Procne (; , ''Próknē'' ) or Progne is a minor figure in

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 ...

. She was an

Athenian Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

princess as the elder daughter of a king of Athens named Pandion. Procne was married to the king of

Thrace Thrace (, ; ; ; ) is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe roughly corresponding to the province of Thrace in the Roman Empire. Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Se ...

, Tereus, who instead lusted after her sister Philomela. Tereus forced himself on Philomela and locked her away. When Procne discovered her sister and her gruesome fate, she took revenge against her husband by murdering their only child, a young boy named Itys. Procne's story serves as an origin myth for the nightingale.

Family

Procne's mother was the

naiad In Greek mythology, the naiads (; ), sometimes also hydriads, are a type of female spirit, or nymph, presiding over fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of fresh water. They are distinct from river gods, who embodied ...

Zeuxippe and her siblings were Philomela, Erechtheus, Butes and possibly Teuthras. She married King Tereus of

and became the mother of Itys (or Itylus).

Mythology

Tereus and Philomela

Procne was given to wife to Tereus, a king of

, in some versions because he assisted king Pandion in a war against the

Laconia Laconia or Lakonia (, , ) is a historical and Administrative regions of Greece, administrative region of Greece located on the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparti (municipality), Sparta. The word ...

ns, so Pandion gave him a daughter in marriage.

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

, ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin Narrative poetry, narrative poem from 8 Common Era, CE by the Ancient Rome, Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its Cre ...

'
6.401-438
/ref>

Apollodorus Apollodorus ( Greek: Ἀπολλόδωρος ''Apollodoros'') was a popular name in ancient Greece. It is the masculine gender of a noun compounded from Apollo, the deity, and doron, "gift"; that is, "Gift of Apollo." It may refer to: :''Note: A ...

3.14.8
/ref> During their marriage they had a son named Itys. As years passed, Procne began to feel homesick, and asked her husband to fetch her her younger sister Philomela, so Tereus travelled to Athens in order to escort Philomela to her sister. Pandion was unsuspecting and Philomela excited, Tereus however conceived a great passion for the beautiful Philomela, which only grew and grew during the journey back home. In one version, Tereus lied about Procne having died, and asked Pandion for Philomela's hand in marriage. When they reached the shore, he dragged her into the woods (and, as Ovid introduced, a cabin) and raped her in spite of her protests and pleading. Philomela then threatened to tell everyone, so he in fear cut her tongue off, and put guards to prevent her from escaping. He then returned to Procne claiming that Philomela had died during the journey; Procne greatly mourned her sister.Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'
6.549-570
/ref>

Procne finds out

Some time passed, and soon a Thracian festival in honour to

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ...

was held, during which it was customary for the Thracian women to gather gifts and send them to their queen. Philomela, unable to speak or escape her prison, wove in letters in her tapestry or a gown, that spoke of her fate at the hands of Tereus, and sent it to Procne. Once Procne got hands on her tapestry, she disguised herself in bacchic attire, joined the festivities with the other women, and located the cabin in which Philomela was kept captive. She broke in, snatched her sister, dressed her instead in her clothes, and sneaked her into Tereus's palace without anyone seeing them.Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'
6.571-619
/ref> Although Philomela was unable to fully inform Procne of her woes due to no longer possessing a tongue, Procne nevertheless promised her sister to avenge the great injustice done to her. As she was pondering on a fitting way to enact revenge against her husband, her young son Itys entered the chamber in search of his mother. Procne, wanting revenge against Tereus and seeing their son as nothing but an extension of his father, slew him as he screamed and cooked him. Then she invited Tereus for dinner, with the excuse that according to an Athenian custom, the wife had to prepare dinner for her husband away from everyone else.Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'

/ref> Tereus ate his son, and when he asked where the child was, the two women presented him with the head of Itys.

Tereus eats by himself, seated in his tall ancestral chair, and fills his belly with his own child. And in the darkness of his understanding cries 'Fetch Itys here'. Procne cannot hide her cruel exultation, and now, eager to be, herself, the messenger of destruction, she cries 'You have him there, inside, the one you ask for.' He looks around and questions where the boy is. And then while he is calling out and seeking him, Philomela, springs forward, her hair wet with the dew of that frenzied murder, and hurls the bloodstained head of Itys in his father's face. Nor was there a time when she wished more strongly to have the power of speech, and to declare her exultation in fitting words.

Tereus's revenge

Enraged, Tereus grabbed his sword and began to hunt down his wife and her sister with the intention to kill them. The two women ran, but he caught up to them in Daulia, in

Phocis Phocis (; ; ) is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Central Greece. It stretches from the western mountainsides of Parnassus on the east to the mountain range of Vardousia on the west, upon the Gu ...

, for which they were later called 'ladies of Daulia'. The gods, taking notice, transformed them all into birds. Tereus became a hoopoe, and the women into a nightingale and a swallow. While Greek sources traditionally held that Procne became the singing nightingale and Philomela the silent swallow, Roman authors tended to swap the birds, so that Procne became the swallow, and Philomela the nightingale. This pattern is only broken by a Hellenistic Greek writer named

Agatharchides Agatharchides or Agatharchus ( or , ''Agatharchos'') of Cnidus was a Greek historian and geographer (flourished 2nd century BC). Life Agatharchides is believed to have been born at Cnidus, hence his appellation. As Stanley M. Burstein notes, the ...

, who refers to Philomela as a nightingale. A late antiquity scholiast, Pseudo-Nonnus, names

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

specifically as the god who put an end to the chase by transforming them all into birds. Pseudo-Nonnus, ''Commentary on

Gregory of Nazianzus Gregory of Nazianzus (; ''Liturgy of the Hours'' Volume I, Proper of Saints, 2 January. – 25 January 390), also known as Gregory the Theologian or Gregory Nazianzen, was an early Roman Christian theologian and prelate who served as Archbi ...

'
39
/ref> As a bird, Procne continued to mourn the death of her child for all time.

Variations and origins

Other versions

The Byzantine scholar

Eustathius of Thessalonica Eustathius of Thessalonica (or Eustathios of Thessalonike; ; ) was a Byzantine Greek scholar and Archbishop of Thessalonica and is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is most noted for his stand against the sack of Thessalonica by the No ...

swapped the roles of the two sisters, so that Procne is the unmarried woman who was raped and mutilated by Tereus. One author has Tereus succeed in murdering both Procne and Philomela before they are all transformed into birds, but hoopoes continued to chase swallows and nightingales. Tereo

A more or less identical tale is said of Aëdon ("nightingale", supplanting Procne),

Chelidon Chelidon (fl. 74 BC) was a Roman courtesan, famed for her influence during the praetorship of Gaius Verres. She was a freedwoman and a successful professional high class courtesan. She was introduced to Gaius Verres by the courtesan Pippa and ...

("swallow", supplanting Philomela) and Polytechnus (supplanting Tereus); in this version, which takes place in

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

rather than Thrace, Polytechnus loses a bet against his wife and has to find her a female slave, so he rapes (but does not maim) her sister Chelidon. Once Chelidon reveals to Aëdon what has happened, the myth proceeds as above, with the difference that the two women manage to reach their father (who is Pandareus here) who has his servants beat and tie up Polytechnus, and then smeared with honey and left to the mercy of insects. Aëdon, in pity, scares the flies away from her husband, enraging her family. As her father, mother and brother try to attack her, the gods intervene at last and change them all into birds (Aëdon and Chelidon as per usual, but Polytechnus becomes a woodpecker, Pandareus a sea-eagle, the mother a kingfisher, and it is the brother who becomes a hoopoe). Antoninus Liberalis
11
/ref> The first traces of the myth come early, as both

Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

and

Sappho Sappho (; ''Sapphṓ'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; ) was an Ancient Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sapph ...

refer to the swallow as ''Pandionis'', or "daughter of Pandion".

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 ...

also mentions Aëdon the daughter of Pandareus who killed her son Itylus, however he makes no mention of a swallow, and the context of this version differs greatly while the name of her husband is given as Zethus, the king of Thebes. As later authors on Homer would clarify and expand, Aëdon the wife of King Zethus killed her son accidentally while trying to kill another boy, Amaleus, the son of her sister-in-law Niobe (the wife of Zethus's twin brother Amphion), envious of Niobe's vast progeny when she had born only one child. This version with Niobe and Amaleus is also attributed to

Pherecydes of Athens Pherecydes of Athens () (fl. c. 465 BC) was a Greek mythographer who wrote an ancient work in ten books, now lost, variously titled "Historiai" (''Ἱστορίαι'') or "Genealogicai" (''Γενελογίαι''). He is one of the authors (= '' FG ...

, a fifth-century BC mythographer; it has been suggested that the earliest myth concerned a woman trying to harm her rival's child; it is possible that the Anatolian Pandareus (Aëdon's father) was confused with the Athenian Pandion (king of Athens) due to their names' similarity, and thus the nightingale and the swallow joined the Athenian mythological traditions, as both Procne and Philomela are in a sense intrusive to the legendary Athenian royal line.

The tragic poets

One of the earliest full accounts was given by

Sophocles Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those ...

, in his now lost play '' Tereus'', of which only brief fragments and a synopsis remain as means for reconstruction. According to Fitzpatrick, the play apparently began with Tereus arriving in Thrace and lying to Procne about Philomela being dead, while bringing with him a female slave, who is in truth Philomela in forced disguise. Procne would have a soliloquy where she laments her isolation and the social position of married women, and in particular her position as a Greek woman married to a barbarian (a foreigner), before discovering the truth thanks to the tapestry. The recognition of Philomela would have taken place on stage, followed by Procne's gruesome revenge and Tereus's realization of his own cannibalism. A messenger then would announce the transformation of the three into birds by a '' deus-ex-machina'', who in this play most likely was

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

. Jennifer Marsh has argued that Sophocles was inspired by

Euripides Euripides () was a Greek tragedy, tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to ...

's play ''

Medea In Greek mythology, Medea (; ; ) is the daughter of Aeëtes, King Aeëtes of Colchis. Medea is known in most stories as a sorceress, an accomplished "wiktionary:φαρμακεία, pharmakeía" (medicinal magic), and is often depicted as a high- ...

'', a work where a woman murders her children in order to enact revenge against her husband, and subsequently it was him who introduced the element of infanticide and child-eating in Procne's story. The chorus from ''Medea'' claim to know only one other woman who killed her child besides Medea herself, Ino, apparently knowing nothing of Procne. The reverse however, that Euripides was inspired by Sophocles's portrayal of Procne for his depiction of Medea, could also be true. At the same time, it is also possible that the pedophagy ''was'' part of the earlier telling Sophocles used as source, and rather it is the Thracian setting that is a Sophoclean addition. However, the rape and the mutilation of Philomela does not have a clear precedent before Sophocles. It is also likely that it was Sophocles who introduced the names 'Procne' and 'Philomela' to the Nightingale and Swallow known to Homer and Hesiod. Earlier than Sophocles, a seventh century BC metope from a temple of Apollo seem to attest to the notion of the nightingale and the swallow being partners of Itys/Itylus's murder, with Aëdon/Procne as the main culprit. Some vases, although much less certainly, might depict the scene of the murder.

Legacy

The swallow

genera Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...

'' Progne'', '' Ptyonoprogne'' and ''

Psalidoprocne The saw-wings, ''Psalidoprocne'', is a small genus of passerine birds in the swallow family. The common name of this group is derived from the rough outer edge of the outer primary feather on the wing, which is rough due to recurved barbs. The f ...

'' and the treeswift family '' Hemiprocnidae'' derive their names from the myth of this Thracian queen.

Footnotes

References

Bibliography

* Antoninus Liberalis, ''The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis'' translated by Francis Celoria (Routledge 1992)
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
*

, ''The Library'' with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.Greek text available from the same website
* * * * * *

Maurus Servius Honoratus Servius, distinguished as Servius the Grammarian ( or ), was a late fourth-century and early fifth-century grammarian. He earned a contemporary reputation as the most learned man of his generation in Italy; he authored a set of commentaries o ...

, ''In Vergilii carmina comentarii. Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii;'' recensuerunt Georgius Thilo et Hermannus Hagen. Georgius Thilo. Leipzig. B. G. Teubner. 1881
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* * * Publius Ovidius Naso, ''Metamorphoses.'' Hugo Magnus. Gotha (Germany). Friedr. Andr. Perthes. 1892
Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library
* *

Stephanus of Byzantium Stephanus or Stephen of Byzantium (; , ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD) was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethnica'' (). Only meagre fragments of the dictionary survive, but the epit ...

, ''Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt,'' edited by August Meineike (1790–1870), published 1849. A few entries from this important ancient handbook of place names have been translated by Brady Kiesling
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
*

External links

* {{Authority control Princesses in Greek mythology Queens in Greek mythology Metamorphoses into birds in Greek mythology Mythological people from Attica Legendary birds Attic mythology Deeds of Zeus Deeds of Apollo Filicide in mythology