Odysseus and the Sirens
Armed with a length of stout cord and a large ball of wax, Odysseus and his crew prepare to face the music of the Sirens.
after 1184 BC
From the Walters Art Museum, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
A perfume vase in the form of a Siren, dating to about 560 BC. Homer does not describe the Sirens in detail, and indeed does not indicate that Odysseus and his crew actually saw them; but early Greek art depicted them as bird-like women, and in one form or another that remained the prevailing image for the ancients. The Greek word for Siren, Σειρήν, is used in the Septuagint (Greek language) version of Isaiah 13:21 where it stands for a bird crying mournfully among the ruins of Babylon. In 1 Enoch 19:2, dating to about 300-200 BC, the Archangel Uriel reveals that on the Day of Judgment “the women also of the angels who went astray shall become sirens.”
Introduction
Odysseus and his crew have parted, not without misgivings, from the paradise island of the goddess Circe. Before they set off for home and the island of Ithaca, Circe warned them about the Sirens. The sailor who once listens to their music will be drawn irresistibly into their meadow, there to sit spellbound forever by song among the other little heaps of withered flesh and bleaching bone.
freely translated by Francis Marvin, Robert Mayor and Florence Stawell
WHEN morning broke I went down to the ship; and we took our places on board, and Circe sent a friendly breeze to fill our sails and help us. So we sat at ease while the ship ran on, and then I said to my crew:
“Comrades, you must all hear the counsel Circe gave me. She bade us beware of the Sirens and their magic song and the flowery meadow where they sit.* I alone may listen, but you must bind me to the mast so that I cannot move, and if I beg you to set me free bind me tighter than before.”
So the good ship went scudding on to the Sirens’ island with the fair breeze in her wake, when suddenly the wind dropped and there was a dead calm; something had put the waves to rest. Then my crew hauled down the sails and took out the oars, and I made plugs of wax and stopped their ears with them, and they bound me hand and foot to the mast. And when we came within earshot of the shore the Sirens caught sight of the ship and began their magic song:
* In warning Odysseus of the Sirens, Circe implied that they numbered just two by using the dual form of the noun Siren.
