Thisbe

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Thisbe is the female figure of the famous myth narrated by Ovid in the Metamorphoses, recalled by Dante in the simile of Purgatory. Together with Pyramus, two young Babylonians opposed by their respective families, she had decided to flee and arranged to meet by a mulberry tree outside the city. Arriving first, she was put to flight by a lioness and lost her veil, which the beast tore and stained with its bloodied muzzle. Pyramus, coming upon the scene and believing her dead, killed himself with his own sword. Returned to the mulberry tree, Thisbe saw him on the ground and, calling him weeping, entreated him to open his eyes and repeated her own name. At that voice Pyramus, already weighed down by death, reopened his eyes, saw her, and recognized her. The Dantean verse evokes precisely the instant in which, at the name of Thisbe, Pyramus opens his eye, taken as an image of the yielding of the soul before love.