Last Class Flashcards
How does Odysseus die?
Odysseus gets killed in ignorance by his own son-by-Circe, named Telegonus [Telegonos].
What is Odysseus’ personality like?
Not particularly likeable. Highly intelligent,
yet but often selfish, devious, manipulative.
How many warrior come back with Odysseus?
None, he is the sole survivor losing 12 ships and 650 men
Who does King Tereus of Thrace marry?
Prokne
Why does Tereus get to marry Prokne?
because of his military assistance, Pandion offers his daughter Prokne for marriage
who does Tereus’ lust for?
his sister-in-law, Philomela
What does Tereus do to Philomela due to his lust?
rapes her & hides her away. In an attempt to silence her, he cuts out her tongue.
The now mute Philomeda finds a way to communicate with her sister, how does she do it?
by weaving a tapestry, she used images to narrating the violations done to her.
Prokne chooses her sisterhood above her marriage & even motherhood. What does she do when she finds out what her husband does to her sister, Philomeda?
she kills her own child Itys, dismembering its corpse and feeding it to her husband.
What does Metamorphoses mean?
means transformation.
Note: heros or heroines transformed into animals, plants or stones
What does Tereus transform in?
a hoopoe (type of bird), whose cry of ‘pou’? meaning where? where? eternally replicated his anguished question about the whereabouts of his son.
What was Prokne transformed into?
a nightingale, continuously mourning her lost Itys.
What does Philomela transformed into?
a swallow, with no melody to sing
Sometimes, tales of
metamorphosis are also tales of what?
metamorphosis are also tales of aetiology but not every aetiology involves a
metamorphoses.
Examples occur in the
Tereus-and-Philomela myth:
How the nightingale- bird got its cry of itu, itu.
How the hoopoe-bird got its cry of pou, pou. Why the swallow-bird is silent.”
What is another example of metamorphoses? What happened?
Apollo and the nymph Daphne. She rejected Apollo’s sexual advances. She prayed to her river-god father and was changed into a laurel, a tree which would thereafter be sacred to Apollo.
