Tereus

Tereus, in Greek legend, king of Thrace, or of Phocis, who married Procne, daughter of Pandion, king of Athens. Pretending that Procne was dead, Tereus later seduced his wife’s sister Philomela and tricked her into a sham marriage. Other versions describe the encounter as a brutal rape. In order to hide his guilt, Tereus cut out Philomela’s tongue. But she revealed the crime to her sister by working the details in embroidery. Procne sought revenge by serving up her son Itys for Tereus’s supper. On learning what Procne had done, Tereus pursued the two sisters with an ax. But the gods took pity and changed them all into birds—Tereus into a hoopoe (or hawk), Procne into a nightingale, and Philomela into a swallow. This version was made famous in Sophocles’ lost tragedy Tereus. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book VI, Procne becomes the swallow and Philomela the nightingale. Ovid’s version influenced later literature.