The author's absorbing interest in the story of the ravishment and mutilation of Philomela by Tereus has been mentioned (cf. note on II. iii. 43). After Tereus had cut out her tongue, Philomela embroidered the story of her wrongs on a sampler, which she sent to her sister, Progne, wife of Tereus. The two sisters then revenged themselves on the guilty husband by murdering his son, Itylus, and serving his body at a banquet to his father. As a result of the horrible affair, Philomela was changed into a nightingale, Progne into a swallow, and Tereus into a hawk.
V. ii. 204. the Centaurs' feast. A reference to the story in classical mythology (told by Ovid in the twelfth book of the Metamorphoses) of the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ, at the wedding-feast of Hippodamia and Pirithous. Cf. Midsummer Night's Dream, V. i. 44.
V. iii. 36–38. Was it well done of rash Virginius To slay his daughter . . . stain'd and deflower'd?. In 449 B.C., Virginius, a centurion, slew his daughter, Virginia, to save her from Appius Claudius, the decemvir, who had attempted to violate her. The story was a favorite with the Elizabethans, and a drama on the subject, The Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia, appeared about 1563. See Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, The story is incorrectly given in the text.
V. iii. 85. Sinon. The Greek who persuaded the Trojans to admit the wooden horse into Troy.
V. iii. 93–97. In the 1594 Quarto these lines read as follows:
'And force you to commiseration,
Here's Rome's young captain, let him tell the tale,
While I stand by and weep to hear him speak.
Lucius. Then, gracious auditory, be it known to you,
That Chiron and the damn'd Demetrius,' etc.
