History and Mythology
This page is for students history students doing the elective history assessment task on this topic. If you let me know what you're researching I will add links for you here...
Mermaids
Nearly all the sources for sirens/mermaids are fictional, beginning with the ancient Greek poet, Homer's stories of the sirens in The Odyssey and ending with Walt Disney's Little Mermaid and the Starbucks logo. The majority of sources about mermaids were written from the C19th onwards and were clearly fictional. Today, feminist scholars generally agree that sirens were never thought to be real, but represented masculine fears about the power of women's bodies (and voices). I've tried to put the sources in chronological order.
- Wikipedia has an excellent (referenced) chart showing ancient sources varying origins of sirens. Mermaids are often said to be inspired by the Mesapotamian goddess of the Underworld, Erishkigal, or the Syrian fertility goddess Atargatis. If you'd like to know more, the Wikipedia article on Atargatis is very well referenced.
- Homer, The Odyssey (epic poem) - Odysseus is warned about the sirens at the beginning of book 12 and meets them soon afterwards. These sirens were half woman, half bird and there are plenty of vase paintings to use as sources. You may also wish to consider the role of Scylla, the monster on the rock who Odysseus meets soon afterwards, often depicted with a fish-shaped tail.
- Virgil, The Aeneid (epic poem) - mentions the cliffs of the sirens at the end of book 5. The Romans also depicted sirens as bird-women, as you can see in this mosaic.
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History (Roman science textbook) - suggests that sirens are are fictional (scroll down to "Fabulous birds" - as in birds of fables).
- Byzantine letters often use the metaphor of the siren to symbolise the power of the letter writers, but don't reference sirens as real.
- On his voyage to 'discover' America, Christopher Columbus mentioned seeing mermaids, which scholars suspect were actually manatees.
- Brunetto Latini, The Book of Treasures (non-fiction about unusual animals) - suggests that menaids were beieved to be real animals found on foreign shores like lions or elephants.
- During the age of exploration, mermaids and other sea monsters appeared on many maps, usually in unexplored regions. It is unknown whether the artists perceived them as real or imagined monsters.
- Heinrich Heine, The Lorelei (poem) - widely admired and translated, illustrated and set to music in the C19th. The real-life inspiration for the poem is the a dangerous rock in the middle of the Rhein, Germany's most important river.
- Hans Christian Anderson, The Little Mermaid, (fairy tale for children). this is creative writing rather than the retelling of an older legend, and is often seen as Use the links at the side of this site to see pictures and other versions of the tale.