this: the bird-women of Greek myth

In Greek mythology, the Sirens (Greek singular: ; Greek plural: ) were three dangerous bird-women, portrayed as seductresses, who lived on an island called Sirenum scopuli. In some later, rationalized traditions the literal geography of the "flowery" island of Anthemoessa, or Anthemusa, is fixed: sometimes on Cape Pelorum and at others in the Sirenusian islands near Paestum or in Capreae. All locations were surrounded by cliffs and rocks. Seamen who sailed near were decoyed by the Sirens' enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast. Although they lured mariners, the sirens were not sea deities.

When the Sirens were given a parentage they were considered the daughters of the river god Achelous, fathered upon Terpsichore, Melpomene, Sterope, or Chthon, the Earth, in Euripides' Helen 167, where Helen in her anguish calls upon "Winged maidens, virgins, daughters of the Earth". Roman writers linked the Sirens more closely to the sea, as daughters of Phorcys. Homer says nothing of their origin or names, but gives the number of the Sirens as two 12:52. Later writers mention both their names and number; some state that there were three, Peisinoe, Aglaope, and Thelxiepeia (Tzetzes, ad Lycophron 7l2) or Parthenope, Ligeia, and Leucosia (Eustathius, loc. cit.; Strabo v. §246, 252 ; Servius' commentary on Virgil's Georgics iv. 562). Eustathius (Commentaries §1709) states that they were two, Aglaopheme and Thelxiepeia. Their number is variously reportedFact: date=November 2007 as between two and five, and their individual names as Thelxiepeia/Thelxiope/Thelxinoe, Molpe, Aglaophonos/Aglaope, Pisinoe/Peisinoë, Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, Raidne, and Teles.

Sirens and death

As Jane Ellen Harrison notes, "It is strange and beautiful that Homer should make the Sirens appeal to the spirit, not to the flesh." "For the matter of the siren song is a promise to Odysseus of mantic truths, with a false promise of living to tell them, they sing,

"Once he hears to his heart's content, sails on, a wiser man.
We know all the pains that the Greeks and Trojans once endured
on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so—
all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!"

"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, though, would suggest it has not been eaten. It has been suggested that, with their feathers stolen, their divine nature kept them alive, but unable to provide for their visitors, who starved to death by refusing to leave.