Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

The most complete and extant rendering of the story of Philomela, Procne, and Tereus can be found in Book VI of the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (43 BC - AD 17/18), where the story reaches its full development during antiquity.[5] It is likely that Ovid relied upon Greek and Latin sources that were available in his era such as the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus (2nd century BC),[6] or sources that are no longer extant or exist today only in fragments—especially Sophocles' tragic drama Tereus (5th century BC).[7][8][9]

According to Ovid, in the fifth year of Procne's marriage to Tereus, King of Thrace and son of Ares, she asked her husband to "Let me at Athens my dear sister see / Or let her come to Thrace, and visit me."[5] Indulging his wife's request, Tereus agreed to travel to Athens and escort Philomela, his wife's sister, to Thrace.[5] King Pandion of Athens, the father of Philomela and Procne, was apprehensive about letting his only remaining daughter leave his home and protection and asks Tereus to protect her as if he were her father.[5][10] Tereus agrees. However, Tereus lusted for Philomela when he first saw her, and that lust grew during the course of the return voyage to Thrace.[5]

"The Rape of Philomela by Tereus", book 6, plate 59. Engraved by Johann Wilhelm Baur for a 1703 edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses
Arriving in Thrace, he forced her to a cabin or lodge in the woods and raped her.[5] After the assault, Tereus threatened her and advised her to keep silent.[5] Philomela was defiant and angered Tereus. In his rage, he cut out her tongue and abandoned her in the cabin.[5] In Ovid's Metamorphoses Philomela's defiant speech is rendered (in an 18th-century English translation) as:

Still my revenge shall take its proper time,
And suit the baseness of your hellish crime.
My self, abandon'd, and devoid of shame,
Thro' the wide world your actions will proclaim;
Or tho' I'm prison'd in this lonely den,
Obscur'd, and bury'd from the sight of men,
My mournful voice the pitying rocks shall move,
And my complainings echo thro' the grove.
Hear me, o Heav'n! and, if a God be there,
Let him regard me, and accept my pray'r.[11]

Rendered unable to speak because of her injuries, Philomela wove a tapestry (or a robe[12]) that told her story and had it sent to Procne.[5] Procne was incensed and in revenge, she killed her son by Tereus, Itys (or Itylos), boiled him and served him as a meal to her husband.[5] After Tereus ate Itys, the sisters presented him with the severed head of his son, and he became aware of their conspiracy and his cannibalistic meal.[5] He snatched up an axe and pursued them with the intent to kill the sisters.[5] They fled but were almost overtaken by Tereus at Daulia in Phocis.[12] In desperation, they prayed to the gods to be turned into birds and escape Tereus' rage and vengeance.[12] The gods transformed Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale.[5][13] Subsequently, the gods would transform Tereus into a hoopoe.[12]

Variations on the myth[edit]

Depiction of Philomela and Procne showing the severed head of Itys to his father Tereus, engraved by Baur for a 1703 edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book VI:621–647)
It is typical for myths from antiquity to have been altered over the passage of time or for competing variations of the myth to emerge.[14][15] With the story of Philomela, most of the variations concern which sister became the nightingale or the swallow, and into what type of bird Tereus was transformed. Since Ovid's Metamorphoses, it has been generally accepted that Philomela was transformed into a nightingale, and Procne into a swallow.[12] The description of Tereus as an "epops" has generally been translated as a hoopoe (scientific name: Upupa epops).[16][17] Since many of the earlier sources are no longer extant, or remain only fragments, Ovid's version of the myth has been the most lasting and influenced most later works.

Early Greek sources have it that Philomela was turned into a swallow, which has no song; Procne turns into a nightingale, singing a beautiful but sad song in remorse.[12] Later sources, among them Ovid, Hyginus, and the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, and in modern literature the English romantic poets like Keats write that although she was tongueless, Philomela was turned into a nightingale, and Procne into a swallow.[12][18] Eustathius' version of the story has the sisters reversed, so that Philomela married Tereus and that Tereus lusted after Procne.[19]

It is salient to note that in taxonomy and binomial nomenclature, the genus name of the martins (the larger-bodied among swallow genera) is Progne, a Latinized form of Procne. Other related genera named after the myth include the Crag Martins Ptyonoprogne, and Saw-wings Psalidoprocne. Coincidentally, although most of the depictions of the nightingale and its song in art and literature are of female nightingales, the female of the species does not sing—it is the male of the species who sings its characteristic song.[1][2]

In an early account, Sophocles wrote that Tereus was turned into a large-beaked bird whom some scholars translate as a hawk[8][20][21] while a number of retellings and other works (including Aristophanes' ancient comedy, The Birds) hold that Tereus was instead changed into a hoopoe.[16][17] Various later translations of Ovid state that Tereus was transformed into other birds than the hawk and hoopoe, including references by Dryden and Gower to the lapwing.[11][22]

Several writers omit key details of the story. According to Pausanias, Tereus was so remorseful for his actions against Philomela and Itys (the nature of the actions is not described) that he kills himself. Then two birds appear as the women lament his death.[23] Many later sources omit the Tereus' tongue-cutting mutilation of Philomela altogether.[24]

According to Thucydides, Tereus was not King of Thrace, but rather from the city of Daulia in Phocis, a city inhabited by Thracians. He cites in proof of this that poets who mention the nightingale refer to it as a "Daulian bird."[25] It is thought that Thucydides commented on the myth in his famous work on the Peloponnesian War because Sophocles' play confused the mythical Tereus with contemporary ruler Teres I of Thrace.[26]

Secret Alias wrote:Notice the parallel with things said about the heretics that they cut off the tongues of their women from prophesizing. Natural progression from Philomela to Philomena in the cultured environs of early Christianity.

Now the Pythagorean symbols were connected with the Barbarian philosophy in the most recondite way. For instance, the Samian counsels “not to have a swallow in the house;” that is, not to receive a loquacious, whispering, garrulous man, who cannot contain what has been communicated to him. “For the swallow, and the turtle, and the sparrows of the field, know the times of their entrance,” 3008 says the Scripture; and one ought never to dwell with trifles. And the turtle-dove murmuring shows the thankless slander of fault-finding, and is rightly expelled the house.

“Don’t mutter against me, sitting by one in one place, another in another.” 3009
The swallow too, which suggests the fable of Pandion, seeing it is right to detest the incidents reported of it, some of which we hear Tereus suffered, and some of which he inflicted. It pursues also the musical grasshoppers, whence he who is a persecutor of the word ought to be driven away.

“By sceptre-bearing Here, whose eye surveys Olympus,
I have a rusty closet for tongues,”
says Poetry. Æschylus also says:—

“But, I, too, have a key as a guard on my tongue.” [Stromata 5.5]