In some stories from

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, Itylus or Itylos (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

: Ἴτυλος) was the son of Aedon, who was the daughter of

Pandareus In Greek mythology, Pandareus () is the son of Merops and a nymph. His residence is usually given as either EphesusAntoninus Liberalis11as cited in Boeus' ''Ornithogonia'' or Miletus. Pausanias10.30.2/ref> Pandareus married Harmothoë and had s ...

of Ephesus and the wife of King Zethus of Thebes. In others, Itys was the son of

Procne Procne (; , ''Próknē'' ) or Progne is a minor figure in Greek mythology. She was an Athens, Athenian princess as the elder daughter of a king of Athens named Pandion I, Pandion. Procne was married to the king of Thrace, Tereus, who instead lu ...

and Tereus.

Mythology

Aedon was envious of

Niobe Niobe (; : Nióbē) was in Greek mythology a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa. She was the wife of Amphion and the sister of Pelops and Broteas. Niobe is mentioned by Achilles in Homer's ''Iliad ...

, her sister-in-law, who had six sons and six daughters. Aedon planned to kill the eldest of Niobe's sons, but by mistake killed her own son Itylus. Zeus relieved her grief by changing her into a nightingale, whose songs are Aedon's lamentations about her child. The story was an ancient one; for example,

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

's listeners were expected to know the allusion, when

Penelope Penelope ( ; Ancient Greek: Πηνελόπεια, ''Pēnelópeia'', or , ''Pēnelópē'') is a character in Homer's ''Odyssey.'' She was the queen of Homer's Ithaca, Ithaca and was the daughter of Spartan king Icarius (Spartan), Icarius and ...

reveals to the still-disguised

Odysseus In Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus ( ; , ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; ), is a legendary Greeks, Greek king of Homeric Ithaca, Ithaca and the hero of Homer's Epic poetry, epic poem, the ''Odyssey''. Od ...

her anguish:

I lie on my bed, and the sharp anxieties swarming
thick and fast on my beating heart torment my sorrowing self.
As when Pandareos' daughter, the greenwood nightingale
perching in the deep of the forest foliage sings out
her lovely song when springtime is just begun, she varying
the manifold strains of her voice, pours out the melody
mourning Itylos, son of the lord Zethos, her own beloved
child, whom she once killed with the bronze, when the madness was upon her;
So my mind is divided, and starts one way, then another. —''Odyssey'' xix.519-24;
Richmond Lattimore Richmond Alexander Lattimore (May 6, 1906 – February 26, 1984) was an American poet and classicist known for his translations of the Greek classics, especially his versions of the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey''. Biography Richmond Alexander Lattimo ...
's translation).

As one of only nine

simile A simile () is a type of figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes are often contrasted with metaphors, where similes necessarily compare two things using words such as "like", "as", while metaphors often create an implicit c ...

s in the ''Odyssey'' that are longer than five lines, the thematic complexity of the image and its multiple points of contact with Penelope's situation has arrested the attention of many readers. In an explanatory ''

scholium Scholia (: scholium or scholion, from , "comment", "interpretation") are grammar, grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of a ...

'' on this passage, an anonymous scholiast, echoed by Eustathius, explains that Aedon attempted to kill

Amaleus In Greek mythology, Amaleus () is the name of the eldest of the Niobids, the twelve or fourteen children of Amphion, king of Thebes, by his wife Queen Niobe. Although the Niobids are primarily notable for the myth of Niobe's blasphemous boast ag ...

, the son of her sister-in-law and rival,

, but accidentally killed her own son instead: thus, the gods changed her into a nightingale to weep for eternity. The setting of the episode is Thebes. Attic authors later than Homer, including the dramatists, knew a different nightingale myth in which Procne was married to Tereus, who raped her sister

Philomela Philomela () or Philomel (; , ; ) is a minor figure in Greek mythology who is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary and artistic works in the Western canon. Family Philomela was the younger of two daughters of P ...

. Tereus cut out Philomela's tongue so that she could not tell. Philomela wove her story into a robe that she gave to Procne. In a fit of madness, Procne then murdered her own child by Tereus,

Itys In Greek mythology, Itys () is a minor mythological character, the son of Tereus, a king of Thrace, by his Athenian wife Procne. Itys was murdered by his own mother and served to be consumed during dinner by his father, as part of a revenge pl ...

. All were changed to birds,The most substantial surviving account of this myth is in the repertory of myth, '' Bibliotheke'', but many Greek authors allude to

. though the specific birds vary; for example, in Ovid, Philomela is changed to a nightingale. For more details, see

Notes

{{Reflist, 2 Metamorphoses characters Characters in the Odyssey