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In Greek mythology, Tereus (; Ancient Greek: Τηρεύς) was a Thracians king,Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War Bibliotheca 3.14.8 the son of Ares and the naiad Bistonis. He was the brother of Dryas. Tereus was the husband of the Athenian princess Procne and the father of Itys.
When Procne recognized her sister and knew the impious deed of Tereus, the two planned to return the favour to the king. Meanwhile, it was revealed to Tereus by prodigies that death by a relative's hand was coming to his son Itys. When he heard this, thinking that his brother Dryas was plotting his son's death, he killed the innocent man. Procne, however, killed her son Itys by Tereus, served his flesh in a meal at his father's table in revenge, and fled with her sister.
When Tereus learned of the crime she had done, he pursued the sisters and tried to kill them but all three were changed by the Twelve Olympians into birds out of pity: Tereus became a hoopoe or a hawk; Procne became the swallow whose song is a song of mourning for the loss of her child; Philomela became the nightingale. Incidentally, the female nightingale has no song. (Hyginus, Fabulae, 45).
A very similar story was told about Polytechnus.
The Athens playwrights Sophocles and Philocles both wrote plays entitled Tereus on the subject of the story of Tereus. The popularity of Sophocles' play caused a confusion among Athenians between Tereus and Teres I, a Thracian king and father of the king with whom Athenians made an alliance in 431 BC.
Shakespeare refers to Tereus in Titus Andronicus, after Chiron and Demetrius have raped Lavinia and cut out her tongue and also both her hands. He also makes reference to Tereus in Cymbeline, when Iachimo spies upon the sleeping Imogen to gather false evidence so he can persuade Posthumus he has seduced her.
The transformed Tereus is a character in The Birds by Aristophanes.
Other fathers who were tricked into consuming their children:
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