Pyramus and Thisbe

“Ceyx and Alcyone” by Ovid in Book 10 of The Metamorphoses (8 AD)

“Ceyx and Alcyone” is another example in the Metamorphoses of a positive romantic relationship between human lovers. Like “Pyramus and Thisbe,” their story ends in tragedy—Ceyx tragically drowns in a shipwreck—but their relationship is deeply loving and devoted. Again, as he did with the simile of the broken pipe, Ovid may have inserted jarringly humorous elements into Ceyx’s death scene.

"Amores 1.6" by Ovid (16 BCE)

Pyramus and Thisbe’s desperate pleas to the wall are a play on a common stock element in elegiac poetry, paraklausithyron. In these scenes, a lover pleads for entrance at the closed door of his mistress. Like Pyramus and Thisbe, Ovid’s narrator in Amores 1.6 directly addresses an inanimate obstacle; like Thisbe, Love (in the form of Cupid) has made him bold (Lines 11-12).

"Pyramus and Thisbe" by Ted Hughes in Tales of Ovid (1997)

The English poet and translator Ted Hughes (1930-1998) is widely considered to be one of the 20th-century’s greatest writers. Hughes concluded his 1997 treatment of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, signaling both the significance he placed on the story as a capstone of Ovid’s magnum opus and his own poetic prioritization of passionate emotion.