Pyramus and Thisbe

“Pyramus and Thisbe” is an episode from Book 4 of the Metamorphoses, an epic poem published by the Roman poet Ovid in 8 AD. In contrast to the epics of Ovid’s contemporaries (like Virgil’s Aeneid), the Metamorphoses does not focus on a single, cohesive narrative. Rather, Ovid takes as his theme “bodies changed to other forms” (Book 1, Line 1) and fittingly, his Metamorphoses is a work in constant state of change. Its 15 books assemble a series of over 250 independent stories, linked loosely together in a continuous flow of words. Thus the text of Ovid’s poem meta-poetically reenacts its theme: transformative metamorphosis.

While Ovid treats a wide variety of topics in his epic, “Pyramus and Thisbe” is representative of his special fondness for love stories. The Ur literary portrait of star-crossed lovers, “Pyramus and Thisbe” has enjoyed a reliable degree of popularity from antiquity to the present day. Preserved images of Pyramus and Thisbe can be found on the walls of Pompeii, and the story remains a popular choice for modern anthologies of Roman myth.

The importance of “Pyramus and Thisbe” as a literary model for tragic love stories cannot be overstated.