Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe
This story is found only in Ovid. It is quite characteristic of him at his best: well-told; several rhetorical
monologues; a little essay on Love by the way.
ONCE upon a time the deep red berries of the mulberry tree were white as snow. The change in color
came about strangely and sadly. The death of two young lovers was the cause.
Pyramus and Thisbe, he the most beautiful youth and she the loveliest maiden of all the East, lived. in
Babylon, the city of Queen Semiramis, in houses so close together that one wall was common to both.
Growing up thus side by side, they learned to love each other. They longed to marry, but their parents
forbade. Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that Harne is covered up, the hotter it bums.
Also, love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be
kept apart.
In the wall both houses shared there was a little chink. No one before had noticed it, but there is nothing
a lover does not notice. Our two young people discovered it and through it they were able to whisper
sweetly back and forth, Thisbe on one side, Pyramus on the other. The hateful wall that separated them
had become their means of reaching each other. “But for you we could touch, kiss,” they would say.
“But at least you let us speak together. You give a passage for loving words to reach loving ears. We are
not ungrateful.” So they would talk, and as night came on and they must part, each would press on the
wall kisses that could not go through to the lips on the other side.
Every morning when the dawn had put out the stars, and the sun’s rays had dried the hoarfrost on the
grass, they would steal to the crack and, standing there, now utter words of burning love and now
lament their hard fate, but always in softest whispers. Finally a day came when they could endure no
longer. They decided that that very night they would try to slip away and steal out through the city into
the open country where at last they could be together in freedom. They agreed to meet at a well-known
place, the Tomb of Ninus, under a tree there, a tall mulberry full of snow-white berries, near which a
cool spring bubbled up. The plan pleased them and it seemed to them the day would never end.
At last the sun sank into the sea and night arose. In the darkness Thisbe crept out and made her way in
all secrecy to the tomb. Pyramus had not come; still she waited for him, her love making her bold. But of
a sudden she saw by the light of the moon a lioness. The fierce beast had made a kill; her jaws were
bloody and she was coming to slake her thirst in the spring. She was still far enough away for Thisbe to
escape, but as she fled she dropped her cloak. The lioness came upon it on her way back to her lair and
she mo uthed it and tore it before disappearing into the woods. That is what Pyramus saw when he
appeared a few minutes later. Before him lay the bloodstained shreds of the cloak and clear in the dust
were the tracks of the lioness. The conclusion was inevitable. He never doubted that he knew all. Thisbe
was dead. He had let his love, a tender maiden, come alone to a place full of danger, and not been there
first to protect her. “It is I who killed you,” he said. He lifted up from the trampled dust what was left of
the cloak and kissing it again and again carried it to the mulberry tree. “Now,” he said, “you shall drink
my blood too.” He drew his sword and plunged it into his side. The blood spurted up over the berries
and dye them a dark red.
Thisbe, although terrified of the lioness, was still more afraid to fail her lover. She ventured to go back to
the tree of the tryst, the mulberry with the shining white fruit. She could not find it. A tree was there,
but not one gleam of white was on the branches. As she stared at it, something moved on the ground
beneath. She started back shuddering. But in a moment, peering through the shadows, she saw what
was there. It was Pyramus, bathed in blood and dying. She Hew to him and threw her arms around him.
She kissed his cold lips and begged him to look at her, to speak to her. “It is I, your Thisbe, your dearest,”
she cried to him. At the sound of her name he opened his heavy eyes for one look. Then death closed
them. She saw his sword fallen from his hand and beside it her cloak stained and tom. She understood
all. “Your own hand killed you,” she said, “and your love for me. I too can be brave. I too can love. Only
death would have had the power to separate us. It shall not have that power now.” She plunged into her
heart the sword that was still wet with his life’s blood. The gods were pitiful at the end, and the lovers’
parents too. The deep red fruit of the mulberry is the everlasting memorial of these true lovers, and one
urn holds the ashes of the two whom not even death could part.”
When it had laid waste the land many days, there chanced to come to Thebes one Œdipus, who had fled
from the city of Corinth that he might escape the doom which the gods had spoken against him. And the
men of the place told him of the Sphinx, how she cruelly devoured the people, and that he who should
deliver them from her should have the kingdom. So Œdipus, being very bold, and also ready of wit, went
forth to meet the monster. And when she saw him she spake, saying:
"Read me this riddle right, or die: What liveth there beneath the sky, Four-footed creature that doth
choose Now three feet and now twain to use, And still more feebly o'er the plain Walketh with three
feet than with twain?"
And Œdipus made reply: “'Tis man, who in life's early day Four-footed crawleth on his way; When time
hath made his strength complete, Upright his form and twain his feet; When age hath bound him to the
ground A third foot in his staff is found."
As a reward Œdipus received the great kingdom of Thebes and the hand of the widowed queen Jocasta
in marriage. Four children were born to them—two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters,
Antigone and Ismené.
Now the gods had decreed that Œdipus should murder his own father and marry his own mother, and
by a curious chance this was precisely what he had done. As a baby he had been left to die lest he
should live to fulfil the doom, but had been rescued by an old shepherd and brought up at the court of
Corinth. Fleeing from there that he might not murder him whom he believed to be his father, he had
come to Thebes, and on the way had met Laius, his true father, the king, and killed him.
While he remained ignorant of the facts Œdipus was very happy and reigned in great power and glory;
but when pestilence fell upon the land and he discovered the truth of the almost forgotten oracle, he
was very miserable, and in the madness of grief put out his own eyes.