Phineus was a royal king of Thrace. He developed the gift of prophecy at an early age, which angered Zeus,
The Blind Phileas's Buffet
because he revealed too much. So Zeus punished him by blinding him and putting him on an island with a buffet of food which he could never eat. The harpies always arrived and stole the food out of his hands before he could satisfy his hunger, and 
befouled the remains of his food. This continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts . The Argonauts then captured the Harpies in a net, before trapping them in a wooden box.