Procne, Philomela, and Tereus

metopeTemple of ApolloThermon

Attic Vase, 510-500 BC

Etruscan Mirror

Fragment of Cup, 500-490 BC

Cup from Etruriac. 490-480 BC

Alkamenes Statue groupof Procne and Itysc. 430-420 BC

Close-up Alkamenesstatue group

Sarcophagus, 2nd century AD

Villa Farnesina Lunette

1512 AD: Lunette in the Villa Farnesina (Rome) by Sebastiano del Piombo

Villa Farnesina, Rome 1512

1563 AD: Vergilius Solis (1514-1562) Illustrated Ovid: rape/detonguing

1703 AD: Wilhelm Baur woodcuts: Illustrated Ovid

Rubens’ “Feast of Tereus,” 1636

1703 AD: Wilhelm Baur woodcuts: Illustrated Ovid: (child-feast)

Lutte entre Teree et

sa Belle-Soeur Philomele

Picasso

1930

The cutting-out of Procne's tongue misrepresents a scene showing a prophetess in a trance, induced by the chewing of laurel leaves; her face is contorted with ecstasy, not pain, and the tongue which seems to have been cut out is in fact a laurel leaf, handed her by the priest who interprets her wild babblings. The weaving of the letters into the bridal robe misrepresents another scene: a priestess has cast a handful of oracular sticks on a white cloth, in the Celtic fashion described by Tacitus (Germania X), or the Scythian fashion described by Herodotus (iv. 67); they take the shape of letters, which she is about to read. In the so-called eating of Itys by Tereus, a willow priestess is taking omens from the entrails of a child sacrificed for the benefit of a king. The scene of Tereus and the oracle probably showed him asleep on a sheep-skin in a temple, receiving a dream relevation (see 51g); the Greeks would not have mistaken this. That of Dryas' murder probably showed an oaktree and priests taking omens beneath it, in Druidic fashion, by the way a man fell when he died. Procne's transformation into a swallow will have been deduced from a scene that showed a priestess in a feathered robe, taking auguries from the flight of a swallow; Philomela's transformation into a nightingale, and Tereus' into a hoopoe, seem to result from similar misreadings. Tereus' name, which means "watcher," suggests that a male augur figured in the hoopoe picture.

Robert Graves: Myth and Ritualism, reductio ad absurdum