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The Sirens' island

Speculative4/12LowItaly & SicilyHomeric name(s): Σειρῆνες

Two singers on a flowery meadow surrounded by the bones of the men who stopped to listen. The poem gives no coordinates and one navigational instruction: wax in the ears, and tie the captain to the mast.

The Sirens are the only hazard Odysseus survives by preparation alone. Circe tells him what they are and what to do; he does it; the ship passes. The episode is twenty lines long and has generated more art than any other in the poem.

Italian tradition attached them to the Sirenuse islets off Amalfi, which is a naming, not a discovery. The atlas records the identification and scores it accordingly.

Identifications proposed

  • Li Galli / the Sirenuse

    Proposed by: Ancient geographical tradition; Strabo 1.2

    Speculative4/12Low

    Three islets off the Sorrentine peninsula, called the Sirenuse since antiquity. The name is the argument, and the name may well have followed the poem rather than preceded it.

    40.5800, 14.4300· Island

    • Primary textStrabo, Geography 1.2 — the Sirens placed off the Campanian coast in the geographical tradition
    • TraditionLi Galli (the Sirenuse), the islets off the Amalfi coast, named for the Sirens in Italian tradition
    • Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
    Confidence
    4/12 · Low confidence
    Textual
    2
    Archaeological
    0
    Scholarly
    1
    Geographic
    1

Why this class

Speculative: a name-based tradition with no supporting evidence and no scholarly consensus, scoring 4/12.

What is disputed

Whether the Sirenuse are named after the episode or the episode located at the Sirenuse — the same circularity that runs through most of the western identifications.

Sources

  • Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
  • ScholarshipVictor Bérard, Les navigations d'Ulysse (4 vols., 1927–1929)
  • Primary textStrabo, Geography 1.2 — the Sirens placed off the Campanian coast in the geographical tradition
  • TraditionLi Galli (the Sirenuse), the islets off the Amalfi coast, named for the Sirens in Italian tradition