Siren

Siren, in Greek mythology, a half-bird and half-woman creature who lured sailors to destruction by the sweetness of her song, personifying maritime hazards. According to Homer, there were two Sirens on an island in the western sea between Circe’s island, Aeaea, and the rocks of Scylla. Later the number was usually increased to three (or eight by Plato), and they were located on the west coast of Italy, near Naples. They were variously said to be the daughters of the sea god Phorcys or of the river god Achelous by one of the Muses.

Origin and names

The Sirens seem to have evolved from an ancient tale of the perils of early exploration combined with an Asian image of a bird-woman. Anthropologists explain the Asian image as a soul-bird—i.e., a winged ghost that stole the living to share its fate. In that respect the Sirens had affinities with the Harpies. In art the Sirens appeared first as birds with the heads of women and later as women, sometimes winged, with bird legs.

Post-Homeric sources give varying individual names for each Siren. Hesiod (flourished c. 700 bce) identified them as Aglaophonus (“Splendid Sounding”), Molpe (“Song”), and Thelxinoe or Thelxiope (“Charming the Mind” or “Charming Voice”). In the Bibliothēke, a compendium of Greek mythology composed in the 1st or 2nd century ce and sometimes attributed to Apollodorus, the Sirens are identified as Aglaope (“Splendid Voice”), Peisinoe (“Affecting the Mind”), and Thelxipea (“Charming”).

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From Athena to Zeus: Basics of Greek Mythology

The legend of Persephone

Ovid (Metamorphoses, Book V) wrote that the Sirens were human companions of Persephone. After she was carried off by Hades, they sought her everywhere and finally prayed for wings to fly across the sea. The gods granted their prayer. In some versions Demeter turned them into birds to punish them for not guarding Persephone. In other traditions the wing feathers of the Sirens were plucked out when they were defeated in a singing contest by some of the Muses.

Encounters with Greek heroes

In Homer’s Odyssey, Book XII, the Greek hero Odysseus, advised by the sorceress Circe, escaped the danger of their song by stopping the ears of his crew with wax so that they were deaf to the Sirens. Odysseus wanted to hear their song but had himself tied to the mast so that he would not be able to steer the ship off its course. Apollonius of Rhodes, in Argonautica, Book IV, relates that when the Argonauts sailed that way, Orpheus sang so divinely that only one of the Argonauts heard the Sirens’ song. (According to Argonautica, Butes alone was compelled by the Sirens’ voices to jump into the water, but his life was saved by the goddess Cypris, a cult name for Aphrodite.) In Hyginus’s Fabulae, no. 141, a mortal’s ability to resist them caused the Sirens to commit suicide.