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Figures in the ancient sources

Sirens in the ancient sources

Ancient Sources / Figures / Sirens

18 passages from 11 ancient authors that tell of Sirens, in the original with English translation, author by author in the order the Greeks read them. The Sirens were beautiful but dangerous creatures that lured the sailors with their beautiful voices to their doom, causing the ships to crash on the ... For the story in one place, read our article on Sirens.

Homer (4)

  1. Homer, Odyssey 12.142–200The SirensOdysseus tells his men of the Sirens, and has them stop their ears with wax and tie him to the mast, so that he alone may hear them. As the ship comes near, the wind drops and the sea is calm, and the Sirens sing of the Trojan war and of all that happens on the earth. Odysseus begs to be set free, but his men row on and bind him tighter.
  2. Homer, Odyssey 12.1–141Circe's counselAfter they leave the river of Ocean and return to Aeaea, Odysseus buries Elpenor, and Circe comes to them with food and wine. She tells him in private of the dangers ahead: the Sirens, whom they must pass with their ears stopped with wax, and the wandering rocks. She describes Scylla and Charybdis, and tells him to choose Scylla's side, and to leave the cattle of the Sun untouched.
  3. Homer, Odyssey 23.288–372Odysseus tells his tale; the dawnThey go to bed, and Odysseus tells Penelope the story of his wanderings, the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops, Aeolus, the Laestrygonians, Circe, Hades, the Sirens, Scylla, Charybdis, the cattle of the Sun, Calypso and the Phaeacians. At dawn he tells Penelope to stay in her room and goes out to the country with Telemachus and the two herdsmen, to see his father, with Athena casting night about them.
  4. Homer, Odyssey 12.201–259Scylla and CharybdisBeyond the Sirens they see smoke and great waves, and the men drop their oars in terror. Odysseus has not told them of Scylla, and he arms himself and stands on the prow, but she snatches six men from the ship with her six heads. They pass Charybdis, who sucks down the sea three times a day, while Odysseus watches the whirlpool.

Apollodorus (2)

  1. Apollodorus, The Library (Bibliotheca), with the Epitome E.7.1–40The wanderings of Odysseus, the suitors and his deathOdysseus leaves Troy and meets the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters and Polyphemus the Cyclops, then Aeolus, the Laestrygonians and Circe. After the visit to Hades, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and the cattle of the Sun, he reaches Calypso and then the Phaeacians and Ithaca, where the suitors are named and killed. The section ends with his later life among the Thesprotians and the variant accounts of his death at the hands of Telegonus, and of Penelope's fate.
  2. Apollodorus, The Library (Bibliotheca), with the Epitome 1.9.23–28Jason and Medea: the Golden Fleece, the return and CorinthAt Colchis Aeetes sets Jason the tasks of yoking the fire-breathing bulls and sowing dragon's teeth, and Medea's drugs bring him through; she then helps him take the fleece. Medea kills her brother Apsyrtus to delay pursuit, and the Argo sails on to Circe, the Sirens, the Phaeacians, Crete (where Talos is killed) and Iolcus. Medea tricks the daughters of Pelias into boiling him, and when Jason marries Glauce at Corinth she destroys the bride and her father and kills her own sons. She flees to Athens and marries Aegeus, bears Medus, and finally returns to Colchis to restore Aeetes.

Euripides (1)

  1. Euripides, Helen 142–178First episode: Teucer departs; Helen begins her lamentTeucer says that the Dioscuri are said to have killed themselves because of their sister, and that he has come to ask Theonoe for an oracle about his voyage to Cyprus, where he will found a new Salamis. Helen warns him to leave before Theoclymenus, who kills every Greek he finds, returns from hunting. Teucer thanks her and goes, and Helen begins a lament and calls on the Sirens to join her.

Apollonius Rhodius (1)

  1. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.885–981The Sirens, the Wandering Rocks and ScyllaAt dawn the Argonauts leave Aeaea; Orpheus drowns out the Sirens' song with his lyre, though Butes dives in and is saved by Cypris. The Nereids pass Argo through the Wandering Rocks, with Hera and Hephaestus watching, and the heroes sail on past Thrinacia and the cattle of Helios.

Ovid (1)

  1. Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.462–571Demeter searches for PersephoneDemeter (Ceres), hearing nothing from her daughter, wanders over the earth by torchlight and finds only her girdle floating in the pool, and punishes the land that is ungrateful. The nymph Arethusa tells her where her daughter is, and Demeter appeals to Zeus (Jupiter). Zeus decides that Persephone (Proserpina) may return to her mother if she has eaten nothing in the underworld, but Ascalaphus tells that she ate pomegranate seeds, and Demeter turns him into an owl. The Sirens, Persephone's companions, are given the feathers of birds, and Zeus settles the matter by dividing the year between mother and husband.

Pausanias (1)

  1. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.34.1–10Itonian Athena, Coronea, Mount Laphystius and the early history of OrchomenusPausanias describes the sanctuary of Itonian Athena, where the Boeotians hold their general assembly, and the story of the priestess Iodama. At Coronea he lists the altars in the market-place and the sanctuary of Hera, as well as Mount Libethrius and the sanctuary of Laphystian Zeus where the golden ram saved Phrixus and Helle. He then begins the history of Orchomenus with Andreus, Athamas and the founders of Haliartus and Coronea, and Eteocles.

Heraclitus (paradoxographer) (1)

  1. Heraclitus (paradoxographer), On Unbelievable Tales 1–20Monsters and marvels, from Medusa to the golden applesHeraclitus explains away Medusa, Scylla, the Centaurs, the Minotaur, the Harpies, the Sirens, the Chimaera and the Hydra as courtesans, raiders, treacherous queens or mistaken counts of young animals. He turns Atlas into an astronomer, Perseus’ winged sandals into his speed in running, and the dragon of the Hesperides into a man named Drakon. Each marvel is traced to a figure of speech that a later age took literally.

Lucian of Samosata (2)

  1. Lucian of Samosata, On the Dance 1–16Crato attacks, Lycinus replies; the dance in Greek traditionCrato condemns the pantomime as unworthy of an educated man, and Lycinus answers that the dance is as old as the world. He traces it to Rhea and the Corybantes, to the Pyrrhic dance of Neoptolemus, to the Lacedaemonians who learned the Caryatic dance from Castor and Pollux, and to the dances of Homer's Shield of Achilles and of the Phaeacians. He adds that no ancient mystery was without dancing.
  2. Lucian of Samosata, Slander 15–32Famous victims; the remedyLucian gives examples of the harm done by slander: Agathocles of Samos, nearly thrown to the lions in Alexander's grief for Hephaestion, Antea's charge against Bellerophon, Phaedra's against Hippolytus, and the stories of Palamedes and Socrates. He advises the hearer to stop his ears like a man passing the Sirens, to set Judgement over them as a hall-porter, and to examine every tale on its merits.

Plato (2)

  1. Plato, Republic 617a–621dBook X: The myth of Er: the spindle of Necessity, the choice of lives and the Plain of OblivionSocrates tells how Er saw the spindle of Necessity, turning on her knees, with its eight whorls of different colours, a Siren on each rim, and the three Fates, Lachesis, Clotho and Atropos, daughters of Necessity, singing with the Sirens of what was, is and will be. A prophet at Lachesis' direction flung lots among the souls and set before them the patterns of lives of all kinds, saying that the blame belongs to the chooser, and God is blameless. Er saw the soul of Orpheus choose a swan, Thamyras a nightingale, Ajax a lion, Agamemnon an eagle, Atalanta an athlete, Epeius a craftswoman and Thersites an ape, and Odysseus, last of all, take the life of a private man free from care. The souls then drank of the river of Forgetfulness on the Plain of Oblivion, and Er was sent back, and Socrates ends that if they believe in the immortality of the soul they will hold to the upward way, pursue justice with wisdom, and fare well both here and in the journey of a thousand years.
  2. Plato, Symposium 215a–219eAlcibiades praises Socrates: the Silenus, the pipes of Marsyas and the failed seductionAlcibiades says that Socrates is like the busts of Silenus in the statuaries' shops, which open in the middle and show images of the gods, and that he is like the satyr who by his pipes enchants men with his words. He says that when he hears Socrates his heart leaps and the tears flow, and that Socrates is the only man who has ever made him feel ashamed, so that he runs away from him as from the Sirens. He tells how he tried to seduce Socrates, sending away his attendant and being alone with him, and how Socrates, who had a wisdom within like images of golden beauty, would not yield. He says that he lay with him all night under one cloak like a father or elder brother, and rose without any more than if he had slept with a father, and that Socrates scorned his beauty.

Plutarch (1)

  1. Plutarch, Table Talk (Quaestiones convivales) 9.14.1–7Book 9, Question 14: why there are nine MusesAfter pouring offerings to the Muses and singing Hesiod's account of their birth, Herod the rhetorician assigns the Muses to rhetoric and statecraft, among them Clio to praise and Polymnia to history. Ammonius asks why there should be nine and no more, and Trypho the physician and Dionysius the farmer claim a share for medicine and for husbandry. Plutarch gives Plato's method of reading a god's powers from the name, and places Urania over the heavens and the other eight over the disorder of the world.

Strabo (2)

  1. Strabo, Geography 1.2.11–14Did Odysseus wander near Sicily and Italy?Strabo separates the real basis of the wanderings of Odysseus (Ulysses) from the poetic scenery of Ocean, Hades, the oxen of the sun and the monsters. He defends the western setting against Eratosthenes, who thinks they are pure invention, and discusses the Sirens near Pelorus and the Sirenussae. He cites the monument of Parthenope at Naples, and answers Eratosthenes' claim that only Hesiod, not Homer, knew these western places by pointing to many writers and local tradition as proof that the scenes are real.
  2. Strabo, Geography 5.4.7–8Naples, Vesuvius and the SirensStrabo tells of Naples, said to have been called Parthenope by the older poets after the siren cast up on its shore, whose tomb is shown, and of its Greek customs and games. He moves on to Heraclaeum, Pompeia, and Mount Vesuvius with signs of old fires. At Surrentum he places the temple of Athena (Minerva) founded by Odysseus (Ulysses) on the Athenaeum, near the rocky Sirenusae islands.