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Delehaye's iconography draws upon classical images of the Sirens, who anciently were depicted as bird-women. It is postclassical art, especially after 1600, that tends to merge iconography of fishlike mermaids — or, likewise, undines, rusalkas, loreleis, or Melusine the water spirit — into the figures of the classical Sirens. Remember that Homer pays no attention to the physical appearance of the two Sirens he describes, attending only to their inextricably lovely voices ("clear" and "honeyed"); his Circe attributes their alluring power to their intimate familiarity with sailors' familial circumstances.

A couple of Victorian depictions of Sirens represent the many neo-classicizing view of the Sirens as sexualized threats to men: Armitage's "Siren" (1888) or Waterhouse's "Ulysses and the Sirens" (1891); Böcklin's comic conception (1875) of the Sirens' true wiliness is worth a laugh.