Scroll I. Attica
subject headings: Procne (Proknē), Philomela (Philomēlā), Tereus
(Tēreus).
On the form Philomēlā: grammarians in the ancient world (for example,
Herodian 3.1 p. 255 line 14 ed. A. Lentz 1867) called attention to the
exceptional ending ā instead of the expected ē. The catastrophic
story of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus is best known today from the
celebrated retelling by
Ovid, Metaphorphoses 6.401–674.
A briefer retelling of the myth can be found in
“Apollodorus” Bibliotheca 3.193–195.
These retellings seem to originate from a version of the myth that was
anchored in the region of Athens. Another version, anchored in the
region of Ephesus, is analyzed at §23 in
Nagy 2016.01.07.
As for the version anchored in Athens, it is linked to still another
version that is anchored in the region of Megara, as we see later when
we read Pausanias 1.41.8–9, where I offer further comments. Pausanias
refers to the myth of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus also at 9.16.4 and
at 10.4.8–9, where I offer still further comments. For now, I simply
introduce the myth, epitomizing from §§19–23 in Nagy 2016.01.07:
As we read in
Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.401–674,
Procne and Philomela are women who become transformed respectively into
the prototypical Nightingale and the prototypical Swallow in the course
of their tragic interaction with the king of Thrace, a man named Tereus.
In some versions of the myth, the names of the two women are more
overt: *Aēdōn *and *Khelidōn*, that is, Nightingale and Swallow (for
more such versions, I cite Levaniouk 2011:215n6). As for the man, King
Tereus, he becomes transformed into a bird known in Greek as *epops*. To
say it in English, Tereus becomes the prototypical Hoopoe. The myth
about these three doomed humans who are turned into birds is a story of
an Eternal Triangle. Tereus marries Procne and then violates her sister
Philomela, only to be punished for his crime when Procne takes revenge
on her husband by killing their own son and then serving up the child’s
cooked body to an unsuspecting Tereus, who thinks he is eating the meat
of an animal. That is the *dikē *or ‘retribution’ to which the narrative
of Pausanias is referring here. Once Tereus discovers that his stomach
has become the tomb of his own son, Tereus experiences a grief that
matches the grief of the two sisters. The combined grief becomes too
much for all three to bear, and the gods take pity by transforming them
all into birds. In
Ovid’s Metamorphoses 6.576–578,
we read that Philomela the would-be Swallow weaves into a web the story
of her violation by Tereus. She cannot express the sad story in words,
since Tereus had cut out her tongue and now keeps her imprisoned in a
fortress, hidden away from her sister. For Philomela, the act of weaving
a web becomes a substitute for the act of singing a lament in expressing
her grief.
