Harpyaeque—

Diodorus Siculus will have the Gorgons and Amazons to have been two warlike nations of women, who inhabited that part of Libya which lay on the lake Tritonidis. The extermination of these female nations was not effected till Hercules undertook and performed it.

Pausanias says, the Gorgons were the daughters of Phorbus; after whose death, Medusa, his daughter, reigned over the people dwelling near the lake Tritonidis. The queen was passionately fond of hunting and war, so that she laid the neighbouring countries quite waste. At last, Perseus having made war on them, and killed the queen herself, when he came to take a view of the field of battle, he found the queen's corpse so extremely beautiful, that he ordered her head to be cut off, which he carried with him to show his countrymen the Greeks, who could not behold it without being struck with astonishment.

Others represent them as a kind of monstrous women, covered with hair, who lived in woods and forests. Others, again, make them animals, resembling wild sheep, whose eyes had a poisonous and fatal influence.