The
cutting-out of Procne's tongue misrepresents a scene showing a prophetess in a trance, induced by the chewing of
laurel leaves; her face is contorted
with ecstasy, not pain, and the tongue which seems to have been cut out is in fact a laurel leaf, handed her by the priest
who interprets her wild babblings. The weaving of the letters into the bridal
robe misrepresents another
scene: a priestess has cast a handful of oracular sticks on a white cloth, in the Celtic fashion described by Tacitus
(Germania X), or the Scythian fashion
described by Herodotus (iv. 67); they take the shape of letters, which she is about to read.
In the so-called eating of Itys by Tereus, a willow priestess is taking omens from the entrails of a child
sacrificed for the benefit of a
king. The scene of Tereus and the
oracle probably showed him asleep on a sheep-skin in a temple, receiving a dream relevation
(see 51g); the Greeks would not
have mistaken this. That of Dryas'
murder probably showed an oaktree
and priests taking omens beneath it, in Druidic fashion, by the way a man fell when he died.
Procne's transformation into a swallow will have been deduced from a scene that showed a priestess in a
feathered robe, taking auguries
from the flight of a swallow; Philomela's transformation into a nightingale, and Tereus' into a hoopoe, seem to result
from similar misreadings. Tereus' name, which means "watcher," suggests
that a male augur figured in the
hoopoe picture.
Robert Graves:
A Modern Rationalizer