Baucis

Baucis saw two strangers arrive at the cottage she shared with Philemon. They had already been turned away from house after house in Phrygia. She and her husband owned little, but she welcomed them inside and spread a coarse cloth over the bench where they sat. Baucis stirred the embers, gathered what the garden offered and helped prepare a meal. Philemon brought down a small piece of bacon kept from an earlier day. They set out their best cloths and served herbs, curds, eggs, berries, fruit, grapes and honey. Their wine ran low, then returned in the goblet whenever a guest drank.

The couple recognised that something beyond chance was happening. Baucis and Philemon tried to catch their goose and serve it to the visitors, but the bird ran to the strangers for shelter. The guests stopped them and revealed themselves as Jupiter and Mercury. They told the couple to leave the cottage and climb the hill. From there Baucis saw the village disappear beneath floodwater while her own home remained. The cottage became a temple. Asked what they wished, Baucis asked to serve there with Philemon and for them to die at the same hour. The pair grew old together as keepers of the temple. One day they saw leaves on each other's bodies. They spoke their farewells while branches rose around them, and their forms became trees growing side by side.