Long ago, Homer’s sailors heard an impossible song – “voices like water, liquid and inviting” – promising a world of pure pleasure. But anyone who plunged in drowned on the rocks.
Robert Greene reminds us that this mythic warning wasn’t merely ancient lore but a living strategy: the Siren archetype is the “ultimate male fantasy figure,” offering men the release that they crave from the boundaries of their life. In her presence the world softens and men feel pure pleasure. And yet she is dangerous – the ones pursuing her can lose control.
In short, the Siren is a mirage: a carefully crafted illusion of adventure and escape. This is the power of the Siren, and it is as potent nowadays as it was two thousand years ago.
Her call taps into something primal: the desire for wonder, for adventure, for pure escape. She beckons us to break the rules, if only in imagination.
Cleopatra: Ancient Egypt’s Great Seductress
A Ptolemaic queen stands calm in stone – but Cleopatra VII was anything but passive. Robert Greene notes she and other legendary sirens “invented seduction” by creating fantasy from reality. Cleopatra dressed like a living goddess, showing only teasing glimpses of flesh and filling Julius Caesar’s ears with grand spectacles and scented pleasures. She literally lured him down the Nile on a luxurious barge. Men grew hooked on this exotic world she created, only to have it abruptly taken away.
Just when Caesar or Mark Antony ached for more, Cleopatra would withdraw – cold and distant on her terms – forcing them into frantic pursuit. She was mixing regal confidence with heightened sensuality. The result? Caesar and Antony became love-struck slaves to her will.
Let him see only enough to hang onto, but never the whole girl.
Cleopatra’s voice was her secret weapon. Witnesses marveled at her delightful voice – low, languorous, hypnotic. Marilyn Monroe and even Empress Josephine similarly weaponized a languid drawl to entrance people.
The Siren never hurries when she speaks. She sounds calm, as if she had just woken up from her bed. This slow, breathy style plays like a lullaby for strong men (but not only), making them forget caution. And her wardrobe dazzled. Every outfit or prop was calculated to astonish and bewitch. The entire effect was seamless fantasy: no single detail dominated, but together they made Cleopatra seem larger-than-life.
Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood’s Breathless Siren
Fast forward two millennia and the Siren appears as Marilyn Monroe, a frail orphan girl who turned that fragility into power.
Young Norma Jeane’s epiphany: a borrowed, too-tight sweater suddenly made all the boys flock around her. So, Marilyn discovered early that any gesture of feminine mystery could stop a room. From then on she refined her weapons carefully. She dressed differently, smiled more, even giggled – each tweak an investment in her image. Before speaking a word, Norma Jean became Marilyn Monroe: a kind of living daydream.
Her voice became like moonlight on glass – soft, vulnerable, tinged with mischief. She was born with that childlike voice, so it became natural. But, in order to overcome her stutter from when she was young, she practiced with vocal coaches until she learned how to use her voice to make it truly seductive.
Every word out of Marilyn’s mouth seemed carefully measured – purring rather than declaring – a far cry from a bossy Hollywood star. And she imbued that breathy innocence with a note of madness. To look into Marilyn Monroe’s eyes or hear her sing was to glimpse something wild and out-of-reach. Presidents and poets alike (Joe DiMaggio, JFK, Arthur Miller) found themselves helpless, abandoned to the spell.
In public, Marilyn moved like a dream. A tilted head here, a languid half-smile there – she left admirers perpetually wondering, “What does she mean by that?” This is the Siren’s promise seductive: she suggests more than she shows. Marilyn embodied that by keeping some part of herself just out of sight – whether literally (the flap of coat revealing a glimpse of bare skin) or metaphorically (feigning shyness while basking in adoration).
It’s the classic Siren ruse: let him see only enough to hang onto, but never the whole girl.
The Stillness at The Eye of Desire
What is the Siren, at bottom? She is less about doing than being. Stillness is her greatest move. Robert Greene likens her to a magnet lying motionless while steel filings inch toward it: “Without their having noticed it, [the filings] had been involuntarily moving nearer to the magnet, which lay there quite still“. The Siren operates the same way. She doesn’t chase; instead, she radiates an aura of calm confidence that others walk right into.
Combine this stillness with carefully chosen stimuli, and the result is a psychological vortex. The Siren uses suggestion over action: a slow blink, a tilted chin, a long silver dress catching firelight. Physically, her body is a decoy – like the red wave of a matador’s cape or the scent of a panther. These cues have no explicit meaning, but they short-circuit logic. They bypass rational thought. A perfume or a whisper can say what a thousand words cannot.
Her voice, too, is a tool of stillness. It never bursts out; it drifts. She sounds dreamy, as if half asleep. This disarms listeners. One might barely register what she says, but they remember how it felt to listen. They step into a trance.
The Siren never lets you see her “true” self. She might gossip or flirt, but nothing personal. She lives partly in shadow – undone sleeves, half-closed eyes – so that her target fills in the blank with his own fantasies. She’s an unfinished painting: beautiful, but with edges deliberately blurred.
The Siren’s strategy remains the same: a mixture of float and flirt. Stillness, a tantalizing whisper of beauty, and a pinch of danger.
Sirens of Today
This ancient game hasn’t died with Cleopatra or Marilyn Monroe. Today’s world just dresses it in new clothes. Think of icons who channel that same uncanny stillness. A superstar like Beyoncé may stalk the stage in slow motion, her gaze steady and unreadable, making 100,000 people feel they’re in a private parlor.
An Instagram influencer, like a modern Aphrodite, can post a single photo of herself lounging in a tropical resort – eyes half-closed – and draw millions of likes with no caption.
Luxury brands know the script: perfume ads show a model in long shadow, breathing deeply, evoking desire without a word. It’s not the product they sell so much as the fantasy of being wanted.
In fact, social media thrives on the Siren effect. Carefully edited selfies focus on glossy lips and lashes (appealing to the unconscious, sensory desire), while the background screams glamour. Every filtered photo, every staged “candid” laugh, is designed to hint at a whole story just out of frame. Even our phones employ this trick: a slow-motion video of a model tossing hair in slo-mo – it’s like a tiny siren song, saying “look, but I am beyond reach”.
In marketing terms, Robert Greene’s advice to “create an overall impression that is both distracting and alluring” has become digital gospel.
Psychologically, nothing has changed. The Siren still plays on people’s yearning to escape responsibility. When life gets too serious – taxes, bills, cubicles – we crave a little dangerous pleasure. The Siren is perilously forbidden fruit. Even aware of the game, we catch ourselves leaning in when she sings. We may laugh at modern tropes (a lip-gloss commercial or a trending song), but deep down we know it: a single dimpled smile on our screen can make hours vanish.
Our world is noisier than ever, yet the Siren’s strategy remains the same: a mixture of float and flirt. Stillness, a tantalizing whisper of beauty, and a pinch of danger.
In online influencer culture, you see it in the silent stares of runway models; in celebrity culture, you see it in the snap of paparazzi catching a star half-turned and smirking. Even in business, the Siren is at play: think of a CEO who smiles just slightly and hints “this deal is exclusive,” or a tech founder who shrouds product details in mystery.
The Siren thrives because she promises a world beyond the mundane. Her call taps into something primal: the desire for wonder, for adventure, for pure escape. She beckons us to break the rules, if only in imagination. In Cleopatra’s kingdom it was literal magic; in Marilyn Monroe’s movies it was cinematic; now it is digital and perpetual. But the song is unchanged.
