Aëdon

Two main narrative strands are attested in the sources. In the Theban/Homeric strand (alluded to in Homer’s Odyssey and scholiastic tradition) Aëdon, daughter of Pandareus and wife within the Theban royal milieu, is grieving after one night when she unknowingly slays her own son Itylus (Itys) with a knife; thereafter she is transformed into the nightingale whose song is described as continual wailing for the child. In a separate western Asia Minor tradition preserved by Antoninus Liberalis (attributing the tale to Boios) Aëdon appears as the wife of Polytechnus of Colophon and her story is woven into a different set of domestic rivalries and tragic errors; in these regional variants gods are named as agents effecting the metamorphosis in particular versions (Homeric material and later scholiasts vary in naming Zeus or, in other variants noted by scholiasts and mythographers, Aphrodite as involved). The narratives function etiologically: the human figure Aëdon is transformed and fixed into the natural sign of the nightingale’s lament.

As a mortal Aëdon is identified by family and social ties (daughter of Pandareus; in different local versions wife of Zethus or of Polytechnus) but the supplied sources give no detailed physical description of her human body. After transformation she is described simply as the nightingale: Homeric wording depicts the bird "perched amid the thick leafage... pouring forth her rich voice in wailing for her child," without further morphological detail.

The primary attributed characteristic after metamorphosis is the nightingale's continuous, plaintive song — interpreted as Aëdon's perpetual mourning for her slain son. Prior to transformation, narrative actions (intent to kill a rival child, a mistaken killing of her own child, or a fit of madness and jealousy) are the causal behaviors that lead to metamorphosis. Sources record that a deity effects or permits the change in some variants (Homeric and scholiastic tradition supply differing attributions such as Zeus in the Homeric context and Aphrodite in other scholiastic variants), but the supplied materials present the transformation as narrative consequence rather than as an ongoing active agency by Aëdon herself.