Why did Odysseus tie himself to the mast?

Circe’s instructions

The plan is Circe’s, not his. On his last night on her island she tells him what lies ahead. First come the Sirens: whoever hears them never sees his wife and children again, for they sit in a green field and sing men to death among heaps of bones. Wax in the crew’s ears, she says. If he insists on listening, the men must bind him upright to the mast and follow one more order:

If you beg and pray the men to unloose you, then they must bind you faster.

Notice the choice Circe leaves open. Plugging his own ears would be perfectly safe. Listening is optional, and Odysseus, who always wants to know more, takes the option. Back on board he tells his crew about the Sirens and repeats her order: if he begs to be untied, tie him tighter.

Wax and rope

Near the Sirens’ island the wind falls dead calm, so the men stow the sail and row. Odysseus takes a big wheel of wax, chops it up with his sword, works the pieces soft in his hands with the help of the sun, and plugs the ears of every man at the oars. Then they bind him hand and foot, standing on a crosspiece of the mast, with the rope’s ends lashed to the mast itself. Nobody else aboard will hear a note.

The song: knowledge, not love

The Sirens see the ship and begin. They call him by name, “renowned Ulysses” in Butler’s translation, and boast that no sailor has ever passed without stopping to hear the sweetness of their song. Then comes the offer:

he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser, for we know all the ills that the gods laid upon the Argives and Trojans before Troy, and can tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world.

There is no word about love. The prize is the complete story of the war he fought in, with the future thrown in. Calypso would offer him immortality; the Sirens offer this endlessly curious man something he wants even more, to know. It works. He frowns at his men, signaling them to free him. Instead, Homer says, Eurylochus and Perimedes get up and bind him with stronger bonds, and the crew rows on until the voices fade. Only then do the men take the wax from their ears and untie him.

And the Sirens?

What did they look like? Homer never says; Greek painters gave them the bodies of birds, and the fish tail came much later. What became of them? Homer is silent there too. Apollodorus, writing centuries later, adds that they were fated to die if any ship sailed past them, “so die they did.”

A siren song

The scene left English an expression. A siren song is any sweet call that leads to ruin: an offer too good to refuse, a temptation dressed up as wisdom. The rest of the scene has a modern name too. Doctors and economists speak of a Ulysses contract when people bind themselves in advance against a weakness they know is coming. Odysseus is the model. He does not trust himself to resist, so he makes sure he cannot give in. Right after the song comes a danger no rope can solve: Scylla and Charybdis.