Lamia, Scylla and the Sirens

In may I posted an item on Melusine the water nymph who once a week mutated from a woman into a serpentine creature and finally one day turned into a dragon. Here are some more female mythical beings that humans should be wary of meeting. They always appear in stories as predators and seducers of men.


   LAMIA was often portrayed as a beautiful woman from the waist up but from the waist down as a serpent. Victorian painter John William Waterhouse sees her as a lovely nymph in the picture above.
  Robert Burton wrote in his "Anatomy of Melancholy" 1621
       "One, Menippus Lycius, a young man 25 years of age, going betwixt Cenchreoe and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a gentlewomen, which taking him by the hand carried him home to her house in the suburbs of Corinth and told him she was a Phoenician by birth and if he would tarry with her he should hear her sing & play and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest Him; but she being fair and lovely would live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold."
The young man tarried with her so long that in the end he married her. At the wedding was Apollonius who detected that she was a supernatural serpent and was ready to expose her. Lamia pleaded with him but he would not be moved. Seeing the game was up she suddenly vanished - herself and all her furniture and fine things, since she had been a creature of illusion.
  The young and soon to die poet John Keats loved this story and wrote a poem "Lamia"

It is sometimes said that Lamia was the mother of Scylla, a beautiful nymph loved by Glaucus.
The sorceress Circe was infatuated with this same young man and raging with jealousy, she put a poison in the sea where Scylla bathed. The toxic potion caused the nymph to become transformed into a monster with 6 long necks supporting grotesque heads, each with 3 rows of sharp teeth. Her body displayed 12 tentacle like limbs and multiple dog heads emerging from her waist. In this guise she reached out to passing ships seizing crew members to devour.


 
Right  is illustration of Scylla from Greek ceramic art ( 450-425 bc) in the Louvre, Paris.
    Circe the sorceress reappears in the story of Odysseus and the Sirens.

The Sirens were seductive but deadly winged bird shaped creatures with the ability to lure sailors to them by an irresistible singing. The image of them as mermaids comes much later than Homer.
Odysseus was warned by Circe of the danger.
          "You shall arrive where the enchanter sirens dwell, they who seduce men. The imprudent man who draws near them never returns, for the sirens, lying in the flower-strewn fields will charm him with sweet song; but around them the bodies of  their victims lie in heaps."
 Odysseus resisted their enticing song by having himself lashed to the mast of his ship while his crew had their ears stuffed with wax.
So they escaped the threat and sailed on by.  Below is a modern interpretation of a siren, in mosaic glass by artist Desmond Kinney.


These mythical creatures will always inspire artists and writers. I will finish by quoting the surrealist Max Ernst - " When Reason sleeps, the Sirens sing"


                                    

Comments

  1. Richard Marsh27 July 2016 at 03:27

    I'd like to discuss maintenance and identification of the Setanta Wall in Dublin.
    Richard Marsh
    richard@richardmarsh.ie

    ReplyDelete

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