Philomela and Procne

Philomela
Philomela, though used in the fourth book of the Georgics to mean “nightingale,” more specifically refers to the daughter of Pandion (the king of Athens) and sister of Procne. Philomela is a first declension feminine noun.

Book 4, Line 511

…tigres et agentem carmine quercus; qualis populea maerens philomela sub umbra amissos queritur fetus…

Translation

…the tigers and urging the oak with song; in what way the nightingale crying under the shade of the poplar…

Procne
Procne, though often used to mean simply “swallow,” in the fourth book of the Georgics to refer to Procne, the wife of Tereus (King of Thrace) and sister of Philomela. Procne is a first declension feminine noun.

Book 4, Line 15

… pinguibus a stabulis meropesque aliaeque volucres et manibus Procne pectus signata cruentis…

Translation

…decorated backs be absent from the rich hives, and woodpeckers and other birds, and Procne her breast having been stamped with bloody hands…



The Myth
Procne, the eldest daughter of King Pandion, was in her fifth year of marriage to King Tereus of Thrace when she convinced her husband to escort her younger sister, Philomela, from Athens to Thrace for a visit. When Tereus beheld Philomela he was consumed with love and, despite promising the Athenian King that he would protect Philomela and treat her as a father, his lust for her only grew during their journey back to Thrace. According to Book VI of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when the pair arrived in Thrace, Tereus took Philomela to a “stabula alta…silvis obsura vetustis” (4. 521). In this hut he raped his wife’s sister. After, when Philomela spoke powerfully of how he had wronged the sisters after he warned her to be silent, Tereus cut out her tongue. As a means to tell her story, Philomela wove a tapestry depicting Tereus’s crimes throughout the course of a full year. She then had the tapestry brought to her sister who became so enraged that she killed her own son, boiled him, and fed him to her husband as revenge. The sisters fled, and when Tereus discovered what had been done, he chased after the sister with an axe. He came upon them and they prayed to the Gods to turn them into birds to escape him. Philomela was turned into a nightingale and Procne was turned into a swallow.