Sirens

Hybrid bird-women (or fish-women in later iconography) whose song lured sailors to shipwreck on the rocks of their island, called Anthemoessa in the epic tradition and the Sirenusae or Sirenum Scopuli in the Latin tradition — the three rocks known today as Li Galli off the Sorrentine peninsula. Their parentage is divided in the tradition: the dominant Greek line makes them daughters of the river-god Achelous and the Muse Melpomene, Apollonius Rhodius gives Terpsichore as the mother, and a late Latin variant substitutes Calliope. Their number varies too — Homer dualises them without naming, Apollodorus gives three (Thelxiepeia, Aglaope, Peisinoe). Odysseus passes them bound to the mast with his crew's ears stopped with beeswax; the Argonauts are saved a generation earlier by Orpheus singing louder than the Sirens from the deck of the Argo.

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