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Show I And How bcience Hopes it May Settle at Last the Question Whether These Forerunners of I ft I ur Modern ' Vamps Really rXLlf Did Live and yQBsSk Lure Men i 1 gL ' to Ruin, as Odysseus and his encounter with the sirens as 1 pictured on an old Greek vase now in the V-. OU.11 tlGSS British Museum "r THAT are believed to bo tbe ruins of the famous Sanctuary of the Sirens, so frequently referred re-ferred to in ancient literature, have just been discovered by archaeologists exploring explor-ing the historic ground surrounding the town of Sorrento, in Italy. Cable dispatches from Rome say that Kuropean scholars are greatly excited over the discovery. They are hopeful that further search of the ruins will bring to light important facts which will settle forever the question whether the sirens were purely mythical creatures or ones that actually existed. As every student of Greek mythology knows, the sirens were sea nymphs, somewhat like the Loreley of German legend, who inhabited caves along the sea coast and lured mariners to destruction destruc-tion by their sweet songs, as well as by their beauty of face and figure. The haunts usually ascribed to them were on the coast of Italy, near Sorrento and Capri, and on the Straits of Mes6inu. The Sanctuary of the Sirens, whoso ruins are believed to have been found a few days ago, was a stately temple of snowy marble reared in their honor in h the Greek town of Sireon. The site of this town, where archaeologists are now digging, is just across the bay from Naples and only a short distance from Sorrento and Canri. two of the til ar i I where the sirens were supposed to dwell. It was a flourishing place In the days when the Greek swarmed over this part of Italy. The sirens are variously described by ancient writers. Some make them quite like ordinary women, except that they live in water as well as on land. Others picture them as part fish, like mermaids. Still others describe them as having human heads and the bodies of birds. The one point on which all the descriptions de-scriptions f these sea nymphs agree is their surpassing beauty a beauty which makes it easy to imagine how sailors might have been led to desert the perils of the sea for a cozy corner in some cave with one of these sweet-voiced charmers. Tbe sirens are objects of extraordinary interest to us of the present day because be-cause they embodied so many of the qualities found in the modern vamp. In fact, the word siren is still retained in our language to describe a woman who displays vnmpish characteristics a woman who lures men to ruin just as the sirens of old did. It is hard for the material-minded I modern world to believe that the sirens of whom so many ancient writers wrote ever existed outside the imagination. And yet it is even more difficult to explain ex-plain how the belief in the existence of these sea nymphs and their supernatural powers has persisted from the time of Homer, nearly 3,000 years ago, down almost to our own generation. Science believes that most of the myi b that filled the mind of aucicnt man, giv-Ing giv-Ing him much pleasure and not a few worries, really had some sort of foundation founda-tion in fact. Just what was the foundation founda-tion of reality on which was built the widespread and long-persistent belief in the existence of the sirens? This question, ques-tion, it is hoped, may soon be ansv. i i ' as a result of further study of the ruins of the Sanctuary of the Sirens and tho city in which it stood. It is a remarkable fact that many historians his-torians whose reliability is hard to doubt have testified to seeing the sirens with their own eyes looking into their lovely jm juwc, outlining un-ii i e a u i y ana even U hearing their voices raised in sons:. One fiffl of these ia the English explorer, Cap- Hflj tain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame. JHl "I cannot here omit to mention," says .ifl j Captain Smith, "the admirable creature iJH of God which in the year 1610 I saw JH with these my own eyes. I happened to 9 be standing, at daybreak, on tho shore JH not far from the harbor of St. John, when I observed a marine monster swift-lv swift-lv swimming toward me. Lovely was IflH ner shape; eye?, nose, ears, cheeks, WBk mouth, neck, forehead, and the whole S face was as that of the fairest maiden; Legends Say her hair, of azure hue, fell over her shoulders. . . Most of the descriptions of the sirens rive them blue hair. This, we are told, they combed all day while they sang their fatal songs to lure the lucklcsss sailors. A Dutch writer of eight centuries ago gives n detailed account of the capture of a siren in the Zuyder Zeo. She was brought to Haarlem, in Holland, and, being naked, allowed herself to bo J clothed. She learned, he says, to eat f like a Dutchman; she could spin thread I ar.d take pleasure in other maidenly occupations; oc-cupations; she was gentle an1 lived to a great age. But she never spoke. The Tioncst burghers had no knowledge knowl-edge of th? sea-folk to enable them to teach her their own tongue, so she remained re-mained mute to the end of her days. This is a i ircumstancc to be regretted, since, excepting in the Arab tale of "Jul-nar "Jul-nar the Seaborn," little information has been handed down to us regarding tho conversational and domestic habits of tho sirens. Rut they seem to have had clearly marked human attributes, if we can be- . licvo Theadorus Gaza, who became famous as the writer of tho first Greek grammar. He tells of a jM? siren being cast fffflM (! up with other jet- V sam on the S 1 breathing i.'-;v ;- large vIIHRbbhhM people gathered Vb!v5K$v :r.r,n.i. i.:jt. I,.-- Vjf vK sighs and heaving showed how em- barrassed she was by their vulvar curiosity. Presently she began to weep. The compassionate writer ordered tho crowd to move awav and escorted her, as best he could, to the water's edge. There throwing herself into the waves with a mighty splash, she vanished from sight. vcry one knows the story of Ulysses, tho most valiant of Greek heroes, who when sailing past the fatal rock of the sirens stuffed the ears of his sailors with wax so that they would not be lured to shore. Then he bade the sailors tie him to the mast, where he could listen to the alluring songs without being tempted to steer the bark toward shore. A monk of the Middle Ages has a curious record of a shipwreck on the Galli rocks, which, he says, was due to the irresistiblo power of the sirens. "All hands were drowned," he relates, "save only the captain's son, who was reserved for a worse fate. Him the waves born to a pebbly beach, so far as might tiro a little child to run, whereon where-on sat n maiden singing, who looked up with eyes f friendship. "Being a grave lad, he walked aside and, stumbling among the stones, happened hap-pened upon a heap of decaying human bones, a loathly thing. Yet she followed with endearing words, till ho lost his reason rea-son for her sake. Fair to sec was this maiden and to bespeak fair beyond be-yond all imagining to those she had fooled, and he deemed himself favored above the angels. "A brjef infatuation, for soon a change came over her and, while he cherished her more than before, the light of love faded out--oi her eyes and there stole into them the look of an bundled generations gen-erations of tigers. Then ever and anon III 7 1 . J I ;- ! i x ;. tv5v v " - ' Sirens on a vase found near Sorrento wings on their shoulders and the lower half of their bodies like a bird's he would bethink himself of what he had seen among the rocks and would fear for his life. For he had given his heart, but she had sharpened her teeth." Just what happened to the unfortunate unfortu-nate lad may not be hard to explain. Fur excavations in alleged siren habitats have brought, to light interesting matter that made it quite plausible that the sirens were cannibals. In the caves at Sorrento and on the island of Capri cracked human bones we re found With them were the bleached bones of pigs and sheep, which suggest marrow-sucking marrow-sucking propensities. It does not seem unlikely that the maidens fed upon tho victims whom they lured from the ships, for, after all, what had they to eat on their lonely rocks? Seaweed wasn't satisfactory sat-isfactory and they were too wellbred to feed upon their kindred, the fish It seems a rather queer matter that these cannibalistic maidens confined them-selves them-selves to the eating of men. At least, there are no records of women being devoured, de-voured, or even held captive, by sirens. Were they, perhaps too preoccupied with their own charms to take notice of any others? They are reputed to have had many aBSZT' 1 A. Frenz's famous painting of tbe beautiful sirenti outside one of their sanctuaries and luring $fyf sailors to shore with their irresistible song Va' Below Siren and a sinking ship, as shown in a curi- ous old drawing dating frcm the Middle Ages I from Jhe paint- tSl J i Waterhouse, JJ j I i envy them H !), their serrpt of Sirens would then uluck their victimM rnal youth. The Greek sirens at least are stamped v.ith features that are ever youthful there are no old or even middle-aged ones. The Greek vases that have come down to us picture them as vigorous and graceful, Lingering on sea-girt rocks, lyre in hand, or rising from the gleaming gleam-ing water, these beauteous creatures clash their cymbals and vanish. The Greek artists loved to veil them with vagueness and remoteness, as if that added to their very perceptible charms. It is rather puzzling, when one comes to think of it, to conceive how the Sirens passed their time on days of wintry storm. True they must havo been ever watchful of ships that passed. The signal sig-nal would no doubt be flashed from one nymph to another in their peculiar fish purring and they would all make ready to sing their entrancing song. Whereupon Where-upon the ship would dash itself on the rocks, the helmsman having lost complete control of his senses and the rudder at tho first measure of the song. The out of tho wreckage and have a feast. I But on day? when nnry a ship passed what did the lonely maidens do witlfl their time? Modern one9 would call fflK cigarettes and a pack of cards and biflM the gal( howj itself out Rut those fisM tailed women or half-birds did the peck at each other viciously or did theg eonte.it themselves with shivering Wfl silence among tho crags? PossibuB-though, PossibuB-though, they just occupied themselvSK, with gossip about their latest catch. What songs these siren? snn;r, thoUgW a puzzling question, not beyond H conje t ire We may 1". -ure that thesJB earliest of "wild women" were not caps4 bio of modulating subtle strains. Thjl melodies may well have been the origlfl nal f those :.vv:ii rhanis, hc Linus- ong, the wailing in the vineyards ofl Isaiah sphinxlike, fraught with the hope.- n, I -i forgotten racel that still waft upon Italy's summed, hreczes and defy the musicians' art.jR record them, though Tosti has made thj attempt in one of his Neapolitan songs |