Itys

In Greek mythology, Itys is a minor mythological character, the son of Tereus, a king of Thrace, by his Athenian wife Procne. Itys was murdered by his own mother and served to be consumed during dinner by his father, as part of a revenge plan against Tereus over him assaulting and raping Philomela, Procne's sister. His immediate family were all transformed into birds afterwards, and in some versions Itys too joins them in the avian kingdom. Itys' story survives in several accounts, the most extensive and famous among them being Ovid's Metamorphoses. His myth had been known since at least the sixth century BC. Family Itys was the son of Procne, a princess of Athens, and Tereus, a Thracian king, thus nephew to Philomela. Through his father he was a grandson of the god of war Ares. Mythology Itys was born and raised in Thrace. At some point his father Tereus raped Itys' maternal aunt Philomela while escorting her to Thrace on her visit to her sister Procne. Tereus cut Philomela's tongue so she could never be able to tell anyone her story, and abandoned her. Philomela however managed to weave a tapestry or robe with her story and sent it to her sister. In rage, Procne slew Itys, seeing him as but an image of his father, boiled him and served him as a meal to Tereus. After he finished his meal, the two sisters presented him with the disembodied head of Itys. Once he realised what had happened, Tereus hunted down the two sisters, who prayed to the gods. All three were transformed into birds. Depending on the myth's version, either Philomela or Procne is turned into either the silent swallow or the singing nightingale which continued to mourn her slain son in her new life. "Itys" was also the name for the plaintive cry of the nightingale. Pausanias on the other hand writes that Tereus was so remorseful for his actions against Philomela and Itys's fate at the hands of the women (the nature of which is not described in clear detail) that he killed himself. Eustathius's version of the story has the sisters reversed, so that Philomela married Tereus and became the mother of Itys.