OVID BOOK 4 Hermaphroditus
Orientation: II (297-314) Locus amoenus
‘This is a classic Ovidian locus that may be amoenus (pleasant) on the shimmering surface, but that conceals a sinister threat. Narcissus’s fatal encounter with an almost identical transparent pool in the previous book triggers a red flag in the imagination of the reader.
The fact that the spring is inhabited by a nymph further evokes the unhappy fate of Actaeon (also in book 3), who comes upon the goddess Diana attended by her nymphs while she is bathing.'
(Hilary Ilkay)
‘The reader who approaches this story as part of the continuum of Ovid’s carmen perpetuum will recognize instantly that here is an inversion of the pattern of rape narrative that was seen in earlier books, and will notice distorted echoes too of the Narcissus story. Like Narcissus’ pool where nothing muddies or disturbs the crystal purity of the water, the description of Salmacis’ pool here suggests an idealized locus amoenus – an idyllic yet menacing spot (4.297–301).
Like Narcissus himself, Hermaphroditus is represented as an ivory statue, his skin reflecting the whiteness of lilies, the red blush of ripe apples (4.331f; 354f). And, just like Narcissus, he rebuffs the unwanted amorous attentions of an ardent nymph. But Salmacis is no patient, pathetic Echo, and although she pretends to withdraw at this rejection, it is only to carry on stalking Hermaphroditus from the bushes (4.338–45).’ (Genevieve Lively)
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And we must not forget that H. is attracted to the beautiful pool; he plays at its margins. Patricia B. Salzman-Mitchell, A web of fantasies (2005) p.32 notes the witty Ovidian twist: though pool and nymph are the same thing, H rejects her but loves her pool.
The spring (297-315)
297 Hermaphroditus is destined to end up in the area of Halikarnassos (Caria) where the historical spring associated with him in the Salmakis inscription was situated. etiam (296) may indicate he has come far, if indeed he grew up on Crete.
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Here he sees a pool of water crystal, clear to the very bottom. No marshy reeds grew there, no unfruitful swamp-grass, nor spiky rushes; it is clear water. But the edges of the pool are bordered with fresh grass, and herbage ever green.
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‘At this point it is not completely clear whether a sexual encounter will take place and if so, who will attack whom.’ (de Vries). In addition, an Actaeon-scenario might present, in which Hermaphroditus will accidentally see a nymph bathing and may suffer for it.
Salmacis is described at length (302-314) and ‘- unlike the male sexual abusers before her - she faces intense objectification of her body [from lines 310ff.] from the narrator’. Marturano (2017), 306.
298-9 marshy reeds, unfruitful swamp-grass (‘clogging sedge’, Wilkinson), spiky rushes.
Is there a wider point in describing the ulvae as steriles?
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'The water of Salmacis' spring is given two distinct meanings within the same passage - purity and sterility - which are inherently antagonistic. Yet they coexist with one another. The purity of the water reflects the boy's character, and is how he "sees" the pond, i.e. from his perspective (videt), while the ominous adjective sterilis is from the perspective of the omniscient, authoritative narrative voice.' (Robert Kirstein)
298-302 play upon lympha/nympha?
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300-1 Ovid pictures the translucent waters of the Salmacis pool as embedded in green meadows (perspicuus liquor/ cinguntur herbis), and soon afterward he similarly describes the naiad as clad in a transparent dress and reclining on soft grass (313-4).
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297ff. Hermaphroditus gazes into the crystal clear pool. There is the ever-present element of danger with the locus amoenus in the Ovidian countryside; at 3.407ff when Narcissus gazes at the pool, his virginity is mirrored but also threatened. The stagnum may also symbolise the sexual inexperience of Hermaphroditus (note that the waters are stained afterwards, 388) but the pool, in fact, belongs to Salmacis – ‘the very embodiment of languid sensuality’ (MARTINDALE) - so it would have to symbolise both virginity AND lust.
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For the ‘seduzione acquatica’: Propertius 1.20.24, Narcissus Met. 3.413.
The mention of cuspis suggests danger, though there is perhaps an etymological connection with caespes, cf. A. Michalopoulos, Ancient etymologies in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: a commented lexicon (Leeds, 2001), 63.
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Evergreen: 3.407, 411 and 3.161-2 (Actaeon)
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A Roman garden?
For a different interpretation, suggesting not the environment of the countryside but the city: ‘The role of the landscape in this transformation is centred on the agency of the spring. Salmacis’s physical coalescence with Hermaphroditus accords with the well-documented conceptual association between women, water, and a worrying lack of boundaries. But there is also a parallel, terrestrial agent of change in Ovid’s account; despite initial appearances, the landscape of Salmacis’s pool is not a woodland wilderness, but a garden. The landscape of Salmacis’s pool is not a natural locus amoenus, but a constructed locus amoenus, a garden.
When Ovid sets the scene for the tale, his aggregate details include crystal clear water in the pool and a lack of wetland flora (reeds, rushes, or swamp-grass). Instead, the pool is girdled by green grass marking a clear boundary between land and water: 297–301. Salmacis’s pool is therefore not part of an organically developed ecosystem, where spiky rushes and damp marsh grasses would naturally be present, but a cultivated environment. Ovid’s landscaping further emphasizes the anthropocentric comfort suited to garden environs: Salmacis ‘sunbathes’ there, 313-15.
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‘Both Carole Newlands and Stephen Hinds have noted that Ovid’s loci amoeni — especially those clustered around the Theban narrative arc — have a deceptive quality, blinding protagonists to the dangers of their surroundings. For Hermaphroditus that danger is explicitly cast in horticultural similes: he blushes like an apple hanging in a sunny orchards (hic color aprica pendentibus arbore pomis, 331) and Salmacis’s embrace traps him like ivy clinging to a tree (utve solent hedera longos intexere truncos, 365).
The latter simile evokes the Roman practice of encouraging garden ivy to grow up statues (to which Hermaphroditus has already been compared at 354) and trees to pleasing aesthetic effect (Cicero, QFr. 3.15; Pliny, Letters 5.6.32–35). It also foreshadows the final union of the two protagonists.’ [STACKELBERG]
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Focalization
Ovid’s female narrator disrupts the normative sexual hierarchy of epic by reversing the focalization. Hermaphroditus admiringly surveys the spring; the narrative focalization switches to Salmacis and her toilette; H. then returns to the narrative not as the subject of the gaze but as the object of the nymph’s. [Alison Keith (218f.)]
‘Salmacis thus wrests control of both gaze and epic model from Hermaphroditus: here, if anywhere in Latin narrative, a female character aspires to the role of the (mobile, male) hero of epic.’ But she proves unable to sustain the demands of the Odyssean role. Her assertion is hindered by two features of the narrative: as a female she is finally unable to usurp control of the gaze from the male; and as a toponym, she is reduced in the end to nothing more than a place, plot-space. ‘At the conclusion of the tale neither nymph nor boy can be seen in the new creature fused from them, though it resembles both.’
At 380-3 Hermaphroditus attempts to reassert his control over the gaze and concomitant mastery of the narrative trajectory by praying that all men who enter the spring be emasculated in its waters.’
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‘Salmacis therefore possesses a sort of hybrid double vision, a merging of female and male that gestures at her impending transformation. When she first spots the puer, she not only sees him through the eyes of a desiring woman, but also envisions him seeing her. It is no accident that the nymph is “deflowering” the landscape when she sets eyes on the youth. Another instance of gender reversal occurs once Salmacis makes herself worthy to be seen by the boy and addresses him in a speech that recalls the language employed by the swarthy Odysseus to charm Nausicaa. While Odysseus only alludes to Nausicaa’s future marriage, Salmacis offers herself as a bride. In response, the youth blushes like a virginal girl, “since he does not know what love is” (nescit, enim, quid amor,” 4.330) — an unexpected reaction from the person who is supposed to have invented marriage.’ (Ilkay)
302-314
302: concentration now on the nymph (as opposed to the pool) but she is not yet named.
302ff. suggest she is open to love (archery/hunting = a trope for virginity). She represents all the visual sensuality identified with Dionysiac revel that the Minyeides, the daughters of Minyas strive to avoid in their stubborn ‘maidenhood’. Ironically, given her lack of interest in hunting, Salmacis proves the most enthusiastic huntress of all, though strictly in a carnal sense. [TAYLOR 79 + n.104]
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Arethusa (5.578ff.), Daphne (1.475-6), Syrinx (1.694-5), Callisto (2.411) are all devoted to Diana.
celer (304) contrasts with the indolence of Salmacis. Cf. the description of Bacchus at 3.554-6.
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The repetition in 305-9 suggests the obstinacy of Salmacis, cf. Hollis on Met 8.628. ‘Her unusual way of living does make the audience wonder however, what role she will play.’
‘The complex features of Salmacis are enhanced when she is said to pick flowers frequently (315). This is an epic motif of nymphs and girls, raped in a meadow. [...] Is she a vulnerable girl after all?’ (de Vries, 9)
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307 duris (venatibus): the ‘hard athleticism’ of the hunt. The epyllion contrasts duris and mollis. Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality 140 discusses ‘less direct but meaningful’ metaphorical language for effeminacy, for depicting a man or his attributes as being the opposite of the tough man of action: delicatus, enervis, fractus.
‘But above all, to call a man mollis (“soft”) or to associate him with mollitia makes the point that he is not fully masculine. He cites 4.380-6 as eloquent testimony.
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310ff. Chaste nymphs neglect their looks, their hair blows in the breeze (incompti 2.413 etc.) The nymph is portrayed as an elegant courtesan, and the scene is very different from the hard athleticism of the hunt.
formosus = ‘fascino sensuale’/’sensual charm’ (ROSATI), see McKeown 1989 on Amores 1.5.11.
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311 Mt Cytorus is in north-eastern Asia Minor; boxwood.
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313 It is appropriate for the water-nymph of this beautifully clear pool to have a transparent garment. Cf. Corinna’s delicate, diaphanous, ‘see-through’ garment in Amores 1.5. Cynthia wears transparent clothes, Propertius 1.2.2.