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.
Queen Arsinoe’s Brief Wartime Reign At The Twilight Of Ptolemaic Egypt
Arsinoe IV was an ambitious daughter of King Ptolemy XII of Egypt (r. 80-51 BCE). Her ambition was mirrored by her sisters, Berenice IV and Cleopatra VII. The eldest sister, Berenice, usurped power from her father in 58 BCE, but she was ultimately executed when he seized back control of Egypt in 55 BCE. As for Cleopatra VII, the next eldest daughter, she was the famous Cleopatra who tied her fate to Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. She and Arsinoe, additionally, had two younger brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, who had their own supporters in the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria. When their father died in 51 BCE, the will of the late king was interpreted as directing the oldest living son and daughter, Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra, to rule as a pair. This succession was implemented, but the two co-rulers and their aides quickly proved incompatible, resulting in a succession war by 50 BCE. Young Ptolemy XIII and his faction of supporters held the initial advantage, forcing Cleopatra to flee Alexandria. Yet, while she was in exile, Cleopatra recruited an army and began pushing back against her brother’s supporters. Meanwhile, the Roman general, Pompey, fled to Egypt in 48 BCE after suffering a decisive defeat in his Roman Civil War, but he was assassinated by agents of Ptolemy XIII. Pompey’s opponent, Julius Caesar, then arrived in Egypt, injected himself into the Egyptian succession crisis, and placed Ptolemy XIII under house arrest in the palace quarter of Alexandria while the Romans wintered in the city. By this point, open war broke out between the Romans and the Egyptian forces at Alexandria. Cleopatra, sensing an opportunity, also appeared and submitted herself to Caesar’s mercy. It was at this time—during Ptolemy XIII’s house imprisonment and when Cleopatra was courting Roman support—that Arsinoe began her own bid for power.
Arsinoe, unlike her siblings, escaped the palace quarter and united with the Alexandrine forces that had begun besieging the Romans back when Ptolemy XIII was taken hostage. Arsinoe brought along her talented guardian and mentor, a eunuch named Ganymedes, who turned out to be a skilled strategist. They joined with Ptolemy’s general, Achillas, who was leading the forces of Alexandria against the Romans. Yet, the general and the princess became rivals instead of partners. Julius Caesar, in his war commentaries, observed, “King Ptolemy [XII’s] younger daughter [Arsinoe], hoping to take unencumbered possession of the throne, went over from the palace to Achillas and began to direct the war in co-operation with him. But very soon they fell out over the leadership…” (Julius Caesar, The Civil War, III.112). A power struggle ensued, where both Arsinoe and Achillas attempted to buy or leverage support for their side among the troops. In the end, Arsinoe and Ganymedes came out on top and Achillas was assassinated. Curiously, despite the death of a major general, the Alexandrian campaign did not lose momentum. Whereas Achillas had mobilized the Alexandrine garrison for war and had set the urban battle lines, Arsinoe and Ganymemdes, for their part, began implementing tactics and strategies that increased pressures on the Romans and made the siege more effective. Arsinoe and Ganymedes’ plans would pose a challenge even for a man of Julius Caesar’s brilliance.
At the time when Arsinoe and Ganymedes took over the assault on Caesar’s entrenched army, the battle in Alexandria was at a standstill. Julius Caesar, in the opening moves of the conflict against Achillas, had occupied the palace quarter, the harbor, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Caesar also burned the docked Alexandrian fleet. To set up a defensive perimeter in the city, Roman forces rammed their way through the walls of buildings to reach their desired destinations, and they demolished structures at the periphery of the battle lines that did not fit the battle scheme. Arsinoe and Ganymedes, rather than continue Achillas’ costly house-by-house urban assault against the Roman positions, instead pivoted their own approach to target Caesar’s supplies and to possibly open another front in the battle against the Romans. On the supply sabotage angle, Arsinoe and Ganymedes concocted a plan to divert the sea into Caesar’s drinking water. This was detailed in a text known as The Alexandrian War, attributed to Aulus Hirtius (c. 90 BCE—43 CE), which served as an expanded continuation of Caesar’s war commentaries. The text reported:
“Almost the whole of Alexandria has galleries beneath it and conduits extending to the Nile by which water is brought to private houses. After a while this water gradually becomes clear and settles, and is habitually used by houseowners and their households because…there is not a single spring in the city. However, the watercourse was in the portion of the town which was under Alexandrian control. This circumstance gave Ganymedes the idea that it was possible to deprive our forces of water, because in order to protect their fortifications our men were distributed over various quarters of the city and used water taken from the conduits and wells of private houses. This plan was approved, and he embarked on a huge and difficult task. He drove tunnels to intercept the conduits, and after isolating all the areas of the city which he himself controlled, strove to raise an enormous quantity of water from the sea, using water-wheels; and this he endlessly poured into Caesar’s area from the higher levels” (The Alexandrian War, chapters 5-6).
According to the account, the change in salinity occurred gradually in the Roman water supply. Caesar’s forces reportedly even held taste tests, comparing the flavors of the water from different houses. Curiosity, however, turned to panic once the Romans realized that the fresh water infrastructure in and around all of the structures under their control had been filled with undrinkable seawater. This sabotage shook Roman morale, but Julius Caesar acted quickly to sure up the resolve of his army during this moment of panic. Caesar ordered new wells to be dug, and he also reassured the army that, since the Alexandrian fleet had been burned, the Romans would be able to use their own ships to freely ship in fresh water from outside the city. Arsinoe and Ganymedes, however, wanted to rebuild their sea power and challenge Caesar’s ships. They scoured the region for anything seaworthy, including patrol boats, administrative vessels, and merchant ships in the vicinity of the city that could be commandeered by the Alexandrian army to reform a makeshift navy. On the gathering, repairing and refurbishing of this fleet, The Alexandrian War commentary reported:
“There were guard-ships stationed at all the mouths of the Nile to collect the customs duties, and in secret docks within the palace old ships which had not been sailed for many years: they repaired the latter and recalled the former to Alexandria. There were no oars: so they took the roofs off colonnades, gymnasia, and public buildings, and the rafters became oars; their natural cleverness provided some things, their plentiful resources others…And so within a few days, contrary to what everyone thought possible, they completed twenty-two quadriremes and five quinqueremes. To these they added a fair number of smaller undecked ships…” (The Alexandrian War, chapter 13).
Once a naval force had been pulled together by the Alexandrians, they began to constantly harass Roman ships coming to and from Alexandria, and the Alexandrian navy was also used to launch amphibious assaults on vulnerable Roman positions. Julius Caesar had to personally sail out with his accompanying fleet to challenge Alexandrian ships on at least two or three occasions. Each time Caesar engaged the makeshift Alexandrian fleet, he would sink a few ships, but he could never destroy the naval force, and they would always return to harass the Roman supply lines and fortifications. Caesar, to further fortify against the Alexandrian naval attacks, decided to expand his foothold on the island that housed the Lighthouse of Alexandria, as well as the bridge that connected the island to Alexandria. The Romans used amphibious tactics of their own in their attempt to secure the causeway to the island. Yet, Caesar’s sailors were caught off guard when Alexandrian forces landed troops to counter-attack the disembarked Roman sailors on the causeway. The chaotic battle was described in The Alexandrian War continuation:
“While Caesar was busy with these operations and urging his soldiers on, a large number of rowers and marines poured on to the causeway from our warships…But once a few of the Alexandrians had found the courage to land further out, on their unprotected side, they began to retreat haphazardly to the ships…Encouraged by their flight, more Alexandrians landed and pursued our disordered troops still more vigorously. At the same time, the men who had remained on board our warships hurried to pull up the ladders and push the ships off from land…As long as he could rally his men and keep them at the fortifications and the bridge, Caesar was in the same danger, but when he saw they were all retreating he withdrew to his own vessel. A crowd of men followed him, swarming on board and not allowing any opportunity to work the ship or push off from shore. Guessing what was going to happen, he jumped overboard and swam to the ships which had stopped somewhat further away. From here he sent boats to help his men in difficulties, and saved some, while his own ship did indeed sink under the number of soldiers, and was lost along with them” (The Alexandrian War, chapter 20-21).
After that battle, the stalemate between the Romans and the Alexandrians resumed. Yet, Arsinoe would not be able to enjoy her side’s successes for much longer. Curiously, Julius Caesar entered into negotiations with the Egyptians and arranged for Ptolemy XIII to be released in exchange for the surrender of Arsinoe. Unfortunately for Arsinoe, her forces accepted the deal, and the Egyptians agreed to replace her with her younger brother. Ptolemy XIII resumed hostilities against Caesar after he was released, but he was not as effective as his sister and Ganymedes. The Alexandrian War stretched into early 47 BCE, when the arrival of Roman reinforcements pushed the balance of power into Julius Caesar’s favor. Ptolemy XIII mobilized his forces to confront the Romans in one last unsuccessful battle, but the king drowned, prompting the Egyptians to surrender. Cleopatra, as the only adult royal who had not fought against Caesar, was allowed to ascend to the Ptolemaic throne in Egypt. Contrastingly, Arsinoe—still in Roman custody—was paraded through the streets of Rome as part of Julius Caesar’s triumphal celebration in 46 BCE. Despite this humiliation, Caesar ultimately spared Arsinoe and let her go into exile in Ephesus, where she lived at the city’s temple of Artemis. Yet, Caesar’s protection ended when he was killed in 44 BCE. Following Julius Caesar’s death, Cleopatra began a relationship with Caesar’s violent right-hand man, Mark Antony, and they had Arsinoe assassinated in 41 BCE.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Marble Bust of Hellenistic Queen Arsinoe III of Egypt, 220-210 BC, photographed by Gary Todd at the Altes Museum in Berlin, [Public Domain] via WorldHistoryPics.com and Flickr, atop an illustration of Siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar, by Louis Poyet (1846–1913), [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons).
Sources: