I chose this story, out of all the others in Ovid's metamorphoses, because I wanted to continue exploring the same topics of gender and rape that I did in my first Ovid project on Caneus' transformation.
The story of Hermaphroditus fits into the larger narrative of book four with its theme of desire, especially of the desire to be united as ‘lovers’. Book four starts out describing the daughters of Minyas’ contempt for Bacchus’ celebrations. They decide to abstain from the rites and worship Pallas instead by telling stories. Alcithoe, the story of Hermaphroditus’ narrator, references the first daughters’ tale, in which Pyramus and Thisbe wish to be together but a wall as well as their parents’ orders separate them. They both end up dying by suicide before they can meet up. The story that follows Pyramus and Thisbe’s is about when Hephaestus caught Mars and Venus, during the act of committing adultery, in a trap he built in order to embarrass them in front of all the Gods. Hyperion sees this and wishes that he would “be overtaken by such disgrace himself” (87, Humphries). He gets his wish when he pursues a girl named Leucothoe, whom he has pined after for a while, and she submits with “no complaint” (88, Humphries). However, her father hears about this from jealous Clytie, Hyperion’s ex lover. Leucothoe’s father buries her alive, but Hyperion still does not want to be with Clytie, so she falls into depression and turns into a flower which always faces the sun. All of these stories demonstrate how unity with a lover, though a desirable idea, can bring trouble or even turn out to be a trap. The story of Hermaphroditus conveys this message no less. The story starts when he is fifteen and leaves his home, where he was raised by kind nymphs, to explore other parts of the world. He stumbles upon a pool. In this pool is a nymph who does not care for hunting or fighting, only leisure. She sees Hermaphroditus and admires his beauty but holds back her desire until she can dress up and make herself pretty [see translation for more details on what happens from then]. The metaphor of a snake wrapping itself around an eagle, preventing it from releasing itself from the snake’s grasp, brings to mind the trap Vulcan built for Mars and Venus. After Alcithoe finishes her story, Ovid returns back to the daughters of Minyas, whom Bacchus punishes by turning them into bats.
In Ovid’s interpretation of Hermaphroditus’ story, he is portrayed as a grotesque fusion of two separate beings, formed in a loveless union. However, other versions associate him with more positive forms of unity such as marriage, as in Theophrastus’ account, androgyny, or eroticism. One version found in the remains of a city in Anatolia states that Salmacis was actually one of the nymphs that raised Hermaphroditus.