SIRENS, fabulous creatures of Greek mythology, that, like the Loreley of German legend, lured mariners to destruction by their sweet song. In the Odyssey Ulysses sails past their island; but, warned by Circe, he had stopped the ears of his crew with wax and caused himself to be bound to the mast. In Homer they are two in number, but in later writers they are generally three, and are located on the coast of Italy, near Sorrento and Capri, or on the Straits of Messina. The tomb of one of them, Parthenope by name, was shown at Naples in Strabo's time. A sanctuary of the Sirens stood on a headland near Sorrento. According to Eratosthenes the Sirens were a three-headed rock separating the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno ; but Strabo says they were three rocky islands on the southern side of the cape. The cape itself (now Cape Campanella) was sometimes called the Cape of the Sirens. When the Argonauts drew near the isle of the Sirens, Orpheus struck up and drowned their song. According to Hyginus the Sirens were daughters of the river Achelous and the muse Melpomene, and because they had not rescued Proserpine from Pluto they were turned by Ceres into winged creatures, who were to live only so long as no one passed by them as they sang. So, when Ulysses had eluded them, they flung themselves into the sea. According to another story, they were instigated by Hera to vie with the Muses in singing ; the the country is intersected with numerous water channels, Muses were victorious, and plucked the feathers from the which run with considerable force and volume during the Sirens and made crowns for themselves out of them. In height of the rainy season, but are dry for the greater art they are usually represented with the bodies of women part of the year. The only river of any importance is the and the legs of birds, with or without wings. More Western Banos. A large portion of the state is covered rarely they appear as birds with only the heads of women. with dense jungle, in which wild animals, including the They seem to have had a funereal significance, and were tiger, bear, and leopard, abound. Many splendid ruins often represented on tombs. For representations of them bear witness to the former prosperity and civilization of see J. E. Harrison, Of yths of the Odyssey. the state. The climate is on the whole dry ; in the south