Reading Diary B: Ovid's Metamorphoses (Books 5-7)

For this diary I read the second part of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The portion I was most impacted by and interested in was the tale of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus. In this story, Procne and Philomela are sisters, with Procne being married to Tereus. When Tereus meets Philomela, he decides that he must 'have' her. So he tricks Procne and Philomela's father into letting him take Philomela with him back to Procne, and instead rapes and mutilates her. He leaves her trapped inside a building while he goes back to Procne and pretends she has died. Philomela manages to weave a message using her hair, which she gets to Procne. Procne then saves Philomela and exacts revenge on Tereus in a pretty horrifying way. Tereus and Procne have a son together, and because he is very much like Tereus, Procne proceeds to murder him and then feed him to Tereus. It's pretty awful. Then Tereus tries to kill the sisters and they all turn into birds and fly away. I've got some pretty mixed feelings about this story. The beginning with the rape of Philomela was terrible, but it didn't seem like an entirely uncommon thing in the context of Greek mythology. The murder of Procne's own son took me off guard though, as I (perhaps naively) don't associate many Greek myths with filicide being committed. I have read similar stories that appeared more recently that follow a similar path, but typically the two feuding parties aren't in the same family and so it's different. I think that ending turned me off to the story as a whole, but I would say I enjoyed it up to that point.

Ovid's Metamorphoses (Books 5-7)
Tereus Marries Procne
Tereus Rapes Philomela
Procne's Revenge

Rubens: Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itys