125-530: Philomela ( / ˌ f ɪ l ə ˈ m iː l ə / ) or Philomel ( / ˈ f ɪ l ə ˌ m ɛ l / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Φιλομήλη , Philomēlē ; Φιλομήλα Philomḗla ) is a minor figure in Greek mythology who is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary and artistic works in the Western canon . Philomela was the younger of two daughters of Pandion I , King of Athens , and
250-479: A "barbaric race". It is possible that these elements were woven into Sophocles' play Tereus and other works of the period. The material of the Philomela myth has been used in various creative works—artistic and literary—for the past 2,500 years. Over the centuries, the myth has been associated with the image of the nightingale and its song described as both exceedingly beautiful and sorrowful. The continued use of
375-430: A 1988 study on house martins . Swallows are excellent flyers and use these skills to feed and attract mates. Some species, such as the mangrove swallow , are territorial , whereas others are not and simply defend their nesting sites. In general, the male selects a nest site, and then attracts a female using song and flight and (dependent on the species) guards his territory. The size of the territory varies depending on
500-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
625-517: A battle with his enemies who violently opposed his poems. In Gascoigne's poem "The complaynt of Philomene" (1576), the myth is employed to depict punishment and control. In " The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd ", Sir Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) relays consolation regarding the nymph 's harsh rejection of the shepherd's romantic advances in the spirit of "time heals all wounds" by citing in the second stanza (among several examples) that eventually, with
750-568: A bird renowned for its song. Because of the violence associated with the myth, the song of the nightingale is often depicted or interpreted as a sorrowful lament . In nature, the female nightingale is mute, and only the male of the species sings. Ovid and other writers have made the association that the etymology of her name was "lover of song", derived from the Greek φιλο- and μέλος ("song") instead of μῆλον ("fruit" or "sheep"), which means "lover of fruit", "lover of apples", or "lover of sheep". The most complete and extant rendering of
875-520: A direct reference to the murder of Agamemnon in the tragedy by Aeschylus—wherein the Greek dramatist directly evoked the Philomela myth. The poem describes Sweeney as a brute and that two women in the poem are conspiring against him for his mistreatment of them. This mirrors not only the elements of Agamemnon's death in Aeschylus' play but the sister's revenge against Tereus in the myth. In the poem "To
1000-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
1125-568: A family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica . Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The term "swallow" is used as the common name for Hirundo rustica in the UK and Ireland . Around 90 species of Hirundinidae are known, divided into 21 genera , with the greatest diversity found in Africa, which
1250-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
1375-422: A few days to begin to sprout, and the chicks are brooded by the parents until they are able to thermoregulate . On the whole, they develop slowly compared to other passerine birds. The parents do not usually feed the chicks individual insects, but instead feed a bolus of food comprising 10–100 insects. Regardless of whether the species has males that incubate or brood the chicks, the males of all hirundines help feed
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#17327754829931500-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
1625-420: A mean body mass of 9.4 g (0.33 oz) while the purple martin and southern martin , which both weigh in excess of 50 g (1.8 oz) on average, rival one another as the heaviest swallows. The wings are long, pointed, and have nine primary feathers. The tail has 12 feathers and may be deeply forked, somewhat indented, or square-ended. A long tail increases maneuverability, and may also function as
1750-405: A moral lesson about greed and altruism through the mending of a swallow's broken leg. During the 19th century, Jean Desbouvrie attempted to tame swallows and train them for use as messenger birds, as an alternative to war pigeons . The swallows would have a light load of course, as a laden swallow could only travel about half as far as an unladen swallow in the same trip. He succeeded in curbing
1875-482: A number of species occasionally consume fruits and other plant matter. Species in Africa have been recorded eating the seeds of Acacia trees, and these are even fed to the young of the greater striped swallow . The swallows generally forage for prey on the wing, but they on occasion snap prey off branches or on the ground. The flight may be fast and involve a rapid succession of turns and banks when actively chasing fast-moving prey; less agile prey may be caught with
2000-456: A poet and "master of a superior art that could inspire the human poet". For some romantic poets, the nightingale even began to take on qualities of the muse. John Keats (1795–1821), in " Ode to a Nightingale " (1819) idealizes the nightingale as a poet who has achieved the poetry that Keats himself longs to write. Keats directly employs the Philomel myth in " The Eve of St. Agnes " (1820) where
2125-719: A poet would "hold his tongue" (line 13) in deference to the more beautiful nightingale's song so that he "not dull you with my song" (line 14). Emilia Lanier (1569–1645), a poet who is considered by some scholars to be the woman referred to in the poetry of William Shakespeare as " Dark Lady ", makes several references to Philomela in her patronage poem "The Description of Cookeham" in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611). Lanier's poem, dedicated to Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford refers to Philomela's "sundry layes"(line 31) and later to her "mournful ditty" (line 189). The image of
2250-442: A poetic device that aids in the "recognition"—the change from ignorance to knowledge—of what has happened earlier in the plot. Such a device, according to Aristotle, is ″contrived″ by the poet, and thus is "inartistic". The connection between the nightingale's song and poetry is evoked by Aristophanes in his comedy The Birds and in the poetry of Callimachus . Roman poet Virgil compares the mourning of Orpheus for Eurydice to
2375-407: A sexual adornment, since the tail is frequently longer in males. In barn swallows, the tail of the male is 18% longer than those of the female, and females select mates on the basis of tail length. Their legs are short, and their feet are adapted for perching rather than walking, as the front toes are partially joined at the base. Swallows are capable of walking and even running, but they do so with
2500-400: A shuffling, waddling gait. The leg muscles of the river martins ( Pseudochelidon ) are stronger and more robust than those of other swallows. The river martins have other characteristics that separate them from the other swallows. The structure of the syrinx is substantially different between the two subfamilies; and in most swallows, the bill, legs, and feet are dark brown or black, but in
2625-408: A slower, more leisurely flight that includes flying in circles and bursts of flapping mixed with gliding. Where several species of swallows feed together, they separate into different niches based on height off the ground, some species feeding closer to the ground and others feeding at higher levels. Similar separation occurs where feeding overlaps with swifts . Niche separation may also occur with
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#17327754829932750-410: A state of torpor , or even that they withdrew for the winter under water. Aristotle ascribed hibernation not only to swallows, but also to storks and kites . Hibernation of swallows was considered a possibility even by as acute an observer as Rev. Gilbert White , in his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789, based on decades of observations). This idea may have been supported by
2875-529: A variation of the myth set in Asia Minor , Philomela is called Chelidon ("swallow") and her sister Aëdon ("nightingale"). The story of Philomela, Procne, and Tereus is largely influenced by Sophocles' lost tragedy Tereus . Scholar Jenny Marsh claims Sophocles borrowed certain plot elements from Euripides ' drama Medea —notably a wife killing her child in an act of revenge against her husband—and incorporated them in his tragedy Tereus . She implies that
3000-434: A while after the breeding season. If a human being gets too close to their territory, swallows attack them within the perimeter of the nest. Colonial species may mob predators and humans that are too close to the colony. For the most part, swallows are insectivorous, taking flying insects on the wing. Across the whole family, a wide range of insects is taken from most insect groups, but the composition of any one prey type in
3125-692: Is Miochelidon eschata from the Early Miocene of Siberia ; it is the only record of Hirundinidae from the Miocene . It is likely a basal member of the family. The Hirundinidae have an evolutionarily conservative body shape, which is similar across the clade , but is unlike that of other passerines . Swallows have adapted to hunting insects on the wing by developing a slender, streamlined body and long, pointed wings, which allow great maneuverability and endurance, as well as frequent periods of gliding. Their body shapes allow for very efficient flight ;
3250-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
3375-486: Is also thought to be where they evolved as hole-nesters. They also occur on a number of oceanic islands. A number of European and North American species are long-distance migrants ; by contrast, the West and South African swallows are nonmigratory. This family comprises two subfamilies: Pseudochelidoninae (the river martins of the genus Pseudochelidon ) and Hirundininae (all other swallows, martins, and saw-wings). In
3500-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
3625-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
3750-418: Is nothing melancholy", (line 15) expressing hope "we may not thus profane / Nature's sweet voices, always full of love / And joyance!" (lines 40–42). At the poem's conclusion, Coleridge writes of a father taking his crying son outside in the night: And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once, Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently, While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears,' Did glitter in
3875-420: Is perpetuated largely through its appearance as a powerful device in poetry. In the 20th century, American-British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) directly referenced the myth in his most famous poem, The Waste Land (1922), where he describes, The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still
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4000-788: Is presumed to be the reason behind the decline of the critically endangered white-eyed river martin , a species that is only known from a few specimens collected in Thailand . The species presumably breeds in riverbanks, a much diminished habitat in Southeast Asia. As the species has not been reliably seen since 1980, it may already be extinct. Two insular species, the Bahama swallow and golden swallow , have declined due to forest loss and also competition with introduced species such as starlings and sparrows, which compete with these swallows for nesting sites. The golden swallow formerly bred on
4125-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
4250-509: Is salient to note that in taxonomy and binomial nomenclature , the genus name of the martins (the larger-bodied among swallow genera) is Progne , a Latinized form of Procne. Other related genera named after the myth include the Crag Martins Ptyonoprogne , and Saw-wings Psalidoprocne . Coincidentally, although most of the depictions of the nightingale and its song in art and literature are of female nightingales,
4375-880: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Swallow 21, see text The swallows , martins , and saw-wings , or Hirundinidae are
4500-475: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
4625-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
4750-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
4875-472: Is the most complete, lasting version of the myth, it is the basis for many later works. In the 12th century, French trouvère (troubadour) Chrétien de Troyes , adapted many of the myths recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses into Old French . However, de Troyes was not alone in adapting Ovid's material. Geoffrey Chaucer recounted the story in his unfinished work The Legend of Good Women and briefly alluded to
5000-431: Is the nightingale and Procne is the swallow. The description of Tereus as an "epops" has generally been translated as a hoopoe (scientific name: Upupa epops ). Since many of the earlier sources are no longer extant, or remain only in fragments, Ovid's version of the myth has been the most lasting and influential upon later works. Early Greek sources have it that Philomela was turned into a swallow, which has no song; Procne
5125-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
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5250-1050: The Indian Ocean , and a number of migratory species are common vagrants to other isolated islands and even to some sub-Antarctic islands and Antarctica. Many species have enormous worldwide ranges, particularly the barn swallow, which breeds over most of the Northern Hemisphere and winters over most of the Southern Hemisphere. The family uses a wide range of habitats. They are dependent on flying insects, and as these are common over waterways and lakes, they frequently feed over these, but they can be found in any open habitat, including grasslands, open woodland, savanna, marshes, mangroves, and scrubland, from sea level to high alpine areas. Many species inhabit human-altered landscapes, including agricultural land and even urban areas. Land-use changes have also caused some species to expand their range, most impressively
5375-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
5500-1209: The International Ornithological Committee (IOC). Pseudochelidon – river martins (2 species) Psalidoprocne – saw-wings (5 species) Ptyonoprogne – crag martins (5 species) Hirundo – swallows (16 species) Atronanus – forest swallow Delichon – house martins (4 species) Petrochelidon – includes cliff swallows (10 species) Cecropis – swallows (9 species) Pseudhirundo – grey-rumped swallow Cheramoeca – white-backed swallow Phedina – Mascarene martin Neophedina – banded martin Phedinopsis – Brazza's martin Riparia – martins (6 species) Tachycineta – swallows (9 species) Progne – martins (9 species) Stelgidopteryx – rough-winged swallows (2 species) Atticora – swallows (3 species) Pygochelidon – swallows (2 species) Alopochelidon – tawny-headed swallow Orochelidon – swallows (3 species) The oldest known fossil swallow
5625-715: The cupwings in the family Pnoepygidae . The two families diverged in the early Miocene around 22 million years ago. Within the family, a clear division exists between the two subfamilies, the Pseudochelidoninae, which are composed of the two species of river martins, and the Hirundininae, into which the remaining species are placed. The division of the Hirundininae has been the source of much discussion, with various taxonomists variously splitting them into as many as 24 genera and lumping them into just 12. Some agreement exists that three core groups occur within
5750-403: The naiad Zeuxippe . Her sister, Procne , was the wife of King Tereus of Thrace . Philomela's other siblings were Erechtheus , Butes and possibly Teuthras . While the myth has several variations, the general depiction is that Philomela, after being raped and mutilated by her sister's husband, Tereus , obtains her revenge and is transformed into a nightingale ( Luscinia megarhynchos ),
5875-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
6000-466: The welcome swallow , which began to colonise New Zealand in the 1920s, started breeding in the 1950s, and is now a common landbird there. Species breeding in temperate regions migrate during the winter when their insect prey populations collapse. Species breeding in more tropical areas are often more sedentary, although several tropical species are partial migrants or make shorter migrations. In antiquity , swallows were thought to have hibernated in
6125-503: The "lament of the nightingale". While Ovid's retelling of the myth is the more famous version of the story, he had several ancient sources on which to rely before he finished the Metamorphoses in A.D. 8. Many of these sources were doubtless available to Ovid during his lifetime but have been lost or come to us at present only in fragments. In his version, Ovid recast and combined many elements from these ancient sources. Because his
6250-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
6375-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
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#17327754829936500-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
6625-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
6750-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
6875-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
7000-479: The Hirundininae: the saw-wings of the genus Psalidoprocne , the core martins, and the swallows of the genus Hirundo and their allies. The saw-wings are the most basal of the three, with the other two clades being sister to each other. The phylogeny of the swallows is closely related to evolution of nest construction; the more basal saw-wings use burrows as nest, the core martins have both burrowing (in
7125-574: The New World.) The family Hirundinidae was introduced (as Hirundia) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. The Hirundinidae are morphologically unique within the passerines, with molecular evidence placing them as a distinctive lineage within the Sylvioidea ( Old World warblers and relatives). Phylogenetic analysis has shown that the family Hirundinidae is sister to
7250-469: The Nightingale", Argentine poet and fabulist, Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), compares his efforts as a poet to the bird's lament though never having heard it. He describes its song as "encrusted with mythology" and that the evolution of the myth has distorted it—that the opinions of other poets and writers have kept both poet and reader from actually hearing the original sound and knowing the essence of
7375-504: The Old World members) and cavity adoption (in New World members) as strategies, and the genus Hirundo and its allies use mud nests. The genus level cladogram shown below is based on a molecular phylogenetic study by Drew Schield and collaborators that was published in 2024. The choice of genera and the number of species is taken from the list of birds maintained by Frank Gill , Pamela C. Rasmussen and David Donsker on behalf of
7500-435: The Old World, particularly Africa, whereas cavity-nesters are more common in the New World. Mud-nesting species in particular are limited in areas of high humidity, which causes the mud nests to crumble. Many cave-, bank-, and cliff-dwelling species of swallows nest in large colonies. Mud nests are constructed by both males and females, and amongst the tunnel diggers, the excavation duties are shared, as well. In historical times,
7625-412: The Old World, the name "martin" tends to be used for the squarer-tailed species, and the name "swallow" for the more fork-tailed species; however, this distinction does not represent a real evolutionary separation. In the New World, "martin" is reserved for members of the genus Progne . (These two systems are responsible for the same species being called sand martin in the Old World and bank swallow in
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#17327754829937750-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
7875-626: The adult male probably being the most common distinction. The chicks hatch naked and with closed eyes. Fledged juveniles usually appear as duller versions of the adult. The family has a worldwide cosmopolitan distribution , breeding on every continent except Antarctica. One species, the Pacific swallow , occurs as a breeding bird on a number of oceanic islands in the Pacific Ocean, the Mascarene martin breeds on Reunion and Mauritius in
8000-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
8125-412: The baseness of your hellish crime. My self, abandon'd, and devoid of shame, Thro' the wide world your actions will proclaim; Or tho' I'm prison'd in this lonely den, Obscur'd, and bury'd from the sight of men, My mournful voice the pitying rocks shall move, And my complainings echo thro' the grove. Hear me, o Heav'n! and, if a God be there, Let him regard me, and accept my pray'r. Philomela
8250-400: The body condition of the bird and are presumably used by females to judge the physical condition and suitability for mating of males. Begging calls are used by the young when soliciting food from their parents. The typical song of swallows is a simple, sometimes musical twittering. Species of hirundine that are threatened with extinction are generally endangered due to habitat loss . This
8375-433: The chicks. When the young fledge is difficult to determine, as they are enticed out of the nest after three weeks by parents, but frequently return to the nest afterwards to roost. Swallows are able to produce many different calls or songs, which are used to express excitement, to communicate with others of the same species, during courtship, or as an alarm when a predator is in the area. The songs of males are related to
8500-417: The contribution of male swallows towards parental care is the highest of any passerine bird. The eggs of swallows tend to be white, although those of some mud-nesters are speckled. The typical clutch size is around four to five eggs in temperate areas and two to three eggs in the tropics. The incubation duties are shared in some species, and in others the eggs are incubated solely by the females. Amongst
8625-533: The course of the return voyage to Thrace. Arriving in Thrace, he forced her to a cabin or lodge in the woods and raped her. After the assault, Tereus threatened her and advised her to keep silent. Philomela was defiant and angered Tereus. In his rage, he cut out her tongue and abandoned her in the cabin. In Ovid 's Metamorphoses Philomela's defiant speech is rendered (in an 18th-century English translation) as: Still my revenge shall take its proper time, And suit
8750-580: The depiction of Lucrece in The Rape of Lucrece , in the depiction of Imogen in Cymbeline , and in Titania 's lullaby in A Midsummer Night's Dream where she asks Philomel to "sing in our sweet lullaby". In Sonnet 102 , Shakespeare addresses his lover (the "fair youth") and compares his love poetry to the song of the nightingale, noting that "her mournful hymns did hush the night" (line 10), and that as
8875-469: The diet varies by species and with the time of year. Individual species may be selective; they do not scoop up every insect around them, but instead select larger prey items than would be expected by random sampling. In addition, the ease of capture of different insect types affects their rate of predation by swallows. They also avoid certain prey types; in particular, stinging insects such as bees and wasps are generally avoided. In addition to insect prey,
9000-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
9125-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
9250-473: The female is away to reduce heat loss (this is different from incubation as that involves warming the eggs, not just stopping heat loss). Incubation stints last for 5–15 minutes and are followed by bursts of feeding activity. From laying, swallow eggs take 10–21 days to hatch, with 14–18 days being more typical. The chicks of swallows hatch naked, generally with only a few tufts of down. The eyes are closed and do not fully open for up to 10 days. The feathers take
9375-441: The female of the species does not sing—it is the male of the species who sings its characteristic song. In an early account, Sophocles wrote that Tereus was turned into a large-beaked bird whom some scholars translate as a hawk while a number of retellings and other works (including Aristophanes ' ancient comedy The Birds ) hold that Tereus was instead changed into a hoopoe. Various later translations of Ovid state that Tereus
9500-579: The fifth year of Procne's marriage to Tereus , King of Thrace and son of Ares , she asked her husband to "Let me at Athens my dear sister see / Or let her come to Thrace, and visit me." Tereus agreed to travel to Athens and escort her sister, Philomela, to Thrace. King Pandion of Athens, the father of Philomela and Procne, was apprehensive about letting his one remaining daughter leave his home and protection and asks Tereus to protect her as if he were her father. Tereus agrees. However, Tereus lusted for Philomela when he first saw her, and that lust grew during
9625-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
9750-458: The habit of some species to roost in some numbers in dovecotes, nests and other forms of shelter during harsh weather, and some species even entering torpor. There were several reports of suspected torpor in swallows from 1947, such as a 1970 report that white-backed swallows in Australia may conserve energy this way, but the first confirmed study that they or any passerine entered torpor was
9875-455: The head. The morphology of the eye in swallows is similar to that of a raptor. Like the unrelated swifts and nightjars , which hunt in a similar way, they have short bills, but strong jaws and a wide gape. Their body lengths range from about 10–24 cm (3.9–9.4 in) and their weight from about 10–60 g (0.35–2.12 oz). The smallest species by weight may be the Fanti sawwing , at
10000-444: The image in artistic, literary, and musical works has reinforced this association. Beginning with Homer 's Odyssey , ancient dramatists and poets evoked the story of Philomela and the nightingale in their works. Most notably, it was the core of the tragedy Tereus by Sophocles (lost, extant only in fragments) and later in a set of plays by Philocles , the nephew of the great playwright Aeschylus . In Aeschylus's Agamemnon ,
10125-528: The infanticide of Itys did not appear in the Tereus myth until Sophocles' play and that it was introduced because of what was borrowed from Euripides. It is possible that social and political themes have woven their way into the story as a contrast between Athenians who believed themselves to be the hegemonic power in Greece and the more civilized of the Greek peoples, and the Thracians who were considered to be
10250-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
10375-652: The introduction of man-made stone structures such as barns and bridges, together with forest clearance, has led to an abundance of colony sites around the globe, significantly increasing the breeding ranges of some species. Birds living in large colonies typically have to contend with both ectoparasites and conspecific nest parasitism . In barn swallows, old mated males and young unmated males benefit from colonial behaviour, whereas females and mated young males likely benefit more from nesting by themselves. Pairs of mated swallows are monogamous, and pairs of nonmigratory species often stay near their breeding area all year, though
10500-516: The island of Jamaica , but was last seen there in 1989 and is now restricted to the island of Hispaniola . Swallows are tolerated by humans because of their beneficial role as insect eaters, and some species have readily adapted to nesting in and around human habitation. The barn swallow and house martin now rarely use natural sites. The purple martin is also actively encouraged by people to nest around humans and elaborate nest boxes are erected. Enough artificial nesting sites have been created that
10625-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
10750-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
10875-405: The metabolic rate of swallows in flight is 49–72% lower than equivalent passerines of the same size. Swallows have two foveae in each eye, giving them sharp lateral and frontal vision to help track prey. They also have relatively long eyes, with their length almost equaling their width. The long eyes allow for an increase in visual acuity without competing with the brain for space inside of
11000-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
11125-574: The myth in his epic poem Troilus and Criseyde . John Gower included the tale in his Confessio Amantis . References to Philomela are common in the motets of the ars nova , ars subtilior , and ars mutandi musical eras of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Throughout the late Renaissance and Elizabethan eras, the image of Philomela and the nightingale incorporated elements of mourning and beauty after being subjected to an act of violence . In his long poem "The Steele Glas" (1576), poet George Gascoigne (1535–1577) depicts "Philomel" as
11250-441: The nest site is defended most vigorously during the breeding season. Migratory species often return to the same breeding area each year, and may select the same nest site if they were previously successful in that location. First-year breeders generally select a nesting site close to where they were raised. The breeding of temperate species is seasonal, whereas that of subtropical or tropical species can either be continuous throughout
11375-475: The nightingale appears frequently in poetry of the period with it and its song described by poets as an example of "joyance" and gaiety or as an example of melancholy, sad, sorrowful, and mourning. However, many use the nightingale as a symbol of sorrow but without a direct reference to the Philomela myth. Poets in the Romantic Era recast the myth and adapted the image of the nightingale with its song to be
11500-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
11625-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
11750-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
11875-524: The passage of time or for competing variations of the myth to emerge. With the story of Philomela, most of the variations concern which sister became the nightingale or the swallow, and into what type of bird Tereus was transformed. In Greek texts like Achilles Tatius and the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, Philomela is transformed into a swallow and Procne into a nightingale, but in Latin texts Philomela
12000-510: The passage of time, Philomel would become "dumb" to her own pain and that her attention would be drawn away from the pain by the events of life to come. In Sir Philip Sidney 's (1554–1586) courtly love poem "The Nightingale", the narrator, who is in love with a woman he cannot have, compares his own romantic situation to that of Philomela's plight and claims that he has more reason to be sad. However, recent literary criticism has labelled this claim as sexist and an unfortunate marginalization of
12125-472: The prophetess Cassandra has a visionary premonition of her own death in which she mentioned the nightingale and Itys, lamenting: Ah for thy fate, O shrill-voiced nightingale! Some solace for thy woes did Heaven afford, Clothed thee with soft brown plumes, and life apart from wail(ing)— In his Poetics , Aristotle points to the "voice of the shuttle" in Sophocles ′ tragedy Tereus as an example of
12250-559: The purple martin now seldom nests in natural cavities in the eastern part of its range. Because of the long human experience with these conspicuous species, many myths and legends have arisen as a consequence, particularly relating to the barn swallow. Roman historian Pliny the Elder described a use of painted swallows to deliver a report of the winning horses at a race. There is also the Korean folktale of Heungbu and Nolbu , which teaches
12375-491: The rape of Madeline by Porphyro mirrors the rape of Philomela by Tereus. Keats' contemporary, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) invoked a similar image of the nightingale, writing in his A Defence of Poetry that "a poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why." In France, Philomèle
12500-410: The representative of poetry (Poesys), her sister Progne as satire (Satyra), and Tereus as "vayne Delight". The characterization of Philomela and the nightingale was that of a woman choosing to exercise her will in recovering her voice and resisting those forces which attempts to silence her. Critics have pointed to Gascoigne's use of the Philomela myth as a personal appeal and that he was fighting in verse
12625-415: The river martins, the bill is orange-red and the legs and feet are pink. The most common hirundine plumage is glossy dark blue or green above and plain or streaked underparts, often white or rufous. Species that burrow or live in dry or mountainous areas are often matte brown above (e.g. sand martin and crag martin ). The sexes show limited or no sexual dimorphism , with longer outer tail feathers in
12750-670: The same name composed by Richard Mills ). Canadian playwright Erin Shields adapted the myth in her play If We Were Birds (2011), which won the 2011 Governor General's Award for Drama . More recently, poet and author Melissa Studdard brought new life to the myth in her poem "Philomela's tongue says" (2019), published in Poetry magazine's May 2019 edition. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
12875-468: The sisters intending to kill them. They fled but were almost overtaken by Tereus at Daulia in Phocis. The sisters desperately prayed to the gods to be turned into birds and escape Tereus' rage and vengeance. The gods transformed Procne into a swallow and Philomela into a nightingale . Subsequently, the gods transformed Tereus into a hoopoe . It is typical for myths from antiquity to have been altered over
13000-450: The size of prey chosen. The more primitive species nest in existing cavities, for example in an old woodpecker nest, while other species excavate burrows in soft substrate such as sand banks. Swallows in the genera Hirundo , Ptyonoprogne , Cecropis , Petrochelidon , Atronanus and Delichon build mud nests close to overhead shelter in locations that are protected from both the weather and predators. The mud-nesters are most common in
13125-736: The song. Several artists have applied Ovid's account to new translations or reworkings, or adapted the story for the stage. Leonard Quirino notes that the plot of Tennessee Williams 's play A Streetcar Named Desire "is modeled on the legend of Tereus". British poet Ted Hughes (1930–1998) used the myth in his 1997 work Tales from Ovid (1997) which was a loose translation and retelling of twenty-four tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses . Both Israeli dramatist Hanoch Levin (in The Great Whore of Babylon ) and English playwright Joanna Laurens (in The Three Birds ) wrote plays based on
13250-600: The species of swallow; in colonial-nesting species, it tends to be small, but it may be much larger for solitary nesters. Outside the breeding season, some species may form large flocks, and species may also roost communally. This is thought to provide protection from predators, such as sparrowhawks and hobbies . These roosts can be enormous; one winter-roosting site of barn swallows in Nigeria attracted 1.5 million individuals. Nonsocial species do not form flocks, but recently fledged chicks may remain with their parents for
13375-539: The species where the males help with incubation, their contribution varies amongst species, with some species such as the cliff swallow sharing the duties equally and the female doing most of the work in others. Amongst the barn swallows, the male of the American subspecies helps (to a small extent), whereas the European subspecies does not. Even in species where the male does not incubate the eggs, he may sit on them when
13500-776: The story of Philomela, Procne, and Tereus can be found in Book VI of the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (43 BC – 17/18 AD), where the story reaches its full development during antiquity. It is likely that Ovid relied upon Greek and Latin sources that were available in his era such as the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus (2nd century BC), or sources that are no longer extant or exist today only in fragments—especially Sophocles ' tragic drama Tereus (5th century BC). According to Ovid, in
13625-481: The story. The story was adapted into an opera by Scottish composer James Dillon in 2004, and a 1964 vocal composition by American composer Milton Babbitt with text by John Hollander . The reference to Philomela also exists in the name of a Bengali music troupe in Calcutta, India, called Nagar Philomel (The city that loves song), formed in 1983. Several female writers have used the Philomela myth in exploring
13750-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
13875-605: The subject of rape, women and power ( empowerment ) and feminist themes, including novelist Margaret Atwood in her novella "Nightingale" published in The Tent (2006), Emma Tennant in her story "Philomela", Jeannine Hall Gailey who uses the myth in several poems published in Becoming the Villainess (2006) , and Timberlake Wertenbaker in her play The Love of the Nightingale (1989) (later adapted into an opera of
14000-549: The traumatic rape of Philomela. Sidney argues that the rape was an "excess of love" and less severe than being deprived of love as attested by the line, "Since wanting is more woe than too much having." Playwright and poet William Shakespeare (1564–1616) makes frequent use of the Philomela myth—most notably in his tragedy Titus Andronicus (c. 1588–1593) where characters directly reference Tereus and Philomela in commenting on rape and mutilation of Lavinia by Aaron, Chiron, and Demetrius. Prominent allusions to Philomela also occur in
14125-460: The world pursues, "Jug Jug" to dirty ears. Eliot employs the myth to depict themes of sorrow, pain, and that the only recovery or regeneration possible is through revenge. Several of these mentions reference other poets' renderings of the myth, including those of Ovid and Gascoigne. Eliot's references to the nightingales singing by the convent in "Sweeney and the Nightingales" (1919–1920) is
14250-456: The year or seasonal. Seasonal species in the subtropics or tropics usually time their breeding to coincide with the peaks in insect activity, which is usually the wet season, but some species, such as the white-bibbed swallow , nest in the dry season to avoid flooding in their riverbank nesting habitat. All swallows defend their nests from egg predators, although solitary species are more aggressive towards predators than colonial species. Overall,
14375-441: The yellow moon-beam! Well!— It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up Familiar with these songs, that with the night He may associate joy.— Coleridge and his friend William Wordsworth (1770–1850), who called the nightingale a "fiery heart", depicted it "as an instance of natural poetic creation", and the "voice of nature". Other notable mentions include: The Philomela myth
14500-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
14625-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
14750-505: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
14875-414: Was an operatic stage production of the story, produced by Louis Lacoste during the reign of Louis XIV . First published in the collection Lyrical Ballads , "The Nightingale" (1798) is an effort by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) to move away from associations that the nightingale's song was one of melancholy and identified it with the joyous experience of nature. He remarked that "in nature there
15000-518: Was not King of Thrace, but rather from Daulia in Phocis , a city inhabited by Thracians. Thucydides cites as proof of this that poets who mention the nightingale refer to it as a "Daulian bird". It is thought that Thucydides commented on the myth in his famous work on the Peloponnesian War because Sophocles' play confused the mythical Tereus with contemporary ruler Teres I of Thrace. In
15125-500: Was transformed into other birds than the hawk and hoopoe, including references by Dryden and Gower to the lapwing . Several writers omit key details of the story. According to Pausanias , Tereus was so remorseful for his actions against Philomela and Itys (the nature of the actions is not described) that he kills himself. Then two birds appear as the women lament his death. Many later sources omit Tereus' tongue-cutting mutilation of Philomela altogether. According to Thucydides , Tereus
15250-420: Was turned into a nightingale, singing a beautiful but sad song in remorse. Later sources, among them Hyginus and in modern literature the English romantic poets like Keats write that although she was tongueless, Philomela was turned into a nightingale, and Procne into a swallow. Eustathius ' version of the story has the sisters reversed, so that Philomela married Tereus and that Tereus lusted after Procne. It
15375-427: Was unable to speak because of her injuries, and so she wove a tapestry (or a robe ) that told her story and sent it to Procne. Procne was incensed by her husband's actions and killed their son Itys (or "Itylos") in revenge. She boiled Itys and served him as a meal for Tereus. After Tereus ate Itys, the sisters presented Tereus with the severed head of his son, revealing the conspiracy. Tereus grabbed an axe and chased
15500-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
15625-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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