The Song of the Sirens — The Sirens (Σειρῆνες), landfall 10 of 15 on the voyage of odysseus
Homer's Odyssey, Book XII. The song of the Sirens. Traditional location: Li Galli islands, off the Sorrentine peninsula, Italy.
Their meadow is heaped with the bones of men who listened. The Sirens do not promise pleasure — they promise knowledge: 'We know all that happens on the fruitful earth.'
Forewarned by Circe, Odysseus stops his crew's ears with kneaded wax and has himself lashed to the mast, ordering them to bind him tighter if he begs. He is the only man to hear the Sirens' song and live — because he chose to hear it bound.
The meadow of bones
The Sirens sit in a flowering meadow, and around them moulder heaps of men — skin shrivelling on bone. There is no monster here, no storm, no violence at all. Only a song, and the men who chose to stop rowing and listen until they died.
Circe's instructions were exact: knead beeswax and stop the crew's ears; and if you must hear it yourself — she knows her man — have them bind you upright to the mast, and order them to bind you tighter if you beg.
Bound to the mast
The wind drops dead flat as they approach — the sea itself conspiring with the song. The crew row in enforced silence, hearing nothing; Odysseus, lashed to the mast, hears everything, and the song does exactly what it is said to do. He strains at the ropes and jerks his brows at Perimedes and Eurylochus to free him. They bind him tighter and row harder, as ordered.
He is the only man in the story to hear the Sirens and live — not because he was strong, but because he arranged in advance to be unable to act on his own desire. Philosophers have been writing about this scene ever since.
“Come hither, famed Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans — stay your ship, that you may hear our voice. For we know all that happens on the fruitful earth.” — Odyssey XII, 184–185
What the song offers
Listen to what the Sirens actually sing: not love, not pleasure — knowledge. We know everything the Greeks and Trojans suffered at Troy; we know all that happens on the earth. To a man ten years from home, they offer the war finally made sense of, and omniscience thrown in.
That is why the bones pile up in the meadow. The Sirens are the temptation peculiar to clever men — to stop the journey and simply know, instead of living the rest of it.
Bird-women, not mermaids: Archaic Greek art always shows Sirens as birds with women's heads — creatures of the boundary between worlds, kin to harpies, often carved on tombs. The fish-tailed mermaid is a medieval upgrade. Their traditional islands, Li Galli off the Sorrentine coast, were still called Le Sirenuse into the twentieth century.
The fleet after this landfall: 1 of 12 ships. None lost — the wax holds, and the ropes.