A Pausanias Commentary in Progress

1.5.4 subject headings: Procne (Proknē), Philomela (Philomēlā), Tereus (Tēreus). On the form Philomēlā: grammarians in the ancient world (for example, Herodian 3.1 p. 255 line 14 ed. A. Lentz 1867) called attention to the exceptional ending ā instead of the expected ē. The catastrophic story of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus is best known today from the celebrated retelling by Ovid, Metaphorphoses 6.401–674. A briefer retelling of the myth can be found in “Apollodorus” Bibliotheca 3.193–195. These retellings seem to originate from a version of the myth that was anchored in the region of Athens. Another version, anchored in the region of Ephesus, is analyzed at §23 in Nagy . As for the version anchored in Athens, it is linked to still another version that is anchored in the region of Megara, as we see later when we read Pausanias 1.41.8–9, where I offer further comments. Pausanias refers to the myth of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus also at 9.16.4 and at 10.4.8–9, where I offer still further comments. For now, I simply introduce the myth, epitomizing from §§19–23 in Nagy 2016.01.07: As we read in Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.401–674, Procne and Philomela are women who become transformed respectively into the prototypical Nightingale and the prototypical Swallow in the course of their tragic interaction with the king of Thrace, a man named Tereus. In some versions of the myth, the names of the two women are more overt: Aēdōn and Khelidōn, that is, Nightingale and Swallow (for more such versions, I cite Levaniouk 2011:215n6). As for the man, King Tereus, he becomes transformed into a bird known in Greek as epops. To say it in English, Tereus becomes the prototypical Hoopoe. The myth about these three doomed humans who are turned into birds is a story of an Eternal Triangle. Tereus marries Procne and then violates her sister Philomela, only to be punished for his crime when Procne takes revenge on her husband by killing their own son and then serving up the child’s cooked body to an unsuspecting Tereus, who thinks he is eating the meat of an animal. That is the dikē or ‘retribution’ to which the narrative of Pausanias is referring here. Once Tereus discovers that his stomach has become the tomb of his own son, Tereus experiences a grief that matches the grief of the two sisters. The combined grief becomes too much for all three to bear, and the gods take pity by transforming them all into birds. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses 6.576–578, we read that Philomela the would-be Swallow weaves into a web the story of her violation by Tereus. She cannot express the sad story in words, since Tereus had cut out her tongue and now keeps her imprisoned in a fortress, hidden away from her sister. For Philomela, the act of weaving a web becomes a substitute for the act of singing a lament in expressing her grief.