Tereus

The king of Thrake (Thrace) and the husband of Prokne (Procne).

Prokne and her sister, Philomela, were Athenian princesses and the daughters of Pandion; Prokne married Tereus but his cruelty towards Philomela caused all three of them to surrender their humanity and be transformed into various birds; Tereus attacked or offended Philomela and in order to keep his outrage a secret he cut out Philomela’s tongue and hid her away in a secret place; Philomela was able to weave her sad story onto a piece of needlework and send it to her sister; Prokne found Philomela and the two of them killed her son, Itys, and served the cooked body of the child to Tereus; Tereus tried to slay the sisters but all three were transformed into birds; Tereus became a hoopoe, Philomela became a swallow and Prokne became a nightingale; Tereus is one of the main characters in the play, Birds, by Aristophanes.