BOOK
brothers of Greek myths. Zethos tends the flocks, while Amphion < : receives from Hermes a harp which makes the stones not merely move but fix themselves in their proper places as he builds the walls of Thebes. The sequel of the history of Antiope exhibits, like the myths of Tyro, Ino, and other legends, the jealous second wife or step-mother, who is slain by Amphion and Zethos, as Sidero is killed by Pelias and Neleus. Amphion himself becomes the husband of Niobe, the mother who presumes to compare her children with the offspring of Zeus and Leto.
Zethos In one tradition Zethos, the brother Amphion, is the husband of n"'^, , Prokne, the daughter of the Athenian Pandion : and in this version ProknS.
the story ran that she killed her own child by mistake, when through envy of her fertility she proposed to slay the eldest son of her sister- in-law Niobe.^ But in its more complete form the myth makes her a wife of Tereus, who is king either of the hill-country (Thrace) or of the Megarian Pegai. When her son Itys was born, Tereus cut out his wife's tongue and hid her away with her babe, and then married her sister Philomela, whom he deceived by saying that Prokne was dead. When the sisters discovered his guilt, Prokne killed her own child It)^s, and served up his flesh as a meal for Tereus.^ Tereus in his turn, learning what had been done, pursues the sisters as they fly from him, and he has almost seized them when they pray that they may be changed into birds. Tereus thus became a hoopoe, Prokne a swallow, and Philomela a nightingale.^ Hence it is that as the spring comes round, the bride mourns for her lost child with an inconsolable sorrow, as in the Megarian legend the living Prokne wept herself to death, like Niobe mourning for her sons and daughters. The story is easily taken to pieces. The transformation is the result of the same process which turned Lykaon into a wolf, and Kallisto into a bear ; and as Philomela was a name for the nightingale, so the daughter of Pandion is said to have been changed into that bird. With the nightingale as a bird of spring the swallow is closely associated, and this fitting transformation was at once suggested for Prokne. But it becomes at the least possible that in its earlier shape the myth may have known only one wife of Tereus, who might be called either Prokne or Philomela. Of these two names Prokne is apparently only another form of Prokris, who is also the daughter of an Athenian king ; and thus the legend seems to explain itself, for as in Tantalos and Lvkaon we have the sun scorching up and destroying
' Preller, Gr. Myth. ii. 141. • Another version reversed the doom
' Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, of the sifters, and made Prokne llie ii. 229. nij^htingale and Philomela the swallow.
