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- Introduction -

The legends about sirens are very ancient and the first known to us date back to the 800-1000 B.C.; they are the symbol of the dangers that could be met across the sea that attracts mariners with its fascinating beauty but can be deadly with its many hidden threats.

Greek mythology reported the most famous legends about sirens but really all the coastal and insular peoples of the world report ancient legends about mythical creatures of this type, until recent times.

This article treats the sirens by the Greek mythology and the first interesting fact to consider about them is that the ancient Greeks didn't describe them as beautiful women with a fish tail, as we imagine them today; this last image, in fact, spread in the Middle Age, in some mysterious way.
The ancient Greeks, instead, believed the sirens had the body of a big bird unable to fly, big breasts and the head of a beautiful woman.
For this reason, they were often confused with the Harpies, similar wicked monsters, able to cause storms in the sea that made sink the ships.

Sirens' enchanting singing attracted in an irresistible way the mariners who directed their ships toward the rocks where the sirens were sitting while singing, until being wrecked against semi-submerged rocks.
At that point, the sirens had only to kill and eat the mariners fallen in the sea to get their daily meal.
Alternatively, the sirens attracted the mariners making them dive from their ships and swim until they cruelly killed and ate them.

In this way, the ancient mariner populations tried to explain why so many mariners didn't come back home anymore and nobody could know what really was heppened to them.

The Greek mythology believed the sirens were the sons of the river-god Acheloos and of a Muse (Melpomenes or Thersicores).
Another version tells the first sirens were generated during the fight between the same Acheloos (a monster with horns and a snake tail) and Heracles.
Heracles broke one of Acheloos' horns, making him lose some blood drops that generated the first sirens (12 or also 6, by some sources).

At the beginning, they were only beautiful nymphae, faithful friends of Persephones, the daughter of Demetra, goddess of cereals crops.
When Ades (god of the Reign of the Dead) kidnapped Persephones, they asked the gods to be turned into birds to be able to look for their friend.
A more credited variation tells the same Demetra turned them in half birds and women to punish them for not having prevented the kidnapping.

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