Baucis and Philemon

Jacob van Oost Mercury and Jupiter in the House of Philemon and Baucis
Jupiter and Mercury in the house of Philemon and Baucis, Adam Elsheimer, c1608, Dresden
Rubens, 1630–32
Jean-Bernard Restout, 1769
Rembrandt 1658
Rembrandt, 1658

Baucis and Philemon (Greek: Φιλήμων και Βαυκίς, romanized: Philēmōn kai Baukis) are two characters from Greek mythology, only known to us from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Baucis and Philemon were an old married couple in the region of Tyana, which Ovid places in Phrygia, and the only ones in their town to welcome disguised gods Zeus and Hermes (in Roman mythology, Jupiter and Mercury respectively), thus embodying the pious exercise of hospitality, the ritualized guest-friendship termed xenia, or theoxenia when a god was involved.