Parthenope, the siren of Naples: her story and images

There’s a small terracotta siren in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, made around 550–500 BCE. She has a human face, feathers and claws. This is how sirens often appear in Greek art: with the body of a bird. [3]

The Parthenope we chose for Sirendipity has two tails. To understand the history around that choice, we can start in Naples.

Parthenope’s tomb

Writing about Neapolis in his Geography, Strabo mentions a tomb of Parthenope and an athletic contest held on the advice of an oracle. His account doesn’t tell us where to find the tomb today. It does tell us that the siren was remembered and honoured there. [2]

Lycophron tells another part of the story in his Alexandra. After Odysseus sails past, the sirens die and their bodies reach the coast of southern Italy. He names Parthenope, Leucosia and Ligeia, describing Parthenope’s burial and the honours paid to her by the local people. [1]

In both accounts, her story is already tied to the people who live along this coast.

A siren with feathers

The Met’s terracotta isn’t identified as Parthenope. It shows us one ancient way of picturing a siren. The museum suggests it may have been a votive offering. [3]

Homer gives us no description of the sirens’ bodies. In the Odyssey, it’s their song and the danger of listening that matter. For their wings and feathers, we have to turn to the surviving objects. [4]

Did Tanit have wings too?

A votive stela from Carthage, catalogued as CIS I 183, bears a dedication to Tanit and Baal Hammon. On it is a winged female figure, long interpreted as Tanit.

Charmaine Petersen Montebello takes this stela as the starting point for her 2023 University of Malta dissertation. Her research compares fourteen objects with winged female figures. According to the public abstract, CIS I 183 is among the more plausible identifications of Tanit; others are less certain. [7]

The stela shows a winged woman, rather than the bird-bodied figure of Greek siren imagery. It’s an interesting comparison, but it doesn’t show that Tanit and Parthenope share an origin.

A two-tailed siren on the printed page

Much later, a crowned, two-tailed siren appears on the books of Antonio Bulifon, a printer and bookseller working in seventeenth-century Naples. Beside her are the words “Non sempre nuoce”.

She was his printer’s device: a mark that helped readers recognise his editions. The University of Barcelona’s database records three examples and the trading sign “All’insegna della sirena” — “At the sign of the siren”. [6]

Wings and tails could also appear side by side. A scene in the Queen Mary Psalter, made around 1310–1320, includes both a bird-siren and a fish-tailed siren. [5]

Our Parthenope

For Sirendipity, we chose the two-tailed siren. In the story we’ve written, she meets Tanit during an eclipse. We imagined that meeting after getting to know their separate stories.

The two-tailed figure appears in relief on the jewellery in the La Moneta collection, from necklaces to earrings, a ring and a bracelet. Read the story of Parthenope and Tanit in Sirendipity jewellery for the imagined encounter behind the design.