Gardner, Percy: The principles of Greek art (London, 1924)

282

PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART

CHAP.

stood for the soul, but was otherwise used among the Greeks.
Here, as in many cases, the Greeks, to repeat the phrase of
Brunn, borrowed the letters of art from the East, but used
them to spell out their own ideas. It must be confessed that
in these bird-women there is nothing terrible; one would expect

a warrior like Odysseus to make short work with them. The
Greeks carried their dislike of the horrible in art sometimes to an
extreme length. (3) I am disposed to see contamination and
continuous narration in the introduction of the dead Siren
falling into the sea, for there was a story current after the Ho-
meric age, that when the Argonauts passed the islands of the
Sirens, Orpheus entered into a musical contest with them, and
defeated them, on which they threw themselves into the sea
in despair. This story seems to have been transferred by the
vase-painter into the myth of Odysseus. In this case the second
Siren, she on the right, would be depicted at two different mo-
ments, first as singing, second as throwing herself into the sea,
and indeed as already dead. It may be to some extent a con-

Fig. 98. —Vase in British Museum.