Devoted old husband of Baucis on a Phrygian hillside, who shared their last goose and humble hearth with Jupiter and Mercury disguised as wanderers — and who, granted a temple and a shared end, became a linden tree entwined with his wife's oak.1
Philemon and Baucis had been joined in early youth in the same thatched cottage on the slope and had grown old together there, making their poverty light by accepting it without an unjust mind. The whole house was the two of them alone.2
When the gods wandered Phrygia without their insignia and found every door closed, Philemon and Baucis welcomed them into their reed-thatched home. He helped chase the goose meant for sacrifice until Jupiter and Mercury stayed their hands and revealed the wine bowl refilling of its own accord.3
Jupiter led the couple up the hill while the valley below became a marsh and proud houses sank beneath the flood. Only their cottage was spared; it rose into a temple, and Philemon asked with Baucis only to die together and serve as priest beside his wife.4
In old age, tending the shrine they had been granted, Philemon saw Baucis putting forth leaves and felt his own limbs harden into bark; husband and wife became a linden and an oak with branches intertwined — a latticed screen still guarding the spot in Ovid's day.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story