n Greek mythology, sirens (Ancient Greek: singular: Σειρήν, Seirḗn; plural: Σειρῆνες, Seirênes) are female humanlike beings with alluring voices; they appear in a scene in the Odyssey in which Odysseus saves his crew's lives.[1] Roman poets place them on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli. In some later, rationalized traditions, the literal geography of the "flowery" island of Anthemoessa, or Anthemusa,[2] is fixed: sometimes on Cape Pelorum and at others in the islands known as the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae.[3] All such locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks.
Sirens continued to be used as a symbol of the dangerous temptation embodied by women regularly throughout Christian art of the medieval era. "Siren" can also be used as a slang term for a woman considered both very attractive and dangerous. The etymology of the name is contested. Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin.[5] Others connect the name to σειρά (seirá, "rope, cord") and εἴρω (eírō, "to tie, join, fasten"), resulting in the meaning "binder, entangler",[6][better source needed] i.e. one who binds or entangles through magic song. This could be connected to the famous scene of Odysseus being bound to the mast of his ship, to resist their song.[7]
Sirens were later often used as a synonym for mermaids and portrayed with upper human bodies and fish tails. This combination became iconic in the medieval period.[8][9] The circumstances leading to the commingling involve the treatment of sirens in the medieval Physiologus and bestiaries, both iconographically,[10] as well as textually in translations from Latin to vulgar languages,[a][11] as described below..
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(mythology)
The sirens of Greek mythology first appeared in Homer's Odyssey, where Homer did not provide any physical descriptions, and their visual appearance was left to the readers' imagination. It was Apollonius of Rhodes in Argonautica (3rd century BC) who described the sirens in writing as part woman and part bird.[b][12][13] By the 7th century BC, sirens were regularly depicted in art as human-headed birds.[14] They may have been influenced by the ba-bird of Egyptian religion. In early Greek art, the sirens were generally represented as large birds with women's heads, bird feathers and scaly feet. Later depictions shifted to show sirens with human upper bodies and bird legs, with or without wings. They were often shown playing a variety of musical instruments, especially the lyre, kithara, and aulos.[15]
The tenth-century Byzantine dictionary Suda stated that sirens (Ancient Greek: Σειρῆνας)[c] had the form of sparrows from their chests up, and below they were women or that they were little birds with women's faces.[16]
Originally, sirens were shown as male or female, but the male siren disappeared from art around the fifth century BC.[17]
Some surviving Classical period examples had already depicted the siren as mermaid-like.[8] The sirens are described as mermaids or "tritonesses" in examples dating to the 3rd century BC, including an earthenware bowl found in Athens[20][22] and a terracotta oil lamp possibly from the Roman period.[8]
The first known literary attestation of siren as a "mermaid" appeared in the Anglo-Latin catalogue Liber Monstrorum (early 8th century AD), where it says that sirens were "sea-girls... with the body of a maiden, but have scaly fishes' tails".[23][24]
Medieval Iconography
Further information: § Physiologus and bestiaries
The siren appeared in several illustrated manuscripts of the Physiologus and its successors called the bestiaries. The siren was depicted as a half-woman and half-fish mermaid in the 9th century Berne Physiologus,[25] as an early example, but continued to be illustrated with both bird-like parts (wings, clawed feet) and fish-like tail
Classical literature
Family tree
Although a Sophocles fragment makes Phorcys their father,[27] when sirens are named, they are usually as daughters of the river god Achelous,[28] either by the Muse Terpsichore,[29] Melpomene[30] or Calliope[31] or lastly by Sterope, daughter of King Porthaon of Calydon.[32]
In Euripides's play Helen (167), Helen in her anguish calls upon "Winged maidens, daughters of the Earth (Chthon)." Although they lured mariners, the Greeks portrayed the sirens in their "meadow starred with flowers" and not as sea deities. Epimenides claimed that the sirens were children of Oceanus and Ge.[33] Sirens are found in many Greek stories, notably in Homer's Odyssey.
List of sirens
Their number is variously reported as from two to eight.[34] In the Odyssey, Homer says nothing of their origin or names, but gives the number of the sirens as two.[35] Later writers mention both their names and number: some state that there were three, Peisinoe, Aglaope and Thelxiepeia[36] or Aglaonoe, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia;[37] Parthenope, Ligeia, and Leucosia;[38] Apollonius followed Hesiod gives their names as Thelxinoe, Molpe, and Aglaophonos;[39] Suidas gives their names as Thelxiepeia, Peisinoe, and Ligeia;[40] Hyginus gives the number of the sirens as four: Teles, Raidne, Molpe, and Thelxiope;[41] Eustathius states that they were two, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia;[42] an ancient vase painting attests the two names as Himerope and Thelxiepeia.
Their names are variously rendered in the later sources as Thelxiepeia/Thelxiope/Thelxinoe, Molpe, Himerope, Aglaophonos/Aglaope/Aglaopheme, Pisinoe/Peisinoë/Peisithoe, Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, Raidne, and Teles.[
