<P> We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so--</P> <P> "They are mantic creatures like the Sphinx with whom they have much in common, knowing both the past and the future", Harrison observed . "Their song takes effect at midday, in a windless calm . The end of that song is death ." That the sailors' flesh is rotting away, suggests it has not been eaten . It has been suggested that, with their feathers stolen, their divine nature kept them alive, but unable to provide food for their visitors, who starved to death by refusing to leave . </P> <P> By the fourth century, when pagan beliefs were overtaken by Christianity, the belief in literal sirens was discouraged . Although Saint Jerome, who produced the Latin Vulgate version of the bible, used the word sirens to translate Hebrew tannīm ("jackals") in Isaiah 13: 22, and also to translate a word for "owls" in Jeremiah 50: 39, this was explained by Ambrose to be a mere symbol or allegory for worldly temptations, and not an endorsement of the Greek myth . </P> <P> The Early Christian euhemerist interpretation of mythologized human beings received a long - lasting boost from Isidore's Etymologiae: </P>

Where is the island of the sirens located