ANCW20021 CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY

UNIT TEN

UNIT CONTENT:
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. M. Innes (London, 1995): Daphne (1.444-570);
Io (1.580-630); Callisto, (2.405-531); Coronis, (2.596-611); Medusa (4.753-
803).
Ovid Metamorphoses 4.295-388 [Salmacis and Hermaphroditus] Trans. A.S.
Kline 2000
Richlin, A., Reading Ovids Rapes in A. Richlin (ed.) Pornography and
Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992).
SEMINAR READING:
Ovid Metamorphoses 1.452-747; 2.401-535; 2.833-875; 5.341-678 [Apollo &
Daphne; Jupiter & Io; Jupiter & Callisto; Jupiter & Europa; Hades &
Proserpine; Alpheus & Arethusa]
All translated by M. Innes, except Jupiter and Europa (trans. David R. Slavitt.
Baltimore: 1994)
Richlin, A. Reading Ovids Rapes in A. Richlin (ed.) Pornography and
Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992), 158-79.
 OVID Metamorphoses
Book 4, lines 295-388 of the Latin
Trans. A.S.Kline, Copyright 2000 1

Salmacis and Hermaphroditus

[Alcitho speaks while weaving at the loom with her sisters, the daughters of Minyas]: Now
you will hear where the pool of Salmacis got its bad reputation from, how its enervating
waters weaken, and soften the limbs they touch. The cause is hidden, but the fountains effect
is widely known. The Naiads nursed a child born of Hermes, and a goddess, Cytherean
Aphrodite, in Mount Idas caves. His features were such that, in them, both mother and father
could be seen: and from them he took his name, Hermaphroditus.

When he was fifteen years old, he left his native mountains and Ida, his nursery, delighted to
wander in unknown lands, and gaze at unknown rivers, his enthusiasm making light of travel.
He even reached the Lycian cities, and the Carians by Lycia. Here he saw a pool of water,
clear to its very depths. There were no marsh reeds round it, no sterile sedge, no spikes of
rushes: it is crystal liquid. The edges of the pool are bordered by fresh turf, and the grass is
always green. A nymph lives there, but she is not skilled for the chase, or used to flexing the
bow, or the effort of running, the only Naiad not known by swift-footed Diana.

Often, its said, her sisters would tell her Salmacis, take up the hunting-spear or the painted
quiver and vary your idleness with some hard work, hunting! But she takes up neither the
hunting spear nor the painted quiver, and will not vary her idleness with the hardship of
hunting. She only bathes her shapely limbs in the pool, often combs out her hair, with a comb
that is made of boxwood from Cytorus,2 and looks in the water to see what suits it best. Then
draped in a translucent robe, she lies down on the soft leaves, or in the soft grass. Often she
gathers flowers. And she was also busy gathering them, then, when she saw the boy, and
what she saw she longed to have.

She did not go near him yet, though she was quick to go to him, waiting until she had
calmed herself, checked her appearance, composed her expression, and merited being seen as
beautiful. Then she began to say Youth, O most worthy to be thought a god, if you are a

1
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otherwise, for any NON-COMMERCIAL purpose. http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/index.html
2
Cytorus is a mountain in Paphlagonia, with abundant boxwood.

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god, you must be Cupid, or, if you are mortal, whoever engendered you is blessed, and any
brother of yours is happy, any sister fortunate, if you have sisters, and even the nurse who
suckled you at her breast. But far beyond them, and far more blessed is she, if there is a she,
promised to you, whom you think worthy of marriage. If there is someone, let mine be a
stolen pleasure, if not, I will be the one, and let us enter into marriage together.

After this the naiad was silent. A red flush branded the boys face. He did not know what
love was: though the blush was very becoming. Apples are tinged with this colour, hanging in
a sunlit tree, or ivory painted with red, or the moon, eclipsed, blushing in her brightness,
while the bronze shields clash, in vain, to rescue her. The nymph begged endlessly, at least a
sisters kiss, and, about to throw her arms round his ivory-white neck, he said Stop this, or
shall I go, and leave this place, and you? Salmacis, afraid, turning away, pretended to go,
saying, I freely surrender this place to you, be my guest. But she still looked back, and hid
herself among bushes in the secluded woods, on her bended knees. But he, obviously at
leisure, as if unobserved, walks here and there on the grass and playfully, at the end of his
walk, dips his feet and ankles in the pool. Then, quickly captured by the coolness of the
enticing water, he stripped the soft clothes from his slender body.

Then she was truly pleased. And Salmacis was inflamed with desire for his naked form. The
nymphs eyes blazed with passion, as when Phoebuss likeness is reflected from a mirror,
that opposes his brightest unclouded orb. She can scarcely wait, scarcely contain her delight,
now longing to hold him, now unable to keep her love to herself. He, clapping his open palms
to his side, dives into the pool, and leading with one arm and then the other, he gleams
through the pure water, as if one sheathed an ivory statue, or bright lilies behind clear glass.
I have won, he is mine, the naiad cries, and flinging aside all her garments, she throws
herself into the midst of the water.

She held him to her, struggling, snatching kisses from the fight, putting her hands beneath
him, touching his unwilling breast, overwhelming the youth from this side and that. At last,
she entwines herself face to face with his beauty, like a snake, lifted by the king of birds and
caught up into the air, as Hermaphroditus tries to slip away. Hanging there she twines round
his head and feet and entangles his spreading wings in her coils. Or as ivy often interlaces tall
tree trunks. Or as the cuttlefish holds the prey, it has surprised, underwater, wrapping its
tentacles everywhere.

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The descendant of Atlas holds out, denying the nymphs wished-for pleasure: she hugs him,
and clings, as though she is joined to his whole body. It is right to struggle, perverse one,
she says, but you will still not escape. Grant this, you gods, that no day comes to part me
from him, or him from me. Her prayer reached the gods. Now the entwined bodies of the
two were joined together, and one form covered both. Just as when someone grafts a twig
into the bark, they see both grow joined together, and develop as one, so when they were
mated together in a close embrace, they were not two, but a two-fold form, so that they could
not be called male or female, and seemed neither or either.

When he saw now that the clear waters which he had penetrated as a man, had made him a
creature of both sexes, and his limbs had been softened there, Hermaphroditus, stretching out
his hands, said, but not in a mans voice, Father and mother, grant this gift to your son, who
bears both your names: whoever comes to these fountains as a man, let him leave them half a
man, and weaken suddenly at the touch of these waters! Both his parents moved by this,
granted the prayer of their twin-formed son, and contaminated the pool with a damaging
drug.

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Richlin, A. Reading Ovids Rapes in A. Richlin (ed.) Pornography and
Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992).
The Metamorphoses of Ovid, trans. David R. Slavitt, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1994.
This selection is from Book 2 of the Metamorphoses.