Eight Brief Tales

of Lovers

Pyramus and Thisbe

Pyramus and Thisbe grew up in a one-room house that was connected to the other.

Over the years, they fell in love with each other, but could only talk through a hole in their wall because their parents refused them to see each other.

They decided to run off one night and elope. Pyramus gave Thisbe the location of the place they would meet, and they agreed.

Thisbe was the first to arrive there. While she was waiting for Pyramus, a lioness walked by with her jaws covered in blood. She was so frightened that she ran to the nearest cave to hide.

 Soon after, Pyramus arrived and thought that his only love had been killed by a hungry lioness, and unsheathed his swordpiecing his heart. Thisbe ran back and found her only love lying on the ground.

She asked the still breathing Pyramus what happened and knew anything. And she chose to die with Pyramus together, in love and peace.

This is why the berries on the Mulberry bush are red, instead of their original white.

Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus was a beautiful musician who loved a nymph called Eurydice. They married and were very happy. 

Eurydice spent hours wandering and playing in the fields and woodlands. One day she trod on a deadly snake and died. She went to the underworld.

Orpheus was so sad that he took his lyre and went to visit Hades to plead for her life. He played his lyre and charmed Charon the ferry man into crossing the river Styx.

Orpheus played his lyre to charm Hades, and eventually Hades relented and told him that Eurydice could follow him out of Hades, but only if he did not look back and see her.

Orpheus made his way carefully and slowly back to Charon, but then with only a tiny way to go he looked back.

As he did so Eurydice faded, she was pulled back into Hades...gone forever. A very unhappy Orpheus journeyed back over the river to come out of Hades. He had lost his true love forever.

Ceyx and Alcyone

Ceyx decided to make a long journey across the sea to consult the Delphic oracle.

Alcyone, knowing the dangers of the winds of the seas , tried to dissuade her husband. He refused to listen to her warnings.

Alcyone prayed to Hera for the safe return of Ceyx but Ceyx died in the storm.

Hera felt sorrow and sent Morpheus, son of old god of sleep to visit Alcyone in a dream. Morpheus showed Alcyone her husband’s death through a dream.

Alcyone ran to the seashore where she saw the body of her husband and wanted to commit suicide by throwing herself into the sea.

Zeus felt remorse and transformed the couple into halcyon birds.Ceyx and alcyone live together again.

Pygmalion and Galatea

Pygmalion was a confirm bachelor who hates so many qualities in women.

That he despised that he could not bear the idea of marriage.

He was a sculptor who made a perfectly beautiful statue of a maiden named Galatea..

He admired his work, then fell in love with it.

At the festival of Venus, he stood before an altar and prayed for a wife .

Flame on the altar shot into air.

When he got home, he was surprised that his statue became alive.

They got married, and soon had a son named Paphos.

Baucis and Philemon

Zeus and Hermes assumed human form and visited earth disguised as poor travelers.

When they reached Phrygia, they looked for shelter but were turned away by everyone except Philemon and his wife, Baucis.

Baucis and Philemon, an old couple from the land of Phrygia, showed hospitality toward the gods and were rewarded.

Zeus led the couple to a hill above Phrygia and sent a flood to destroy the land to punish the people who had turned them away.

Zeus made the house a temple to the gods and awarded Baucis and Philemon two wishes: to serve as priest and priestess of the temple and, when the time came, to die together.

Many years later, when the moment of their deaths came, Baucis and Philemon were transformed into trees with intertwined branches.

Endymion

Endymion was an extremely handsome mortal man,

Selene, goddess of the moon turn fell madly in love with him.

Selene cast a spell of eternal sleep over him. And so he did, in slumber remaining forever young and handsome.

Daphne

Daphne was an independent, love-and-marriage-hating person.

When Apollo saw her, things were not like before.

…. she was frightened than before. She ran very fast and came to her father’s river.

She was rooted to the ground and became a tree, a laurel.

Apollo decided to make the wreathe by her leaves and had her part in all his triumphs.

Alpheus and Arethusa

Arethusa, a name of a sacred spring in Ortygia, was a fair young huntress

….. It was the god of the river, Alpheus, who followed her and called to her to stop.

Arethusa was so scared that she asked for help to her goddess, Artemis.

Artemis changed her into a spring of water and made a tunnel under the sea from Greece to Sicily.

So Alpheus followed her through the tunnel and that now his water mingled with hers in the fountain. She was still not free of Alpheus.