PYRAMUS AND THISBE

hero and heroine of a Babylonian love story related by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. Though their parents refused to consent to their union, the lovers at last resolved to flee together and agreed to meet under a mulberry tree. Thisbe, first to arrive, was terrified by the roar of a lioness and took to flight. In her haste she dropped her veil, which the lioness tore to pieces with jaws stained with the blood of an ox. Pyramus, believing that she had been devoured by the lioness, stabbed himself. When Thisbe returned and found her lover mortally wounded under the mulberry tree, she put an end to her own life. From that time forward, legend relates, the fruit of the mulberry, previously white, was black.