Philemon and Baucis are the poorest of the poor, but when the immortals arrive in disguise and ask for hospitality, their response is immediate and their generosity boundless. Ovid in the Metamorphoses sometimes plays the rather rickety old gentleman and his kindly wife for laughs, but their open-handedness and the warmth of their welcome are heartwarming nevertheless. The next post will tell the end of their story.

Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.

Phaethon’s ride in the chariot of his father, the Sun, has brought catastrophe as he sets the world ablaze. Now Jupiter intervenes to fell him with a thunderbolt before the damage goes from bad to worse.

The illustration by Giovanni Bernardi shows his fall, his sisters, who are turned to poplar trees on his burial mound, and his friend Cycnus, who will be transformed in to a swan.

Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.