My first introduction to sirens, the mythological creatures starring in today’s article, was either through Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters or the 2003 animated movie Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Either way, I, like most people, thought sirens were sexy, fish-tailed women who lured sailors to their deaths through their seductive songs.
It turns out there’s a lot more to their history than I anticipated.
The original ancient Greek depiction of sirens is so removed from the picture I painted in the introduction that it’s baffling that they have the same name. According to ancient Greek sources, namely Homer’s The Odyssey, Siren were bird-bodied women who lived near the water (not in it) and sang sailors to their deaths, with songs more about offering knowledge than seducing the crew. Moreover, the sirens were strongly associated with the Underworld for two main reasons.
Sirens were considered companions to Persephone. According to some tales, these maidens pleaded with the gods for wings so they could search for Persephone after she was abducted by Hades. Others assert they were cursed by Demeter to become what we know as sirens for failing to protect her daughter. Regardless of which story about their origin is true, sirens were linked to the Underworld through the Queen of the Underworld.
Sirens caused countless deaths and would logically be associated with the realm of the dead.
Now, while the Greeks, by no means, had a positive attitude towards sirens (to be called a siren meant you were someone who led others astray through your words), they weren’t sexualized by any meaning of the term. Come the Middle Ages, and suddenly things start to change. Bestiaries and Church records begin portraying sirens as naked or half-naked women with fish/snake tails, unbound hair, and holding a comb in one hand. The imagery was overtly sexual, with clear symbols of sexual looseness (the hair and the comb) incorporated.
However, this begs the question, where did these inspired changes come from? In my article Goddesses of Love and War: Examined, I mentioned that the acquisition of new territories was often accompanied by the slow blending of their local gods with the existing ones. The same thing happened here.
The Greeks already had a distinct seductive female monster associated with snakes, known to eat all who approached her, the Lamia. Stories of the Lamia describe her as sitting by the sea with her breasts exposed to lure sailors, revealing her snake tail only when they were too close to escape. She was also known to kill and eat women and children. They had no reason to mix Sirens with Lamia. The interchangeable use of the terms lamia and sirens (in translations of the Bible) and the convenient blending of the anatomical features of the Lamia with the singing prowess of the siren created a “new image” of the siren and mermaids as a whole.
And that was that. The Church was obsessed with sirens, which makes sense given how weirdly obsessed it was with chastity, especially male chastity, during the late antiquity. Women who were seen as inspiring lust were heavily condemned. So, the prominence given to stories of sirens/lamia/mermaids, mythical creatures that seduced men to (essentially) their death aligned with the overarching conversations the medieval Church was engaging with at the time.
In a moment of hilarious hypocrisy, however, the Church actually stopped using the term lamia sometime in late antiquity. Why, you ask? Women started talking about how Lamia ate pregnant women and children too–which they did, according to the ancient Greeks– rendering the Lamia a “woman’s myth” and, therefore, unworthy of serious consideration by the Church. Of course, it is fine when the Church misinterprets and misrepresents ancient mythological creatures, treating them as if they were a real threat to their chastity! But not when women talk about it!
Idiocy aside, as time passed, this image of the fish-tailed, honey-tongued, murderous marine seducer solidified itself in the collective psyche. Most of us have probably gone through life thinking the same thing, which makes (old) discoveries like this all the more interesting. But, what's more, it highlights, once again, how history evolves and how who writes history (or has the power to influence how it is written) transforms our perceptions of historical or, in this case, mythological figures.