Tereus

“ Maddened with fury, he draws his sword, and is in the act of rushing upon the women, when lo! the air receives them metamorphosed into birds. Tereus also becomes a bird, and ascends after them; and to show that their change of form has wrought no change in their hate, the hoopoe (Tereus) still pursues, and the nightingale (Procne) still flies." We had for once escaped the snare laid for us, but we gained by it only a single day, for next morning Chæreas arrived, and feeling ashamed to make any more excuses we went on board a vessel and sailed to Pharos. ”

“ The tale of Tereus is from Ovid, Metam. vi. 424-674, in some parts abbreviated and in others expanded, with good judgement usually in both cases, so that this is one of Gower’s best-told tales. He omits the long account given by Ovid of the way in which Pandion was persuaded to allow Philomela to accompany Tereus (Metam. vi. 447-510) , the incidents of the rescue of Philomela from her imprisonment, which no doubt he felt would be unintelligible to his readers (587-600) , and many of the more shocking details connected with the death of Itys and the feast upon his flesh. ”

“ She, however, found means to tell her sister Procne by a piece of tapestry-work, and she, wroth with Tereus, slew his son Itys, and gave his flesh to his father that he might eat it. And then Zeus put forth his power, and changed Philomela into a nightingale, and Procne into a swallow, and Tereus into a hoopoo, and so the nightingale ever flies from the hoopoo and wails for Itys. Sophocles had dramatised the history in his Tereus, probably before the date of the Electra. ”

“ Catullus has taken this name from the legend of Tereus (see Harper's Classical Dictionary, 'Tereus') , while he has followed the myth as it appears in Odyssey, 19. 518 ff., where the plaintive song of the nightingale is represented as the lamentation of Aedon for her child Itylus, whom before her transformation into the nightingale 'she slew unwittingly with the bronze.' 15. haec expressa carmina Battiadae: these verses translated from Callimachus. Callimachus of Cyrene, 'the son of Battus,' was a Greek poet of the Alexandrine school. ”

“ According to some, Procne became a swallow, Philomela a nightingale, and Tereus a hawk. (Hygin. Fab. 45.) According to the Megarian tradition, Tereus, being unable to overtake the women, killed himself. The Megarians showed the tomb of Tereus in their own country, and an annual sacrifice was offered to him. Procne and Philomela, moreover, were there believed to have escaped to Attica, and to have wept themselves to death. ”

“ Upon his wives importunate desire himselfe he bare.
He also wept: as though his wife had willed that likewise.
O God, what blindnesse doth the heartes of mortall men disguise?
By working mischiefe Tereus gets him credit for to seeme
A loving man, and winneth praise by wickednesse extreeme.
Yea and the foolish Philomele the selfesame thing desires.
Who hanging on hir fathers necke with flattring armes, requires
Against hir life and for hir life his licence for to go
To see hir sister. Tereus beholdes hir wistly tho,
And in beholding handles hir with heart. ”

“ They both agreed to kill Itys, whom Procné had born to Tereus, and dished up the limbs of his own son to the father; at the end of the meal Philomela appeared and threw the child's head upon the table. Tereus rushed with drawn sword upon the princesses, but all the actors in this terrible scene were metamorphised. ”

“ The little town is situated on the uneven summit of a massive hill which rises abruptly from the glens at the eastern foot of Parnassus, and of its bowery loveliness among pomegranates and olives and almonds enticing tales are told. Here, according to a favourite Greek legend, was the first home of the nightingale and the 260scene of that “life enriched with sorrow, which her clear voice, insatiate, bemoans.” The savage Tereus, king of Daulis, had married Procne, a prehistoric princess of Athens, and after the birth of her son Itylus had cut out her tongue and claimed that she was dead. ”

“ Thus by his ingratitude and falsehood he broke the law of love, and evil came of it afterwards. (5231-5495.)
5505-6074. Ravine. Ravine, in whose service is extortion, seizes other men’s goods without right and without payment. So there are lovers who will take possession by force. (5505-5550.)
Tereus. Pandion, king of Athens, had two daughters, Progne and Philomene. Progne was married to Tereus, king of Thrace, and desiring to see her sister, she sent Tereus to Athens to bring her. ”

“ On learning this, while one person relates the transformation by Latona of the Lycian rustics into frogs, another calls to mind how Marsyas was flayed by Apollo. Niobe is lamented by Pelops, whose shoulder is of ivory. To console the Thebans in their afflictions, ambassadors come from the adjacent cities. The Athenians alone are absent, as they are attacked by hordes of barbarians, who are routed by Tereus, who marries Progne, the daughter of Pandion. Tereus coming a second time to Athens, takes back with him to his kingdom Philomela, his wife’s sister ”

“ One flies to the woods, the other rises to the roof. And even now their breasts have not lost the marks of their mur- derous deed, their feathers are stained with blood. Tereus, swift in pursuit because of his grief and eager desire for vengeance, is himself changed into a bird Upon his head a stiff crest appears, and a huge beak stands forth instead of his long sword. He is the attendants his ες hoopoë, with the look of one armed for war. 335 METAMORPHOSES BOOK VI This woe shortened the days of old Pandion and sent n down to the shades of Tartarus before old age came to its full term. ”

“ Taurus, the second zodiacal constellation, the Bull, which poets feign was the bull in the form of which Jupiter bore Europa from Phoenicia to Crete, H. Fur. 9, 952; Thy. 852. Telephus, a king of Mysia, wounded by Achilles' spear, and afterward cured by application of the rust scraped from its point, Tro. 215. Tereus, a king of Thrace, whose barbarous feast upon his own son, Itys, is called the "Thracian crime," Thy. 56. See Philomela and Procne. Tethys, the goddess of the sea, used frequently for the sea itself, in which the sun sets and from which it rises, Hip. ”

“ Meantime Darius, who had crossed the Bosphorus by the bridge over it, marched through Thrace; and happening upon the sources of the Tearus, pitched his camp and made a stay of three days.
Now the Tearus is said by those who dwell near it, to be the most healthful of all streams, and to cure, among other diseases, the scab either in man or beast. Its sources, which are eight and thirty in number, all flowing from the same rock, are in part cold, in part hot. They lie at an equal distance from the town of Heraeum near Perinthus, and Apollonia on the Euxine, a two days' journey from each. ”

“ The true and glorious version of her story lives only in the subdued memory of the two aged men, Teiresias the prophet, and her father Cadmus, apt now to let things go loosely by, who has delegated his royal power to Pentheus, the son of one of those sisters—a hot-headed and impious youth. So things had passed at Thebes; and now a strange circumstance has happened. An odd sickness has fallen upon the women: Dionysus has sent the sting of his enthusiasm upon them, and has pushed it to a sort of madness, a madness which imitates the true Thiasus. ”

“ Then Teiresias was stung past bearing, and would hold his tongue no longer. "By thine own doom shalt thou be judged, O king," he said. "Thou thyself art the murderer, thyself the pollution that staineth the land with the blood of innocent men."
Then Œdipus laughed aloud,
"Verily, old man, thou pratest. What rival hath urged thee to this lie, hoping to drive me from the throne of Thebes? Of a truth, not thine eyes only, but thy heart, is shrouded in a mist of darkness."
"Woe to thee, Œdipus, woe to thee! Thou hast sight, yet seest not who thou art, nor knowest the deed of thine hand. ”

“ The old blind prophet Teiresias, and the aged king Cadmus, always secretly true to him, have agreed to celebrate the Thiasus, and accept his divinity openly. The youthful god has nowhere said decisively that he will have none but young men in his sacred dance. But for that purpose they must put on the long tunic, and that spotted skin which only rustics wear, and assume the thyrsus and ivy-crown. ”

“ TEIRESIAS, in Greek legend, a famous Theban seer, son of Eueres and Chariclo. He was a descendant of Udaeus, one of the men who had sprung up from the serpent’s teeth sown by Cadmus. He was blind from his seventh year, for which various causes were alleged. Some said that the gods had blinded him because he had revealed to men what they ought not to know. ”

“ But the blind seer Teiresias rose up in their midst, and at his voice the people were silent.
"Citizens of Cadmus, foolish and blind of heart! Will ye slay the saviour of your city? Have ye forgotten the man-devouring Sphinx and the days of darkness? Verily prosperity blunteth the edge of gratitude. And thou, Œdipus, curse not the gods for thine evil fate. He that putteth his finger in the fire is burnt, whether he do it knowingly or not. As to thy sire, him indeed didst thou slay in ignorance ”

“ Later, in the twilight, Theseus and Ariadne would walk together in the fragrant gardens where the nightingales sang, and Minos knew it, and was glad. He thought that nowhere in the world could he find such a husband for his daughter, and he deemed it wise to have the alliance of so great a king as Theseus promised to be. But, loving his daughter, he kept Theseus with him long, till the prince was ashamed of his delay, knowing that his father, King Ægeus, and all the people of his country, were looking for him anxiously. ”

“ For what honest communication can a young conqueror have with the wife of his enemy, and what can be the meaning of his showing such excessive honour to her after her death?" While Darius was yet speaking, Teireus threw himself at his feet, and besought him to be silent, and not to dishonour Alexander [Pg 332] and his dead wife and sister by such suspicions, nor yet to take away from himself that thought which ought to be his greatest consolation in his misfortunes, which was that he had been conquered by one who was more than man. ”

“ Then Teiresias, "strong in the might of truth," denounces that infatuation and blindness of heart which is far worse than the loss of eyesight. His own mind and reason are clairvoyant, while Œdipus is ignorant of his own birth, ignorant of the sin in which he is living. Fatal—continues the prophet, using a bold metaphor—is the harbour in which the king has moored his barque, lulled by a vain security, and terrible is the storm which shall soon break upon himself and on his children. ”

“ Thus Eros brushed his wings across Theria’s fancy and flew away. No business of his was this. But youth was here—fearful impressibility: A breath, and youth is changed.
Who shall say that when in after years this boy sang of a woman and gave her a new type of nobleness the image of this proud sweet maid of Delphi did not float before him and make his creation real?
And as for Theria, the encounter was a peep outward into the world. From this time she became more aware of the hurry of development outside in the awakening land of Greece. ”

“ Now the keeper of the gate was Nisus, a valiant man of war, and with him Euryalus, the goodliest youth among the men of Troy; and great love was between them. And as they watched, Nisus said, “Whether it be a bidding of the Gods, or prompting of my own heart, I know not, but I have a great desire to do somewhat this night. Seest thou how the enemy lie asleep and drunken? Can I not win some honour hence, and carry the tidings of these things to Æneas? For yonder by the hill lieth the way to the city of Evander.” ”

“ When Theseus came to the palace, he went straight to the upper chamber of his mother, where she was spinning wool with a distaff of ivory. When he laid before her the sword and the shoon, the distaff fell from her hand, and she hid her head in a fold of her robe. Theseus kissed her hands and comforted her, and she dried her eyes, and praised him for his strength. 'These are the sword and the shoon of your father,' she said, 'but truly the gods have taken away his strength and courage. For all men say that Ægeus of Athens is not master in his own house ”

“ Enter Teiresias. He is an old man and blind, leaning upon a staff and moving with slow stateliness, though wearing the Ivy and the Bacchic fawn-skin.
Teiresias.
Ho, there, who keeps the gate?—Go, summon me Cadmus, Agênor's son, who crossed the sea From Sidon and upreared this Theban hold. Go, whosoe'er thou art. See he be told Teiresias seeketh him. Himself will gauge Mine errand, and the compact, age with age, [Pg 15] I vowed with him, grey hair with snow-white hair, To deck the new God's thyrsus, and to wear His fawn-skin, and with ivy crown our brows. Enter Cadmus from the Castle. ”

“ Then she must give her oracle as best she might not knowing the question—trusting that it must in some way concern the fate of Greece.
She would pray for that storm which was to help the Athenian ships. Baltè’s word showed her the way.
Theria might doubt the voice of her Golden God, she might almost doubt the existence of Apollo. But the things of Nature—the sea, the mountains, the winds—these she could see or feel. These to her were persons, clear-imaged, well known, and having much power. They were gods nearer to men in whom all men must believe. To these Theria still could pray. ”