Then truly he pleased her, Salmacis burned with desire for
his nude form; the eyes of the nymph also burned,
not unlike when Phoebus' image is reflected by a mirror
opposing the most polished clear orb;
and a delay is barely endured, she now barely delays her joys, 350
she now desires to embrace him, now she wants to hold him wickedly and frenzied.
Clapping his swift hollow body with his hands
he leapt into the water and he is leading with alternating arms
in smooth transparent waters, as if he was an ivory statue
that brightens when unclothed or bright white lilies behind clear glass. 355
"Victory is mine" exclaims the nymph, and throwing all
her clothes far away she sent herself into the middle of the waves,
and she held the fighting boy, and she harvested struggling kisses,
throwing her hands under him, and she touched his unwilling chest,
and now the young man is surrounded from this way and that; 360
as he is wishing to escape she tangles around him
just like a serpent, whom a kingly bird snatched up
and would lift her: Hanging, she bound his head
and tail and tangled his wings;
as long ivy tends to weave around a trunk, 365
as an octopus catching her enemy restrains him under the water,
sending her tentacles out of every part.
The son of Atlas persisted and denied the remainder of the nymph's having been awaited joy;
she pressed for that joy of joining in all of their bodies
as she was clinging to him, "excessive fighting is allowed," she said, 370
"however he is not allowed to flee. If gods, you order this, then
no day would lead him away from me nor me from him."
she had the gods' wishes; for the two entangled
bodies were joined, and the form is brought forth by both of them
together. Just as if someone connected branches to the bark, 375
it is becoming visible to join and grow separate equally,
thus they assembled clinging limbs,
it is not possible for the two forms to be separate, nor to speak of them as a woman
or a boy, a neuter and both were seen.
Therefore when he sees the water, whose waves he had climbed down into as a man, 380
that made him a hermaphrodite and softened his
limbs, extending his hands, Hermaphroditus speaks,
but now with a voice not of a man: "I swim having been given your burden,
father and mother, having both of your names:
whichever man would come to this fountain, let him exit from there 385
a hermaphrodite, and having touched the water he would suddenly soften in the waves!"
He moved his parents having considered the two-faced son’s words,
and the defiled fountain was tinged with their medicine.