They were rejected by everybody except for Baucis and Philemon, an old couple who only had a small, modest home to welcome them in.
They told Baucis and Philemon to leave town, and after they did, they the gods destroyed the town.
Not that men are blameless--Erysichthon's cruelty carries a ghastly punishment--but often they appear innocent before the activities of the immortals--did Actaeon deserve his fate?--and attractive in their loves--Pygmalion,
Baucis and Philemon. Questions of sexuality are not avoided, as in the treatment of Narcissus.
The spider woman Arachne, Actaeon the hunter become a stag, Midas and the Golden Touch, Theseus and the Minotaur, Orpheus and Eurydice, Jupiter and Io,
Baucis and Philemon, the tales of Persephone, Bacchus, and Tiresias, all these mythic tales and more are retold in language both as fresh, ancient, and rich as its original creator could ever wish.
The spatial and architectural motif of the myth, in particular, the humble cottage of Baucis and Philemon transformed into a sacred temple, clearly appealed to Calvino who sought to recognize and "give space" to what was not inferno.
In fact, alongside the Earth and the landscape of place, but beyond the temporal dimension of the ego, Calvino presents the pure exteriority of the book itself as object and as "spatialization of time," that is, as a means to counteract the temporality of the journey no less than the temple of Baucis and Philemon or the journey of Gilgamesh written down on stone tablets.
His picture of the country curate, for instance, who might barely survive on [pounds]20 to [pounds]40 a year, is characteristically crisp and witty: 'In women's fiction his status is mythic, binding the virtues of
Baucis and Philemon to the agonies of the Christian martyrs' (p.