Philomela

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Philomela, led by Prokne, shows Tereus the head of Itys (oil painting by Peter Paul Rubens )

Philomela ( Greek  Φιλομήλα , the friend of the herds ) or Philomele is a figure in Greek mythology . She was a daughter of the Attic king Pandion and his wife Zeuxippe ; her siblings were Prokne , Erechtheus and Butes .

myth

In gratitude for his help against the Thebans , the Thracian king Tereus of Pandion, ruler of Athens , had his daughter Prokne as his wife. But Tereus also wanted her sister Philomela. He took her to a stable deep in the forest and raped her. To prevent her from betraying him, he cut out her tongue and then kept her imprisoned in that place.

But Philomela was a weaver, and so she made a garment for her sister Prokne, in which she wove the images of her story of suffering. Prokne got the message and freed Philomela from her forest prison.

It was just the time of the desolate nocturnal celebrations of the god of wine. Prokne raced through the forest with the bakchantes and carried away her sister. As revenge, the two women chopped up Tereus and Proknes's son Itys , cooked his limbs and put them before Tereus for dinner; the king did not realize what he had eaten until Philomela threw him his son's head. With his sword drawn he pursued the sisters. To put a stop to the killing, Zeus turned them all into birds: Philomela into a swallow , Prokne into a nightingale, and Tereus into a hoopoe .

Tereus cuts out Philomela's tongue. Woodcut to Ovid's Metamorphoses by Virgil Solis (1514–1562)

In later traditions the assignment of the birds was changed: Tereus is said to have become a hawk and Philomela to have become a nightingale, who complains about the victim with the cry ityn, ityn . The latter variant probably comes from the story of Aëdon , who killed her son Itylos .

swell

literature

Web links

Commons : Philomela, Tereus and Prokne  - collection of images, videos and audio files