Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Hermaphroditus was the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, raised in the caves of Ida (or by naiads on Mount Ida) and named for both parents. In Ovid’s telling, at fifteen he wandered to Asia Minor and came to a clear pool near Halicarnassus belonging to the naiad Salmacis. Unlike huntress-nymphs devoted to Artemis, Salmacis avoided the chase and lingered at her spring. She desired the boy; he refused her. When he entered the water to bathe, she embraced him and prayed to the gods that they never be parted. The gods granted the prayer literally: their bodies fused into one form, both male and female. Hermaphroditus, thus transformed, prayed in turn that any man who bathed in that spring thereafter be weakened or made half-man—etiology of the spring Salmacis’s ill repute among Greek and Roman topographers (who sometimes rationalize the story as moral or medical folklore). Greek sources attest the spring and the divine parentage of Hermaphroditus as a type of Aphrodite’s child; the erotic pursuit and fusion scene are **Roman transmission** via Ovid.