Ovid Metamorphoses Book 4

Orientation: I (288-297)

Ovidian poetry plays with recognition and reassessment. When Ovid first introduces Hermaphroditus here, he introduces him as Mercurio puerum diva Cythereide natum (288). This line presents the reader with two paths: stop and decipher this mythological heritage and thereby discover the name Hermaphroditus buried within it (the detached reader's path),

or assume this information is merely an insignificant bit of ancestral trivia and proceed without giving it full thought (the duped reader's path). Ovid's stroke of brilliance will be to ensure that both types of reader are equally duped. (Robert Groves)

A son born of the goddess of Cythera to Mercury the naiads nursed within Ida’s caves (288).

(*The first type of reader will think wrongly that Hermaphroditus was born as dual-sex.)

'His name “lies hidden” much like the causa behind the mystery of the spring.' H.Ilkay

'The reader is left with a kind of riddle. The rarity of the word Cythereis adds to the riddle. The word is not used in Greek and in Latin only by Manilius.' R.Groves

‘As the god who is ubiquitously depicted with an erect phallus on ancient herms, Hermes is a hyper-masculine divine figure, while Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual desire who is typically depicted nude or semi-nude, is a hyper-feminine immortal. Together, they produce a son “whose face was one in which mother and father could be recognized” (cuius erat facies, in qua materque paterque cognosci possent, 290-1).

The striking use of the passive voice renders the youth an object of a hypothetical gaze.’ (Hilary Ilkay). It may also help to continue the 'detached reader' in their misunderstanding.

'The fact that both mother and father can be recognized in the god's face seems to confirm that the god is as androgynous as a reader supposes him to be. The reader may even take this detail as a hint, as a signal intentionally left by the author to assure him that he is on the right track.' Robert Groves

Donald Lateiner has observed that Mercury and Venus were often jointly venerated (e.g. at Halicarnassus, Samos, Argos, Athens, Kato Syme).

At 4.186ff. Mercury had wished that he, rather than Mars, could be turpis with Venus.

He obviously got his wish, ‘his impossible dream’, il sogno impossible [Gianpiero Rosati].

Hermaphroditus had a brother, specifically a half-brother named Aeneas, because of their common divine mother.

The young man (288-297)

289 enutrivere is a word invented by Ovid. Hermaphroditus is reared by nymphs of Ida, just as Venus had wanted another son, Aeneas, to be raised (h.Hom. 5.256-8): ‘the deep-girdled mountain nymphs who dwell on this great and holy mountain will bring him up’.

Anderson takes the cave as being in Mt Ida on Crete where Jupiter was looked after as a baby. But there is also Mt Ida in Phrygia (Turkey). Gianpiero Rosati, however, points out that as Lycia is mentioned first in Hermaphroditus' journey, then Caria which is north of it, this presupposes a movement of west to east-north which would make it likely that the boy is travelling from Crete. He also refers to ‘la connessione fra Ermafrodito e Giove bambino’ (the connection bwteen H. and the baby Jupiter) on the Salmakis inscription: Isager 1998 p.13 n.24.

Hermaphroditus’ travels from the Troad to visit unfamiliar cities and places reminds us of Odysseus (Alison Keith). The boy’s arrival in the landscape of Salmacis is reminiscent of Odysseus’ arrival at the isolated islands of Calypso and Circe, but rehearses still more closely the Homeric hero’s approach to Nausikaa, Odyssey 6.93-100.

‘Until the moment when Salmacis sees Hermaphroditus, then, the Ovidian narrative proceeds on a gendered narrative trajectory that distinguishes the male epic hero from the feminized site of his labours.’

‘The very framework of the tale encodes the gendered dichotomy of “male-hero-human, on the side of the subject; and female-obstacle-boundary space, on the other” identified by Teresa de Lauretis. But Salmacis is, if anything, even more closely associated with plot-space than her counterparts in earlier epic, for as the eponymous nymph of her spring she quite literally embodies the landscape through which Hermaphroditus travels.’

(Alison Keith)

Beauty & gender instability

290f. ‘The special age of adolescents when it is difficult to tell if male or female.’ [ANDERSON] For this idea of sexual ambiguity: Narcissus 3.351ff. (Adonis is never effeminised, whatever his gender ambiguities [TAYLOR 83].) Gender instability marks the remarkably handsome boy long before the introduction of Salmacis [SALZMAN-MITCHELL 161]. Bacchus is portrayed as the eternal puer: 4.18-20 (virginal face), cf. Acoetes’ description in 3.606-7.

‘Hermaphroditus is chaste to the point of asexuality despite his parentage.’ [von Stackelberg]. This complex gender play could foreshadow the cruel metamorphosis.

292 At 3.251-2 Narcissus, we are told, was 16 years old; at 2.497 Arcas is fifteen. Notice also that Hermaphroditus is familiar with nymphs, as some of them brought him up.

294 Bömer refers to the Ovidian anaphoric adjectives (ignotis / ignota) with different metrical stress.

295 studio minuente laborem: in the context of 285ff. (the waters that will eventually weaken him), here we see Hermaphroditus fully enjoying his physical power.

‘Throughout the episode, Salmacis is described in diction applicable to both spring and nymph.’ (Alison Keith)

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