ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the contents and forms of artistic expression in Antiquity; the myth of the Siren soon appears fearfully complex. Iconography was not immune to the influence of Homer's work, although it was affected to a lesser degree. This ancient status of the myth, of which only a few traces remain in Homer's work, is absent from later texts: the Sirens become the cause of tempests and shipwrecks, as in Apollonius Rhodius, for example. Femininity is discreetly present in Homer's work, in the links with Circe, consecrated by Lucian in a superimposition of the two figures, and a very obvious sexual symbolism in the hero's triumph, but is not primary in the process of temptation. Placed at the heart of The Odyssey they form one of the first and perhaps most subtle constructions of a mise en abime in literature. For the song that they promise is an epic poem, the story of the Trojan War.
