But, though Plato and the poets and the mystics exalt the Siren, ‘half-angel and half-bird,’ to cosmic functions, yet, to the popular mind, they are mainly things, if not wholly evil, yet fearful and to be shunned. This is seen in the myth of their contest with the Muses[531]. Here they are the spirits of forbidden intoxication; as such on vases they join the motley crew of Centaurs and Satyrs who revel with Dionysos. They stand, it would seem, to the ancient as to the modern, for the impulses in life as yet unmoralized, imperious longings, ecstasies, whether of love or art or philosophy, magical voices calling to a man from his ‘Land of Heart’s Desire’ and to which if he hearken it may be he will return home no more—voices too, which, whether a man sail by or stay to hearken, still sing on. The Siren bird-woman transformed for ever by the genius of Homer into the sweet-voiced demon of seduction may seem remote from the Ker of which she is but a specialized form. A curious design[532] on a black-figured cylix in the Louvre (fig. 41) shows how close was the real connection. The scene is a banquet: five men are reclining on couches, two of them separated by a huge _deinos_, a wine-vessel, from which a boy has drawn wine in an oinochoë. Over two of the men are hovering winged figures, each holding a crown and a spray; over two others hover bird-women, each also holding a crown and a spray. What are we to call these ministrant figures, what would the vase-painter himself have called them? Are the human winged figures Love-gods, are the bird-women Sirens? For lack of context it is hard to say with certainty. Thus much is clear, both kinds of figures are favouring genii of the feast, and for our purpose this is all-important: the bird-women, be they Sirens or not, and the winged human figures, be they Love-gods or merely Keres, _perform the same function_. The development of the Love-god, Eros, from the Ker will be discussed later (Chap. XII.); for the present it is best to regard these bird-women and winged sprites as both of the order of Keres, as yet unspecialized in function. [Illustration: FIG. 41.] THE KER AS SPHINX. Two special features characterize the Sphinx: she was a Harpy carrying off men to destruction, an incarnate plague; she was the soothsayer with the evil habit of asking riddles as well as answering them. Both functions, though seemingly alien, were characteristic of underworld bogeys; the myth-making mind put them together and wove out of the two the tale of the unanswered riddle and the consequent deathly pest.