587It was the time when the Sithonian women are wont to celebrate the triennial rites of Bacchus: night is privy to the rites. 589By night Rhodope rings with the clashing of shrill bronze, by night the queen went out of her house and is equipped for the god's rites and takes up the arms of frenzy. 592Her head is covered with vine, deerskins hang from her left side, a light spear rests on her shoulder. 594Rushing through the woods with a crowd of her women attending her, terrifying Procne, driven by the frenzies of grief, feigns yours, Bacchus. 596She comes at last to the pathless steading and howls and cries 'euhoe' and breaks down the doors and seizes her sister; 598and she dresses the seized girl in the trappings of Bacchus and hides her face with ivy leaves and, dragging her, dazed, leads her within her own walls.
601When Philomela realised she had reached that unspeakable house, the unhappy girl shuddered and turned pale over her whole face. 603Procne, finding a place, removes the tokens of the rites and unveils the shamefaced features of her wretched sister, and seeks to embrace her. 605But she cannot bear to raise her eyes to face her, seeming to herself her sister's rival, and with her face cast down to the ground, wishing to swear and call the gods to witness that the disgrace was brought on her by force, she had her hand in place of a voice. 609Procne burns and cannot contain her own anger; 610and checking her sister's weeping, 'This is not a matter for tears,' she says, 'but for the sword, or for something, if you have it, that can outdo the sword.
613I have readied myself, sister, for every crime. 614Either I shall burn the royal palace with torches and hurl Tereus, the author of it all, into the midst of the flames, or with the sword I shall tear out his tongue, or his eyes, and the parts that robbed you of your honour, or through a thousand wounds drive out his guilty soul. 618I have prepared something great: what it is, I am still in doubt.' 619While Procne is going through such things, Itys came to his mother. 620She was taught by him what she could do: and gazing at him with pitiless eyes, 'Ah, how like your father you are!' she said.
622And saying no more she prepares a grim crime and seethes with silent anger. 624Yet when her son came up and greeted his mother and drew her neck down with his little arms, and joined kisses mingled with boyish coaxing, the mother was indeed moved, and her anger broken she stood still, and her unwilling eyes grew wet with forced tears: but as soon as she felt her mind wavering from too much love, she turned from him again to her sister's face, and looking at both in turn, 'Why does one,' she says, 'offer endearments, while the other is silent, her tongue torn out? 633Why, when he calls me mother, does she not call me sister?
634Consider to what husband you are married, daughter of Pandion. 635You are falling short of your blood: with a husband like Tereus, devotion is a crime.' 636Without delay she dragged Itys off, as a Gangetic tigress drags a doe's suckling fawn through the dark woods. 638And when they had reached a remote part of the lofty house, as he stretched out his hands and already saw his fate and cried 'Mother, mother!' and sought her neck, Procne strikes him with a sword, where the breast joins the side, and does not turn her face away. 642Even one wound was enough for his death: Philomela cut open his throat with the sword.
644The limbs, still living and retaining something of life, they tear apart. 645Part then bubbles in hollow cauldrons, part hisses on spits: the inner rooms run with gore. 647To this feast the wife brings Tereus, unknowing, and, pretending a sacred rite of her native custom, which only a husband may attend, she removed the companions and servants. 650Tereus himself, sitting on high on his ancestral throne, feasts and heaps his own flesh into his belly. 652And so great is the night of his mind that he said, 'Fetch Itys here.' 653Procne cannot hide her cruel joy, and now eager to be the messenger of her own disaster, 'You have inside the one you ask for,' she says.
655He looks around and asks where he is. 656As he asks and calls again, just as she was, her hair spattered with the frenzied slaughter, Philomela sprang forward and threw the bloody head of Itys into his father's face: nor at any time did she more wish to be able to speak and bear witness to her joy with words. 661The Thracian thrusts back the table with a huge shout and summons the snaky sisters from the Stygian valley; 663and now he longs, if he could, to open his breast and bring out the dreadful feast and the flesh sunk within, now he weeps and calls himself his son's wretched tomb, now he pursues Pandion's daughters with naked sword.
667You would think the bodies of the Cecropian women hung on wings: they hung on wings. 668One of them makes for the woods, the other goes under the roof; 669nor even yet have the marks of the slaughter left her breast, and her plumage is stamped with blood. 671He, swift through his grief and his desire for vengeance, is turned into a bird with a crest standing on its head; 673an immoderate beak juts out in place of a long spear-point: the bird's name is hoopoe, its face looks armed.