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June 9
39 min read
Greek Mythology II: Heroes

Desire and Violence

Daily history and lit
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Readings
• Book 2: 1–400 from "Metamorphoses" by Ovid
• Book 3: 339–510 from "Metamorphoses" by Ovid
• Book 4: 274 – 388 from "Metamorphoses" by Ovid
• Book 6: 412-584 from "Metamorphoses" by Ovid
• Book 6: 585-674 from "Metamorphoses" by Ovid
• Book 4: 55-166 from "Metamorphoses" by Ovid

Pyramus and Thisbe

Forbidden lovers turn a hidden crack into an escape toward a dangerous rendezvous.
Two young lovers lived in neighboring houses divided by a wall. Forbidden to meet, they whispered through a crack and planned to run away at night.
As you read, see if you can guess the famous play that was inspired by this myth.
Ovid
Pyramus was considered the most handsome of all youthful men; Thisbe the loveliest of all eastern girls. They lived in adjoining houses near the brick walls of Babylon, and they grew fond of each other.
As the days went by their love increased; they wished to join in marriage, but that joy their fathers had forbidden them to hope.
No parents could stop their passion; they kept their love secret and all their converse was by nods and signs. And as a smoldering fire may gather heat, the more 'tis smothered, so their love increased.
A partition built between their houses, but our lovers found a secret opening and used its passage to convey gentle, murmured words.
Their tuneful note passed oft in safety through that hidden way; there, many a time, they stood on either side, Thisbe on one and Pyramus the other, and warm breath touched from lip to lip.
Every night they exchanged farewells and made as if to kiss. When dawn removed the glimmering lamps of night and the bright sun had dried the dewy grass, again they met where they had told their love, complaining of their hapless fate in gentle murmurs.
At last they resolved to slip away upon the quiet night, elude their parents, and, as soon as free, quit the great builded city and their homes, fearful to wander in the pathless fields.
They chose a trysting place, the tomb of Ninus, where safely they might hide unseen, beneath the shadow of a tall mulberry tree covered with snow-white fruit, close by a spring.
All was arranged according to their hopes; and now the daylight, seeming slowly moved, sank in the deep waves, and the tardy night arose from the spot where day declined.
Quickly, clever Thisbe, having first deceived her parents, opened the closed door. She flitted away in the silent night, and, having veiled her face, reached the great tomb and sat beneath the tree.
Love made her bold; there, as she waited, a great lioness approached, her frothing jaws incarnadined with blood of slaughtered oxen beneath the bright moon.

The Bloody Veil

A dropped veil becomes Pyramus's fatal evidence and Thisbe's terrible discovery.
Ovid
Affrighted, Thisbe fled with trembling footstep to a gloomy cave; as she ran she slipped and dropped her veil, which fluttered to the ground; she did not dare to save it.
Therefore, when the savage beast had taken a great draft and slaked her thirst, and thence had turned to seek her forest lair, she found it on her way and, bloody-jawed, tore it.
But Thisbe, fortunate, escaped unseen. Now Pyramus had not gone out so soon as Thisbe to the tryst; when he saw certain traces of that savage beast imprinted in the yielding dust, he paled.
When he found the veil covered with blood, his face went white with fear
Pyramus
Alas, one night has caused the ruin of two lovers! You were most deserving of completed days; but as for me, my heart is guilty! I destroyed you, O my love!
I bade you come out in the dark night to a lonely haunt, and failed to go before. O whatever lurks beneath this rock, though ravenous lion, tear my guilty flesh!
With most cruel jaws, devour my cursed entrails. No! It is a craven's part to wish for death. I shall take my own life.
Ovid
So he stopped briefly, and took up the veil, went straightway to the shadow of the tree; and as his tears bedewed the well-known veil, he kissed it oft.
He drew the steel girt at his side, and imbrued it deep in his bowels. He then plucked the sword from the wound and fell, his spurting blood shot upward in the air.
As the roots soaked up the blood, the pendent mulberries were dyed a purple tint. Thisbe returned, trembling still with fright, thinking her lover must await her at the tree.
She should hasten before he feared for her; longing to tell him of her great escape, she sadly looked for him with faithful eyes; but when she saw the spot and the changed tree, she doubted.
The colour of the hanging fruit deceived; while doubt dismayed her, on the ground she saw the wounded body covered with its blood; she started backward, and her face grew pale and ashen.
She shuddered like the sea, which trembles when its face is lightly skimmed by the chill breezes; she paused a space; but when she knew it was the one she loved, she struck her breast.
She tore her hair; then, wreathing in her arms his loved form, she bathed the wound with tears, mingling her grief in his unquenched blood, and kissed his death-cold features as she wailed.

The Dark Mulberry

Thisbe completes the tragedy and turns the mulberry into a memorial of forbidden love.
Thisbe
Ah Pyramus, what cruel fate has taken your life away? Pyramus! Pyramus! awake! awake! It is your dearest Thisbe calls you! Lift your drooping head! Alas—
Ovid
At Thisbe’s name he raised his eyes, though languorous in death, and darkness gathered round him as he gazed. And then she saw her veil; near it lay his ivory sheath.
But not the trusty sword. And once again she wailed that his own right hand and his great passion had destroyed him, and that her hand should be as bold as his.
Thisbe
My love shall nerve me to the fatal deed—you, I will follow to eternity—though I be censured for the wretched cause, surely I shall share your wretched fate.
Alas, though death could me alone bereave, you shall not from my love be reft by death! And, O ye wretched parents, mine and his, let our misfortunes and pleadings melt your hearts.
Deny no more to those whom constant love and lasting death unite—entomb us in a single sepulchre. And, O you tree of many-branching boughs, spreading dark shadows on the corpse of one.
Destined to cover twain, take our fate upon your head; mourn our untimely deaths; let your fruit darken for a memory, an emblem of our blood.
Ovid
She said no more; and, having fixed the point below her breast, she fell on the keen sword, still warm with his red blood; though her death was out of Nature's law, her prayer was answered.
It moved the Gods and moved their parents. Now the Gods changed the ripened fruit which darkens on the branch; and their parents sealed their gathered ashes in a single urn.
Ovid's Metamorphoses was one of Shakespeare's favorite books. You've just read "Pyramus and Thisbe," one of the inspirations to the tragic romance that inspired Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."

Echo and Narcissus

Echo's borrowed words become a failed confession and then her only surviving form.
The "noisy nymph" Echo once helped Jove hide an affair from his wife, Juno, by distracting Juno with words. Juno cursed Echo’s tongue so she could not talk except to repeat the words of others.
Later, Echo saw the beautiful youth Narcissus in the woods. He was proud, cold and thought all maidens were beneath him. Cursed, she could not profess her love.
Ovid
Oh, how she longed to make her passion known, to plead in soft entreaty, yet she had to wait, a mute of Nature, until Narcissus spoke.
At last he spoke. Separated from his friends, lost in the woods, Narcissus cried aloud in the pathless woods.
Narcissus
Whoever can hear me, come to me!
Echo
Hear me, come to me! Hear me, come to me!
Ovid
From the woods Echo hastened and strove to wind her arms around his neck; he fled from her and spurned her embrace.
Narcissus
Take your hands off me; better death than that such a one should ever caress me.
Echo
Caress me, caress me, caress me...
Ovid
Rejected, Echo hid in deep woods, veiling her blushing face with green leaves; her love increased with neglect as her body wasted, wakeful with sorrow, until only her bones and voice remained.
Her voice continued in the wilderness, her bones turned to stone; she lay concealed in wild woods and was never seen, though we hear her living voice still among the hills.

Narcissus at the Spring

Nemesis traps Narcissus in an impossible love that survives him as a flower.
Echo survived as a disembodied voice. Narcissus, still proud, continued to scorn all who loved him. One scorned lover prayed to Nemesis, goddess of retribution, "If Narcissus ever loves someone, let him be denied this love." Nemesis granted her wish...
Ovid
There was a fountain, silver-clear and bright, untouched by shepherds, goats, cattle, birds, or falling boughs; sweet grasses grew about it, and shade and balmy airs tempered its unsullied waters.
Here Narcissus, tired of hunting and the heated noon, lay down, attracted by peaceful solitude and the glassy spring; as he stooped to drink, another thirst increased within him.
Drinking, he beheld himself reflected in the mirrored pool and loved the image of himself, whom he thought to be another; he marveled and lay still as Parian marble.
Long upon the bank, his gaze fixed on his own eyes, twin stars, on fingers shaped as Bacchus might desire, on glorious hair like Apollo's, smooth cheeks, ivory neck, sweet mouth, and rose-blushing complexion.
All that is lovely in himself he loved; witlessly he wanted himself—he sought and was sought, he burned and was burned—and he kissed the deceitful fount and stretched his arms toward the pictured neck.
Yet never could he wreathe his arms around that image; he knew not what he beheld, though longing inflamed him and the error that deceived enticed his fascinated eyes.
Nor food nor rest could draw him thence; outstretched upon the shadowed green, his eyes fixed on the mirrored image, never knowing satisfaction.
Raising himself a moment, he extended his arms and beckoned to the murmuring forest, beginning his lament to the aisled woods that had long sheltered lovers and heard their voices.
Narcissus
O aisled woods, was ever man in love more fatally than I; your silent paths have sheltered many whose loves were told, and you have heard their voices through long ages.
Who through all those weary years has pined as I; this fatal image wins my love as I behold it, yet I cannot press the form that gives me joy.
What strange mistake has come between us and our love; not lands, nor seas, nor mountains, nor even walls with closed gates, but only a little water keeps us far asunder.
Surely he desires my love and embraces; as often as I bend to kiss, he lifts his face fondly to me and vainly struggles upward, and it seems I could touch him.
Some strange delusion keeps us apart; grief saps my strength, the sands of life are run; in early youth I am cut off, yet death is not my bane—it ends my woe; I would die as two made one.
Ovid
He spoke, and crazed with love returned to view the same face; his tears disturbed the stream, and ripples on the glassy surface defaced his mirrored form until the lovely shadow fled.
Narcissus
Ah, whither do you fly; leave me not, cruel boy; do not forsake your lover; stay with me that I may see your lovely form and soothe my wretched pains with sight.
Ovid
He rent his garment from the upper edge and beat his naked marble-white breast until each stroke raised a tint like an apple streaked with red.
When the rippling waters smoothed again like glass and such beauty returned, he could endure no more; as wax in flame or hoar-frost in kindly sun, he pined away, consumed by the fire in his heart.
Narcissus
Ah, youth beloved in vain; farewell—farewell; alas, alas; farewell again, farewell; in vain, in vain; alas, farewell, farewell.
Echo could only repeat Narcissus's final words back to him, like a sad echo in the hills.
Echo
Alas, alas; in vain, in vain; farewell, farewell; farewell...
Ovid
He laid his wearied head and rested on the verdant grass, and Night closed those bright eyes that had so loved to gaze, entranced, on their own master’s beauty.
All the Dryads mourned, and Echo made lament anew; they would have raised his funeral pyre and waved the flaming torch and made his bier, but when they looked, he was not there.
In the place where his body had lain, a sweet flower grew, golden and white, the white around the gold, standing upon the grass beside that unsullied spring.

Hermaphroditus

A wandering child of two gods arrives at the spring that will transform him.
Hermaphroditus—child of Hermes and Aphrodite (hence the name)—has long symbolized androgyny, depicted through the ages as a feminine figure with male genitals.
We’ll read Ovid’s version, a tale of separation and union, of desire and possession, and of the boundaries of the self. It begins with Salmacis—the nymph and her spring—whose waters were said to leave bathers weak-limbed.
Ovid
Learn how the fountain, Salmacis, became so infamous; learn how it enervates and softens the limbs of those who chance to bathe…
The Naiads nursed an infant son of Hermes, Hermaphroditus, surely his by Aphrodite, begotten in the caves of Ida.
The years passed, and when the boy had reached the limit of three lustrums (fifteen years), he forsook his native mountains.
He loved to roam through unimagined places, by the banks of undiscovered rivers; and the joy of finding wonders made his labor light.
Leaving Mount Ida, where his youth was spent, he reached the land of Lycia, and from thence the verge of Caria. There, a pretty pool of soft, translucent water was seen.
The pool's glistening bottom gladdened the eye: no barren sedge, no fenny reeds to vex, no rushes with sharpened arrow-points. But all around the edges of that pool the softest green grass encircled it.

Salmacis's Prayer

Salmacis turns desire into ambush, bodily union, and a lasting curse.
Ovid
A Nymph dwelt there named Salmacis, unsuited to the chase, unskilled to bend the bow, idle of foot. The only Naiad in the world unknown to rapid-running Diana.
Her Naiad sisters pledged in winged words: "take up the javelin, sister Salmacis; take up the painted quiver, and unite your leisure with the action of the chase." But she scorned their advice.
Instead, she bathed her smooth and shapely limbs, combed her tresses with a boxwood comb, Citorian; or, looking in the pool, consulted the glassy waters whose reflection increased beauty.
Now, perhaps as she culled the sweetest flowers, she saw the youth, Hermaphroditus; and longing in her heart made havoc as her greedy eyes beheld him.
Although her love could scarcely brook delay, she paused to enhance her loveliness, hoping by beauty to allure his love.
Richly dight, she scanned herself and robes, to ensure every charm appeared fair and she be worthy; wherefore [after some flattery] she proposed that he join her in wedlock.
So she spoke, and stood in silence, waiting for the youth's reply; but he neither knew nor cared for love [and cast her away].
She made fair pretense to retire, she hid herself, that from a shrub-grown covert, on her knees she might observe unseen.
As any boy who, heedless, deems his mischief unobserved—now here, now there—he rambled on the green; now dipped his feet in bubbly ripples, now dallied ankle-deep in the clear pool.
The warm-cool feeling of that liquid so pleased him that, without delay, he doffed his fleecy garments from his tender limbs.
As hot glitters of the round bright sun, collected, sparkled from a polished plate, her eyes glistened with delirious fires.
She could not delay; panting for his joy, languid for his caresses, crazed and distracted, she could scarcely hold her passion in check.
He splashed his body with cupped palms and lightly vaulted into the limpid wave; and, darting through the water hand over hand, shone in the liquid element, as though one should burnish an ivory statue, or glaze the lily in a lake of glass.
Quickly disrobed, she plunged into the yielding wave—seized him, caressed him, clung to him a thousand ways, kissed him, thrust down her hands, and touched his breast.
Reluctant and resisting, he endeavored to escape; but even as he struggled, she wound herself about him, as the serpent entwines the royal bird that holds it high in his talons.
Hanging there, it coils in sinuous folds around the eagle’s feet, twisting its coils around his head and wings; or as the ivy clings to sturdy oaks.
Or as the octopus (polypus) beneath the waves, pulling downward, with suckers on all sides tenaciously holds its prey. And yet the youth, descendant of great Atlas, did not relent nor grant the Naiad joy.
Pressing her suit, Salmacis wound her limbs around him and exclaimed: "you shall not escape me, struggle as you will. Hear me, O Gods: let time never release the youth from me; nor me from the youth!"
Propitious deities accorded her prayers: the mingled bodies of the pair united and fashioned a single human form.
As one might see two branches beneath a single rind grow united as one, so these two bodies, in a firm embrace, were no more twain.
When Hermaphroditus felt the change the languid fount had wrought, he remembered that he had entered it as a man.
He lifted up his hands and thus implored to his parents, albeit with no manly voice, that “whoso shall enter in this fount a man must leave its waters only half a man.”
Moved by the words of their bi-natured son both parents yield assent: they taint the fount with essences of dual-working powers.
Years after Ovid’s retelling, the Roman poet Ausonius wrote, “happy Salmacis, if she is conscious of a man's embrace; and twice happy Hermaphroditus, united with a lovely bride, if one can still be two.” This is the contradiction considered through the ages: can union be enjoyed without separation?

Tereus and Philomela

A cursed marriage gives Tereus access to the sister he plots to possess.
To the northeast of Athens lay Thrace (in modern day Bulgaria). For the Greeks, Thrace felt like a borderland—not as remote as far-off India, Ethiopia, or Scythia, but still wild and uncivilized. Bacchus country.
We learn from Ovid that the King Tereus of Thrace recently helped Pandion, Athens' fifth king, in war. For his help, Tereus was rewarded with the hand of Pandion's daughter Procne. We also learn that their marriage was cursed from the start.
Ovid
King Tereus received from Pandion the hand of his daughter Procne in sacred wedlock. But Juno, Hymenaeus, and the Graces were absent from the wedding. And the Furies lifted torches, foreboding the marriage.
A boding owl flew over the bride's room and perched silent on the roof. Under such omens Tereus married sad Procne, and gloom lay over the house until their first-born's fateful birth.
All Thrace rejoiced when little Itys saw the light; they blessed the Gods, and ordained yearly festivals for the wedding day and the child's birthday, while fate's sad veil still concealed their future woes.
After five autumns, Procne spoke gently to Tereus, asking to visit her dear sister and invite her to Thrace, vowing that her heart would bless him as it blesses the Gods.
The monarch launched his long ships; driven by sail and hastened by oars, they entered Athens' deep port and landed at the fortified Piraeus. He greeted Pandion, exchanged wishes for health, and declared his wife's desire.
Promising a brief visit and safe return, he beheld Philomela, rich in raiment yet richer in beauty, like a Dryad or Naiad appearing radiant from dark solitudes. Seeing her, Tereus was consumed with love.
Her modest beauty merited love, but his debased inheritance made his passion base; unholy fires burned within his lawless nature, fierce as the habits of his evil race.
He could not brook delay. With impassioned words he begged for her, pretending to he spoke on behalf of Procne; when his words exceeded bounds, he claimed they were Procne's words, not his own.
Philomela nestled to her father, pleading for consent to visit her sister. Tereus watched her kiss him and clasp his neck. With impious longing, he wished he were her father.
Overcome by entreaties, king Pandion consented. Day declined; Phoebus’ steeds beat the downward slope of Olympus.
A regal feast was set, golden vessels poured flashing wine, and the assembly merrily ate, then sought gentle sleep—save love-hot Tereus, sleepless and doting.
He imagined Philomela's form, her fair hands and graceful movements; his flaming heart pictured beauties yet unseen. Feeding his frenzy on itself, the Thracian king could not sleep.
At daybreak, ancient Pandion clasped his son-in-law's right hand, wept, and commended Philomela to his guarding care, preparing a sorrowful farewell.
Pandion
In your care, my son-in-law, I trust my daughter's health; love compels my sad approval. You begged for her, and both my daughters persuaded me; shield her like a kind father and return her safe as soon as may be.
She is my last comfort to bless my doting age; all delay will agitate and vex my failing heart. Dearest Philomela, if you love me, return quickly and comfort me, for your sister's absence already makes me suffer.
Ovid
Pandion kissed his weeping daughter; sobs broke his trembling voice as a vague foreboding left him forlorn. Soon, Philomela was safe aboard the painted ship as the sailors urged the swiftly gliding keel across the deep.

The Woven Truth

Tereus destroys Philomela's speech, but she invents a testimony he cannot silence.
Ovid
Arriving in Thrace, Tereus led frightened Philomela into a wild forest and a forbidding old house concealed among thickets; there he immured the pale, trembling maid, unmoved by cries for sister, father, or Gods.
He overmastered her with brutal force. She trembled like a lamb escaped a gaunt wolf, dreading every twig; like a blood-soaked dove spared from a hawk's talons, she quivered with terror.
Philomela
O barbarous, brutal wretch, unnatural monster of abhorrent deeds! Could not my anxious father's parting words, nor his foreboding tears, restrain your lust or stir the least regard for my chaste sister, your wife?
You spoil virginity and make me invade my sister's claim; you have befouled the sacred fount of life, a lawless bond of double sin. This dark punishment was not my due; finish with my murder your black deed.
Had you slaughtered me before your criminal embrace befouled my purity, my shade would be entirely pure and stainless. If there is a Majesty in Heaven, you shall suffer wrong's due, and time will hasten to avenge me.
I will declare your sin before the world and publish my own shame to punish you; if I am prisoned in solitudes, my voice will wake echoes and move conscious rocks. Hear me, O Heaven; rouse, you Gods!
Ovid
Her cries roused the dastard tyrant's wrath and guilty fear; he seized her hair, forced her arms behind, bound them with brazen chains, drew his sword, and, while she screamed, caught her tongue with pincers and cut it.
The mangled root still quivered; the bleeding tongue fell murmuring on the blood-stained floor, writhing like a slain snake's tail and, as it died, creeping toward her feet. It is said the monster violated her again.
After these vile deeds, he returned to Procne. With sighs and tears he feigned Philomela's death so convincingly that all believed; Procne laid aside gold-bordered robes, donned sable mourning, and built a noble sepulchre.
She offered pious gifts to an imagined shade, lamenting the sad death of her who lived. A year passed; what could Philomela do, jailed by massive stone, guarded, and mutilated, unable to communicate her tragic woe?
Yet grief bred ingenuity. On a warp, with purple marks and white, she wove the story of the crime and entrusted it to her one attendant, begging by signs for secret delivery to Procne.
Procne unwrapped the cloth, saw, understood, and pondered in speechless despair; grief and frenzy rose beyond tears, and in mad rage her rapid mind confounded right and wrong, intent upon revenge…
We'll continue Ovid's story in the next lesson. It's the night of the Bacchanal. Every third year, the Ivy-crowned women of Thrace took staff (thyrsi) and wound uphill by torchlight, clashing drums and chanting "Evoë!"—the ritual cry to Bacchus. This evening sets the stage for Procne’s mad vengeance.

Procne and Philomela

Sisters’ revenge: filicidal feast, nightingale’s lament.
In the previous lesson, Queen Procne learned that her husband, King Tereus of Thrace, raped and mutilated her own sister Philomela. It's the night of the Bacchanal and Procne is in a "mad rage." Dressed in ivy, she hurries to free Philomela.
Ovid
Vine leaves crowned Procne; a native deer-skin hung from her left, a light spear rested on her shoulder. So fashioned, Procne rushed through dark woods with screaming followers, rage masked as Bacchian ecstasy, to the lonely prison.
Howling the ritual cry, she forced the massive doors, seized her sister, veiled her face with ivy, arrayed her in Bacchanalian trappings, and the demented pair sped to Tereus's house, where Procne was queen.
At that accursed house, Philomela’s grief-paled countenance turned ghastlier; shuddering in convulsions, she refused to lift her eyes, fixed her gaze on emptiness, and raised her hand as if swearing she had suffered violence without fault.
Procne
This is no time for weeping. Awful deeds demand great revenge; take up the sword, or any fiercer weapon. My breast is hardened to the worst of crime; make haste with me!
Together let us put this palace to the torch. Let us maim the beastly Tereus with revenging iron, cut out his tongue, quench his cruel eyes, and hurl and burn him writhing in flames.
Or we will pierce him with a grisly blade and let his black soul issue from a thousand wounds—slaughter him with every death imagined in the misery of hate.
Aha, here comes his son, the image of his father; no further warning is needed, and I will execute the revenge I conceived when rage first took hold.
Ovid
The tender child ran to her, called her mother, hugged her neck, smiled and kissed her; maternal instinct pulsed again, and she wept despite resolve, turning her eyes between her sister and her darling boy.
Procne
Why does the little one prevail with pretty words while Philomela stands mute, her tongue torn out? The wife of such a monster must be flint; in this house, compassion is a crime.
Ovid
Swift as a Ganges tigress seizing a hind's suckling, Procne dragged the frightened boy to a lonely place and raised the sword, maddened eyes fixed and glaring as she struck and lopped his tender limbs.
Itys stretched his little hands and clung to her, pleading as the sword was raised, his voice small and frightened in this lonely place.
Philomela cut his tender throat. Together the sisters mangled the remains still quivering with life, boiled part in steaming pots that bubbled with the child’s blood, and roasted other parts on hissing spits.
When all was ready, Procne summoned King Tereus to a loathsome feast, dismissed the servants under a sacred pretense allowing only one man, and seated him majestic on his ancient throne.
High in imagined state, he devoured his son and gorged on flesh of his own flesh, then, glutted and raging, called for Itys to attend and share the banquet, blind to the horror.
Procne
Inside yourself you have the thing you are asking for; call him no more, for you have consumed what you seek.
Ovid
Amazed, he looked around and called his son again. Philomela sprang forth, hair disordered and stained with murder; unable to speak, she hurled Itys’s head into his fear-struck face and longed for fitting words.
Tereus overturned the table, howled for the viperous sisters, tore at his breast, tried to disgorge half-digested gobbets, called himself his child’s sepulchre, wept hot tears, and rushed at the sisters with his sword.
Fleeing from him, they seemed to rise on wings; truly they had changed to birds. Philomela flitted to the woods and found refuge in leaves, while Procne flew straight to sheltering gables.
If you look, the swallow's breast bears the brand of murder—red feathers from that day. Tereus, frantic for revenge, became a crested bird: his long, sharp beak replacing the sword, rightly named Hoopoe.
To stop this tragic cycle, the gods turn Tereus, Procne, and Philomela into birds. According to the Greeks, Procne became a nightingale and Philomela a swallow. Later this assignment was reversed. Romans (and everyone thereafter) cast Philomela as the nightingale.
Philomela might be a minor figure in classical myth, but in poetics, she is sovereign. The nightingale became the most important bird in all of Western literature.
Hers is the voice that arrives once language is destroyed. And for that, countless poets from Homer to T.S. Eliot adored her. When poets need to voice a grief that ordinary speech cannot bear, they borrow Philomela's register.

The Sun's Chariot

Phaethon's demand for proof turns a father's absolute promise into mortal danger.
To convey the Sun across the sky each day, you need some celestial horses, a chariot, and a charioteer. In Greek myth, that charioteer is the titan god, Helios (known to the Romans as “Sol”).
This story is about Phaethon, the mortal son of Helios (Sol). Phaethon has arrived at the Sun’s palace asking to drive his father’s chariot.
Ovid
Glowing with gold and carbuncles, the Sun's palace shone; ivory dome and silver portals. By steep paths Phaethon entered, yet stood back, dazzled.
Sol sat in purple on an emerald throne. To the left and right stood Day, Month, Year—Time and the Hours; and the Seasons: Spring flower-crowned, Summer with sheaves, Autumn grape-stained, Winter rough with hoary hair.
Helios (sol)
Declare the reason for your journey. What would you do in my palace, Phaethon, my beloved child?
He beheld the trembling youth and bade him speak plainly.
Phaethon
O universal light—if your name be mine, if Clymene hid no sin—grant me a token of fatherhood to establish my descent and banish suspicion from our minds.
Helios (sol)
From my shining brows I cast my rays, draw you to my breast, and swear by the inviolate Stygian lake: ask what you desire, and I will freely give.
Phaethon
Command me the wing-footed steeds; lend me your chariot for a day, that a sure token of my descent may blaze before the world.
Helios (sol)
Ah, would I might refuse my plighted word. Your request is unsafe, beyond your strength and tender years; you are mortal, aspiring to immortal things. I alone can stand the flame-fraught axle; not even Jupiter would dare to drive this car.
The path is steep; the midmost height fearful; the last descent most perilous; heaven wheels, stars are drawn with rapid twist.
Taurus, the Bow, Lion, Scorpion, Cancer beset the way, and the fire-breathing team scarce obeys me. Take other gifts; my fears prove my fatherhood.

Phaethon's Great Attempt

Phaethon's day at the reins scorches the world and ends as a cautionary epitaph.
Ovid
The admonitions of Sol failed. Reluctant, he showed his child the spacious car that Vulcan had built: its axle and beam of gold, wheel with golden tire, silver spokes, and a yoke spangled with gems that flung back the Sun's own light.
Aurora opened purple portals for Phaethon; the stars withdrew; the nimble Hours yoked the ambrosia-fed horses. The father anointed the stripling's face, and crowned his hair with rays.
Helios (sol)
Dear son, spare the whip, keep the middle course, follow the wheel-tracks, avoid extremes and the twisted Snake or Altar.
Ovid
With youthful vigor he leaped and stood in the light-made car; Tethys, unwitting of her grandson's fate, drew back the bars.
Piercing the clouds, the steeds soared; but the easy yoke deceived him, and the great car tossed like a ship lightened of ballast.
Before the double-circled Scorpion, swart and venomous, the lad let the reins fall. Unchecked, the team broke lawful bounds, rushed among the fixed stars and plunged toward the scorching earth.
Luna, the titan Moon, wondered to see her brother's steeds run lower than her own; clouds smoked; the high airs cracked as their moisture fled. Grass withered; trees burned; ripe fields fed their own destruction; walls and nations fell.
The Alps and cloud-topped Pyrenees burned together. Rivers boiled; the Nile hid his head; the Rhine, Rhone, Po, and world-ruling Tiber ran dry. The sea shrank; Tartarus was lit; Neptune thrice tried and failed to rise.
Calling Heaven to witness, the Almighty Jupiter mounted the height whence he mantles clouds and hurls thunder.
With no rain to draw, he poised a flashing dart and cast it: Phaethon fell from life and seat; flames were quenched; the horses burst their harness; wreckage strewed the sky.
Far he fell, a summer star that never reaches earth; Eridanus received him and bathed his foaming face. Hesperian Naiads laid his charred body in a tomb, inscribing: Here lies Phaethon—he drove his father's car and fell, though he made a great attempt.
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