A HONEYCOMB FOR SALMACIS

There are the fascinating transformations of sexuality (in the Metamorphoses). Iphis (Book IX:764) and Caeneus (Book XII:146), are girls who become boys: Salmacis and Hermaphroditus merge bodies (Book IV:346): and Tiresias, experiences life as a woman and then is transformed back into a man, making him uniquely qualified to testify to the superior pleasure women derive from sexual intercourse (Book III:316). Ovid subversively both attests to the fluidity of sexuality, and to the possibilities of female erotic delight, even self-sufficiency.

'Salmacis and Hermaphroditus’

Ovid evokes nature constantly through pastoral description, sheer visual charm that prompted later a wealth of Renaissance landscape imagery. 

Salmacis entwines Hermaphroditus in the pool ‘clear to its very depths’, clasping his ivory-white neck (Book IV:346). 

The son of Hermes by Aphrodite is Hermaphroditus, with whom Salmacis falls in love and begs to be joined to him eternally. The gods grant her prayer and the two form a bi-sexual product of mind and beauty (Book IV:274). 

Hermes himself is mental dexterity and cunning. He achieves his ends by seductive speech, and the swiftness of his mental passage on winged feet. He gained his herald’s staff with the entwined snakes, the caduceus that brings sleep and healing, on the boundaries of wakefulness and illness. The tales of his early life reveal a strong link between him and Apollo, with echoes of Phoebus’ medicine, oracular power, and musical arts.

As god of communication he punishes betrayal by speech: so he turns informers to stone, that dead medium, the opposite of living speech (Book II:676), and as a god of paths, doorways and agreements, he petrifies the envious Aglauros, whose sister Herse he is in love with, turning her own words into a form of punishing contract (Book II:812). He transmits the power of language, eloquence, and negotiation, to the world, in the force of speech and persuasiveness.

Aphrodite is not merely lust, no mere sexuality. Though she is the prostitute and the goddess of prostitutes, she is the deeper movement of love also. She is committed passion that dies of love for its object: she is a tenderness that stirs the god to pity, and the goddess to heart-broken mourning. She is the betrayed and the betrayer but also the faithful and the entangled. She is the body’s remorseless stirring, but she is also the mind and spirit’s sweet embrace. So Echo wasted away with love for Narcissus (Book III:359) ‘the more she followed the closer she burned’: and Salmacis fused with Hermaphroditus (Book IV:346) ‘hanging there’, twined round his head and feet.

If woman is exceptionally fortunate she will find love and affection, rescued like Andromeda (Book IV:753), finding long-lasting marriage like Harmonia (Book IV:563), or fused like Salmacis with her lover (Book IV:346).