Siren

This article is about the mythological creature. For the noise maker, see Siren (noisemaker). For other uses, see Siren (disambiguation).


When the Sirens were given a name of their own they were considered the daughters of the river god Achelous, fathered upon Terpsichore,Melpomene, Sterope, or Chthon (the Earth; in Euripides' Helen 167, Helen in her anguish calls upon "Winged maidens, daughters of the Earth"). Although they lured mariners, for the Greeks the Sirens in their "meadow starred with flowers" were not sea deities. Roman writers linked the Sirens more closely to the sea, as daughters ofPhorcys.[3] Sirens are found in many Greek stories, particularly in Homer's Odyssey.In Greek mythology, theSirens (Greek singular:Σειρήν Seirēn; Greek plural: Σειρῆνες Seirēnes) were dangerous and devious creatures, portrayed as femmes fatales who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on some small islands calledSirenum scopuli. In some later, rationalized traditions, the literal geography of the "flowery" island of Anthemoessa, or Anthemusa,[1] is fixed: sometimes on Cape Pelorum and at others in the islands known as the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae.[2] All such locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks.

Their number is variously reported as between two and five. In theOdyssey, Homer says nothing of their origin or names, but gives the number of the Sirens as two.[4] Later writers mention both their names and number: some state that there were three, Peisinoe, Aglaope, andThelxiepeia (Tzetzes, ad Lycophron 7l2) or Parthenope, Ligeia, and Leucosia (Eustathius, loc. cit.; Strabo v. §246, 252; Servius' commentary on Virgil's Georgics iv. 562); Eustathius (Commentaries §1709) states that they were two, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia. Their individual names are variously rendered in the later sources as Thelxiepeia/Thelxiope/Thelxinoe, Molpe, Aglaophonos/Aglaope/Aglaopheme, Pisinoe/Peisinoë/Peisithoe, Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, Raidne, and Teles.[5][6][7][8][9]

The Sirens of Greek mythology are often confused with the Gorgonsportrayed in later folklore as half women–half birds, (birds sing beautiful, enchanting songs, like the sirens are portrayed to do); the fact that in Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Portuguese the word for mermaid is respectively Sirena, Sirène,Sirena, Syrena, Sirenă and Sereia, and that in biology the Sireniacomprise an order of fully aquatic mammals that includes the dugongand manatee, add to the visual confusion, so that Sirens are even represented as mermaids. However, "the sirens, though they sing to mariners, are not sea-maidens," Jane Ellen Harrison has cautioned; "they dwell on an island in a flowery meadow."[10]