Sirenes

or Seire'>NES (Σειρῆνες), mythical beings who were believed to have the power of enchanting and charming, by their song, any one who heard them. When Odysseus, in his wanderings through the Mediterranean, came near the island on the lovely beach of which the Sirens were sitting, and endeavouring to allure him and his companions, he, on the advice of Circe, stuffed the ears of his companions with wax, and tied himself to the mast of his vessel, until he was so far off that he could no longer hear their song (Hom. Od. 12.39, &c., 166, &c.). According to Homer, the island of the Sirens was situated between Aeaea and the rock of Scylla, near the south-western coast of Italy. Homer says nothing of their number, but later writers mention both their names and number some state that they were two, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1709); and others, that there were three, Peisinoe, Aglaope, and Thelxiepeia (Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 712), or Parthenope, Ligeia, and Leucosia (Eustath. l.c. ; Strab. v. pp. 246, 252; Serv. ad Virg. Georg. 4.562). They are called daughters of Phorcus (Plut. Sympos. 9.14), of Achelous and Sterope (Apollod. 1.7.10), of Terpsichore (Apollon. 4.893), of Melpomene (Apollod. 1.3.4), of Calliope (Serv. ad Aen. 5.364), or of Gaea (Eurip. Hel. 168). Their place of abode is likewise different in the different traditions, for some place them on cape Pelorum others in the island of Anthemusa, and others again in the Sirenusian islands near Paestum, or in Capreae (Strab. i. p.22; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 1709; Serv. l.c.). The Sirens are also connected with the legends about the Argonauts and the rape of Persephone. When the Argonauts, it is said. passed by the Sirens, the latter began to sing, but in vain, for Orpheus rivalled and surpassed them ; and as it had been decreed that they should live only till some one hearing their song should pass by unmoved, they threw themselves into the sea, and were metamorphosed into rocks. Some writers connected the self-destruction of the Sirens with the story of Orpheus and the Argonauts, and others With that of Odysseus (Strab. v. p.252; Orph. Arg. 1284; Apollod. 1.9.25; Hygin. Fab. 141). Late poets represent them as provided with wings, which they are said to have received at their own request, in order to be able to search after Persephone (Ov. Met. 5.552), or as a punishment from Demeter for not having assisted Persephone (Hygin. l.c.), or from Aphrodite, because they wished to remain virgins (Eustath. l.c. ; Aelian, Ael. NA 17.23; Apollon. 4.896). Once, however, they allowed themselves to be prevailed upon by Hera to enter into a contest with the Muses, and being defeated, they were deprived of their wings (Paus. 9.34.2; Eustath. ad Hom. p. 85). There was a temple of the Sirens near Surrentum, and the tomb of Parthenope was believed to be near Neapolis. (Strab. i. p.23, v. p. 246.) [L.S]

(Σειρῆνες). The daughters of Phorcys, according to later legend of Acheloüs, and one of the Muses. In Homer there are two, in later writers, three, called Ligea, Leucosia, and Parthenopé, or Aglaophemé, Molpé, and Thelxiepea. Homer describes them as dwelling between Circé's isle and Scylla, on an island, where they sit in a flowery meadow, surrounded by the mouldering bones of men, and with their sweet song allure and infatuate those that sail by. Whoever listens to their song and draws near them never again beholds wife and child. They know everything that happens on earth. When Odysseus sailed past, he had stopped up the ears of his companions with wax, while he had made them bind him to the mast, that he might hear their song without danger ( Od. xii. 41-54; 153-300). Orpheus protected the Argonauts from their spell by his own singing (Apollon. Rh. iv. 903). As they were only to live till some one had sailed past unmoved by their song, they cast themselves into the sea, on account either of Odysseus or of Orpheus, and were changed to sunken rocks. When the adventures of Odysseus came to be localized on the Italian and Sicilian shore, the seat of the Sirens was transferred to the neighbourhood of Naples and Sorrento, to the three rocky and uninhabited islets called the Sirenūsae, the Sirenum scopuli of Vergil (Aen. v. 864; cf. Stat. Silv. ii. 2, 1), or to Capri, or to the Sicilian promontory of Pelorum. There they were said to have settled, after vainly searching the whole earth for the lost Persephoné, their former playmate in the meadows by the Acheloüs; and later legend also assigned this at the time when they in part assumed a winged shape. They were represented as great birds with the heads of women, or with the upper part of the body like that of a woman, with the legs of birds, and with or without wings. At a later period they were sometimes regarded as retaining their original character of fair and cruel tempters and deceivers. But they are more generally represented as singers of the dirge for the dead, and they were hence frequently placed as an ornament on tombs; or as symbols of the magic of beauty, eloquence, and song, on which account their sculptured forms were seen on the funeral monuments of fair women and girls, and of orators and poets— for instance, on those of Isocrates and Sophocles. The National Museum at Athens contains several examples of stone Sirens, not as reliefs, but as separate figures; and a funeral monument of this type may be noticed on a vase in the British Museum, where the Siren is standing on a pillar and playing the lyre. Cf. Eurip. Hel. 169; the Anthologia Palatina, vii. 710, 481; with Miss Harrison's Myths of the Odyssey, pp. 146-182, and Mythology and Monuments of Athens, pp. 582-5.