Sirens
Voices on the Rocks
SY-runz
Bird-bodied singers on a flowered island, surrounded by the bones of everyone who stopped to listen.
The Story
Daughters of the river Achelous and one of the Muses, they are birds with women's faces, the mermaid came much later. What they offer is not seduction but knowledge: they call to Odysseus by name and promise to tell him everything that happened at Troy, and everything that will happen on the earth. Nobody who wants to know refuses.
Circe's instructions are the standard answer, wax in the crew's ears, and the captain lashed to the mast so he can hear it and survive it. Orpheus solved it differently on the Argo by simply playing louder, and one Siren threw herself into the sea. In some tellings the whole flock is fated to die the first time a ship gets past.
Did You Know?
- They are birds with women's heads in every Greek depiction. The fish tail arrives in the Middle Ages, and Romance languages still use the word for mermaid, sirena, sirène.
- The emergency siren is named after them, by way of an acoustic instrument built in 1819 that could sound underwater.
- Homer never says how many there are. Two, three, and four all appear in later sources, and the vases mostly show three.