Sirens
mythological figure · 4 works · 7 mentions · 8 anchored passages
the Sirens · Siren-song · the crag of the Sirens · their song
in the texts
Orations
Mythological creatures whose song lured and destroyed those who listened too eagerly, invoked as a comparison to the fatal devotion of some Alexandrian music-lovers.
But did the Sirens do anything else, as the myth says, than destroy those who too greatly delighted in them?
For I think it rather befits a temperate man in such a city to smear his ears with wax than if he happened to be sailing past the Sirens.
but if there is such a place, in which there is a continual sound either of flutes or of song or of the lyre, such as they say the crag of the Sirens is, ever sung over, I could not, having gone there, pass my time.
Against Ctesiphon
Mythological singers invoked in Demosthenes' alleged comparison of Aeschines' eloquence to destructive charm.
For he likens me in natural endowment to the Sirens, saying that it was not charm that the Sirens brought to those who listened to them, but destruction, and that therefore the Siren-song has no good repute;
Stromata
Mythological creatures alluded to in the Odyssean image of those avoiding Greek learning.
But, as it seems, the most of those who inscribe themselves with the name, like the comrades of Odysseus, go after the discourse boorishly, passing by, not the Sirens, but the rhythm and the melody, stopping their ears with want of learning, since they know they will not be able, having once submitted their hearing to the Greek studies, thereafter to attain the return home.
Memorabilia
The mythical singers who, according to the tale Socrates recalls, never touched anyone yet enchanted all who heard their song, used as a positive model for winning devotion through appeal rather than compulsion.
but the Sirens laid hands on no man;