<P> It is also said that Hera, queen of the gods, persuaded the Sirens to enter a singing contest with the Muses . The Muses won the competition and then plucked out all of the Sirens' feathers and made crowns out of them . Out of their anguish from losing the competition, writes Stephanus of Byzantium, the Sirens turned white and fell into the sea at Aptera ("featherless"), where they formed the islands in the bay that were called Leukai ("the white ones", modern Souda). </P> <P> In the Argonautica (third century BC), Jason had been warned by Chiron that Orpheus would be necessary in his journey . When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew out his lyre and played his music more beautifully than they, drowning out their voices . One of the crew, however, the sharp - eared hero Butes, heard the song and leapt into the sea, but he was caught up and carried safely away by the goddess Aphrodite . </P> <P> Odysseus was curious as to what the Sirens sang to him, and so, on the advice of Circe, he had all of his sailors plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast . He ordered his men to leave him tied tightly to the mast, no matter how much he would beg . When he heard their beautiful song, he ordered the sailors to untie him but they bound him tighter . When they had passed out of earshot, Odysseus demonstrated with his frowns to be released . Some post-Homeric authors state that the Sirens were fated to die if someone heard their singing and escaped them, and that after Odysseus passed by they therefore flung themselves into the water and perished . </P> <P> Statues of Sirens in a funerary context are attested since the classical era, in mainland Greece, as well as Asia Minor and Magna Graecia . The so - called "Siren of Canosa"--Canosa di Puglia is a site in Apulia that was part of Magna Graecia--was said to accompany the dead among grave goods in a burial . She appeared to have some psychopomp characteristics, guiding the dead on the after - life journey . The cast terracotta figure bears traces of its original white pigment . The woman bears the feet, wings and tail of a bird . The sculpture is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain, in Madrid . The Sirens were called the Muses of the lower world, classical scholar Walter Copland Perry (1814--1911) observed: "Their song, though irresistibly sweet, was no less sad than sweet, and lapped both body and soul in a fatal lethargy, the forerunner of death and corruption ." Their song is continually calling on Persephone . The term "siren song" refers to an appeal that is hard to resist but that, if heeded, will lead to a bad conclusion . Later writers have implied that the Sirens were cannibals, based on Circe's description of them "lolling there in their meadow, round them heaps of corpses rotting away, rags of skin shriveling on their bones ." As linguist Jane Ellen Harrison (1850--1928) notes of "The Ker as siren": "It is strange and beautiful that Homer should make the Sirens appeal to the spirit, not to the flesh ." The siren song is a promise to Odysseus of mantic truths; with a false promise that he will live to tell them, they sing, </P>

The story of the sirens in the odyssey
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