SIRENS, in fabulous history, certain celebrated songstress who were ranked among the demigods of antiquity. Hyginus places their birth among the consequences of the rape of Proserpine. Others make them daughters of the river Acheloüs and one of the muses.* Ovid Met. The number of the Sirens was three, and their names were Parthenope, Lygaea, and Lelucia. Some make them half women and half fish; others half women and half birds. There are antique representations of them still subsisting under both these forms. Pauianias tells us, that the Sirens, by the persuasion of Juno, challenged the Muses to a trial of skill in singing; and these having vanquished them, plucked the golden feathers from the wings of the Sirens, and formed them into crowns, crows, with which they adorned their own heads. The Argonauts are said to have been diverted from the enchantment of their songs by the superior strains of Orpheus: Ulysses, however, had great difficulty in securing himself from seduction. See Odys. lib. xii.

Pope, in his notes to the twelfth book of the Odyssey, observes, the critics have greatly laboured to explain what was the foundation of this fiction of the Sirens. We are told by some, that the Sirens were queens of certain small islands named Sirenuse, that lie near Capraea in Italy, and chiefly inhabited the promontory of Minerva, upon the top of which that goddess had a temple, as some affirm, built by Ulysses. Here there was a renowned academy, in the reign of the Sirens, famous for eloquence and the liberal sciences, which gave occasion to the invention of this fable of the sweetness of the voice and attracting songs of the Sirens. But why then are they fabled to be destroyers, and painted in such dreadful colours? We are told, that at last the flouts abused their knowledge, to the colouring of wrong, the corruption of manners, and the subversion of government: that is, in the language of poetry, they were designed to be transformed into monsters, and with their music to have enticed passers to their ruin, who there consumed their patrimonies, and poisoned their virtues with riot and effeminacy. The place is now called Magra. Some writers tell us of a certain bay, contracted within winding straits and broken cliffs, which, by the singing of the winds and beating of the waters, returns a delightful harmony, that allures the passenger to approach, who is immediately thrown against the rocks, and swallowed up by the violent eddies. Thus Horace, moralising, calls idleness a Siren.

—Vitanda est improba Siren Defidua.

But the fable may be applied to all pleasures in general, which, if too eagerly pursued, betray the incautious into ruin; while wise men, like Ulysses, making use of their reason, stop their ears against their infatuations.

The learned Mr Bryant says, that the Sirens were Cuthite and Canaanitish priests, who had founded temples in Sicily, which were rendered infamous on account of the women who officiated. They were much addicted to cruel rites, so that the shores upon which they resided are described as covered with the bones of men destroyed by their artifice. Virgil. Aeneid. lib. v. ver. 864.

All ancient authors agree in telling us, that Sirens inhabited the coast of Sicily. The name, according to Bochart, who derives it from the Phoenician language, implies a songstress. Hence it is probable, says Dr Burney, that in ancient times there may have been excellent singers, but of corrupt morals, on the coast of Sicily, who, by seducing voyagers, gave rise to this fable. And if this conjecture be well founded, he observes, the Muses are not the only pagan divinities who preferred their influence over mankind in modern times; for every age has its Sirens, and every Siren her votaries; when beauty and talents, both powerful in themselves, are united, they become still more attractive.