Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Thaumas son of Pontus weds the Oceanid Electra; she bears Iris, swift golden-winged messenger of the gods, and the Harpies Aello and Ocypete—“Storm-swift” and “Quick-flying”—fair-haired maidens in Hesiod’s brief notice, later imagined as bird-bodied snatchers of food and souls. The sibling pair maps two faces of airy speed: Iris carries Zeus’s and Hera’s commands along the rainbow path and, in Hesiod, fetches the dread water of Styx when gods swear; the Harpies are the same wind-swiftness turned predatory, haunting Phineus’s table in the Argonautic saga. Catalogue the birth and contrast of Iris and the Harpies apart from the wider Pontus stemma and apart from any single messenger errand or Argonautic episode.