Itys was the son of Tereus, a Thracian king and Procne, an Athenian princess, Pretending that Procne was dead Tereus betrayed Philomela, her sister, When Procne heard this, she killed Itys and served him up at Tereus' table. Procne and Philomela then fled and were only saved from' Tereus' vengeance by transformation into birds. According to one form of the myth Procne became a nightingale, Philomela a swallow; according to another, Procne became a swallow and Philomela a nightingale, Tereus himself was changed into a hoopoe, Ovid, Met. 6.424 sqq. ; Matthew Arnold's Philomela; Swinburne's Itylus; and the allusive summary of the tale in the spring chorus in 'Atalanta,' 'And the brown bright nightingale amorous |Is half assuaged for Itylus| For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, |The tongueless vigil and all the pain.' It is probable that Horace adopts the second form of the legend and that the bird which moans for Itys is the swallow. For though Sappho calls the nightingale, in Ben Jonson's paraphrase, 'the dear good angel of the spring' (ἦρος ἄγγελος ἱμεροφωνος ἀηδών), the swallow is the regular poetical harbinger of spring. Cf. Homeric(?) Εἰρεσιώνη; Hes. Works 564; Simon. fr. 74; Aristoph. Eq. 419; the popular song; ἦλθε, ἦλθε, χελιδών; Hor. Epist. 1. 7. 13, cum zephyris . . . et hirundine prima ; the proverb, 'one swallow does not make a spring,' Aristotle, Eth. 1.7.16; Ovid, Fasti, 2.853, veris praenuntia ; Anth, Pal, 10.14, 5, οἱ ζέφυροι πνείουσι ἐπιτρύζει δὲ χελιδών|κάρφεσι κολλητὸν πηξαμένη θάλαμον; Verg. Georg. 4.306; in Gray's Ode to Spring, 'The Attic warbler pours her throat'; Cicero's λαλαγεῦσαν ad Att. 9.18.
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Horace. Odes and Epodes. Edited with commentary by. Paul Shorey. revised by. Paul Shorey and Gordon J. Laing. New York. Benj. H. Sanborn and Co. 1910.
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