Hermes, Herse, and Aglauros (Ovid-Labeled)
Catalogue ID: 02-olympian-gods/081-hermes-herse-aglauros-ovid-roman
Cycle: Olympian gods — Hermes / Attic Cecropid sisters
Version line: Roman transmission (Ovid) of Attic Cecropid jealousy tale; Greek notices of Herse and Aglauros background
Sources: Ovid, *Metamorphoses* 2.708–832 (**Roman**); Apollodorus, *Library* 3.14.6 (Cecropids and Erichthonius); Pausanias 1.18.2
Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/02-olympian-gods/081-hermes-herse-aglauros-ovid-roman.md
Characters
- Aglauros — envious sister; turned to stone
- Artemis — sends Envy; prior link to Erichthonius
- Athena — lover of Herse; petrifies Aglauros
- Envy — Ovidian personification (**Roman**)
- Herse — Cecropid; beloved of Hermes
- Pandrosos — third sister (background; often the obedient one)
Places
Themes
Narrative
In Ovid’s Attic tale (**Roman**), Hermes, seeing Herse among the Cecropid sisters in Athena’s procession, loves her and seeks entry to her chamber. Aglauros (Aglaurus), her sister, bars the way from envy and greed, having already been tainted by earlier guilt over Erichthonius’s chest. Athena sends Envy to poison Aglauros’s heart; when Hermes returns, Aglauros still refuses passage, and the god turns her to black stone. He then joins Herse.
Greek handbook tradition names Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosos as Cecrops’s daughters and ties them to Erichthonius’s guardianship; Ovid elaborates Hermes–Herse as a jealousy metamorphosis. Catalogue the Ovid line explicitly as Roman transmission, with Attic cult names (Aglauros’s precinct on the Acropolis) as Greek background.