Demeter gave them wings to search for Persephone when she was abducted by Hades. The Siren of Canosa, statuette exposing psychopomp characteristics, late fourth century BCĪccording to Ovid (43 BC–17 AD), the sirens were the companions of young Persephone. Thelxiepeia ( Θελξιέπεια) or Thelxiope ( Θελξιόπη) "eye pleasing")Ĭomparative table of sirens' names, number and parentage Relation.Their individual names are variously rendered in the later sources as Thelxiepeia/Thelxiope/Thelxinoe, Molpe, Himerope, Aglaophonos/Aglaope/Aglaopheme, Pisinoe/Peisinoë/ Peisithoe, Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, Raidne, and Teles. Later writers mention both their names and number: some state that there were three, Peisinoe, Aglaope and Thelxiepeia or Aglaonoe, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia Parthenope, Ligeia, and Leucosia Apollonius followed Hesiod gives their names as Thelxinoe, Molpe, and Aglaophonos Suidas gives their names as Thelxiepeia, Peisinoe, and Ligeia Hyginus gives the number of the sirens as four: Teles, Raidne, Molpe, and Thelxiope Eustathius states that they were two, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia an ancient vase painting attests the two names as Himerope and Thelxiepeia. In the Odyssey, Homer says nothing of their origin or names, but gives the number of the sirens as two. Their number is variously reported as from two to eight. The sirens are depicted as mermaids or "tritonesses" in examples dating to the 3rd century BC, including an earthenware bowl found in Athens and a terracotta oil lamp possibly from the Roman period. Some surviving Classical period examples had already depicted the siren as mermaid-like. Originally, sirens were shown as male or female, but the male siren disappeared from art around the fifth century BC. The tenth-century Byzantine dictionary Suda stated that sirens ( Greek: Σειρῆνας) had the form of sparrows from their chests up, and below they were women or, alternatively, that they were little birds with women's faces. They were often shown playing a variety of musical instruments, especially the lyre, kithara, and aulos. Later depictions shifted to show sirens with human upper bodies and bird legs, with or without wings. In early Greek art, the sirens were generally represented as large birds with women's heads, bird feathers and scaly feet. They may have been influenced by the ba-bird of Egyptian religion. By the 7th century BC, sirens were regularly depicted in art as human-headed birds. It was Apollonius of Rhodes in Argonautica (3rd century BC) who described the sirens in writing as part woman and part bird. The sirens of Greek mythology first appeared in Homer's Odyssey, where Homer did not provide any physical descriptions, and their visual appearance was left to the readers' imagination. Moaning siren statuette from Myrina, first century BC
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