Sirens

Half-birds, half beautiful maidens, the Sirens were singing enchantresses capable of luring passing sailors to their islands, and, subsequently, to their doom. Daughters of the river god Achelous and a Muse, they were fated to die if anyone should survive their singing. When Odysseus passed them by unharmed, they hurled themselves into the sea and were drowned.

What Are Sirens in Greek Mythology?

The Sirens were bird-bodied women in Greek mythology whose singing lured sailors to steer toward their island and die there. They were not sea creatures and not mermaids: in every ancient Greek source and image, a Siren has the body and wings of a bird and the head, and sometimes the arms, of a woman.

• Parents: the river god Achelous and one of the Muses – usually Terpsichore, Melpomene, or Calliope
• Number: two in Homer, three in most later authors, and as many as eight in Plato
• Home: a rocky island in the western Mediterranean, surrounded by the bones of the men they killed
• Weakness: they were fated to die if any mortal ever heard their song and survived

What Do Sirens Look Like?

A Siren in Greek art is a bird with a woman’s head – feathered body, wings, clawed feet, and a human face. The fish-tailed Siren everyone pictures today is a later European invention, not a Greek one.

• Vase paintings and grave sculptures from the seventh century BCE onward show them perched on rocks, sometimes holding a lyre or pipes
• Homer never describes them at all: their appearance in the Odyssey is left entirely blank, and only the voice matters
• The mermaid form spread through medieval bestiaries and Romance languages, where the word for Siren became the word for mermaid – sirena in Spanish and Italian, sirène in French
• Greek myth already had sea-women in the Nereids and Oceanids; the Sirens were never among them

What Do Sirens Do to Their Victims?

The Sirens sing, and the men who hear them stop rowing, turn the ship toward the rocks, and die there – either drowned in the wreck or left to waste away on the shore. The Sirens do not attack, chase, or drag anyone under; the sailors destroy themselves.

• Homer describes their meadow heaped with the bones of rotting men, which suggests victims stayed until they starved rather than being eaten
• The danger is enchantment, not violence: Circe warns Odysseus that a man who hears them will never see his wife and children again
• What they actually offer in Homer is not beauty or love but knowledge – they claim to know everything that happened at Troy and everything that happens on earth
• That detail is often lost in modern retellings, which turn a temptation of the mind into a temptation of the body

Are Sirens Gods or Monsters?

The Sirens sit between the two. They are divinely descended – daughters of a river god and a Muse – but they receive no worship as Olympians do, and Greek writers class them with monsters such as Scylla and the Harpies.

• They can die, and they do, which separates them from the immortal gods
• Their gift for music comes from their mother, one of the Muses, which makes their song genuinely divine rather than merely magical
• One Siren, Parthenope, did receive cult honours: her tomb was shown at Naples, and the city was once named after her

Are Sirens Real?

Sirens are not real. They are mythological creatures, and no animal or sea phenomenon corresponds to them, though the myth almost certainly grew out of something in the ancient world.

• Bird-women appear across the eastern Mediterranean long before Homer, often as spirits of the dead, which may be where the form began
• Sirens were carved on Greek tombs as mourners, suggesting an early link with death rather than with seduction
• Sailors did give their islands real coordinates: the Romans placed them at the Sirenum scopuli off the Amalfi coast, and Strabo near Naples and Capri
• The modern emergency siren takes its name from them, borrowed in the nineteenth century for a device defined by its penetrating sound

Sirens Family

Traditionally, the Sirens were daughters of the river god Achelous and a Muse; it depends on the source which one, but it was undoubtedly one of these three: Terpsichore, Melpomene, or Calliope. However, according to the great tragedian Euripides, the Sirens’ mother was actually one of the Pleiades, Sterope.

In Homer, only two nameless Sirens are mentioned. Later authors usually talk about three, naming them in any number of ways. It would seem that Theixiope, Aglaope, and Parthenope are the three names one encounters with the highest frequency.

Siren Names in Greek Mythology

No two ancient authors give the same list. Homer leaves them unnamed, and later writers supply names that describe their voices, so the surviving names read more like descriptions of singing than personal names.

• The most common trio: Parthenope (“maiden-voice”), Ligeia (“clear-toned”), and Leucosia (“the white one”)
• A rival trio: Thelxiepeia (“enchanting speech”), Aglaope (“splendid voice”), and Peisinoe (“persuader of the mind”)
• Other names scattered across the sources include Molpe, Raidne, Teles, Himerope, and Aglaopheme
• Parthenope is the most famous: her body was said to have washed ashore where Naples now stands, and the city bore her name for centuries

Sirens Dwelling Place

In any case, most agree that they lived on three small rocky islands, called Sirenum scopuli by the Romans. It was said that the Sirens’ dwelling place was a ghastly sight to behold: a great heap of bones lay all around them, with the flesh of the victims still rotting off the dead bodies…

Sirens Portrayal

In the “Odyssey,” Homer says nothing about the Sirens’ outward appearance, but one can infer from the text that he has in mind humanlike creatures, if not beautiful maidens. However, at a later date, this all changed and both poets and artists started depicting the Sirens in a similar fashion to how the Harpies were usually portrayed – that is, as creatures with the body of a bird and a woman’s face.

The Abduction of Persephone

Quite a few stories tried shedding some light on this transformation, but the most famous two are related to the abducting of Persephone, to whom it was said that they had been either servants or companions. According to the first one, Demeter turned the Sirens into bird-like monsters because they had failed to help her daughter. The second one is much more flattering to them: in this case, the aggrieved Sirens asked Demeter for wings themselves, so that they can help her search for Persephone better.

Sirens, The Myths

The most famous appearance of the Sirens in classical mythology is in Homer’s “Odyssey” however, they also take part in one or two other myths as well.

Sirens and Odysseus

After Odysseus had made up his mind to leave Aeaea and head back to Ithaca, the love-stricken Circe had no choice but to let him go. However, on going away, she warned him of the dangers that yet awaited him on his journey.

“First you will come to the Sirens,” she told him, “who enchant all who come near them. If anyone unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song.”

There was only one way for a sailor to pass the Sirens unharmed; and that was by not hearing them sing. So, advised by Circe, Odysseus ordered each member of his crew to stuff his own ears with beeswax. As for himself, he opted for a much riskier solution.

Ever the adventurer, he had himself bound to the mast, instructing his sailors to tie him even tighter if he starts begging them to be unfastened or tries to break loose by himself. Ever the adventurer, Odysseus didn’t want to miss the opportunity to experience the luring song of the Sirens and hear what the fuss is all about.

Sirens and Orpheus

As enchanting as their singing might have been to mortals, the Sirens seems to have been no match to divine musicians. The Argonauts, for example, had no problem whatsoever to evade these terrible creatures, since they had none other than Orpheus on board. The very moment he heard their voices, the divine poet drew his lyre and started strumming a tune so loud and lovely that the bewitching song of the Sirens was instantaneously drowned out.

Truth be told, even a second of the Sirens’ singing was enough to lure one especially sensitive member of the Argonauts’ crew – a certain Boutes of Athens – to jump overboard and start swimming towards them. Fortunately, he was saved by Aphrodite who, subsequently, took him as her lover and bore him a son, Eryx.

Sirens and The Muses

The Sirens were never more humiliated than when Hera persuaded them to challenge the Muses to a singing contest. Unsurprisingly, the Muses won, and, as a punishment, they plucked out the Sirens’ feathers and used them to make crowns for themselves.

The Death of the Sirens

It was said that the Sirens were fated to die if any mortal should hear them sing and live to tell the story. So, once Odysseus passed them unharmed, disheartened by their humbling defeat, the Sirens hurled themselves into the sea and bothered no man ever again.

Sirens Sources

Find out how Odysseus managed to outlive the song of the Sirens in the 12^th book of Homer’s “Odyssey.” You’ll find the episode with Orpheus in the fourth book of Apollonius’ epic poem “Argonautica.” As for the contest with the Muses, consult the ancient geographer Pausanias.

See Also: Achelous, The Muses, Odysseus, Orpheus, Circe, Scylla, Persephone, Demeter