(ALEXANDRA CHAMPANIS)
Chapter 1
Introduction
It cannot be disputed that the Augustan poet, Ovid, was interested in the lives of women. Whatever else can be said of him, it is clear that females play a significant role in the poet’s works, especially his great epic, the Metamorphoses, however problematic that role might be. While at times they are hunted, imprisoned, transformed and made objects of the male gaze, women themselves act vengefully, pursue ‘unnatural’ relationships, murder and betray their loved ones. They also tell stories, are part of loving relationships, and are devoted mothers.
There are episodes of rape in Ovid’s earlier and later works, but depictions of sexual violence are most abundant in the Metamorphoses. In Ovid’s first venture into hexameter, there are more than fifty tales of rape and attempted rape (Curran 1984: 263), a large number, considering that the Metamorphoses is made up of only fifteen books. Some accounts are long and detailed while others are merely referred to in passing. Rape victims are most likely to be female and their rapists are most likely to be male; however, there is one very graphic tale of the attempted rape of Hermaphroditus by a nymph, Salmacis. In the Metamorphoses, male rapists appear to go largely unpunished1 and it seems that it is often the victims of rape or the potential victims of rape who themselves suffer penalties for the crime.
This thesis undertakes to examine the violation and violence of women and Ovid’s representation of these women in the Metamorphoses. The aim is to analyse and catalogue the representation of rape victims and, in as far as it is possible, to understand the governing social mores and values that perhaps shaped these representations. It seeks to provide an active reading of Ovid and his critics. I shall observe Ovid’s focalisation of victims and examine how his narration might betray his values and attitudes and those of his contemporary audience. This thesis will survey the different ways in which this poet is read by modern scholars, either as misogynistic, sympathetic or more neutral, and will discuss the question of authorial intent and its validity as an interpretive objective. The poet’s representation of rape victims will be used to reflect on the different ways that Ovid and his poem can be read.
In chapter 7, sexually aggressive women in the Metamorphoses are examined, focusing on Salmacis and her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus. This chapter looks at the negative consequences that appear to be reserved for sexually active females. Women, who are active in the epic, are made exaggeratedly so and are shown to be ‘unnatural’ to the extent that they become monstrous. These women are not permitted agency in their sexuality or in their lives without consequently being portrayed as monstrous and unnatural. This is consistent with Roman sexual mores, by which an ‘active’ woman was considered abnormal. Women were expected to be passive, in every sense, and I argue that Ovid’s narratives reflect this normative rule. In chapter 8, conclusions are drawn.
2.3.2 Sympathetic Ovid: as much muse and poetry as she is flesh and blood
Salzman-Mitchell is especially interested in the gaze in the Metamorphoses and comments that “rape is a pervasive theme in Ovid’s epic and a situation where the male gaze is acting, controlling and penetrating” (2005: 23). The author asks whether a female gaze can be penetrative and whether women would even want to possess such a gaze (32). She uses Salmacis as the closest example of a woman with a “penetrative gaze” and we know that Salmacis is punished for her “penetrative gaze” with the loss of both her identity and her consciousness. Salzman-Mitchell explains, “a woman who has a powerful gaze is still not in the same position as a man, as she cannot stop being a woman and, like Salmacis, loses even her own identity”. In the Metamorphoses, there is no human female who successfully adopts a “penetrative gaze”, instead, “[women] are normally punished and abandoned and their gazes are not as paralyzing and controlling as those of men.” Salzman-Mitchell, however, argues that there is an exception in those women who observe events and who are able to narrate their stories and somehow triumph. These women can find a feminine alternative to the male gaze (206). Salzman-Mitchell believes that women in the Metamorphoses not only leave their mark on the poem and in Latin literature when they narrate their stories and transmit their gazes to other women but also “stimulate other women to forge cooperative and personal readings from a feminine perspective” (207).
6.3.2 Women as Victims of Silencing
Richlin notes that women regularly suffer loss of speech in the Metamorphoses (1992: 165). When a woman is raped, she is inevitably transformed and with this transformation her voice and identity are lost.
It is one of the stories which the Minyeides tell, however, which is the most conclusive evidence that silence is peculiarly a woman’s punishment: the story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (Met. IV. 285-388). In this episode, the roles of rapist and rape victim are reversed. Salmacis, a nymph, attempts to rape Hermaphroditus, a male youth. Yet when the two are joined together, according to Salmacis’ prayer, it is Salmacis who is silenced and only Hermaphroditus’ voice remains. This is in contrast to other rapes where it is the female victim who is transformed and silenced. This is the only story of a rape in which the rapist is female and it is the only story in which the rapist is silenced, ensuring that the pattern remains the same: the female is silenced.
Chapter 7: Salmacis and Sexually ‘Aggressive’ Women
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Salmacis: The Un-Ovidian Nymph
7.3 ‘Other’ Women in the Metamorphoses
7.4 Pygmalion and his Statue
7.5 Conclusion
Chapter 7 Salmacis and ‘Aggressive’ Women
7.1 Introduction
This chapter will look at the episode of Salmacis: Ovid’s exception to the rule of the passive, anti-sexual 'nymph-huntress'. I focus on the depiction of female sexual aggression in Salmacis as abnormal and I discuss her in relation to other sexually aggressive or ‘active’ figures such as Byblis, Myrrha, and Scylla. It cannot be argued that Ovid is not interested in illicit passions, especially those where women are the active party. In the Ars Amatoria the poet provides a catalogue of mythical heroines “who yield to excessive and illicit passion . . . Ovid represents female passion as excessive, uncontrolled, and, accordingly, properly subject to male rule” (Keith 2009: 360). In the Metamorphoses too there is a “sequence of powerful yet deranged women” (Barkan 1986: 41). I argue that these women, who are active rather than passive, are portrayed as monstrous and abnormal, either in their desires or their actions, because they are ‘unnatural’ and inverted: a sexually aggressive rather than passive female. The disastrous outcomes of their denatured desires stand in sharp contrast with that of Pygmalion and his love for an inanimate statue, with its felicitous outcome.
7.2 Salmacis: The Un-Ovidian Nymph
In the Salmacis episode, the reader is faced with two ideas which are at odds with the rest of the nymph episodes in the Metamorphoses: firstly, we are confronted with a nymph who actively seeks sexual gratification and thus contradicts the typical characterization of the nymph as passive and virginal. Secondly, in Salmacis we are introduced to the one and only female rapist in Ovid’s epic. We, as readers, quickly realize that the nymph is not like the nymphs to whom we have become accustomed. Salmacis’ personality is “first ‘negatively’ defined with reference to the anti-sexual norm” (Davis 1983:63).3 She cannot hunt, sed nec venatibus apta, nor is she skilled with a bow, nec arcus flectere quae soleat, she is unused to running, nec quae contendere cursu, and she is the only nymph unknown to Artemis, solaque naiadum celeri non nota Dianae (Met. IV. 302-4). With this separation from the chaste Hunt, we may begin to suspect that Salmacis will not guard her virginity as desperately as the nymphs we have already considered.
Salmacis is pointedly contrasted with the other nymphs of the Metamorphoses (Robinson 1999: 218): unlike the virgin nymphs, she is concerned with her appearance, and often sits combing her hair, saepe Cytoriaco deducit pectine crines, and looking at her reflection in the water, spectatas consulit undas (Met. IV. 311-12). This is in contrast with Daphne and Callisto who pay no attention to their appearance, and appear au naturel (especially when it comes to hairstyle). Unlike Arethusa, Salmacis is not estranged from her body but rather “she accepts it and attempts to enhance its attractiveness to others” (Davis 1983: 65). As we have seen in the other episodes dealing with the rape of a nymph, the nymph is usually found in “a becoming state of disarray from the exertion” (Nagle 1984: 249). Salmacis refuses to hunt or engage in any other physical activity, but prefers to laze about the pool or pick flowers (Met. IV. 313-15) and does not spend her time in the woods like Daphne, Callisto, Syrinx, and Arethusa. It is her opposition to the Hunt life that makes the reader wonder again whether she will be opposed to a life of virginity as well (Robinson 1999: 218) since in the Metamorphoses a love of physical activity is closely associated with determined purity (Anderson 1997: 441).
As Salmacis never hunts or engages in any other physical activity, she is never in ‘a becoming state of disarray’; instead she is well groomed and physically self-aware. This kind of beauty, riddled with artifice, is not appealing in the Metamorphoses (this type of beauty was also not appealing to other Roman elegists) and neither are her preferred pastimes. Salmacis is unattractive because it is too important to her that she be attractive and she leaves no place for natural beauty. The male deities of the Metamorphoses prefer a beautiful virgin, who rejects all suitors and the thought of marriage. Up to now, Ovid has told only of the rapes of “unwilling young women, maidens deeply committed to the protection of their sexual integrity” (Curran 1984: 279) and this is what the audience may mistakenly but reasonably expect to happen with Salmacis.
At the beginning of the episode, the reader may fairly expect the usual rape of a virgin nymph as she rests by a secluded pool in the customary locus amoenus. However, as the episode proceeds, the reader’s expectations are upset as she learns of Salmacis’ estrangement from the Ovidian nymphs’ traditional way of life. It is important, however, to recognize that Ovid has generated the motif of the anti-sexual nymph huntress and so the “‘deviant’ Salmacis who shatters the stereotyped Daphne image is ‘abnormal’ only with respect to the narrative norm he himself has created” (Davis 1983: 65). We have been primed by Ovid to expect Salmacis to be passive and virginal, a beautiful huntress who is unconcerned with her appearance. When the poet presents us with such an ‘anti-nymph’ we are aware of the normalizing pattern of female representations that he himself has contrived. With this new kind of nymph we find ourselves unsure as to what to expect and Ovid continues to entice, surprise and entertain his audience.
Salmacis is picking flowers when she sees Hermaphroditus for the first time (See Robinson (1999: 218), Keith (1999: 217) and Hinds (2002: 133) for the act of picking flowers as a precursor to a rape scene. However, it is usually the girl who is picking flowers who is to be the victim, cf. Persephone). Just like the rapists Zeus and Apollo, she immediately wants what she sees (Met. IV. 316). 8 The nymph is made “parallel to all those male lovers in Ovid’s rape scenes whose sight of the beloved is immediately and inappropriately translated into violent action” (Fowler 2000: 163). Unlike Ovid’s male rapists, Salmacis restrains herself long enough to compose herself and to ensure that she is at her most beautiful (Met. IV. 317-19), apparently unaware that natural, rather than cultivated beauty is appealing in the world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Salmacis approaches Hermaphroditus just as Apollo or Zeus do their victims and her speech echoes that of Odysseus to Nausicäa in Book VI of the Odyssey (Robinson 1999: 218). Nugent comments that Salmacis is always the object rather than the subject and so does not see but is seen and does not speak but is spoken to. When she does speak, however, her words are not her own but rather a coarse version of Odysseus’s courtly speech to Nausicaa (1990: 176). In the nymph’s mouth, Odysseus’ respectful praise of a maiden becomes “a brutally frank sexual proposition” (Janan 1994: 431). Keith argues that it is “in wholesale inversion of the normative gender roles of epic” that Salmacis approaches Hermaphroditus (1999: 218). In contrast to Apollo’s speech to Daphne or Zeus’s to Callisto (and Io, and others), Salmacis’ proposition is “a model of frankness” (Nagle 1984: 250). Compared to the male gods who try to flatter and compliment their way into sexual intercourse with women, Salmacis’ blunt proposal is overly aggressive. (Had she had access to Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, she would find herself better versed in how to effectively attract and keep a lover.) She is even more forceful than those male gods who rape maidens. She is demonstrated as being monstrous not only in that she is a female rapist but because her aggressive forwardness is unmitigated by the arts of persuasion.
Similarly to Daphne and Leucothoe, whose flight and fear only enhance their beauty, Hermaphroditus blushes at Salmacis’ speech and his blush becomes him, sed et erubuisse decebat (Met. IV. 330). At Salmacis’ insistence on receiving even a sister’s kiss, Hermaphroditus threatens to leave, causing Salmacis to retreat into the bushes to watch secretly her object of desire (Met. IV. 333-40). In this scene both Salmacis and Hermaphroditus are “playing the male and female part”. Salmacis is the “lustful deity” while Hermaphroditus is the virginal nymph, intent on preserving his virginity (Robinson 1999: 218). Richlin comments that Salmacis’ voyeurism as she watches naked Hermaphroditus from her hiding place in the bushes, rivals that of even Tereus (1992: 165). At the sight of Hermaphroditus’ naked body, like the male rapists in the Metamorphoses, Salmacis can hardly contain herself. Her eyes burn with desire, flagrant quoque lumina nymphae, just like the sun’s rays reflected in a mirror (Met. IV. 347-49). We can expect that something violent is about to happen since “the sun is frequently suggestive of danger, a source of violence and destruction” (Parry 1964: 277). However, we expect that Hermaphroditus, the rape victim, will suffer rather than Salmacis, the rapist. Salmacis throws aside her clothes in order to join Hermaphroditus in the pool (Met. IV. 356- 57). Fowler condemns Salmacis for not being satisfied with just watching Hermaphroditus and for attempting to join with him instead (2000: 162). Irigaray, however, argues that women take more pleasure from touching than from looking (1985: 26).
There is no such rebuke from critics for male rapists in the Metamorphoses, since, apparently male rapists do not have to be satisfied with contemplation, and they face no negative consequences from rape. (Tereus is an exception) It is because she is a female figure that her refusal to defer her desire to couple with Hermaphroditus causes Salmacis to lose her identity later on in the episode (Ibid.). Male rapists in the Metamorphoses need not fear the loss of their identity after they rape a woman. Salmacis demonstrates in her (too) female self the male characteristic of intolerance of delay, mora, when she refuses to defer her pleasure (163), but unlike her male counterparts she is punished by our author for this impatience. The narration of the attempted rape runs over fourteen verses, in contrast to the brief and sometimes elliptical descriptions given to attacks on females.
Nagle believes that the extended description of Salmacis’ attempted rape of Hermaphroditus demonstrates her struggle to overcome Hermaphroditus and this contrasts with the ease with which male gods overcome women (1984: 251). Nagle has a point, but it is also reasonable to assume that Ovid is hoping to achieve a novel and surprising dramatic effect as he describes in full the very significant attempted rape of a male youth by a female nymph. In the same way, this episode is the only one which spells out explicit physical contact (Richlin 1992: 165). Ovid is intent on extracting as much drama as he can from this already graphic episode. The poet moves away from the usual Homeric similes of a greyhound after a hare or a wolf chasing a lamb and instead compares Salmacis to a snake attacking an eagle, ivy growing on trees or towers, and an octopus attacking its prey (Met. IV. 361-67). Ovid not only inverts the natural order of things by comparing Salmacis to a snake attacking an eagle but he creates striking comparisons that invoke strong images of smothering in the similes of ivy growing on trees or towers, and an octopus catching its prey. These similes imply that “the sexually aggressive female is not only dangerous but potentially monstrous, or capable of producing monstrous effects” (Segal 1998: 21). Nugent declares that these similes leave “little doubt that the touch of woman is to be compared to confrontation with the bestial or even the monstrous” (1990: 175).
Richlin comments that this episode “over-determines Salmacis’ desire and marks its abnormality” (1992: 165). Salmacis’ lustfulness is described in full unlike that of the male rapists in the Metamorphoses and she is made to seem to be out of control of her feelings and actions:
The kunoichi nymph's bright eyes of green
are embers, as the lad kissed by the spring
divides the liquid glass with his lithe limbs,
with all his strength, turning to left, to right;
the naked swimmer, glittering and cool,
looks as fair as a greenhouse lily, seen
through frosted lattice in the winter, or
a porcelain doll shut in a glass case.
Thus, as he cools himself, she is on fire,
retracing every muscle of his frame
and following his wake where he careens,
dazzled by his white form in liquid glass.
Now he looks fairer than dressed and on land!
Her peridot orbs blaze with lightning flash,
like mirrors facing rays of th'August sun,
showing through these twin window-panes the flame
that rises within her and can't be quenched
but with his presence. And yet the high ground
is hers: who's she? The Lady of the Spring,
with webbed fingers and toes just like a frog's,
and gills to breathe with as well as her lungs,
and in that freshwater, power is hers.
And she cannot delay her thirst, no more!
Salmacis is dazed by Hermaphroditus’ naked body, her eyes burn like the sun and she can barely restrain herself, so mad is she with lust. Her desire is clear, if not a little overwhelming. Of male rapists, we learn only that they see a woman and they desire her. Male rapists are overcome with desire when they see the object of their lust but they do not appear to be critically judged in the text and it is not implied that they are ‘against nature’. This is because males are 'naturally' allowed to be dominant and active while females have no choice but to be passive (Parker 1997: 48). When a female is active, she is behaving “abnormally”. Salmacis is already unnatural in the eyes of the Roman audience because she is initiating contact with Hermaphroditus, and because she pursues and attempts to engage. Salmacis is Ovid’s over-determined monster of female, sexual will.
As Salmacis and Hermaphroditus struggle in the water, Salmacis realizes that she cannot achieve what she desires and she prays for outside assistance.Unlike the other nymphs of the Metamorphoses, Salmacis does not, of course, pray for escape from union with Hermaphroditus, but that that she may never be separated from him, ita di, iubeatis, et istum nulla dies a me nec me deducat ab isto (Met. IV. 371-72). Salmacis and Hermaphroditus are joined into one form, nec femina dici nec puer ut possit, neutrumque et utrumque videntur (Met. IV. 378-79). However, although Salmacis’ prayer has been answered, it is not answered in the way that she most likely wanted. After their union, Salmacis no longer exists and it is only Hermaphroditus’ conscience that is left in the transformed body. Salmacis has been conclusively eliminated from the story. It is important to note that “even in suffering feminization the male body is a visible presence, easily legible; even in exerting power the female body is hidden, secret, in need of elucidation and the narrativizing or interpretation of another” (Nugent 1990: 165). Nugent argues that although Hermaphroditus is the ‘victim’ of the episode, of the attempted rape, he, in fact, “never relinquishes male subjectivity or potency” (163), rather, in the conclusion of the episode, he remains “what he already is – and that is a male subject, always fully conscious of himself as such” (164).
Women who possess penetrative and performative eyes are punished or destroyed in the Metamorphoses (Salzman-Mitchell 2005: 13). This is true of Salmacis, who attempted to take on a male role but ultimately failed since “as a female, she is finally unable to usurp control of the gaze from the male” (Keith 1999: 219). Women are only granted a certain degree of agency before they begin to become monstrous. In this episode, the “first presentation of this phallic female par excellence . . . is organized not in terms of aggression or power but in terms of negation, lack, absence” (Nugent 1990: 167). Although it appears that Ovid has created a powerful woman, he describes her in terms of what she lacks, what she is not. Nugent argues that “on every level – from how she sees, to how she desires, to how she acts on that desire, to how she speaks – Ovid’s representation of the castrating nymphomaniac tends, either overtly or covertly, to graft masculine modes of discourse onto the female Other, figured mainly as lack or as reflection of the (masculine) Same” (176). Ovid ensures that Salmacis is portrayed as abnormal throughout the episode by explicitly contrasting her against the motif of the virginal nymph. Salmacis is also clearly punished for being active and abnormal when she is removed from the narrative. In other episodes, it is the nymph as victim of rape who is transformed into a tree, or a cow, or reeds and who loses her identity. In this episode, however, it is Salmacis, the attempted rapist, who loses her identity. Salmacis acts ‘unnaturally’ throughout the episode and is punished at the end of it for her deviation from the norm which Ovid has created.
While Salmacis’ desire rather than her choice of lover is portrayed as abnormal, there are still more sexually aggressive women in the Metamorphoses whose objects of desire can be considered anything but ‘natural’ (ie parental incest, sibling incest, zoophilia --Pasiphae and the Cretan Bull--, falling in love with the enemy). These desires and the actions these female figures take are all invariably disastrous for the women involved and as a result the majority of them lose their human identity.
Their desire is outrageous and Ovid emphasizes that these women become mad with passion, that they lose themselves. They might begin as rational women but once they give in to their passions, they begin a downward spiral that will only end in disaster. Their agency leads to the quest for the fulfilment of an abnormal desire and is the expression of a supposedly intrinsic unnaturalness.
Ovid seems keen to experiment with gender roles but only to a certain extent: “to try on a female role is important for Ovid; but that role, like the trying on, has its limits” (Richlin 1992: 166). The poet does not allow for women to be too active without consequences. The praeceptor’s claim about women’s desire in the Ars Amatoria (Ars Am. I. 341-42) is ‘proven’ correct in the Metamorphoses. On the basis of the above examples, women’s lust is portrayed as very near madness. This latent madness is, however, only actualized in active women. In the Metamorphoses, women are allowed to be active only to a certain point before they become monstrous. The link between female desiring and social and biological abnormality is made explicit in these stories.
7.4 Pygmalion and his Statue
The female figures discussed above are punished for loving inappropriate men and for not loving within the boundaries of the law. Their stories compare to that of Pygmalion and his love for a statue he has sculpted himself. Such a comparison demonstrates the apparent bias that existed between what men are allowed to love and what is permitted for women.
Agency is disastrous for women in the Metamorphoses. Ovid enjoys experimenting with gender roles and norms but he does not take his experimentation too far. Men are allowed to be passive while women are not. Salmacis and the other active women discussed above do not benefit from their agency; instead they are the victims of abnormal desires of which their unusual agency is both the expression and the cause. Ovid portrays these women as crazed and irrational which contrasts strongly with his gentle, indulgent portrayal of Pygmalion. Pygmalion is not irrational but eccentric. Ovid’s praeceptor in the Ars Amatoria declares that women are not meant to do the asking. In the Metamorphoses, women who do try to initiate sexual love become monsters in their desire and invariably suffer because of their agency, however, even their agency is depicted as a form of grotesque helplessness or passivity.
PART III: OVERVIEW
Chapter 8: Conclusion
The use of silence as a punishment (and the subsequent loss of identity), especially for innocent victims of rape, seems to have been a significant motif for Ovid. In his epic, rape victims are inevitably silenced: some through transformation at the hands of their rapist, some through benevolent third parties who wish to save the victims from rape, and some through the malevolence of jealous deities. Salmacis is silenced absolutely when she is removed from the narrative, dissolving into a mere quality of the surviving subject, Hermaphroditus. The relationship between speech and identity is evidently an important one for Ovid. As a poet, he relied on his ability to express himself to establish his own identity, making it clear why such a relationship would be thematic in the poem. Ovid’s preoccupation with this theme can also, perhaps, explain how sympathy can be read in those episodes, which deal with victims’ silence and their loss of identity.
While it is impossible to know fully Ovid’s intentions behind what he wrote, as a poet, one of his primary goals would have been to create a lastingly entertaining work, one that people would delight to hear and read. The objective to entertain does not mean, however, that misogyny and sympathy cannot be read in the Metamorphoses, since entertainment, misogyny and sympathy are not mutually exclusive. It is unlikely that we will ever know what Ovid’s motives were. Perhaps the Metamorphoses is a frank and unapologetically misogynistic treatment of rape victims, or perhaps it was designed to inspire sympathy for these women. All we can ever know definitely is how we, his modern readers, read and react to the Metamorphoses. Every reader is subject to his or her own historical and social context and responds in different ways to different works. Ovid’s representation of rape victims provides ample space to reflect on the different ways that he and his poem can be read. Whatever Ovid’s intentions for the Metamorphoses were, it cannot be doubted that his text at least holds up a mirror to the negative treatment of women. Intended or not, the poet shows up attitudes to both rape and its victims and the plight of women. By depicting such violence against women, Ovid exposes the gender equalities that existed during his time. While important scholars like Richlin and Curran read the poet as unquestionably either misogynistic (Richlin) or sympathetic (Curran), I find it hard to pin him down, other than as always seeking to give or share pleasure in his poetic world. Although I struggle sometimes with his treatments of female figures, I understand that my own context significantly influences my reading and that I would have difficulty relating to the Roman audience for whom this was written, influenced as they were by their own context, and current Roman attitudes to and laws concerning rape. While I am informed by the various opinions provided by Ovidian scholars on the poet, himself, and his epic, I do not read Ovid or his critics passively. I am an active reader – a stance, which the poem invites – and above all I wish to remain a sympathetic reader of the Roman poet Ovid.
It is evident that the Metamorphoses leaves space for a wide range of readings, a characteristic, which has no doubt contributed to the poem’s continuing popularity 2000 years after it was written. It is also clear that the Metamorphoses can, in parts, be read as showing either misogynistic or sympathetic colourings. The problem, however, lies in characterizing the poet and the poem as unquestionably either one or the other, when there are recurrences of both nuances (and more) throughout the work. It is important to keep in mind, as we research his works, what Ovid’s objectives would have been as an artist and poet: he sought to create entertaining and stimulating pieces for his audience and himself, he sought to be memorable and liked, he sought to charm and even seduce. It is possible that he is neither a misogynist nor particularly sympathetic towards women, but rather is merely 'opportunistic' in his use of sources and choices of material for his public, however problematic that might be for a modern audience, and however much his material may betray the received opinions of his day. Ovid appears to have been amoral rather than immoral in his choice of material and he understood and exploited the power of sensational writing. His writing is often gratuitously violent and his imagery provocative in order to draw in his audience and to keep them stimulated. Instead of focusing on what Ovid’s intentions might have been, it is more important to look at what Ovid’s texts reveal about contemporary Augustan Rome. We should see this poet’s works as important, if somewhat distorting, reflections of the social values of his contemporaries.
Davis, G. 1983. The Death of Procris: “Amor” and the Hunt in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo S.P.A.
Keith, A. 2009. ‘Sexuality and Gender.’ In P.E. Knox, (ed.), A Companion to Ovid, 355-369. United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell.
Nagle, B. R. 1984. ‘Amor, Ira and Sexual Identity in Ovid's Metamorphoses.’ Classical Antiquity. 3, 2:236-255.
Nugent, G. 1990. ‘This Sex Which Is Not One: De-Constructing Ovid’s Hermaphrodite.’ Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 2,1:160-185.
Richlin, A. 1992. ‘Reading Ovid's Rapes.’ In A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, 158-179. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Salzman-Mitchell, P.B. 2005. A Web of Fantasies: Gaze, Image, and Gender in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Victim: Hermaphroditus
Aggressor: Salmacis
Book and Verse Numbers: IV.285-388
Attempted or Successful Assault? Attempted
Indirect Victims: None
Type of Transformation: Hermaphroditus and Salmacis become one but Salmacis ceases to exist after the transformation.
Preventive or Vindictive Transformation? Neither
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