Home › Glossary › Letter T

Tereus

Mythology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Thracian king who raped his sister-in-law Philomela and cut out her tongue. When the truth emerged, he was transformed into a hoopoe bird, Philomela into a nightingale, his wife into a swallow.

Detailed Definition
Tereus mutilated Philomela after raping her; she and her sister Procne took revenge by serving his son to him. All were turned into birds. In poetry, he embodies brutality, the cycle of vengeance, and the metamorphosis of trauma into eternal forms.
Example
Example in poetry:
Tereus, who rapes Philomela, is transformed into a hoopoe in Ovid’s Metamorphoses; In Sophocles’ lost play Tereus, the sisters’ revenge is central; Virgil alludes to Tereus’s crime in Georgics; Later Roman poetry cites Tereus as a symbol of brutality; Renaissance tragedy uses Tereus to explore violence and voice; Modern feminist verse reclaims Philomela’s story against Tereus.
Additional Notes
Tereus, Thracian king who raped Philomela and cut out her tongue, was transformed into a hoopoe; his myth (Ovid) explores violence, voicelessness, and avian metamorphosis—ideal for poetry on trauma, revenge (Procne serves him his son), or the limits of justice.
Also Known As
Thracian King Violator of Philomela Bird-Transformed Tyrant
Skip to main content