Procne, Philomela, and Tereus

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Procne, Philomela, and Tereus
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metope Temple of Apollo Thermon
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Attic Vase, 510-500 BC
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Etruscan Mirror
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Fragment of Cup, 500-490 BC
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Cup from Etruriac. 490-480 BC
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Alkamenes Statue groupof Procne and Itysc.
430-420 BC
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Close-up Alkamenesstatue group
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Sarcophagus, 2nd century AD
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Villa Farnesina Lunette
1512 AD Lunette in the Villa Farnesina (Rome) by
Sebastiano del Piombo
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Villa Farnesina, Rome 1512
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1563 AD Vergilius Solis (1514-1562) Illustrated
Ovid rape/detonguing
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1703 AD Wilhelm Baur woodcuts Illustrated Ovid
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Rubens Feast of Tereus, 1636
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(No Transcript)
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1703 AD Wilhelm Baur woodcuts Illustrated Ovid
(child-feast)
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Lutte entre Teree et sa Belle-Soeur
Philomele Picasso 1930
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Robert Graves Myth and Ritualism, reductio ad
absurdum
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.