Philomela () or Philomel (; , or ) is a minor figure in Greek mythology who is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary and artistic works in the Western canon.
Family Philomela was the younger of two daughters of Pandion I, King of Athens, and the naiad Zeuxippe. Her sister, Procne, was the wife of King Tereus of Thrace. Philomela's other siblings were Erechtheus, ButesApollodorus, 3.15.1. and possibly Teuthras.Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica s.v. Thespeia
Mythology While the myth has several variations, the general depiction is that Philomela, after being raped and mutilated by her sister's husband, Tereus, obtains her revenge and is transformed into a bird, either a swallow in Greek versions or a nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), a bird renowned for its song, in Roman ones. Because of the violence associated with the myth, the song of the nightingale is often depicted or interpreted as a sorrowful lament. In nature, the female nightingale is mute, and only the male of the species sings.
Ovid and other writers have made the association that the etymology of her name was "lover of song", derived from the Greek and ("song") instead of ("fruit" or "sheep"), which means "lover of fruit", "lover of apples",Defining φιλόμηλος as "fond of apples or fruit", see Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; and Jones, Henry Stuart. A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1st ed. 1843, 9th Ed. 1925, 1996). (LSJ) found online here ; citing "Doroth.Hist. ap. Ath. 7.276f". (Retrieved 7 October 2012) or "lover of sheep".
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 – 17/18 AD), where the story reaches its full development during antiquity.Ovid. Metamorphoses Book VI, lines 424–674. (Line numbers vary among translations.) 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),Frazer, Sir James George (translator/editor). Apollodorus, Library in 2 volumes (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1921). See note 2 to section 3.14.8, citing Pearson, A. C. (editor) The Fragments of Sophocles, II:221ff. (found online here – retrieved 23 November 2012), where Frazer points to several other ancient source materials regarding the myth. or sources that are no longer extant or exist today only in fragments—especially Sophocles' tragic drama Tereus (5th century BC).Sophocles. Tereus (translated by Lloyd-Jones, Hugh) in Sophocles Fragments (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard College, 1996), 290–299Fitzpatrick, David. "Reconstructing a Fragmentary Tragedy 2: Sophocles' Tereus" in Practitioners Voices in Classical Reception Studies 1:39–45 (November 2007) – retrieved 23 November 2012).
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." Tereus agreed to travel to Athens and escort her sister, Philomela, to Thrace. King Pandion of Athens, the father of Philomela and Procne, was apprehensive about letting his one remaining daughter leave his home and protection and asks Tereus to protect her as if he were her father.According to the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus (Book III, chapter 14, section 8), in the translation by Sir James George Frazer, Pandion fought a war with Labdacus, King of Thebes and married his daughter Procne to Tereus to secure and alliance and obtain his assistance in fighting Thebes. 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.
Arriving in Thrace, he forced her to a cabin or lodge in the woods and raped her. After the assault, Tereus threatened her and advised her to keep silent. Philomela was defiant and angered Tereus. In his rage, he cut out her tongue and abandoned her in the cabin. 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.Dryden, John; Addison, Joseph; Eusden, Laurence; Garth, Sir Samuel (translators). Ovid. Ovid's Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books, translated by the most eminent hands (London: Jacob Tonson, 1717) Volume II, p. 201.
Philomela was unable to speak because of her injuries, and so she wove a tapestry (or a robe)Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3.14.8; in Frazer, Sir James George (translator/editor). Apollodorus, Library in 2 volumes (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1921). (found online. Retrieved 23 November 2012). Notes on this passage include references several variations on the myth. that told her story and sent it to Procne. Procne was incensed by her husband's actions and killed their son Itys (or "Itylus") in revenge. She boiled Itys and served him as a meal for Tereus. After Tereus ate Itys, the sisters presented Tereus with the severed head of his son, revealing the conspiracy. Tereus grabbed an axe and chased the sisters intending to kill them. They fled but were almost overtaken by Tereus at Daulia in Phocis. The sisters desperately prayed to the gods to be turned into birds and escape Tereus' rage and vengeance. The gods transformed the two sisters into a swallow and a nightingale. Although the earlier Greek accounts say that Procne became the nightingale, and the tongueless Philomela the silent swallow (which are more consistent with the facts of the myth), Roman authors tended to swap the bird metamorphosis of the two sisters.Frazer in his translation of the Bibliotheca [Frazer, Sir James George (translator/editor). Apollodorus, Library in 2 volumes (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1921), in note 2 to section 3.14.8] comments that the Roman mythographers "somewhat absurdly inverted the transformation of the two sisters". Ovid himself stayed neutral on the matter, not naming which sister became which bird. Subsequently, the gods transformed Tereus into a hoopoe.
Variations on the myth
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.Honko, Lauri. "The Problem of Defining Myth" in Dundes, Alan (editor) Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 41–52. 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. In Greek texts like Achilles Tatius and the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, Philomela is transformed into a swallow and Procne into a nightingale, but in Latin texts Philomela is the nightingale and Procne is the swallow. The description of Tereus as an "epops" has generally been translated as a hoopoe (scientific name: Upupa epops).Arrowsmith, William (editor). Aristophanes: Three Comedies: The Birds, The Clouds, The Wasps. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 14, 109.DeLuca, Kenneth (Hampden-Sydney College). "Deconstructing Tereus: An Introduction to Aristophanes' Birds" (paper prepared for the American Political Science Association Convention Chicago 2007). Found online here . Retrieved 9 January 2013. Since many of the earlier sources are no longer extant, or remain only in fragments, Ovid's version of the myth has been the most lasting and influential upon later works.
Early Greek sources have it that Philomela was turned into a swallow, which has no song; Procne was turned into a nightingale, singing a beautiful but sad song in remorse. Later sources, among them Hyginus 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.Fields, Beverly. "Keats and the Tongueless Nightingale: Some Unheard Melodies in 'The Eve of Saint Agnes'". Wordsworth Circle 19 (1983), 246–250. Eustathius' version of the story has the sisters reversed, so that Philomela married Tereus and that Tereus lusted after Procne.For the comparison between Homer's version and Eusthathius' version of the myth, see: Notes to Book XIX (regarding line 605&c.) in Pope, Alexander. The Odyssey of Homer, translated by A. Pope, Volume V. (London: F. J. DuRoveray, 1806), 139–140.
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.
In an early account, Sophocles wrote that Tereus was turned into a large-beaked bird whom some scholars translate as a hawkHalmamann, Carolin. "Sophoclean Fragments" in Ormand, Kirk (editor). A Companion to Sophocles. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 175.compare with the "hawk" in Hyginus (Gaius Julius Hyginus ). Fabulae, 45. Hyginus based his interpretation on Aesch.Supp.60 from Smyth, Herbert Weir (translator); Aeschylus. Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, PhD in two volumes. in Volume 2. Suppliant Women. (Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1926). while a number of retellings and other works (including Aristophanes' ancient comedy The Birds) hold that Tereus was instead changed into a hoopoe. 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.Gower, John. Confessio Amantis Book V, Lines 6041–6046, refer to a "lappewincke" or "lappewinge"
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.Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1:41 sections 8 and 9. Many later sources omit Tereus' tongue-cutting mutilation of Philomela altogether.According to Delany, Chaucer barely mentions it and the Chretien de Troyes omits the "grotesquerie" entirely. Delany, Sheila. The Naked Text: Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 216–217, and passim.
According to Thucydides, Tereus was not King of Thrace, but rather from Daulia in Phocis, a city inhabited by Thracians. Thucydides cites as proof of this that poets who mention the nightingale refer to it as a "Daulian bird".Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. 2.29. In the version translated by Thomas Hobbes (London: Bohn, 1843). (found online here – retrieved 23 November 2012). 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.Webster, Thomas B. L. An Introduction to Sophocles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), 3, 7.
In a variation of the myth set in Asia Minor, Philomela is called Chelidon ("swallow") and her sister Aëdon ("nightingale").Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 11