Philomela

Philomela was the daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, and the sister of Procne. Her story is the myth of Tereus, who married Procne, raped Philomela and cut out her tongue. Philomela revealed the crime to her sister in a woven cloth, and the two women took a terrible revenge on Tereus through his son Itys. At the end of the story all of them are turned into birds. It is told in detail by Apollodorus and Ovid.

Family

Pandion married Zeuxippe, and they had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and twin sons, Erechtheus and Butes (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.8). When Pandion was at war with Labdacus over a question of boundaries, he called in Tereus, a Thracian and son of Ares, and after the victory he gave him his daughter Procne in marriage (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.8). In Ovid, Tereus wins fame by driving off a barbarian host that threatened Athens, and Pandion then joins him to Procne (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.421–428). Procne and Tereus had a son, Itys. Thucydides says that this Tereus lived at Daulis in what was later Phocis, which was then inhabited by Thracians, and that many poets call the nightingale the Daulian bird (Thucydides 2.29.3); Pausanias agrees, though the Megarians claimed that Tereus ruled at Pagae in the Megarid (Pausanias 1.41.8).

Tereus and Philomela

In Ovid’s account, in the fifth year of the marriage Procne asks her husband either to let her visit her sister or to bring her sister to Thrace (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.438–444). Tereus sails to Athens. When he sees Philomela he is seized by desire, and she, not suspecting anything, clings to her father and begs to be allowed to go (Metamorphoses 6.451–485). Pandion gives her to him in tears, asking Tereus to guard her with a father’s love and to send her back quickly (Metamorphoses 6.494–503).

Once they have landed in Thrace, Tereus takes Philomela to a lodging deep in the forest and rapes her, though she cries out for her father, her sister and the gods (Metamorphoses 6.519–526). She tells him that she will make the deed known to the people, or to the woods and the rocks if she is shut up there (Metamorphoses 6.544–548). Tereus draws his sword, seizes her tongue with pincers and cuts it out (Metamorphoses 6.549–560). He then returns to Procne and tells her that her sister is dead; Procne puts on mourning and builds an empty tomb (Metamorphoses 6.563–570).

In the version of Apollodorus, Tereus fell in love with Philomela and seduced her, telling her that Procne was dead, for he had hidden Procne away in the country. Afterwards he married Philomela and cut out her tongue (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.8). In both accounts Philomela, though mute, sends word to her sister by weaving.

The Woven Message

Philomela spends a year guarded in the stables behind high walls. She sets up a loom and weaves purple letters into a white web telling what had happened, then has it carried to Procne by a servant (Metamorphoses 6.571–580). Procne reads it and says nothing; she is silent with grief and rage (Metamorphoses 6.581–586).

The Revenge

In Ovid, Procne takes advantage of the Thracian women’s biennial festival of Bacchus, leaves the palace at night dressed as a Bacchante, breaks into the lodging and brings her sister back to the palace, hiding her in the dress of the god (Metamorphoses 6.587–600). When Procne sees her son Itys, who looks like his father, she kills him: she strikes him with a sword, and Philomela cuts his throat (Metamorphoses 6.619–643). The sisters cut up the body, boil some parts and roast others, and Procne serves the meal to Tereus, telling the servants to leave (Metamorphoses 6.644–651). When Tereus calls for Itys, Procne says that he has him inside, and Philomela leaps out and throws the boy’s bloody head into his father’s face (Metamorphoses 6.652–660).

Apollodorus gives a shorter account: Procne, who has found her sister, kills Itys, boils him and serves him to Tereus without his knowledge, and flees with her sister. Tereus, learning what has happened, seizes an axe and pursues them (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.8). Pausanias also mentions the meal, which he says was the first pollution of the dining-table among men (Pausanias 10.4.8).

The Transformation

In Ovid the sisters flee and Tereus pursues them with his sword. As they run, they seem to hang in the air on wings; one makes for the woods, the other for the roofs, and on the breast of each remain the marks of the murder, red feathers. Tereus, swift with grief and hatred, becomes a bird with a crest on its head and a long, spear-like beak, which is the hoopoe (Metamorphoses 6.666–674). Ovid does not say in these lines which sister becomes which bird.

Apollodorus does name them. The sisters are overtaken at Daulis in Phocis and pray to the gods; Procne becomes a nightingale and Philomela a swallow, and Tereus is turned into a hoopoe (Apollodorus, Library 3.14.8). The same Procne-as-nightingale appears in Aeschylus, where Tereus’ wife is called “the hawk-chased nightingale” and mourns her son (Aeschylus, Suppliants 58–67). In Apollodorus, therefore, Philomela is the swallow, not the nightingale.

Pausanias gives a different ending. He says that Tereus killed himself in Megara and that the hoopoe first appeared there, while the sisters came to Athens and died of weeping; he thinks that the story of the nightingale and swallow comes from the plaintive notes of these birds (Pausanias 1.41.8–9). At Daulis he mentions the belief that no swallow nests in Phocis, because Philomela, even as a bird, feared Tereus (Pausanias 10.4.9).

Homer knows a different nightingale story. In the Odyssey the nightingale is the daughter of Pandareus, who mourns the son Itylos, whom she killed by mistake; Homer does not name Tereus, Procne or Philomela (Odyssey 19.518–523).

Philomela Sources

Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.412–674. Apollodorus, Library 3.14.8. Pausanias 1.41.8–9, 10.4.8–9. Thucydides 2.29. Aeschylus, Suppliants 58–67. Homer, Odyssey 19.518–523.

See Also: Procne, Tereus, Itys, Pandion I, Athens