620 THE GREEK SAGAS: GREEK LOCAL LEGENDS
PYRAMUS AND THISBE
Ovid's setting for the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is Babylon. Perhaps Cilicia
in southern Asia Minor is the home of the legend, for the river Pyramus was
there, and the name Thisbe was variously associated with springs in Cilicia or
Cyprus.
Pyramus and Thisbe were next-door neighbors in Babylon, forbidden by
their parents to marry or even to meet each other. They conversed through a
crack in the common wall of their houses and arranged to meet at the tomb of
Ninus outside the city. Thisbe arrived first only to be frightened by a lioness
that had come to drink in a nearby fountain. As she fled, she dropped her veil,
which the lioness mangled with her jaws, bloodstained from a recent kill. Pyra-
mus came and found the footprints of the lioness and the bloodstained veil. He
concluded that the lioness had eaten Thisbe and fell on his sword; as he lay dy-
ing, Thisbe returned and in grief killed herself with the same sword. They lay
together in death beneath a mulberry tree, whose fruit, which before had been
white, henceforward was black, in answer to Thisbe's dying prayer that it be a
memorial of the tragedy.
This is one of Ovid's most beautifully told stories (Metamorphoses 4. 55-166),
of which a paraphrase is at best a pale reflection. The structure of the tale was
used by Shakespeare for the main plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with its
meetings outside the city and lovers' errors, while countless people have en-
joyed Shakespeare's hilarious yet pathetic burlesque of the tale presented by the
"rude mechanicals" in the last act of the play.NOTES- He taught Achilles, Jason, and Asclepius.
- Pindar calls her Hippolyta. Similar stories are those of Bellerophon and Stheneboea
and the biblical Joseph and Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39). - The magic sword is a folktale element in the legend.
- Either by dipping him in the river Styx or by burning away his mortality (see
pp. 312-313 for the similar story of Demophoôn). - Homer (Iliad 11. 682-704) says that Neleus survived into old age.
- For her recovery from the Underworld by Heracles, see p. 527.
- There are many folktale elements in the legend, for example, the bridegroom's task,
the magician who can understand the speech of animals, and the cure of disease by
sympathetic magic (cf. Telephus, p. 454). - In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (see p. 248) the god himself lays the foundations of the
temple. - According to the sixth-century poetess Telesilla, Alpheus loved Artemis herself.
- Divination was practiced by inspecting entrails of victims sacrificed at the altar, and
Iamus was asked for omens.