Catherine Campbell Rhorer – précis of article (‘Red and White in Ovid's Metamorphoses: The Mulberry Tree in the Tale of Pyramus and Thisbe’, Ramus 1980): Throughout the Metamorphoses Ovid draws special attention to the colours red and white. Red (rubor, rutilus, rubesco, puniceus, purpureus, ‘red’ or ‘purple’) is, of course, the colour of blood, of a blush, of ripening fruit, Tyrian dye, and the sky at dawn. White is the colour of marble, ivory, lilies, and the sky at noon. If we examine this pair in erotic contexts, however, we will find that white is associated with innocence and chastity, with the frigid absence of sexual feeling and with emotional and physical death. Red is associated with pudor, that sense of shame that afflicts the innocent whose eyes have just been opened to erotic reality, and with the heat of violence, both the violence of feeling (furor) and the violence of rape.

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Perhaps one of the most familiar examples of this colour contrast and its erotic associations occurs in the story of Pygmalion and his ivory maiden, in Book 10. Ovid is emphatic that the statue is ivory (10.247-48: niveum … ebur, ‘snowy ivory’; 255: ebur, twice) and that the ivory is white. Her ivory flesh, however, is so lifelike that the sculptor fears she will bruise. He dresses her like a real woman, adorns her with countless gifts, and makes her recline on a couch covered with red-dyed spreads (X.267: conlocat hanc stratis concha Sidonide tinctis).

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‘We will see Salmacis's desire intensified by Hermaphroditus's blush; elsewhere, the amator of Amores 2.5 is aroused after his cruelty to the woman makes her blush; Narcissus's frustrating desire intensifies after he sees his image redden in the pool (Met. 3.477- 93).’ Theresa M. Krier, ‘Sappho's Apples: The Allusiveness of Blushes in Ovid and Beaumont’, Comparative Literature Studies, 25.1 (1988), pp. 1-22

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332-3 H.’s blushes are like the moon tinted red [TAYLOR 84 + n.116].  The narrator refers to the moon in eclipse, when superstitious people would anxiously beat bronze cymbals to ‘help’ the moon recover its white form (see 7.207-8).  The mixture of red and white in the face is often used of the bellezza di efebi e fanciulle : see Bömer on 3.423.

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334-6 Salmacis tries to win erotic kisses by deception, a sister’s kiss.  Narcissus’ neck was also eburnea (335, cf. 3.422).

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335 Five dactyls illustrate her impulsiveness, but she stops when he protests.  Not for long, however.

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336 desinis the speech starts with a question in present indicative.  Notice that tecumque…ista relinquo highlights the dualism of nymph and place. [ANDERSON] But of course, H. is unaware of the hybrid nature of Salmacis.

338 Salmacis is withdrawing verbally as well as physically: H. is not Cupid now or a cute little brother, but hospes.  ‘Con questo appellativo Salmacide vuol essere rassicurante, e ristabilire le distanze volute da Ermafrodito’ ROSATI.

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339 frŭtex , ĭcis, m., ‘shrub, bush’; delitesco – ‘to conceal oneself, lurk’.

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340 She brings her knee down to the ground by bending.  

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339ff. Martindale p.13 calls this a perfect narrative moment: the hidden Salmacis watches the naked boy swimming in her pool. 

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In Shakespeare’s sonnet XX, there is a line about the fair youth, his body ‘is prickt…out for womens pleasure’. 
 
There is a special quality of sensuality about such unseen watching, perfectly caught in Milton, PL 9.421ff. where Satan watches Eve among the flowers.  Bartholomäus Spranger painted the moment (Vienna).

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In The taming of the shrew, Induction ii.47ff.:
Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight
Adonis painted by a running brook
And Cytherea all in sedges hid,
Which seem to move and wanton with her breath,
Even as the waving sedges play with wind.

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‘Focalization in the story seems to be achieved through Salmacis who reifies the boy. She appears to have a “male gaze”.  Therefore the narrator [Alcithoë] who looks with Salmacis also possesses a “male gaze”.  In this she once more transgresses the limits of traditional femininity that in appearance she tries to defend.’ [SALZMAN 163, also 37 + n.36, an observation that gazing at a puer would not have been a problem for an ancient male reader, though ‘the objectification of the male does not do great wonders for the female reader’]. On the spying, Gianpiero Rosati cites Ovid, Heroides 18.118    

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Donald Lateiner (134): ‘More vulnerable without the protection of land and the self-esteem of sex-identified clothes, Hermaphroditus’ story ends with his entwinement and capture.