The Siren – Female Creatures of Greek Mythology
Sirens – Female creatures of Greek mythology
Sirens were half bird, half woman, legendary female creatures of Greek mythology (not to be confused with mermaids).
These beautiful yet dangerous creatures, with their sweet siren song, impossible to resist once heard, lured sailors to the rocky shores where they were instantly shipwrecked.
Originally Sirens, sisters to the harpies, were not associated with the sea but were categorized as Naiads, freshwater nymphs.
Legend has that the Sirens were daughters of Achelous, the god of freshwater and Melpomene, one of the nine muses.
How Many Sirens Were There?
The Sirens Edward Burne-Jones – 1875
When the question arises, asking how many sirens actually existed and what their names were, there seems to be quite a bit of confusion.
Eustathius (Greek Archbishop of Thessaloniki, and scholar), states, as did Homer, that there two and gives them the names Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia.
All later mention of the sirens of ancient Greek mythology use the following individual names:
Thelxiepeia/Thelxiope/Thelxinoe, Molpe, Himerope, Aglaophonos/Aglaope/Aglaopheme, Pisinoe/Peisinoë/Peisithoe, Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, Raidne and Teles.
Where Did the Sirens Live?
Le Sirenuse or Li Galli, – a small group of islands off the Amalfi coast of Italy.
Sirens are represented in early Greek art as birds, with large women’s heads, feathers and scaly feet (And later as females with the legs of birds, with or without wings), sprawled in meadows dotted with flowers, playing musical instrument, usually the harp and lyre.
These flower-filled meadows, home to the sirens, in ancient times, were referred to as Anthemoessa or Anthemusa (The flowery islands), said by the Roman poets, Virgil and Ovid, to be the Sirenum Scopuli, three small, rocky islands, (South of Capri) or Pelorus, today known as Punto del Faro, Sicily.
The Strait of Messina – Punta del Faro (or Capo Peloro) – Sicily
As is usual when it comes to Greek myths, there are often various versions of the same tale and so it is when it comes to the Sirens and thus the siren’s home may have been Le Sirenuse, or Li Galli, a small group of islands off the Amalfi coast of Italy.
Homer (Ancient Greek poet, author of The Odyssey) locates the home of the sirens, as an island in the Western sea, between Aeae; the Island, in Greek mythology home to the witch Circe and Scylla (A monster in Greek mythology, which lived at one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart Charybdis.)
All locations though, thought to be home to the sirens, were surrounded by cliffs and rocks, the perfect setting for luring sailors to their death.
Sirens in Greek Mythology
Persephone and the Sirens
The Call of the Sirens – Felix Ziem -(1821-1911)
According to Ovid, the famous Roman poet (43 BC – 17/18 AD), the sirens of Greek mythology were handmaidens to Persephone, daughter of Zeus, king of all Greek gods and the Goddess of harvest, Demeter.
After Persephone had the bad luck to be kidnapped by Hades, God of the Underworld, her distraught mother, Demeter, ordered Persephone’s handmaidens to quickly find and rescue her.
To help them with their task Demeter gave them wings.
The handmaidens of Persephone searched high and low, all the while calling out to Persephone with their sweet song but to no avail, Persephone was nowhere to be found.
Demeter, in a state of rage at the handmaidens who had failed to bring home her precious daughter, condemned them to live forever more as sirens, far away, on rocky, rugged islands, singing their siren song, a song with the power to put body and soul into a state of fatal lethargy.
Odysseus (Ulysses) and the Sirens
Ulysses and the Sirens (1891) – John William Waterhouse – National Gallery of Victoria – Melbourne – Australia
“No seaman ever sailed his black ship past this spot without listening to the honey-sweet tones that flow from our lips and no one who has listened has not been delighted and gone on his way a wiser man.”
(The Sirens, Odyssey 12:186-190)
In Homer’s ‘The Odessey’, Odysseus was curious to hear the song of the sirens and so on the advice of Circe; A powerful sorceress in Greek mythology, ordered his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and then tie him to the mast.
No matter what happened or how much Odysseus begged them they were not to untie him.
Upon hearing the siren song Odysseus begged his crew to untie him but they heeded their master’s orders and only tied him tighter enabling their ship to pass safely by the island of the sirens.
The Argonauts and the Sirens
Orpheus and the sirens – Group of terracotta figures dated to the 4th century B.C – Museo dell’arte salvata (Museum of Rescued Art) – Rome – Italy
In the epic poem “Argonautica” by Apollonius of Rhodes (third century B.C) Jason, captain of the ship “Argo” is warned by the centaur Chiron, that Orpheus (Musician, poet and prophet) would be needed on his journey.
Orpheus would be needed to to play his lyre in order to drown out the song of the siren and this is exactly what Orpheus did.
However, one member of the crew, Butes, heard the song which caused him to jump into the sea, luckily for him though, he was caught and brought to safety by Aphrodite, Goddess of love, pleasure and procreation.
Death of the sirens
The Sirens – Edward Matthew Hale – 1852-1924
Some post-Homeric authors believe the Sirens were sure to die if someone heard their singing and escaped and that after Odysseus passed by the sirens flung themselves into the sea and drowned.
According to GaiusGaius Julius Hyginus, (Latin author), sirens were fated to live only until the mortals who heard their songs were able to pass by them.
Another story is that Hera, queen of the gods, persuaded the Sirens to enter a singing competition with the Muses.
The Muses won the competition and then plucked out all of the Sirens’ feathers and made crowns out of them.
Out of their anguish from losing the competition it’s said that the Sirens turned white and fell into the sea at Aptera, meaning “featherless”, where they formed the islands in the bay that were called Leukai, meaning white.
Today the Leuka islands are the islands of Nisi and Leon in the bay of modern day Souda on the island of Crete.
Nisi and Leon in Suda Bay, Crete – In ancient times these two islets were referred to as Leukai (Greek for “white ones”).
Acknowledgements to Sirens
Odysseus and the Sirens – Roman mosaic – 2nd century AD – Bardo National Museum – Tunis – Tunisia
The first-century Roman historian Pliny the Elder discounted Sirens as sheer fantasy but went on to say;
“Although Dinon, the father of Clearchus, a celebrated writer, asserts that they exist in India, and that they charm men by their song, and, having first lulled them to sleep, tear them to pieces.”
In his notebooks Leonardo da Vinci wrote of the Siren,
“The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners.”
In 1917 Franz Kafka wrote in “The Silence of the Sirens”:
“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing never happened, it is still conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never.”
The Siren of Canosa
Siren of Canosa 340 to 300B.C
National Archaeological Museum of Madrid, Spain.
The “Siren of Canosa” from Italy was said to be among items buried with the dead in order to guide them on the after-life journey.
This terracotta figure, from around 340 to 300B.C, has the feet, wings and tail of a bird and bears traces of its original white pigment.
The sculpture is housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid, Spain.
How Sirens Became Confused with Mermaids
Edmund Dulac. The Little Mermaid, illustration for William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”
Sirens, in Greek mythology, never had the half body of fish but are half human and half bird female creatures.
Also, sirens never lived underwater, they frolicked amongst flowers in the meadows of rocky islands.
As we see time and time again, by the fourth century A.D, when Christianity began to spread throughout the Western world, all pagan beliefs and that includes Greek mythology, were considered evil and the customs and stories were either changed to suit Christian belief or malevolent beings suddenly becoming benevolent.
In his book “The Etymologies of Isidore Saville“,Isidore of Seville c. 560–636), states:
“They (the Greeks) imagine that ‘there were three Sirens, part virgins, part birds,’ with wings and claws, one of them sang, another played the flute, the third the lyre, they drew sailors, decoyed by song, to shipwreck.
According to the truth, however, they were prostitutes, who led travelers down to poverty and were said to impose shipwreck on them, they had wings and claws because Love flies and wounds.
They are said to have stayed in the waves because a wave created Venus.”
And there we have it, a clue of what really caused sirens to become mermaids:
“Venus”, the Latin term for Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure and procreation, all qualities frowned on by the Christian church, was born from the waves.
She was created in the sea and according to Isidore of Seville, in his “Etymologiae”, that’s where the sirens lived, among the waves of the sea, just as mermaids do!
So today, sirens, female figures of dangerous temptation, are seen as mermaids!
More Confusion Between Sirens and Mermaids
Late Roman mosaic from the Trajan Baths of Acholla, showing 3 aquatic deities. Phorcys centre, Ceto right and Triton or Thaumas on the left. Bardo National Museum, Tunis.
I must add here that the confusion between sirens and mermaids was not totally the fault of the Christian church.
Roman writers tended to link sirens to the sea and named Phorcys, a primordial sea god, depicted as a fish-tailed merman with crab-claw fore-legs and red-spiked skin, as the father of some of the sirens of ancient Greek mythology.
