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    Summary: Part Five, Chapter III - The Royal House of Athens

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    Cherry Mae Panong
    The Royal House of Athens is notable for the many supernatural events that befall its members. The ancestor Cecrops was either a half-man, half-dragon creature or the son of a great king. His descendants experience tragic fates, including being raped, disfigured, or murdered in revenge for past wrongs. The gods sometimes take pity and transform the women into birds to spare them from their pursuers. Many of the stories involve themes of deception, betrayal, and accidental death within marriage.

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    Summary: Part Five, Chapter III - The Royal House of Athens

    Uploaded by

    Cherry Mae Panong
    130 views2 pages
    The Royal House of Athens is notable for the many supernatural events that befall its members. The ancestor Cecrops was either a half-man, half-dragon creature or the son of a great king. His descendants experience tragic fates, including being raped, disfigured, or murdered in revenge for past wrongs. The gods sometimes take pity and transform the women into birds to spare them from their pursuers. Many of the stories involve themes of deception, betrayal, and accidental death within marriage.

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    Myth

    Original Title

    Mythology

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    The Royal House of Athens is notable for the many supernatural events that befall its members. The ancestor Cecrops was either a half-man, half-dragon creature or the son of a great king. His descendants experience tragic fates, including being raped, disfigured, or murdered in revenge for past wrongs. The gods sometimes take pity and transform the women into birds to spare them from their pursuers. Many of the stories involve themes of deception, betrayal, and accidental death within marriage.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    130 views2 pages

    Summary: Part Five, Chapter III - The Royal House of Athens

    Uploaded by

    Cherry Mae Panong
    The Royal House of Athens is notable for the many supernatural events that befall its members. The ancestor Cecrops was either a half-man, half-dragon creature or the son of a great king. His descendants experience tragic fates, including being raped, disfigured, or murdered in revenge for past wrongs. The gods sometimes take pity and transform the women into birds to spare them from their pursuers. Many of the stories involve themes of deception, betrayal, and accidental death within marriage.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    Summary: Part Five, Chapter III —The Royal House of Athens

    Hamilton takes these stories from Latin poets, largely Ovid, but also borrows
    from the Greek tragedians, which increases the stories’ pathos and reduces
    their sensationalism and gory detail. The Royal House of Athens is notable in
    the number and degree of supernatural feats that befall its members. The
    ancestor is Cecrops, who in some cases is a magical half-man, half-dragon
    creature. Cecrops is said to have chosen Athena over Poseidon to be the
    protector of Athens. The angered Poseidon floods the land, and the men of
    Athens, who have voted for the god, take the vote away from the more
    numerous women. In other stories, Cecrops is merely the son of Erechtheus,
    a great Athenian king. Erechtheus has two sisters, Procne and Philomela.
    Procne is married to Tereus, a son of Ares. When Tereus sees the lovely
    Philomela, he seduces her into a false marriage by telling her that Procne has
    died. When Philomela learns the truth, Tereus cuts out her tongue and
    imprisons her to prevent her from telling anyone. He then tells Procne that
    Philomela has died. But Philomela weaves a beautiful tapestry as a gift for her
    sister and secretly embroiders into it the story of her troubles. Procne then
    rescues her sister and, for revenge, kills Itys—her son with Tereus—and
    cooks him and serves him to his father. The women escape, but Tereus
    pursues. As he is about to catch them, the gods take pity on the women and
    turn them into birds: Procne becomes the beautiful singing nightingale, the
    tongueless Philomela into the songless swallow.
    Erechtheus also has a daughter, Procris, who is married to Cephalus. Just
    after their wedding, Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, falls in love with
    Cephalus and kidnaps him. He resists her advances and finally she gives up
    but not before spitefully planting the suggestion that his wife may not have
    been faithful as he has. To test it, Cephalus returns home disguised as a
    stranger and repeatedly tries to seduce Procris, but she always remains
    faithful to her missing husband. One day, however, she briefly hesitates
    before rejecting his advances. He becomes angry and reveals his deception,
    and Procris runs away, furious. Realizing his error, Cephalus follows and
    apologizes. The two reunite, but tragedy strikes again later when, while
    hunting, Cephalus accidentally kills Procris with his javelin.
    Two of Procris’s sisters also have tragic love stories. One, Orithyia, wins the
    heart of Boreas, the North Wind. Her family opposes the marriage, but Boreas
    carries the girl off. Creüsa is kidnapped and raped by Apollo. Shamed at the
    encounter, she bears their baby boy in secret and leaves him to die in the
    same cave where Apollo assaulted her. Creüsa later feels guilty and goes to
    retrieve him, but he has vanished. Her father, meanwhile, has married her to a
    man named Xuthus. Unable to conceive a child, the pair go to the Oracle at
    Delphi for advice. While Xuthus confers with one of the priests, Creüsa
    speaks to a beautiful young priest named Ion, wanting to ask, out of Xuthus’s
    earshot, what happened to the baby she abandoned. Xuthus suddenly
    appears and hugs Ion, saying that Apollo has told him that Ion will become his
    own son. An older priestess reveals that she found Ion as a baby, wrapped in
    a cloak and veil. Creüsa recognizes the garments as her own and realizes
    that Ion is her son. Athena then appears and confirms this revelation,
    announcing that Ion will one day become a great king of Athens.

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