Note 603 — Chapter V · THE DEMONOLOGY OF GHOSTS AND SPRITES AND BOGEYS. (continued 2)

This striding flying pose with the bent knee has been used by some archaeologists to explain the epithet καμψίπους. But bending or turning the knee is not bending or turning the foot. It is possible that in this epithet applied (Aesch. Sept. 791) to the Erinys we have merely an expression of the instinct to create an uncouth deformed bogey. M. Paul Perdrizet (Mélusine vol. IX. 1898, p. 99, ‘Les pieds ou les genoux à rebours’) makes the interesting suggestion that the καμψίπους Ἐρινύς may be an Erinys with feet turned the reverse way, a horrid distorted cripple. This peculiar form of deformity was not unknown among the ancients, as witness the statuettes cited as examples by M. Perdrizet, a bronze in the British Museum (Cat. Walters no. 216) and a terracotta in the National Museum at Athens (Cat. 7877: Stackelberg, Gräber der Hellenen, pl. LXXIII. 475). I do not feel confident of the rightness of this interpretation for two reasons, firstly, καμψίπους seems scarcely to be the right epithet for a striking distortion which would rather be στρεβλόπους or some such word, and secondly, constant stress is laid on the swiftness of the Erinys which would be inconsistent with a crippling deformity. On the other hand, figures with their feet reversed may have suggested the inevitable back-coming of the Erinys. Mr F. M. Cornford suggests to me that καμψίπους is the humanized equivalent of γαμψῶνυξ, an interpretation proffered by Blomfield but rejected in favour of pernix. The suggestion seems to me to carry fresh conviction now that the Erinys is seen to be in her original essence and in her art-form near akin to Harpy, Sphinx and Bird-woman. Sophocles (Oed. Tyr. 1199) calls the Sphinx γαμψῶνυξ. In fig. 44 she is claw-footed; the Harpy to the right in fig. 19 has crooked claws for hands. Aeschylus may be using an epithet that originally meant ‘clutch-foot’ in some new sense as ‘plying the foot,’ i.e. swift, or as ‘back-returning.’