Hermaphroditus

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Hermaphroditus

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Hermaphroditus or Hermaphroditos (Ancient Greek

Ancient greek language

#REDIRECT Ancient Greek...
: ) was the child of Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
and Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
. Born a remarkably handsome boy, he was transformed into an androgynous being by united with the nymph

Nymph

In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large class of mythological entities in human form. They were typically associated with a particular location or landform....
Salmacis

Salmacis

In Greek mythology, Salmacis was an atypical naiad who rejected the ways of the virginal Culture of Greece goddess Artemis in favor of vanity and idleness....
. His name is the basis for the word hermaphrodite

Hermaphrodite

A hermaphrodite is an organism having both male and female reproductive organs. In many species, hermaphroditism is a common part of the life-cycle, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which partners are not separated into distinct male and female types of individual....
.

aphroditus's name is derived from those of his parents Hermes and Aphrodite.

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Ancient greek language

#REDIRECT Ancient Greek...
: ) was the child of Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
and Hermes

Hermes

Nymph

In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large class of mythological entities in human form. They were typically associated with a particular location or landform....
Salmacis

Salmacis

Hermaphrodite

Mythology

Hermaphroditus's name is derived from those of his parents Hermes and Aphrodite. He was raised by nymphs on Mount Ida

Mount Ida

In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida, Crete, and Mount Ida, Turkey, known as Mount Ida, Turkey in Classical times....
, a sacred mountain in Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the Southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges, changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the Hellespont....
(present day Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
). At the age of fifteen, he grew bored of his surroundings and traveled the cities of Lycia

Lycia

Lycia was a region in Anatolia in what are now the Provinces of Turkey of Antalya Province and Mugla Province on the southern coast of Turkey. It was a federation of ancient cities in the region and later a Roman province of the Roman Empire....
and Caria

Caria

Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionians and Dorians Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there....
. It was in the woods of Caria, near Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus was an ancient Greek city on the southwest coast of Caria, Anatolia , on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf . It was the site of the Siege of Halicarnassus, between Alexander the Great and the Persian Empire....
(modern Bodrum

Bodrum

Bodrum , formerly Halicarnassus , is a Turkey port town in Mugla Province, in the southwestern Aegean Region, Turkey of the country. It is located on the southern coast of Bodrum Peninsula, at a point that checks the entry into the Gulf of G?kova, and it faces the Greece island of Kos....
, Turkey

Turkey

Salmacis

In Greek mythology, Salmacis was an atypical naiad who rejected the ways of the virginal Culture of Greece goddess Artemis in favor of vanity and idleness....
the Naiad in her pool. She was overcome by lust for the boy, and tried to seduce him, but was rejected. When he thought her to be gone, Hermaphroditus undressed and entered the waters of the empty pool. Salmacis sprang out from behind a tree and jumped into the pool. She wrapped herself around the boy, forcibly kissing him and touching his breast. While he struggled, she called out to the gods that they should never part. Her wish was granted, and their bodies blended into one intersex form. Hermaphroditus, in his shame and grief, made his own vow, cursing the pool so that any other who bathes within it shall be transformed as well. "In this form the story was certainly not ancient" Karl Kerenyi

Karl Kerényi

One of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology, K?roly Ker?nyi was born in Temesv?r, Hungary , and then lived in Hungary....
noted, as compared the myth of the beautiful ephebe
Ephebos

Ephebos , also anglicised as ephebe or archaically ephebus , is a Greek language word for an adolescent age group or a social status reserved for that age in Classical antiquity....
with Narcissus

Narcissus (mythology)

Narcissus or Narkissos in Greek mythology was a hero from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. In the various stories, he became obsessed with his own reflection in a pool, and for one reason or another, dies because of it....
and Hyacinthus

Hyacinth (mythology)

Hyacinth is a divine hero from Ancient Greek mythology. His cult at Amyclae, where his tomb was located, at the feet of Apollo's statue, dates from the Mycenean era....
, who had an archaic hero-cult, and Hymenaios

Hymenaios

In Greek mythology, Hymenaios was a god of marriage ceremonies, inspiring feasts and song. A hymenaios is also a genre of Greek lyric poetry sung during the procession of the bride to the groom's house in which the god is addressed, in contrast to the Epithalamium, which was sung at the nuptial threshold....
.

Literature

His only literary attestation in classical literature is in Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
's Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)

The Metamorphoses by the Ancient Rome poet Ovid is a Narrative poetry in fifteen books that describes the Creation myth and history of the world....
, IV.402-533. Based on Ovid's telling, Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher .Beaumont was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas ....
wrote an epyllion in heroic couplet

Heroic couplet

A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English literature poetry, commonly used for epic poetry and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines....
s of the story, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (London 1602).

Algernon Swinburne's poem "Hermaphroditus" is subscribed Au Musée du Louvre, Mars 1863, leaving no doubt that it was the Borghese Hermaphroditus

Borghese Hermaphroditus

The Borghese Hermaphroditus is a type of marble sculpture depicting Hermaphroditus life size, reclining on a couch, with a form that is is partly derived from ancient portrayals of Venus and other female nudes, and partly from contemporaneous feminised Hellenistic portrayals of Dionysus....
that had inspired his ode, a poem to which Victorian reviewers took offence:

To what strange end hath some strange god made fair

The double blossom of two fruitless flowers?

Art

The most famous sculpture of this figure is the Borghese Hermaphroditus
Borghese Hermaphroditus

The Borghese Hermaphroditus is a type of marble sculpture depicting Hermaphroditus life size, reclining on a couch, with a form that is is partly derived from ancient portrayals of Venus and other female nudes, and partly from contemporaneous feminised Hellenistic portrayals of Dionysus....
.

The myth of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis was the basis for the early Genesis
Genesis (band)

Genesis are an English rock music band formed in 1967. With approximately 150 million albums sold worldwide, Genesis are among the top 30 List of best-selling music artists....
song, "The Fountain of Salmacis," the final track from the Nursery Cryme
Nursery Cryme

Nursery Cryme is the third studio album by Genesis and was recorded and released in 1971. It is also the first album to feature the lineup of Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks , Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins, and Steve Hackett; the latter two replacing John Mayhew and Anthony Phillips, on drums and guitar respectively, in 1970....
album (1971), which recounts the myth in some detail.

"Hermaphroditus" is a song by Frank Black and the Catholics which appears on the album Dog in the Sand.

Film

Hermaphroditus is depicted in the film Fellini Satyricon as a childlike, very physically weak god who is able to heal human supplicants afflicted by various ailments (but apparently unable to heal him/herself). It is not made clear if this pathological weakness has anything to do with Hermaphroditus' intersexed condition.

Hermaphroditus is not mentioned in the original Petronius

Petronius

Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman Empire courtier during the reign Nero. He is speculated to be the author of the Satyricon, a satire believed to have been written during the Neronian age....
novel Satyricon

Satyricon

Satyricon is a Latin language work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as a certain Titus Petronius....
, on which Fellini's film is loosely based. According to one source, the film episode "may be based on a Pseudo-Petronian poem sometimes printed along with the Satyricon".

Sources

Kerenyi, Karl. The Gods of the Greeks. London: Thames & Hudson, 1951.

External links

(e-text)