Fun Trivia About the Sirens in Greek Mythology

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), directed by Joel Coen, written by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, based on The Odyssey of Homer.

Who or, for that matter, what were the Sirens in Greek mythology?

Well, for starters, they didn't look anything like the voluptuous beauties who seduced Everett, Delmar, and Pete in the Coen brothers' spirited take on the Odyssey. The Sirens of archaic and classical Greek myth were avian demons, i.e. supernatural beings that were part-bird and part-human. In earlier depictions (7th and 6th centuries BC) the bird part is dominant: At that time a siren is conceived as a bird with a human face-sometimes female, other times male and bearded. In classical and late Greek mythology, however, the Sirens have acquired a human torso and an unmistakable pair of female breasts: They have become bird-women.

The Sirens are beings of mystery. Even the origin of their name is obscure. The Greek word Seiren (Seirenes in the plural) is of unknown etymology. A frequent interpretation is that it derives from the Greek noun seira, which means "rope", "cord", "lasso"-apparently in reference to the ability of the Sirens to lure and ensnare men. If there is one thing about the Sirens that all sources and traditions agree on, it is their irresistible power of seduction, their "meretricious wiles and charms." (Fox, p. 262)

The genealogy of the Sirens is also a mystery. Some sources consider them daughters of Phorkys, a primordial god of the sea. Elsewhere they are called Acheloides, i.e. daughters of the all-powerful river god Achelous (Acheloös in Greek). Their mother may have been a Muse (which would explain the Sirens' powers of enchantment through music and song) or Mother Earth (Gaia) herself. Alternatively, some myths have the Sirens spring forth from the blood that spilled on the earth when Hercules fought with Achelous and broke off one of the river god's bull's horns. (Don't ask.)

How many Sirens were there? Again, the sources are inconsistent. A simple (simplistic even) mnemonic device would be: Two by Homer, between two and five by the rest. Three is the number of Sirens that the classical Greek vase-painters seem to prefer.

What were the Sirens' names? Various writers report all sorts of different names. There is an unmistakable pattern though: All attributed names signify allurement, bewitchment, and temptation-especially by voice, as in Thelxiepeia (= she who seduces with her speech), Aglaophonos (= she with the wonderful voice), and Himerope (= she who arouses longing with her voice).

The Sirens lived on Anthemoëssa (ironically, the name means "flowery"), a small island between Italy and Sicily. Perched on the jagged rocks overlooking the sea, these pitiless bird-demons sang the sweet songs that lured sailors to their deaths. Only two potential victims managed to elude the Sirens: Jason (and his Argonauts) and Odysseus (Ulysses). According to later legends, the Sirens took these failures to heart, and committed suicide.

When did the Sirens of Greek myth change from bird-women to fish-women (i.e. mermaids)? Hard to say, but the transformation had already begun when Horace wrote in his Ars Poetica (18 BC) about a sea creature that was a beautiful woman above (mulier formosa superne) and a fish below the waist (desinit in piscem). The conflation of sirens and mermaids was well under way by the second half of the 14th century, when Chaucer berated the French for failing to make the distinction: "Though we mermaydens clepe [= call] hem heere, ... Men clepen hem sereyns in Fraunce." (quoted in Carlson, p. 258) Shakespeare used the words mermaid and siren as synonyms, and even coined the phrase syren teares (think: crocodile tears), presumably in allusion to the original Sirens' deceptive ways. This folkloristic and linguistic fusion of siren (the birdlike sea monster) and mermaid (the sea nymph) is reflected in several modern languages, as, for example, in Italian, where sirena means both "siren" and "mermaid". (Cf. also La Sirenetta, which is Italian for The Little Mermaid.)

Christian tradition did not endorse a literal interpretation of the myth of the Sirens, but rather an allegorical one: The mythic Sirens personify the treacherous shallows of our life's voyage, while their bewitching song (cf. siren song) stands for the spiritually destructive temptations of the world. A notable exception to this line of thought was the highly individual approach of Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit philosopher of the 17th century. In his voluminous Arca Noë (1675), Kircher maintained that the Sirens (Syrenae) did indeed exist, that they were amphibian sea monsters (monstra marina), and that they "had been granted a place on Noah's ark, in vats of water." (Austern & Naroditskaya, p. 74)

In times long past, the Sirens cast a magic spell on our collective imagination. Maybe the strongest proof of their existence is that they continue to do so.

Sources:
http://www.imdb.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_mythology
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/horace/arspoet.shtml
http://www.shakespeare-online.com
Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.m-w.com
Greek and Roman Mythology by William Sherwood Fox. Vol. I of The Mythology of All Races.
(Boston: Marshall Jones Co., 1916): http://alturl.com/krju
Literature and Lore of the Sea by Patricia Ann Carlson (Editor). (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1986): http://alturl.com/2yay
Music of the Sirens by Linda Phyllis Austern and Inna Naroditskaya (Editors). (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006): http://alturl.com/d2yb