Sirens

SIRENS. - From the Greek Σειρήν, Σιρήν (Latin siren, sirena), mythological monsters whose song, accompanied by musical instruments, seduced and attracted men who imprudently listened to it, bringing them to ruin (Odyssey, XII, 41-43). The sirens are part of the group of the genii of death. Their myth took on various allegorical meanings in classical Greco-Roman literature and in Christian literature.

I. IN CLASSICAL GRECO-ROMAN LITERATURE

The myth of the Sirens, developed by later writers, is attested for the first time in the Odyssey (XII, 39-54, 158-200), and the most salient fact of the myth centers on the episode of Ulysses who, to escape their spells, stops the ears of his sailors with wax and has himself bound to the ship's mast so as to hear their song without suffering its sad consequences. Homer speaks of two Sirens, whereas later they become three or four, but the number three remains the most common. The Sirens of this group were called: Leucosia, Ligea and Parthenope. The poet places their abode on an island west of the Mediterranean, not further determined; later, instead, various localities in Sicily were assigned to them, Capri or the rocks between that island and the Sorrentine peninsula. At Sorrento there was a temple in their honor, and at Naples the tomb of the Siren Parthenope was pointed out, while in Sicily worship was given to Leucosia (Capo Posidonio) and and Ligea (Terina). Their genius was not always considered maleficent: their musical virtues transformed them into comforters of mortals, afflicted by the departure of their loved ones (Euripides, Hel., 168 ff.); their woman-bird appearance made them be considered as the bird of the soul, the ειδωλον of the deceased; they were also taken as a symbol of the soul that has reached its peace and that participates in the sufferings of the living after having been a cause of suffering for them. For these reasons, as well as for their powerful apotropaic virtue, they appear so frequently in funerary art. More often, however, the s. were esteemed as a maleficent obstacle both moral and intellectual; generally pointed to as a symbol of voluptuousness and of enticement to sensual pleasures, they represented for the Neoplatonists the obstacles that the soul must overcome to reach its divine homeland, among which are "generation," or the pleasures of inferior culture, the κακουουσία. Epicurus invited his followers to stop their ears and flee with full sails from encounters with the s. "of poetry," that is, the studies dear to the rival school (cf. texts cited by Zwicker, Courcelle, Marrou, Alfonsi).

II. IN CHRISTIAN LITERATURE

Given the notoriety of the myth of the Sirens, Christian writers of all centuries, but especially of antiquity, knew how to exploit it skillfully to draw immediate moral lessons from it. It should be noted at once that the ship's mast, to which Ulysses was bound, is presented as the symbol of the Cross of Christ. In Christian literature, as in all modern European literatures, the Sirens commonly symbolize voluptuousness, the invitation to sensual pleasures, which draw the soul to perdition; hence the word Siren is often a synonym for prostitute or in any case for a woman who flatters and entices. Among the many texts that could be cited in this regard, see, for example, the Latin version of Isaiah (13:22; the original has jackals); the Physiologus (ed. F. J. Carmody, Paris 1939, pp. 75-76); St. Ambrose (Explanatio in psalmum, XLIII, 73: PL 14, 1179; Expositio in Ev. sec. Lucam, IV, 2: PL 15, 1612; De fide, III, 1: PL 16, 614, with reference to the Latin text of Isaiah); St. Jerome (Adversus Jovinianum, I, 4: PL 23, 225; cf. also Commentarium in Isaiam, VI, 14: PL 24, 216, and other passages of St. Jerome in Courcelle, cited in the bibliography, p. 90, n. 2); Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais (Epist., 145: PG 66, 1542); St. Maximus of Turin (the whole of homily 49 is devoted to the episode of Ulysses: PL 57, 339-342); Sidonius Apollinaris (Epist., book IX, ep. 6: PL 58, 620); St. Isidore of Pelusium (Epist., book V, ep. 185: PG 78, 1435); St. Isidore of Seville (Etym., XI, 3, 30: PL 82, 423, cf. ibid. 83, 1310); Honorius of Autun, Speculum Ecclesiae: PL 172, 855-57 (the Sirens as a symbol of avarice, wantonness and lust); Alan of Lille (De planctu naturae: PL 210, 461-462); Dante (Purg., XIX, 7-33). Other authors assigned particular allegorical meanings to the Sirens. Pseudo-Justin (Cohortatio ad gentiles, 36, ed. J. C. Th. Otto, II, Jena 1879, p. 116) compares to the bewitching Sirens the eloquence of the philosophers, against which anyone who wishes to be saved must stop his ears. St. Hippolytus (Philosophumena, VII, 13: PG 16,

3294-95) invites the faithful to arm themselves against heretical doctrines so as not to be seduced by them as by the song of the Sirens; and whoever wishes to become acquainted with such doctrines should have himself bound to the mast of the Cross of Christ. St. Augustine (De beata vita, I, 1-4: PL 32, 959-61) testifies that rhetoric was for him the Siren that almost kept him from reaching the harbor of salvation, that is, philosophy and thence the Faith; he likewise alludes also to the Sirens of superstition (De moribus ecclesiae cath., 34: PL 32, 1342). St. Paulinus of Nola (Epist., XVI, 7: ed. G. Hartel, CSEL, 29, p. 121) in his turn advises Jovius to flee profane literature as one avoids the "carmina blandimentorum" of the Sirens, and in order to avoid shipwreck he must not only stop his ears but also close his eyes. Clement of Alexandria, while in the Protrepticum (12: ed. C. Mondésert - A. Plassart, Paris 1949, pp. 187-88) he makes the Sirens the symbol of the fearsome obstacle of custom and alludes to the island of evil where a fresh courtesan sings, in the Stromata (II, 2: PG 8, 941) says that the word of God in Holy Scripture is as attractive as the song of the Sirens. Procopius of Gaza (Comment. in Genesim: PG 87, 509-10) compares to the Sirens the preachers who with eloquence proclaim the truths of religion and praise God. Finally Celsus says that Christians are called by some dancing and lying Sirens, but Origen cannot make sense of this accusation (Contra Celsum, V, 64: PG 11, 1285).

III. ICONOGRAPHY

Homer does not describe their figure, which was later fixed by the lexicographers and scholiasts as well as by very ancient monuments, among which mention should be made of the 6th-century Attic vase in the Louvre bearing the inscription Σιγην εμα (cf. Corpus vasorum antiquorum, Louvre, III, Hd, pl. 12, 1 [Paris 1923]). There are four clearly distinct types of siren. First type: a bird with a woman's head. Second type: a female figure down to the waist, sometimes winged, with the legs and feet of a bird, naked or clad in a girded chlamys, with musical instruments (double pipe and cithara with the plectrum) and in some cases with a volumen. These two types are found in Oriental, Egyptian, Greek and Roman monuments: vases, statuettes, stelae, etc. The scene of Ulysses and the sirens, reproduced on the front of a group of 11 lids of Roman, pagan sarcophagi (3rd-4th century A.D.), must be interpreted in the Neoplatonic sense mentioned above and not in a Christian sense, as Wilpert wrongly judged (Sarcofagi, I, pp. 14-16; III, pp. 5-7, pls. 24-25, 272, 1). The two aforementioned types of siren continued to be used for ornamental purposes in Byzantine, Coptic, Muslim, Romanesque and Renaissance art. In the Romanesque period the sirens served above all to adorn capitals (cf. the list of monuments in Jalabert, pp. 450-57); in the Renaissance they appear as supports of sarcophagi. Third type: complete female figures seated on a rock, clad in chiton and mantle, with lyre, panpipe and double pipe, a type found on Etruscan urns (cf. E. Brunn, I rilievi delle urne etrusche, I, Rome 1870, pp. 121-23, pls. 90-94). Fourth type: a female figure that from the waist down is transformed into a fish with two tails turned upward. This last type, already noted in the Monstrorum liber de diversis generibus (ch. 8) of the 6th-7th century and in the Bestiaries of the 12th century (cf. Jalabert, pp. 434, 436), is inspired by the tritons or the nereids and became fashionable from the 12th century onward: it was frequently used by Romanesque sculptors for ornamental motifs, especially in capitals (e.g. in Jalabert, pp. 458-68), and by the illuminators of liturgical books in the interlace of initial letters or in marginal friezes (cf. the examples noted in the catalogues of V. Leroquais [v.], s.v. sirènes in the respective indexes). The woman-fish siren was also used as a chimeric figure in coats of arms. - See pl. XLVI.

A. Pietro Frutaz

A. Pietro Frutaz