What Is the Difference between a Siren and a Mermaid?

If you enjoy reading about mythology, you have most likely heard of mermaids and Sirens, but you may not be familiar with the difference between them. Most people today generally consider them the same thing. We usually tend to imagine both a mermaid and a Siren as a beautiful woman with the tail of a fish instead of legs. Sirens, however, originally come from Greek mythology and this is not at all how the ancient Greeks envisioned Sirens. On the contrary, the ancient Greeks did not envision Sirens (or, as they are called in Greek Seirenes) as having fish-like attributes at all.

Archaic Greek images of Seirenes

The ancient Greeks did not imagine Seirenes as having fish tails or any other fish-like attributes; instead, the ancient Greeks envisioned Seirenes as having bird-like attributes. In the earliest surviving ancient Greek artistic representations of Seirenes, they are always shown with the full bodies of birds, but the heads of women. Here is an Archaic Greek terracotta perfume vase shaped like a Seiren, showing her with the body of a bird and the head of a woman, dating to around 540 BC:

The most famous story involving the Seirenes in all of ancient Greek literature comes from Book XII of the Odyssey, an ancient Greek epic poem probably originally composed sometime around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. In a famous scene from the epic that is portrayed by in numerous ancient vase paintings, the Greek hero Odysseus and his crew pass the island of the Seirenes on their long, arduous voyage home to the island of Ithaka (a voyage which only Odysseus himself ultimately completes).

In the epic, Odysseus is warned in advance by the enchantress Kirke that the song of the Seirenes is impossible for any man to resist, but that sailing towards the island on which they reside will mean certain death, because the island is surrounded on all sides by sharp rocks that will sink any ship that comes near them. Odysseus therefore orders his men to plug their ears with wax while they row and to tie him to the mast of the ship so that he will not be able to escape. He warns them not to untie him until they are safely past the island, telling them that, even if he should beg them to untie him, they must not do it.

Odysseus and his men sail past the island of the Seirenes and Odysseus hears their song. He frantically demands his men to untie him and let him go closer to the island to hear the song more clearly, but, instead of untying him, two of Odysseus’s men named Perimedes and Eurylochos dutifully tighten his bonds to keep him from breaking free. Finally, they make it past the island of the Seirenes. Once they are past and the island is completely out of sight, Odysseus’s men remove the wax from their ears and untie Odysseus from the mast.

As I noted earlier, we have many depictions of this famous episode in ancient Greek art. Here is an Attic black-figure oinochoë depicting the famous scene from Book XII of the Odyssey in which Odysseus is tied to the mast of his ship while his men row past the island of the Seirenes with their ears filled with wax. In this depiction, there are three Seirenes and all of them have the bodies of birds and heads of women:

Here is an Attic red-figure vase painting by the so-called “Seiren Painter,” dating to c. 475 BC or thereabouts, depicting the Seirenes flying around Odysseus’s ship as it passes the island of the Seirenes, as described in Book XII of the Odyssey:

As you can clearly see, here again the Seirenes are shown with the full bodies of birds and only the heads of women.

Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman images of Seirenes

In later Greek artistic depictions, however, Seirenes start to gradually become more human-like. From around the early fourth century BC onwards, they are commonly shown with the heads, arms, and upper bodies of women, but the wings and feet of birds. For instance, here is a photograph of a Pentelic marble funerary monument from the Kerameikos Cemetery in Athens, dating to around 370 BC, depicting a Seiren playing a lyre fashioned from a tortoise-shell:

Here is a Hellenistic Greek statuette of a Seiren holding a lyre, dating to between around 340 and around 300 BC:

Here is a painting of a Seiren from the neck of a Hellenistic Apulian polychrome vessel, dating to around 330 BC:

Here is an ancient Greek statuette of a Seiren from the city of Myrina in Anatolia, dating to around the first century BC. As you can see, by this point, she now has the full body of a woman and only the wings and feet of a bird:

This is also exactly how the Seirenes are portrayed in ancient Roman art. Here is a second-century AD Roman mosaic from Tunisia depicting Odysseus and his men sailing past the island of the Seirenes:

Why we imagine Seirenes as mermaids today

As you can clearly see, in ancient Greek and Roman art, Seirenes are portrayed with features of birds, not features of fish. Why on earth, then, do we imagine Seirenes today as having the bodies of women and tails of fish like mermaids?

Well, it is because, in the Early Modern Period, western Europeans who did not have access to ancient Greek and Roman artistic representations of Seirenes read about Seirenes in ancient Greek and Roman texts. These texts never really give very clear descriptions of what Seirenes looked like because the authors of them assumed that the people reading them already knew what they looked like.

These western Europeans, who lacked direct, immediate access to the artistic tradition of the Greeks and Romans, therefore assumed that the Greeks and Romans were describing some kind of mermaid-like creature simply because the descriptions of the Seirenes’ behavior in classical sources resembled western European notions at the time of what mermaids were supposed to be like.

Western European artists began to portray Seirenes as having the bodies of women and tails of fish. For instance, here is a painting titled Ulysses and the Sirens, painted in 1909 by the English Academic painter Herbert James Draper (lived c. 1863 – 1920). It shows the same scene from Book XII of the Odyssey shown in three of the ancient representations above, with Odysseus tied to the mast and his men rowing with their ears plugged with wax, but, in this representation, the bird-like Seirenes of Greek mythology have been replaced with mermaids of the western European artistic tradition:

Other painters just portray Seirenes as beautiful naked women, without the fish tail. For instance, here is a painting from 1888 by the English painter Edward Armitage (lived 1817 – 1896) titled The Siren. Like the Seirenes in the ancient Greek and Roman representations, this Seiren has a lyre and the triremes on the distance clearly allude to that famous scene from Book XII of the Odyssey, but the bird-like attributes have all been completely stripped away:

In a sense, one might argue that these sorts of depictions represent the completion of that trend that began in antiquity of portraying Seirenes as more and more humanlike.

Some painters did get it right, though. For instance, here is a beautiful, remarkably well-researched painting from 1891 by the English Academic painter John William Waterhouse (lived 1849 – 1917), which correctly shows the Seirenes as creatures with the bodies of birds and the heads of women:

Conclusion

To sum everything up, the difference between a mermaid and a Seiren is that a mermaid has the body of a woman, but the tail of a fish instead of legs; whereas a Seiren has either the head of a woman and the body of a bird or the head, arms, and upper body of a woman and the wings and lower body of a bird.