Hermaphroditus

Role: youth · First appears: Fable 42

Life events

• Hermaphroditus is born to Mercury and the Cytherean Goddess.(Fable42 · 📍 caves of Ida)
  • With: Mercury Cytherean Goddess
  • “The Naiads nursed a boy, born to Mercury of the Cytherean Goddess in the caves of Ida”
• Salmacis proposes marriage, but Hermaphroditus rejects her advances.(Fable42)
  • With: Salmacis
  • “if thou hast none, let me be {thy wife}, and let us unite in one tie.” After these things {said}, the Naiad is silent; a blush tinges the face of the youth: he knows not what love is”
• Salmacis seizes resisting Hermaphroditus and entwines herself around him in the water.(Fable42)
  • With: Salmacis
  • “she plunges in the midst of the waters, and seizes him resisting her, and snatches reluctant kisses”
• Hermaphroditus asks his parents to transform men entering the waters into half-men.(Fable42)
  • With: Mercury Cytherean Goddess
  • “grant this favor to your son, who has the name of you both, that whoever enters these streams a man, may go out thence {but} half a man”
• Hermaphroditus’s parents assent, tainting the fountain with drugs that soften those who enter.(Fable42)
  • With: Mercury Cytherean Goddess
  • “Both parents, moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint the fountain with drugs of ambiguous quality.”

Fable 42

• parent: Mercury “The Naiads nursed a boy, born to Mercury of the Cytherean Goddess in the caves of Ida; whose face was such that therein both mother and father could be discerned; he likewise took his name from them.”
• parent: Cytherean Goddess “The Naiads nursed a boy, born to Mercury of the Cytherean Goddess in the caves of Ida; whose face was such that therein both mother and father could be discerned; he likewise took his name from them.”
• admirer: Salmacis “The Naiad Salmacis falls in love with the youth Hermaphroditus, who rejects her advances.”
• courtship with Salmacis “But far, far more fortunate than all these {is she}; if thou hast any wife, if thou shouldst vouchsafe any one {the honor of} marriage. And if any one is thy {wife, then} let my pleasure be stolen; but, if thou hast none, let me be {thy wife}, and let us unite in one tie.”
• with Salmacis (Their bodies are magically merged into one.) “Her prayers find propitious Deities, for the mingled bodies of the two are united,[52] and one human shape is put upon them; just as if any one should see branches beneath a common bark join in growing, and spring up together.”
• with Atlas (Atlas is Hermaphroditus's great-grandfather.) “Hermaphroditus was the great-grandson of Atlas; as the latter was the father of Maia, the mother of Mercury, who begot Hermaphroditus.”

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Extracted from the original text of The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Made with Rho MD.