![]() ![]() ![]() There is contradictory information about what the powers of the mermaid were, and perhaps this is where the conflation of the mermaid and the siren came into play. Some of the first stories are from ancient Syria, but in Greek mythos, the mermaids were the daughters of Triton. Of course, mermaids have always been a part of Greek mythology, too. It’s unclear why or how, but somewhere along the way, mermaids and sirens got conflated. He begged his crew to untie him, but they just kept sailing, and Odysseus became the first to hear the song of the siren and live. As they sailed past, the sirens promised Odysseus that if he came to them, they would tell him everything he wanted to know about the Trojan War. He had his crewmen plug up their ears with wax so they would not succumb to the sirens, and he had himself tied to the mast of his ship. In his tale, Odysseus was cautioned about the allure of the siren’s song and couldn’t resist hearing it. In his epic poem, the mention of the sirens is far briefer than in modern tellings. One of the first-and most famous-appearances of the siren was in Homer’s Odyssey, written in the eighth century BC. Some depictions have even described men leaping haplessly from their ships into the waves of sea after the sounds of the sirens’ voices. Legend has it the sirens would tempt sailors with their beautiful song and drive them to shipwreck on the rocky shores of the islands in the sea. But popular myth seems to have pinned them in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Sorrento. The sirens have been linked to various locations, both real and imaginary, in and around Italy and Greece. The other myth comes from Hyginus, a contemporary of Ovid, who said that Demeter cursed the companions of Persephone-when they failed to intervene in her abduction, she transformed them into sirens Ovid, a Roman poet who lived from 43 BC-17 AD, claimed that they were companions of Persephone, and after she was abducted, they were given wings so that they could find her in the underworld. Sometimes the creature had the head of a woman and the body of a bird, but sometimes the creature had the body of a woman and the head of a bird. In Greek mythology, the siren was depicted as a creature that was half bird and half woman. But the truth is, the ancient Greek myth of a siren was nothing like that. Do you think of the three enchanting water-soaked women from O Brother Where Are Thou who sing and lure the men into unconsciousness? Or do you think of the fish-tailed seductresses from Pirates of the Caribbean who are both beautiful and dangerous? Today, the words “siren” and “mermaid” are often used interchangeably. I’m talking femmes fatales-the Greek myth of the siren. When you think of a siren, what image comes to mind? Of course I’m not talking about the emergency sirens that make our German Shepherds howl and let us know when there may be tornados. ![]()
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