Siren (mythology)

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] 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, in order to resist their song.[7]

The English word "siren", referring to a noise-making device, derives from the name.

Overall, the partly fish (mermaid) form characteristic became iconic in the medieval period,[12] but actually, there have survived examples from the Classical period where the siren is depicted as mermaid-like.[12] The sirens are depicted as mermaids or "tritonesses" in examples dating to the 3rd century BC, including the image of the siren impressed onto an earthenware bowl, found in Athens.[15][17] Another is a terracotta oil lamp, possibly from the Roman period.[12]

Miniature illustration of a siren enticing sailors who try to resist her, from an English Bestiary, c. 1235

The first known literary attestation of siren as a "mermaid" is not until the Middle Ages, 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".[18][19]

The siren's description as bird-like was retained when the "siren" was added to the Latin version of the Physiologus (6th century)[lower-alpha 3] and the bird image was adhered to by a number of subsequent bestiaries, into the 13th century,[21][20] but at some time during the interim, the mermaid shape was introduced to this body of works.[22]

A Physiologus dated to the mid 9th century illustrated the siren as a woman-fish, contradicting its texts.[lower-alpha 4][23] Illustrating the siren as a mermaid (often holding an eel-fish, instead of a musical instrument) became commonplace in the "second family" bestiaries,[24] which included the oldest codex in the group, dated the late 12th century.[lower-alpha 5]

In some exceptions, the siren was drawn as a hybrid, with both a fish-like lower body and bird-like wings and feet.[25][26] Guillaume le clerk's bestiary (1210 or 11) referred to the Syren as "shaped like a fish or like a bird".[27]

There also appeared medieval works that purported sirens to be mermaid-shaped, while citing Physiologus as their source.[28][29]

The Siren of Canosa, statuette exposing psychopomp characteristics, late fourth century BC

According to Ovid (43 BC–17 AD), the sirens were the companions of young Persephone.[51] Demeter gave them wings to search for Persephone when she was abducted by Hades. However, the Fabulae of Hyginus (64 BC–17 AD) has Demeter cursing the sirens for failing to intervene in the abduction of Persephone. According to Hyginus, Sirens were fated to live only until the mortals who heard their songs were able to pass by them.[52]

One legend says that Hera, queen of the gods, persuaded the sirens to enter a singing contest with the Muses. The Muses won the competition and then plucked out all of the sirens' feathers and made crowns out of them.[53] Out of their anguish from losing the competition, writes Stephanus of Byzantium, the sirens turned white and fell into the sea at Aptera ("featherless"), where they formed the islands in the bay that were called Leukai ("the white ones", modern Souda).[54]

In the Argonautica (third century BC), Jason had been warned by Chiron that Orpheus would be necessary in his journey. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew out his lyre and played his music more beautifully than they, drowning out their voices. One of the crew, however, the sharp-eared hero Butes, heard the song and leapt into the sea, but he was caught up and carried safely away by the goddess Aphrodite.[10]

Odysseus was curious as to what the sirens sang to him, and so, on the advice of Circe, he had all of his sailors plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast. He ordered his men to leave him tied tightly to the mast, no matter how much he might beg. When he heard their beautiful song, he ordered the sailors to untie him but they bound him tighter. When they had passed out of earshot, Odysseus demonstrated with his frowns to be released.[55] Some post-Homeric authors state that the sirens were fated to die if someone heard their singing and escaped them, and that after Odysseus passed by they therefore flung themselves into the water and perished.[56]

The first-century Roman historian Pliny the Elder discounted sirens as a pure fable, "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."[57] In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci wrote, "The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners."

By the fourth century, when pagan beliefs were overtaken by Christianity, the belief in literal sirens was discouraged. Although Saint Jerome, who produced the Latin Vulgate version of the bible, used the word sirens to translate Hebrew tannīm ("jackals") in the Book of Isaiah 13:22, and also to translate a word for "owls" in the Book of Jeremiah 50:39, this was explained by Ambrose to be a mere symbol or allegory for worldly temptations, and not an endorsement of the Greek myth.[64]

The early Christian euhemerist interpretation of mythologized human beings received a long-lasting boost from the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville:

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.[65]

Italian poet Dante Alighieri depicts a siren in Canto 19 of Purgatorio, the second canticle of the Divine Comedy. Here, the pilgrim dreams of a female that is described as "stuttering, cross-eyed, and crooked on her feet, with stunted hands, and pallid in color."[66] It is not until the pilgrim "gazes" upon her that she is turned desirable and is revealed by herself to be a siren.[66] This siren then claims that she "turned Ulysses from his course, desirous of my / song, and whoever becomes used to me rarely / leaves me, so wholly do I satisfy him!"[66] Given that Dante did not have access to the Odyssey, the siren's claim that she turned Ulysses from his course is inherently false because the sirens in the Odyssey do not manage to turn Ulysses from his path.[67] Ulysses and his men were warned by Circe and prepared for their encounter by stuffing their ears full of wax,[67][68] except for Ulysses, who wishes to be bound to the ships mast as he wants to hear the siren's song.[68] Scholars claim that Dante may have "misinterpreted" the siren's claim from an episode in Cicero's De finibus.[67] The pilgrim's dream comes to an end when a lady "holy and quick"[66] who had not yet been present before suddenly appears and says, "O Virgil, Virgil, who is this?"[66] Virgil, the pilgrim's guide, then steps forward and tears the clothes from the siren's belly which, "awakened me [the pilgrim] with the stench that issued from it."[66] This marks ending the encounter between the pilgrim and the siren.

By the time of the Renaissance, female court musicians known as courtesans filled the role of an unmarried companion, and musical performances by unmarried women could be seen as immoral. Seen as a creature who could control a man's reason, female singers became associated with the mythological figure of the siren, who usually took a half-human, half-animal form somewhere on the cusp between nature and culture.[69]

Sirens continued to be used as a symbol for the dangerous temptation embodied by women regularly throughout Christian art of the medieval era; however, in the 17th century, some Jesuit writers began to assert their actual existence, including Cornelius a Lapide, who said of woman, "her glance is that of the fabled basilisk, her voice a siren's voice—with her voice she enchants, with her beauty she deprives of reason—voice and sight alike deal destruction and death."[70] Antonio de Lorea also argued for their existence, and Athanasius Kircher argued that compartments must have been built for them aboard Noah's Ark.[71]

Charles Burney expounded c. 1789, in A General History of Music: "The name, according to Bochart, who derives it from the Phoenician, implies a songstress. Hence it is probable, that in ancient times there may have been excellent singers, but of corrupt morals, on the coast of Sicily, who by seducing voyagers, gave rise to this fable."[72]

John Lemprière in his Classical Dictionary (1827) wrote, "Some suppose that the sirens were a number of lascivious women in Sicily, who prostituted themselves to strangers, and made them forget their pursuits while drowned in unlawful pleasures. The etymology of Bochart, who deduces the name from a Phoenician term denoting a songstress, favors the explanation given of the fable by Damm.[73] This distinguished critic makes the sirens to have been excellent singers, and divesting the fables respecting them of all their terrific features, he supposes that by the charms of music and song they detained travellers, and made them altogether forgetful of their native land."[74]