Hecuba: The wife of Priam, king of Troy, and mother of Paris and Hector.
Philomel and Procne*: the daughters of King Pandion of Athens. Procne was married
to King Tereus of Thrace (one of the sons of Ares), and had a son by him, Itys. Tereus conceived
an illicit passion for Philomel. He contrived to get her sent to Thrace; he raped her, and then cut
her tongue out and imprisoned her so that she could tell no one of his crime. However, Philomela
wove a tapestry which revealed the facts of the matter to Procne. In order to get revenge, Procne
killed Itys and cooked him, so that Tereus ate his own son for dinner. When Tereus discovered the
ghastly trick, he pursued the two women, trying to kill them. Before the chase could end, all three
were turned into birds--Tereus into a hoopoe, Procne into a swallow, and Philomel into a nightingale.
(Hence the nightingale is often called a "Philomel" in poetry.) *(Procne sometimes spelled Progne)
Tarquin: From Shakespeare's The Rape Of Lucrece, Lucrece draws on the story described in
both Ovid's Fasti and Livy's history of Rome. In 509 BCE, Sextus Tarquinius, son of Tarquin, the
king of Rome, raped Lucretia (Lucrece), wife of Collatinus, one of the king's aristocratic retainers.
Titan: In Greek mythology, the Titans are a race of godlike giants who were considered to be the
personifications of the forces of nature.