474 HARPIES seized by a party of insurgents, and the work- shops were partly burned. The place was af- terward alternately in the hands of both par- ties. In September, 1862, a Union force of about 12,000 men, under Col. Miles, was sta- tioned here. On the 12th, four days before HARPSICHORD the battle of Antietam, a strong confederate force under Jackson and A. P. Hill appear- ed before Maryland heights on the Maryland shore, and early in the morning of the 13th drove the Union troops stationed there behind their breastwork. This was soon after taken, Harper's Ferry. when the federals withdrew across the river. On the same day the confederates established batteries on London heights on the Virginia shore, and on the 14th they opened fire both from these and Maryland heights, renewing it at daybreak of the 15th from seven com- manding points. The federal guns returned fire from Bolivar heights, but ineffectually, and Col. Miles surrendered his force (being mortal- ly wounded almost in the act), the cavalry of which alone had escaped in the night. The confederates made about 11,000 prisoners, and captured 73 guns, 13,000 small arms, and a considerable amount of stores. HARPIES (Gr. "Apnviai, from dpir&Zetv, to snatch), in Greek mythology, fabulous mon- sters, said to have been the daughters of Nep- tune and Earth, or, according to Hesiod, of Thau- mas and Electra. In Homer they are merely personified storm winds, who were believed to have carried off any person that had suddenly disappeared. In Hesiod they are fair-haired and winged maidens who surpass the winds in swiftness, and are called Aello and Ocypete; but in later writers they are represented as disgusting monsters, with heads like maidens, faces pale with hunger, and claws like those of birds. The harpies ministered to the gods as the executors of vengeance. They were two or three in number, and dwelt in the Stropha- thc.-i n isles, in the Ionian sea. The most celebra- ted myth in which the harpies figure is that of the blind Phineus, whose food they had been commissioned to snatch away as often as it was placed before him. The Argonauts arrived at his residence while he was thus tormented, and freed him from the persecution. In the fa- mous harpy monument discovered in Lycia by Sir C. Fellowes, and nofa in the British mu- seum, the harpies are represented in the act of carrying off the daughter of Pandarrous. HARPOCRATES. See HOBTJB. HARPOCRATION, Valerius, a Greek philologist, who according to some flourished in the 2d century A. D., and according to others about the middle of the 4th. He was a native of Al- exandria in Egypt, and the author of a valuable lexicon, still extant, to the works of the Attic orators. The earliest edition was published at Venice in 1503 ; the most recent is that of Bekker, which appeared at Berlin in 1833. HARPSICHORD, a keyed musical instrument, somewhat in the form of a grand piano, in which the sounds are produced by the action of oblong slips of wood called jacks, furnished with crowquill plectrums, and moved by finger keys, upon a series of stretched wires, resem- bling a horizontal harp. It was provided with stops for increasing or diminishing the power of the strings, and with a swell; and the best instruments had a compass of five octaves, from double F below the base to F in altissimo. The harpsichord was in use as early as the 15th cen- tury, and gradually took the place of the spinet
