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such an exposure, filling the forest with her cries of accusation (54447, especially 546f.: si silvis clausa tenebor / implebo silvas et conscia saxa movebo).29 Now she breaches these walls not by sound but by a silent witness (cf. 574, os mutum facti caret indice), an act of communication that is the product of artfulness in more senses than one (cf. ingenium, sollertia, callida tela, 575f.). |
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Procne's first response to the message was stupefied silence (58286, above); her second is a violent departure from the house at night (nocte sua est egressa domo regina, 590), to join the Thracian women on Mt. Rhodope. The toponyms Sithoniae and Rhodope underline the Thracian character of the ritual. Procne takes up furialia arma and makes her way per silvas (594). "Stirred up by the wild madness of grief" (594f.), she leads the women in bacchantic rage. Later, in the infectious spread of violence, she will dress Philomela in Bacchantic garb (598f.). Amid the Dionysiac howls (exululat euhoeque sonat, 597), she penetrates the remote forest, "breaks down the doors" of her sister's prison, and carries her off, amazed, "within her own walls" (adtonitamque trahens intra sua moenia ducit, 600). She thus exactly undoes the act of Tereus, who had "dragged" Philomela ''into" the forest: in stabula alta trahit silvis obscura vetustis (521). Enclosure in the remote forest was previously in the service of lust. Now lust is punished by the criminal's metaphorical enclosure within his own body: if he could, he would "unlock" his breast and remove the accursed food within: et modo, si posset, reserato pectore diras / egerere inde dapes immersaque viscera gestit (663f.). A crime committed across vast distances is answered by a crime committed in his own intimate household and, finally, within his own interior flesh. Tereus' tears, feigned before, are now genuine (flet modo, 665). |
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The parallels and inversions between the beginning and end multiply as the tale goes on and clearly form part of the terrible mimetic violence of the revenge plot.30 Tereus' helpful "conquest" of a barbarian army in Athens' behalf degenerates into a libidinous "conquest" of his sister-in-law (reversing the direction of his voyage) and then into his own being "conquered" by the collusion of two women (425, 483, 513, 525, 612).31 The first appearance of Procne and her child Itys combines the motifs of the Eumenides, the marriage torch, and the figurative bird of prophecy (43034); and all of these |
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29 These lines may be a reminiscence of E. Hipp. 1253f., especially as accusation by nonspoken means are involved. |
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30 This structure of infectious violence could be described in the terms of Girard (1977), especially 41ff., 158ff. But such an analysis would perhaps only show how little the moral issues of the myth are here resolved. For a criticism of such an approach see Joplin (1991) 42ff. |
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31 This reversal may go back beyond Accius' Tereus to Sophocles' play on that subject: see Bömer (1976) 117f. and Otis (1970) 406f. If so, the plotting and vengeance of Hecuba against Polymestor in Euripides' Hecuba may give us an idea of how it might have been handled in Greek tragedy. |
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