There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of

Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible —

magic to make the sanest man go mad.

– Homer, The Iliad

This is the epigraph for my latest novel, Aphrodite’s Tears. It is from Book XIV of The Iliad, and refers to a gift from the goddess of love, Aphrodite, to Hera, goddess of women, marriage, family, and childbirth, after Hera implored Aphrodite, ‘Give me Love, give me Longing now, the powers you use to overwhelm all gods and mortal men!’

The quotation sets the tone for Aphrodite’s Tears, which is a story of the kind of love that evokes that longing, that magic. Oriel and Damian ache for each other; to each, the other is very difficult to resist.

Oriel certainly does drive Damian crazy, especially when she manages to resist him. ‘You are a temptress,’ Damian tells her. ‘Like the Sirens of our mythology, desirable, with a fatal beauty.’

In this, Damian is referencing those who really did make the sanest man go mad: the Sirens of Ancient Greek mythology.

A modern translation of siren is ‘a woman who is considered to be alluring or fascinating but also dangerous in some way’ (Oxford English Dictionary). But in fact the Siren of the Ancient Greek legends was not entirely woman, but half bird. From this bird part she had the most beautiful singing voice – and she used this to lure sailors to their doom.

Writers did not agree on the number of Sirens: Homer wrote that there were two; Hyginus described four. All agreed, however, that these were very dangerous creatures, who would kill mariners by drawing them so close with their song that their ship would be wrecked on the rocks of their islands, the Sirenum scopuli. According to Leonardo da Vinci, they would even board vessels: ‘The Siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners.’

Sirens feature in several Greek myths:

* Demeter gave the Sirens their wings in order that they may look for Persephone when she was abducted by Hades.

* In Jason and the Argonauts, Orpheus saved the crew of the Argo by playing his lyre to drown out the call of the Sirens as they passed by. (One crew member, Butes, did jump overboard having heard the Sirens, but Aphrodite rescued him.)

* In The Odyssey, curiosity nearly killed Odysseus when he decided that he would listen to the Sirens’ song. He had his men block their own ears with wax plugs and then tie him to the mast. He instructed them not to untie him, whatever he said or did, until they were past the Sirens. Thankfully, they followed his orders to the letter, because when Odysseus heard the Sirens, he begged to be freed to go to them.

Thousands of years since these stories were first told, they continue to have resonance. To this day (thanks in part to the teachings of early Christianity), a strong, beautiful woman can be deemed a dangerous Siren.

Is Oriel, as Damian says, ‘Like the Sirens of our mythology, desirable, with a fatal beauty’? She is beautiful, yes, to him, and desirable too.

But will she be his downfall?