Legendary queen of Babylon whose brick walls bound the adjoining houses of Pyramus and Thisbe in Ovid's tale — builder of the city's fortifications in Hyginus' catalogue of wonders, distinct from the Semiramis who slew Ninus in the Assyrian legend.1
Ovid sets the Babylonian lovers in adjoining houses near the walls that Queen Semiramis had built of brick around her famous city — the party wall bore a chink their fathers' hatred could not seal, through which Pyramus and Thisbe whispered their vows.2
Hyginus counts among the wonders of the world the wall in Babylon which Semiramis, daughter of Dercetis, made of baked brick and bitumen bound with iron — twenty-five feet broad, sixty feet high, and three hundred stades in circuit.3
In Hyginus' roll of those who killed kings, Semiramis killed Ninus in Babylonia — a separate strand of the eastern legend that shares the name but not the Ovidian frame of the lovers' tragedy.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story