9. Rhetoric

Extract

The first twelve lines of this text were ascribed to Sophocles’ Tereus by the fifth-century ad anthologist Stobaeus, whose works, unlike Sophocles’ play, did survive antiquity; they appear in Radt's edition of the fragments as fr. 583. Scholars have long supposed, rightly, that they were delivered by Procne, daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, and wife of Tereus, king of Thrace. After living with her husband for a while she grew lonely, and asked him to fetch her sister Philomela from Athens. Tereus did so, but on the return journey he raped her, cutting out her tongue to prevent her accusing him. She was, however, able to communicate to her sister what had happened by weaving the story into a tapestry; together, the sisters conspired to kill Tereus’ child by Procne, Itys, and served the poor boy's flesh as a meal to his unsuspecting father. Once he discovered the truth he pursued them, and the gods turned all three into birds: Tereus into a hoopoe, Procne into a nightingale, and Philomela into a swallow. Procne in her new form became a byword for misery: the nightingale's call was thought to symbolize her perpetual lamentation for her own child, whom she had killed in pursuit of a terrible revenge.