adikospodcast

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Second episode out now on YouTube!

[adikospodcast]

EP. 2: THE ABDUCTION OF EUROPA [TRANSCRIPT]

hello everyone and welcome back to adikos, a true crime podcast, or welcome in case you're new! my name is arete, i'm your host, and first of all i'd like to thank you all so much for all the support you've been giving me on my first episode: i'm obviously still really new to podcasting, it's something i only do in my spare time, but i'm really, really glad you guys enjoyed it, and i'm definitely gonna keep going with your support!

so, today i wanted to talk to you about a case that is really old and really well known, but that surprisingly few people actually know the ending to: i'm talking about the story of the abduction of europa here, and i feel like most people are tangentially aware of that, since she is the woman who gave the name to europe, but not many people actually know the full story beyond like, the moment she got kidnapped, and they don't know that this case actually has a happy ending, which is lovely to hear about for a change, with all the terrible and grim stories that are so common in true crime!

now, before we go on talking about this case, i wanted to give you a bit of background on europa's actual family history, because there are a lot of players at hand here, and i just wanted to make sure that basically you know who they are, even though i'm going to keep reminding you just in case throughout the video. so we have her father, agenor, who was born in memphis, in egypt, to poseidon, the god obviously, and to libya, but he left egypt to be ruled by his brother and he settled down in what would become phoenicia, and he founded the city of tyre. in tyre he met a naiad whose name is telephassa, though some people report it as argiope, but i'm gonna refer to her as telephassa since it's the most commonly used name, and the two married and together they had four children, who were: phoenix, who would become the heir to the throne, cadmus, cilix, and europa, who was the only girl in the family, basically. now, in this case we have another element, another participant, whose relation to the family is really unclear, and i wanted to try and clear up, basically, his presence in the whole story: he is thasus, and he's said to have basically a different connection to the family in pretty much every source i looked at; he has been said to be the son of agenor, the son of cilix, or even the uncle of europa and her brothers! so the one thing that we actually know about him for sure is that he is somehow, someway related to europa, which will be relevant later on when we get into the actual events of this case, but i just wanted to give you this basic, real brief overview of the family tree, so you can have that in mind basically throughout this story.

so, europa grew up in tyre, surrounded by her family and by plenty of friends: by all accounts, she was an extremely beautiful young woman, and she was really kind and sweet, she really got along with everyone she met. she and her brothers were really close growing up, and all three of them were really protective of their little sister, but she also had lots of female friends, aside, of course, from her handmaidens. so, according to one source i read, the night before everything went down, europa had a dream that really deeply shook her to her bones: she dreamt that she was being contented between two lands, which were personified as women, and one was dressed as basically was the custom in europa's culture, she was clinging to her, saying she belonged to her, but the other woman was dressed in foreign clothes that europa had never seen before, and she was violently tugging on her, and she ripped her away from the other woman, saying it was the will of the "bearer of the aegis" for europa to belong to her. the aegis is, as you may know, the legendary shield of zeus, it's basically his symbol, and in my opinion this may have been a prophetic dream of sorts that the fates may have sent to her, seeing what was going to come in her future.

europa woke up terrified and shaking, she was understandably really afraid of this dream; she called for handmaidens and told them everything about the dream she'd had, and they suggested going down to the beach together, to* help her clear her mind out, basically. now at this time it was nearly dawn, the palace was still asleep, besides the girls, and europa and her handmaidens just snuck out in silence, headed down to the beach without being escorted by anyone, but without even telling anyone, which is obviously a really unsafe thing to do – please always tell someone where you're going, in case something happens – but europa didn't want to have to wake anyone up, understandably, and besides, they thought, they were not completely alone: they were quite a large group of girls, so in their minds it would be a bit hard for anyone who wanted to harm them or sneak up on them to actually do something, because they were so many.

now, basically, the beach that the girls had gone down to was somewhat close to the palace, and it was at the base of a hill; and at the top of the hill was the enclosure of agenor's cow herd, which really just gives you an idea of just how old this case really is, this was still a time where having a big herd of animals was what made your wealth, what made your affluence. so, because this was right at sunrise, the cows were beginning to stir, obviously the herd was beginning to wake up, and suddenly they started acting up, for no apparent reason: they began pushing against the enclosure they were in, they even broke down the fence that was holding them in, and they set themselves free basically, and then the entire herd began running down the hill and running towards the beach that the girls were on, which is obviously really frightening, i don't know what i would have done if i was one of those girls.

now, at this point the girls were just lying in the sand, playing on the seashore, enjoying themselves, looking at the sunrise in peace, but when they noticed the herd of cows that was barreling towards them, obviously they got really scared, and they tried to move out the way so they wouldn't be trampled; however, once the herd actually got to the shore, it began to calm down, and the girls were able to get close again, and some of them even began to play with the cows, petting them. and when they were interviewed, europa's handmaidens reported that europa herself got really close to this one specific big white bull she said she'd never seen before among her father's animals, and she began petting him, and weaving him a flower crown, and the bull just sat there patiently and tolerated all that she did to him, just everything that she could do, he just to let her do whatever she wanted with him. now, the situation that the girls were in was obviously a bit unusual: obviously it's not every day, and it was not every day at the time, that you would go to the beach and be surrounded by cows, but they weren't really worried, you know, they had no reason to be; as long as they didn't anger any of the cows, any of the bulls, they thought they could enjoy themselves for a bit, then head back to the palace and tell agenor that the herd had escaped; however, they could never have imagined what was about to happen, obviously.

once europa was done leaving her little flower crown for her bull, she showed it proudly to all her handmaidens, she was really happy about it, and she climbed on the bull so she could reach him better and put it on his head. now, according to what the girls said when they were interrogated, in that moment, when europa climbed on him, the bull got on his legs, with no sort of warning whatsoever, he took off running straight into the sea as if he was taken by madness, and europa was obviously powerless to do anything but try to hold on and not fall off into the sea. she called for help, she screamed as if she was being murdered, but obviously the other girls couldn't do anything: they risked getting seriously injured if they got too close to the animal, and they thought they were too far away from the palace to get help there and come back in time before anything had happened.

now, what happened next was even crazier than that, and that is that once the bull actually hit the sea in his run, he wasn't stopped by the water, he kept galloping straight ahead as if he could just easily travel across the water, and europa obviously held on even tighter, she was terrified that she might fall into the open sea, she didn't know how to swim all the way back to the coast! and at that point, the handmaidens lost all sight of both her and the bull, and they realized that something supernatural or divine was probably afoot, so they rushed back to the palace, they called on to agenor, told him what had happened; now, many of the people who originally were reporting on the investigation when it was still ongoing were quite suspicious of the fact that the girls hadn't gone to call for help while europa was being taken away, but only after she had been lost, only after her traces had been lost, and some even insinuated that they may have had something to do with the disappearance!

now, obviously i can understand that you want to follow every possible trail you have and consider every single suspect during the search and the investigation for a missing person, especially when it comes to the last people that saw her, but i don't think that this suspicion really holds, or even held at the time, any water whatsoever: the girls, the handmaidens, were europa's closest friends, and there was no enmity between them that could motivate them to do something terrible to her and invent a lie to cover their tracks, and this is not even to mention the fact that they were a bunch of young girls on a beach, they had no tools or anything to even harm her or hide her body, even if they had wanted to hurt her. and to me this is, at least, the case of someone witnessing something terrible and being traumatized, shell shocked, and unable to do anything until it's over, and if i try to put myself in their shoes, though hopefully i'm never going to be in the same situation, i can completely sympathize with their behavior.

thankfully for the girls, agenor and his family had always known them and their families, and they were ready to believe their terrified account of what had happened, especially when they saw that the herd had been let loose and the fence was torn down in a way that couldn't have been done by them, even if they had tried. everyone in the palace was extremely scared and really upset at europa's disappearance, she was a lovely girl and all those who knew her really could never have hoped for something like that to happen, and everybody both in and outside the royal family offered to help look for her.

agenor, since he was the king of tyre, he was aging, he was getting really old, he made the incredibly hard decision to not go search himself for his daughter, but remain alone to rule the city on his own, as he was afraid he would be more of a hassle than a benefit to the search efforts; but he sent his sons, who were europa's older brothers, to lead the search parties that would look for her, and he made them swear on the gods and on their life that they would never come back home unless they had found her. telephassa, europa's mother. was absolutely distraught at the loss of her daughter, of course, but she vowed that she would find her no matter what, and she left tyre to look after her herself, alongside thasus and a small search party of their own.

all the brothers said their goodbyes to their native land and vowed to find their sister no matter what, and they left with all the volunteers who wanted to help look for the princess; they took different ships and sailed in various directions, so they could try and cover as much ground as possible, and whenever they encountered land, whether it be an island or a coast, they would explore it and usually interrogate the locals, if it was an inhabited place, on whether or not they had seen any girl in the likeness of europa, wearing the usual tyrian attire, possibly with a bull or with another animal, or even with a god; but no matter who they asked, all they received was no after no, and europa just seemed to have completely vanished into non-existence. now, these search efforts went on for years, and they explored practically every island and every coast in the eastern mediterranean, which is obviously a massive area to cover. i cannot begin to imagine what europa's relatives were going through, knowing their sister, their daughter was gone, and desperately looking for any sort of closure about what had happened to her. and the brothers were obviously interviewed many times on this case, later in their lives, and cadmus said that they knew their sister was still there, just barely out of their reach, as if the gods were taunting them or something, and that their failure to find her had deeply traumatized them for the rest of their lives, which to me is terrible to even think about.

eventually, even though they were being eaten up by guilt, by sorrow, the brothers had to settle down somewhere, after years and years of fruitless searching. cadmus ended up settling in boeotia, he founded the city of thebes and married the goddess armonia; cilix found himself in the south of anatolia and he conquered the area, the area we know as cilicia, and he gave origin to the population of the region, which we know as cilician because of him; thasus and telephassa had taken to exploring the northernmost parts of the coast, and they ended up in thracia, which is really far away, and they settled down in the very small island of thasus and they founded a colony there, and this was the farthest away from their homeland of tyre of any of them; as for phoenix, what ended up happening to him is one of the saddest parts of this whole case, in my opinion.

so, you remember how i said that agenor had forbidden his sons from ever coming back to tyre unless they had found their sister? well, the brothers took that really seriously, and for good reason: agenor was one to stick to his promises, no matter how outlandish they were, and none of them wanted to risk what may have happened if they had dared to come back. only phoenix, who was the heir to the throne, dared to come back years after the events, to reclaim his rightful place in the city; and as soon as he and his ships even set foot on the land of tyre, agenor spared his son no mercy whatsoever. at first, he thought that maybe he had actually found europa and brought her back, but once he saw that his sister was not with him he threatened to kill him, kill his own son, if he did not leave immediately, and that he would not be so kind the next time he saw him. and obviously phoenix ran away with his ships, with his people, but he didn't go really that far from home: he settled down in the northern part of the coast, and when his father died and the throne became empty he wasted no time going to tyre, snatching it up and conquering it, and basically conquering all the neighboring territories, and creating the area which we now call phoenicia in his honour.

now, you might be thinking that this story is sad enough on its own, it's one of the sadly many cases of a girl getting kidnapped, disappearing, and her family never knowing what happened to her despite their best efforts, and even falling apart because of her disappearance; but in this case, we actually do know what happened with europa after she was kidnapped away by the divine bull, and i think that once you hear what happened you'll find it a bit ironic, to say the least. so, once the bull took off into the sea with europa on his back, he actually landed in crete, and he brought the girl to the highest point in the island, in the middle of the woods on top of a mountain, so that nobody would notice what was happening and where, which actually means that she was probably not so far away from her brothers when they were first looking for her, since crete must have been one of their first stops, i assume, being so close to the coast.

obviously europa was really terrified, and she had no idea where she was, what was going on, but she had also caught on to the fact that this bull was probably a god, or at least some sort of supernatural creature, and she just froze and let him take her where he wanted, obviously she didn't want to anger him. when they reached the mountaintop, the bull tossed europa to the ground and he revealed himself in his human form; he introduced himself as zeus, the king of the gods, and told her that he had been beguiled by her virginal beauty as soon as he had set his godly eyes on her, and that he had brought her to crete to seduce her and then give her a husband which was fit to marry zeus's lover.

europa was understandably quite shocked: it's one thing to joke around with her friends about seducing zeus, and it was definitely another thing to be actually abducted by him, with the very real possibility of being violated by him. she balked at first, refused to do anything with him, and when zeus saw that forcing himself on her would be of no avail, he went for a different route to get to her heart instead: he gifted her a lavish golden necklace, sculpted by hephaestus himself, and promised her more gifts to come if she were to accept him. and seeing how far he was willing to go to seduce her, to have sex with her, europa thought she had no choice but to accept his advances; she gave up, she let him take her, do whatever he wanted with her, and when she was, later in her life, interviewed about her relationship with zeus and the children she bore by him, she stated that when he would come to seduce her she would just lay down, dissociate herself from what was going on, think of anything else that could get her through the encounters.

every time that zeus came down from the skies to visit her, he would bring a new present, and each one was more miraculous, more enchanted than the last: the first was talos, an animated bronze giant which moved of its own will, and whose entire original purpose was to actually protect europa from being kidnapped or harmed, which i think is quite funny; the second gift was laelaps, a hunting dog which always managed to catch its prey, and the third was a magic golden javelin which never failed to miss its target. and all of those objects have actually gone down in history, and you may have heard of them before, because europa actually kept them, even after the end of her relationship with zeus, as she passed them down to her sons, after all they were still magic items gifted to her by a god and they may turn out to be useful one day.

speaking of europa's sons, her relationship with zeus actually gave her three children, minos, rhadamantos and sarpedon. obviously she couldn't be left to raise them all alone in the woods, but she also couldn't publicly reveal that she had slept with zeus and had his children, which would risk unleashing the wrath of hera on herself, and also the judgment and disbelief of everyone around her; and of course zeus himself knew this, he had done this countless times before, and even to europa's own ancestor io, who you may know as the woman who was turned into a cow to protect her from hera. so, zeus introduced europa to asterion, the king of crete, and through his intermediation the two of them got married, and asterion even adopted arapa's three sons, since he had no male heirs of his own. and all of them, minos, rhadamantos and sarpedon, would go on to become really important figures, especially minos, who would actually ascend to the throne of crete, and europa was able to live a long, happy marriage with asterion and with zeus's blessing, though she never was able to see her brothers, or parents, or friends, or even just her country again, and they in turn never really know what came of her.

so, this was the case of the abduction of europa! i think this is a really peculiar story, like you don't hear many of them nowadays, and this is for a few reasons. obviously this case is extremely wrapped up in its supernatural element, of course, it centers the abduction of a girl by a literal god, and i feel like it just goes to show how far back this case dates to, to the point that the gods were still mingling with humans on a daily basis and engaging with them, both in the positive and, obviously, in the negative ways. and i think that cases which directly center the gods are far more tricky to handle than the ones where everybody is human: like, with the case of procne and philomela, which i talked about in the last episode, all the people involved were humans, they all had the same standard of morality, more or less, so we can more easily empathize with them, say what they did was right or wrong; but the morality of the gods is so deeply different from ours that we can think something is wrong by our standards, but we will never know the actual reasoning behind a god's actual action, we will never know what their morality is, what the moral value judgment of that action is for a god, and i think that's what makes cases like this really tricky to handle, and why i think i'm going to focus more on human-dominated cases in the future, if that makes sense.

another reason why this case really fascinates me is how bittersweet it is: obviously we know, from the reporters who tracked europa down years and even decades after the event, that she ended up being fine, living a long, happy life, but her brothers, her father, her mother never got to know that, and it's not like europa could exactly reach out to them or vice versa, and that is what really makes this whole story stand out to me: it's not every day that you get a case where everybody's fine in the end but they don't know that, and they are still haunted by that uncertainty; it's the way we, as bystanders from centuries and millennia later, are able to get a closure that the family involved was unfortunately never able to get.

i hope you guys enjoyed today's episode, leave a like if you did! let me know what you thought of this case in the comments down below, and if you have any suggestions or any cases you'd like to hear me talk about, and subscribe if you'd like to never miss out on another true crime episode of this podcast. always remember that every tragedy is born of man's hubris, and i will see you guys next time!

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Second episode out now on YouTube!

[adikospodcast]

EP. 1: PROCNE AND PHILOMELA [TRANSCRIPT]

hello everyone and welcome to adikos, a true crime podcast! my name is arete, i'm your host, and today i wanted to talk to you about a true crime case that has always really shocked me ever since i first heard of it: you might know it already, since it received a massive amount of coverage when it first happened, especially because of how extremely disturbing and really heartbreaking this whole case is. you may have guessed from the title that i am talking about the case of procne and philomela, which you may also know as the case of tereus or the case of itys, depending on whose account of the story is being referenced, basically.

now this story, as i already mentioned, is particularly disturbing and violent, even for this being a true crime channel, so i just wanted to give a quick trigger warning before we start that this case does center around issues of sexual assault and violence, physical mutilation and cannibalism, so you might want to click off if understandably you don't feel like listening to all that. on the other hand, if you just want to hear all about the story of procne and philomela, let's get started!

like i said, this case was extremely popular and famous when it first broke, and there are some conflicting reports on what exactly happened and when: all my sources will be linked down below, and i will do my best to try to make sense of the events that happened and to mention when certain information just overlaps or contradicts each other.

now, all that being said, who were procne and philomela? they were born in athens to pandion, who was the fifth king of the polis, and his wife zeuxippe: they were respectively the eldest and the second eldest children, procne was a few years older than philomela, and they had two younger brothers who were twins; we have erechtheus, who would become the successor to pandion's throne, and butes. we don't really know much about the sisters' early life, but the one thing that we know for sure is that the two were absolutely inseparable: they really loved each other more than anyone else, and when their family was interviewed after the events that unfolded, their brother butes claimed that they had always been ride or die for each other, and they often even got to the point of getting themselves in trouble if they could avoid the other being punished when they were kids. i think this is a really weird thing in a sibling relationship; it's really common for kids, especially for sisters, to just argue and disagree with each other, and i know i often have fights with my sisters, but apparently procne and philomela's relationship really had none of that: their family really emphasized the degree to which they loved each other and cared for each other, and they even said in a few interviews that they always got along and could understand each other at a glance without saying a word, which in retrospect, to me, is just quite grim, honestly.

so, when the girls were in their teenage years, war broke out between athens, so pandion's city, and thebes, which was then ruled by king labdacus: thebes was an incredibly strong city, militarly speaking, and pandion had to enlist the help of tereus, who was the king of thracia, to defeat it. this move would prove to be extremely worth it: thereus's aid was absolutely invaluable in defeating the theban army, and pandion promised him his firstborn daughter as a wife, as both a thanks and as a way to bond the two cities together, so thracia and athens, with this political marriage. now, by all accounts, this wedding was absolutely grandiose, and the whole of thracia got to celebrate alongside their king and their new queen; however, there is one source, which may just be a rumor, that states that on their wedding night procne was looking out the window of their bedroom, when she saw this really off-putting owl, which at the time was considered a bad omen for the marriage, but she sort of paid no mind to it and she just got a servant to shoo it away, and i think in retrospect this may have been a warning sign of what the whole marriage was really going to come to.

soon after the wedding, procne became pregnant with her first son, itys: she and her husband were obviously really overjoyed at the news, as was the whole kingdom to hear that an heir had been secured to the throne, and when little itys was born, both his parents were instantly in love with him. baby itys was just very clingy with his mother, but he also really loved spending time with his dad, and when he grew a little bit older the two of them really loved to eat together and share meals with each other, which again, in retrospect is definitely chilling, if you can sense my foreboding here.

procne and tereus's marriage was a really happy one for the first five years: they had a son, they had a palace, they had a house in the woods all to themselves, they had everything they could have wanted, but still, procne really missed her sister: after all they had spent their entire lives together, but she'd had to just up and abandon her and leave to go to a whole another kingdom! now, obviously this is a fate that all girls must go through eventually, when we do get married, but it's still a really heartbreaking thing to go through, and as someone whose older sister got married and had to move to akragas, i can definitely sympathize with both procne and philomela.

so, after five years spent without seeing her sister, procne finally caved, and she asked her husband if she could be brought there to thracia to just spend some time together as sisters: thereus agreed, and he was going to have to visit athens nonetheless to talk to pandion, so he just set sail and headed to the city. once he actually got to pandion and had an audience with him, he relayed his daughter's wishes to him, so that procne really deeply wished for philomela to come visit her; he also assured pandion that his daughter's visit would be really brief and there would be no overstaying, obviously philomela was the only daughter left to care for pandion, so he really held on to her and was really hesitant to give her up to thereus. as he was pleading though, philomela came downstairs, she had overheard what was happening, what they were talking about, and obviously she was really overjoyed at the idea of going to thracia and seeing her sister, so she started pleading with her father to let her go with tereus. now, at the time it had been five years since thereus and philomela had seen each other for the last time, and obviously philomela was still unmarried, she was still a virgin, but she had still grown and blossomed into a beautiful young woman, and as soon as tereus put his eyes on her he immediately fell in lust with her, and started trying to concoct and think of ways he could seduce her.

so, pandion was finally convinced to send philomela away to thracia, and his last words were, to her and to tereus, to send his beloved daughter back as soon as possible, and to treat her with a father's love, which wasn't exactly how tereus ended up treating philomela, unfortunately. so, she boarded the ship on the harbor of piraeus, alongside some of the guards sent by her father to look after her, and obviously she was really happy to be seeing her sister again, but she had also never really traveled before outside of athens, so this journey really was exciting for her and something really new all the way around; however, what she didn't know was that that would be the last time seeing athens and her father, and that this journey would really spell doom for her and her entire life.

during the time spent on the ship, the servants did note that tereus was a bit quieter and a bit more reserved than he usually was, but they just chalked it up to the awkward nature of being in the ship with his wife's sister: they didn't really know each other that well, after all they had only seen each other once five years ago, so there was not much intimacy between them at all; in reality, however, we can infer that he was probably thinking about his next move in trying to get his hands on philomela, as creepy as that may sound, unfortunately.

now, at some point during the journey tereus probably had the guards killed and tossed into the sea, so they wouldn't just interfere with his plans: they have been reported missing in that time frame, and no bodies were ever recovered. it's actually unclear whether philomela was aware of this, if she simply thought they had maybe had an accident and drowned, or something of sorts, all the sources i looked at just sort of brushed over what the guards' involvement and role was in this story and what happened to them. what we do know is that tereus and philomela did eventually land, and he escorted her to the house in the woods that tereus and procne had together. now, before this moment philomela didn't really suspect anything, she was still really impatient about seeing her sister, but as soon as she walked into this large, empty house in the middle of the woods and tereus closed the door behind her, she felt this sinking sense of dread in her stomach.

and she tried calling her sister's name a few times, obviously she was expecting to see her there to greet her, but she hadn't shown up, so she called for her; but the house remained absolutely dead silent, aside from the echo of her voice, so she turned around to tereus and she asked him where her sister was, she thought she was going to be there to see her, what had happened? and there are different sources that say different things about what tereus said to philomela: some say he told her that procne was dead, others say he just said she wouldn't be there to greet her, but the one thing that we know for sure is that in that moment tereus shoved philomela to the ground and he forced himself on her, he assaulted her, he raped her right then and there. she begged him to stop, obviously, she pleaded him to think of his wife, think of her father, think of her virginity, but it was all in vain; and she later recounted just looking up in horror and seeing the wicked grin on his face, and just being absolutely paralyzed by fear, not being able to do anything but scream and cry and call for help, help that would unfortunately never come for poor philomela.

so, once he got off of her, she covered herself up, she tried to fix herself up, and she started cursing at him: obviously she was absolutely furious with his actions, she was screaming, she defied him to kill her, and she swore to him that she would go around and tell everyone in detail all that he had done to her, and she didn't care about keeping her modesty, keeping her virginity intact, she just wanted everyone to know what a pig thereus was really was; and obviously she was right to say these things, she was extremely angry and she had a reason to be, but this behavior, the way she was challenging him, the way she was defying him, actually made tereus's blood absolutely boil in a fury and he grabbed this dagger, and philomela thought he was going to slit her throat and just kill her right then and there, but he actually took her tongue from his m- from her mouth, he sliced it clean off from the root, and then he tossed it on the ground, and he forced himself on her again and again, and she was still bleeding from her tongue; and then he just got up, he cleaned himself of her blood, and he left her alone, just agonizing in the house on the floor, and to me this is absolutely horrific, i cannot imagine what poor philomela was thinking in that moment, she must have been really in such mental and physical pain it's unbelievable to me.

now, one source states that once tereus left the house in the woods, he went back to the palace to meet with procne, and he told her that her sister had died, which absolutely destroyed poor procne, of course: she wept, she ripped her hair out, she just mourned so hard and for as much as a whole year for the loss of her sister, but without knowing that her sister was actually alive and being held captive not so far away from her. now if this source is actually accurate, it would mean that philomela was imprisoned, was being held captive and brutalized in the forest by tereus, for an entire year, and possibly also thinking that her sister was dead or had not cared for her, which to me is just really heartbreaking to think about.

fortunately for her, philomela had kept the sharp wits she had always had, and she figured out a plan to tell her sister where she was and what had happened to her: in the forest house there was a loom, obviously this house was a fully furnished house for the king and the queen, so a loom was expected to be there, and she used this loom to weave a cloak and embroider onto it the terrible tortures that tereus had put her through, which was actually the primary source from which all the original case coverings and reportings were able to discover what had happened during the captivity of poor philomela, since she wasn't there to speak for herself.

now, it's actually unclear how the cloak was delivered to procne: some sources say that she [philomela] begged a woman to do it and the woman took pity on her, but some say she bribed a guard to do it, others even say that philomela was held captive with the one of procne's friends there to surveil- to surveil her and the friend actually delivered the cloak to procne; this is a really muddled case for a case that is so famous and so widely covered; but the crux of the matter is, philomela got the embroidered cloak to her sister, and as soon as procne opened the package and saw the contents of the embroidery, the terrible acts that were being described on it, she became absolutely livid, and she began making a plan to get her sister back.

now, we don't know for sure how procne managed to get her sister back, but one source does allege that she may have used the occasion of the bacchic celebrations for dionysus to her advantage, and she may have dressed like a maenad and snuck out of the palace to get to the house in the woods, just undisturbed, unnoticed, surrounded by other women dressed as maenads and going in the woods to celebrate. she may have then dressed her sister also like a maenad, so she could pass her off as one of them, and just brought her back into the palace without them being noticed, and i can't even begin to imagine just how touching this reunion between the sisters must have been: like, already, being away from the sister you love for so long is incredibly painful, but then add to that the tragedy of thinking she had actually died without you being there of all things, and then actually discovering that she had been held captive by your own husband all this time! it really is unbelievable to me what pain they must have endured, and also how ecstatic they must have been to be together again. unfortunately, this joy they both felt would not last for long.

procne had always been a very passionate woman, ever since she was a young girl, and her first thought, aside from being happy that she had her sister back of course, went to revenge: she immediately began plotting a way to get back at tereus, make him suffer just the way that she and her sister had suffered, and while she proposed to stab him in the guts, or set him on fire, or torture him any other way that would make him feel the pain they had felt, she was interrupted by her young son itys, who came running into the room to greet his mother back. now, he was a very lively child by now, he had turned five years old, and as soon as procne saw him running towards her with his arms open to hug her, like any five-year-old would do with his mother, she had this chilling thought of: "wow you look so much like your father". and in this moment she was blinded by her rage and her revenge fantasies, and she was less than lucid, and she saw her child as the perfect weapon to really make her husband pay for what he had done; now, of course this doesn't mean that what she did next was in any way right, i don't mean to justify procne, but i think it does give us a way to contextualize her mindset, and what was going on in her head at the time of what happened next.

when itys came up to his mother and hugged her, calling to her "mom, mom, i missed you so much", she took a dagger and stabbed him in the back. some sources say only procne was involved in the murder and philomela was just a bystander, while others claimed that philomela actually slit the child's throat so he would be in less pain and he would die faster, but the fact of the matter was still that procne had killed her poor child and was left with his corpse. now, how she decided to deal with it is really hard to stomach, so if you don't feel like hearing about the details i do encourage you to skip forward a bit, but with the dagger she had she cut off itys's head and gave that to philomela, and then she cut up his body into smaller pieces and had them sent to the kitchens; in the kitchens she had some of the meat boiled, some other she had it roasted on a grill, and then she set up this special dinner for tereus with her son's corpse, her son's remains, her son's flesh.

now, she called on tereus and she explained it to him that this was an important tradition in athens's culture, which was a meal reserved only for the husband, and only to be eaten alone by the husband and king. so tereus sat down, and he fell for this, he sat down and he ate his son's flesh boiled and roasted, and you know what i said earlier, about him and itys enjoying having meals together, sharing food? well, that macabre dinner was so good and so tasty to tereus that he had to call on his son to share that pleasure of eating that food with him, and it was only then that procne, who had been watching him eat diligently, actually revealed to him that the son he was calling for was in his stomach now; and in that moment philomela, like she was waiting for her cue, rushed into the room, shoved the decapitated head of itys in tereus's face, it was still dripping blood on his chiton; and that really gave tereus, whose mouth was still full with his son's flesh, the chilling and absolutely terrifying realization of what he had done, and what his wife had done to him in turn.

the two sisters just took off running before tereus even had time to begin to react, and they left the palace and they disappeared in the surrounding woods; they were never seen again, and all the sources i looked at allege that the sisters were turned into a swallow and a nightingale, but there does seem to be a bit of confusion as to which sister turned into which bird: now, some say that procne became the swallow and philomela the nightingale, as she was finally able to sing again after she had lost her voice, while others say philomela became the swallow and procne the nightingale, and she is singing a song of mourning for the child that she has killed, but what is the crux of the matter is that all sources basically point to these sisters turning into those two specific birds.

tereus, after he got after the initial shock, ran after them, extremely furious, extremely enraged, and he was also turned into a bird; specifically into a hoopoe, it appears, but again, a different source states he was turned into a vulture? and there seems to be a lot of confusion as to which birds everyone got turned into, which personally leads me to believe that this was just a bit of exaggeration that just got spread around with no real basis for it. now, there are some cases where the meddling of the gods and other supernatural forces is proven, it is real, it is confirmed, and it is also sometimes crucial to the case: think of, i don't know, the case of medea – which i would like to also cover in the future on this channel – but in this case i think it really is just some exaggeration that got spread around by all the sources.

so, this was the case of procne and philomela! i'd love to hear what you guys think of this, i think this is a really tricky case to approach, because it is, to me at least, such a clear example of how righteous anger and righteous wrath as someone who has wronged us can end up, unfortunately, being misplaced on others: in my opinion, at least, procne and philomela were absolutely right to want to punish tereus, but because they had no power to do anything to him, he was the husband, the man, the king, he was so much more powerful than either of them could ever become, they decided to instead redirect their anger at the one thing that would hurt him more than anything, his innocent child with no blood on his hands and no way to save himself, no way to protect himself, and in the process of getting their revenge they stained their own hands of innocent blood. again, i'm not trying to justify anyone involved in this case, obviously procne's actions are absolutely unjustifiable, but i do hope to just bring some light to the possible motives and thought processes behind her actions, just so we can better understand how someone does end up committing such horrible and heinous crimes as what procne did.

i hope you guys enjoyed today's episode! let me know what you thought of this case, and if you have any suggestions, or really any cases you would like to hear me talk about; always remember that every tragedy is born of man's hubris, and i will see you guys next time!

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First episode out now on YouTube!

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Podcast trailer out now on YouTube and SoundCloud!