According to ancient Greek myth and legend, a man named Tereus was once the ruler of a powerful Thracian kingdom. He was a mighty warrior, said to have been a demigod son of the war god, Ares. As reckoned by the ancient storytellers, Tereus predated many of the most famous Greek figures and events; for instance, he lived before Theseus ruled in Athens, and several generations were yet to come and go before the time of the Trojan War. Tereus’ era was said to have been a time of constant war and border tensions. The Thracian king won acclaim for fending off invasions of various peoples into his kingdom, and Greece in general. His might and success in battle made Tereus a feared enemy and a coveted ally. One such man who was eager to obtain an alliance with the Thracian ruler was King Pandion of Athens (the son of a nymph), who was at that time struggling in a war against the city of Thebes. In order to achieve the alliance, Pandion diplomatically arranged for one of his daughters to marry Tereus. These circumstances were summarized by a scholar known as Pseudo-Apollodorus (c. 1st-2nd century), who wrote, “Pandion married his mother’s sister, Zeuxippe, and fathered two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and twin sons, Erechtheus and Boutes. When war broke out with Labdacos [of Thebes] over the boundaries of the land, he summoned Tereus, son of Ares, to his assistance from Thrace, and after he had brought the war to a successful conclusion with his help, he gave Tereus his own daughter, Procne, in marriage” (Apollodorus, Library, 3.14.8).
Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE), a Roman poet, envisioned that the goddesses of marriage, love and affection were wary of Tereus from the start. Instead, the union caught the interest of more violent and disagreeable forces, such as the Furies. These signs from the Heavens, however, went unobserved by the mortals below, and so the ill-fated marriage between Tereus and Procne went forward as planned. Foreboding omens aside, the marriage started well. Procne was met with a welcome reception in Thrace, and she and Tereus quickly had a son named Itys. Yet, not long after her son’s birth, Procne became increasingly homesick. In particular, she longed to once again see and converse with her sister, Philomela.
Procne, after stewing in her emotions for a time, finally went to her husband and asked for him to arrange a reunion for the sisters. According to Ovid’s poetic account of the event, Procne presented two options: (1) for Procne to be allowed to go on a trip back to Athens to see her sister, or (2) for Tereus to request that Philomela be allowed to visit Procne in Thrace. Tereus opted for the second option, and he personally journeyed back to Athens to present the request to King Pandion. This, in the beginning, was an innocent—even wholesome—premise and request, but Tereus’ journey to Athens would ultimately lead to disastrous consequences for all involved.
Upon reaching the Athenian city, Tereus began negotiating an agreement with King Pandion and princess Philomela. Yet, in the midst of the discussions, Tereus suddenly and obsessively became enamored with his sister-in-law. It was not a healthy affection. Instead, perhaps corrupted by the blood of his war god father, Ares, Tereus wanted to conquer and control Philomela, and he soon found himself willing to do whatever it took to have his way. Although Tereus raged with lust and desire inside his own mind, his outside demeanor did not show it, and the Athenian royals sensed no danger. Instead, Philomela wholeheartedly endorsed the idea of going to see her sister in Thrace. King Pandion, wishing to think it over during the night, decided to hold a royal banquet that evening and gave Tereus a place to stay for the late hours. The Thracian king’s patience was wearing thin, but he managed to restrain himself until morning, by which time Pandion had made a decision. Tragically, the Athenian king decided to place Philomela, without any Athenian guards or attendants, at the mercy of the increasingly unstable Tereus.
Philomela, unaware of the growing danger, willingly traveled with the Thracian king out of Athenian territory, beyond the jurisdiction, forces and assistance of her father. Yet, as soon as the travel party crossed into the lands of Tereus’ Thracian kingdom, the king dropped his gentlemanly act. Ovid vividly narrated the disturbing scene:
“Triumphant, the vile barbarian scarcely could wait
for his moment of bliss, and his greedy eyes never swerved from his prey,
like an eagle closely watching the hare it has caught in its crooked
talons and dropped in the nest high up where it cannot escape.
The end of the journey at last! They had disembarked from the wave-worn
ship and landed in Thrace, when Tereus dragged Philomela
up to a stone hut hidden away in an ancient forest.
White and shaking in abject terror, she tearfully asked him,
‘Where is my sister?’ But now she was trapped. His ugly intentions
were all too clear. His virgin prize was alone, and he brutally
raped her.”
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6. 514-525)
Tereus, after committing the heinous deed, immediately turned to covering up the crime. He secretly imprisoned Philomela in a hidden stone cell near his palace. Yet, he still worried that she would tell the world of his hellish act. Paranoid and desperate to silence his victim, Tereus grabbed a knife and unspeakably cut out Philomela’s tongue. The princess survived the grievous wound and was forced to continue her captivity in the hidden stone prison. To pass the time, Philomela had only some weaving and sewing equipment left to her by Tereus. Yet, that was exactly how Philomela achieved her revenge. Although she could not tell her story by voice, she could still stitch and weave her testimony into cloth.
Tereus could not spend all of his time watching Philomela. After all, he had a kingdom to run and a wife, Procne, who was expecting the return of her sister. Tereus lied to Procne, telling her that Philomela had died on the road. A few others, however, knew more of the truth—some guards and a few servants knew of the stone prison and the mute captive it held. A few of these witnesses may have come to sympathize with imprisoned and mutilated Philomela. Whatever the case, the chained princess was able to arrange for one of the servants to smuggle a cloth to Procne, and on that cloth was an account of all that had befallen Philomela since she departed Athens with Tereus. Ovid described this scene in his poem, writing:
“Poor Philomela was helpless: her guards precluded escape,
the walls of the hut were firmly constructed of solid stone,
and her speechless lips couldn’t tell the truth of her barbarous treatment.
But suffering sharpens the wits and misfortune makes one resourceful.
She craftily strung a warp on a primitive Thracian loom,
and into the pure white threads she wove a message in purple
letters revealing the crime. When the piece was completed, she handed it
over to one of her sister’s women and gestured her orders
to put it at once in her mistress’ hands. The woman then took it
to Procne as bidden, with no idea of what it contained.
The wife of the merciless tyrant unrolled the woven material,
only to read the pitiful story of what had befallen
her very own sister. Amazing to tell, she said not a word.
All speech was choked by her grief. The words that she needed weren’t there
to express her outrage. Tears were foregone, as she rushed to confound
all right and wrong. Her heart was totally set on revenge.”
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6.572-586)
Procne, it goes without saying, found the accusation to be credible and compelling. As soon as the testimony came into her hands, she began gathering information about the location of her sister’s prison and began concocting ideas about how to break Philomela out of her cell. In Ovid’s account of events, Procne postponed action until the time of a festival honoring the wine-god, Dionysus (or Bacchus), which allowed her to wander at night and act erratically without arousing any suspicion from Tereus’ guards and loyalists. Using the festival as cover, Procne subtly wove her way to the location of Philomela’s prison and finally freed her tormented sister with surprising ease. Procne then disguised Philomela in festival garb, and the sisters snuck away to a safer section of the palace compound. Unfortunately, that location also happened to be where Procne’s son, Itys, was spending the evening.
In Ovid’s telling of the tale, Itys looked just like his father, which, given the circumstances, sent Philomela and Procne into a murderous rage. According to the incredibly dark tale, the crazed sisters murdered the boy and covered up the killing by hiding the body among the kitchen’s stew and roasts. Even more disturbing, Procne then delivered a bowl of the grisly meat to her husband, Tereus.
Accounts differ by this point in the tale. According to Ovid, Procne and Philomela confronted Tereus in the king’s throne room, revealing to him that he was eating his murdered son. Pseudo-Apollodorus’ account, however, insisted that the sisters snuck out of the palace and fled. In that version of events, Tereus soon discovered that Itys was missing and he pieced together what happened. He then raced after Procne and Philomela. In both accounts, that of Ovid and Apollodorus, some sort of divine intervention took place after Tereus successfully intercepted the sisters. The gods had a vested interest in the three, after all, as Tereus was the son of the war god, Ares, and the sisters were granddaughters of a Naiad nymph named Praxithaea. As the story goes, perhaps to avoid further bloodshed and tragedy, the trio were all miraculously transformed into birds.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Philomela by E. C. Burne-Jones (Public Domain via Wikimedia) on top of Tereus and Philomela by Crispijn van de Passe (b. 1564 – d. 1637), [Public Domain] via the Rijksmuseum).
Sources:
- Metamorphoses by Ovid. Translated by David Raeburn. Penguin Classics; Revised Edition, 2004.
- Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, translated by Robin Hard. New York, Oxford University Press, 1997.
- The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion, edited by Simon Price and Emily Kearns. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
