In classical mythology, Baucis is the pious old wife of Philemon, known only from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Living in a thatched cottage in Phrygia (Ovid places the town near Tyana), she alone with her husband welcomed Jupiter and Mercury disguised as wanderers when every richer door stayed shut. Rewarded with a temple and a shared death, she became an oak intertwined with Philemon's linden.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Baucis and Philemon" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Hospitality to the gods
Zeus and Hermes (Roman Jupiter and Mercury) came disguised as ordinary peasants and asked lodging throughout the town. All refused them until they reached Baucis and Philemon's rustic cottage. Though poor, the couple served olives, garden greens, and wine with eager care; Baucis noticed that the beech-wood cups stayed full though she refilled them many times — later proverbial as "Hermes' pitcher."
Recognizing divine guests, they raised their hands in apology for their simple fare. Philemon tried to catch their goose for sacrifice; it fled to Zeus's lap, and the god forbade the killing. He ordered the couple to climb the mountain without looking back while he destroyed the inhospitable town.
II.Temple and metamorphosis
From the summit they saw the valley flooded and every proud house sunk; their cottage alone rose into a marble temple with a golden roof. Asked what reward they wished, Baucis and Philemon asked only to serve as priestess and priest of the shrine and to die together. Years later, tending the temple, each saw the other put forth leaves; bark covered their limbs, and they became an oak and a linden with branches intertwined.
The tale is Ovid's alone among surviving ancient authors (Metamorphoses 8.618–724) and belongs to international tale type ATU 750 (hospitality rewarded, the wicked drowned). It became a classical emblem of xenia and theoxenia — guest-friendship when the stranger is a god.
III.Reception
Later adaptations include La Fontaine's verse retelling, Jonathan Swift's poem, Haydn's marionette opera Philemon und Baucis, Gounod's Philémon et Baucis, and an episode in Goethe's Faust II. Shakespeare alludes to the couple in Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It. This atlas node is Baucis specifically; her husband is the sibling file philemon-phrygia.