The legend of Hermaphroditos

The legend of Hermaphroditos

Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, was usually considered female, but, on the island of Kypros (Cyprus), she was worshipped in a male form under the masculine name Aphroditos. In Greek art, Aphroditos is typically portrayed as an androgynous figure; he wears a kind of dress that the Greeks traditionally regarded as feminine, but yet he is lifting up the dress to show everyone his erect penis. In some depictions, he is also shown with a beard to further emphasize his male aspect.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ancient Greek marble herma of Aphroditos, the male form of the goddess Aphrodite, now held in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm

Aphroditos was sometimes known by the name “Hermaphroditos,” which means “Aphroditos in the form of a herma,” since hermai were a kind of statue that was commonly used in ancient Greece to mark boundaries. Eventually, however, Hermaphroditos became seen not as a form of Aphrodite, but rather the son of Aphrodite and the god Hermes.

The cult of Aphroditos was apparently introduced to Athens by at least around the late fourth century BCE. The Greek historian Philochoros of Athens (lived c. 340 – c. 261 BCE) wrote a work titled Atthis, in which he apparently described, among many other things, the cult of Aphroditos in Athens at this time. A fragment of the work that has been preserved through quotation by the Roman antiquarian Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, who lived in around the early fifth century CE, in his Saturnalia 3.8.2 records that men made sacrifices to Aphroditos wearing women’s clothing and women made sacrifices to him wearing men’s clothing.

 In Book Four of his Metamorphoses, Ovid tells a story about Hermaphroditos. According to Ovid, Hermaphroditos was raised by naiads in the caves underneath Mount Ida in Phrygia, but, when he turned fifteen, he left Mount Ida to visit Asia Minor. In the middle of the woods in the land of Karia, he found a beautiful pond filled with the clearest water and was tempted to take a bath in it.

There was, however, a nymph named Salmacis who lived near the pond. She saw him and was instantly overcome with mad lust for him. She went to him and attempted to seduce him, but he spurned her advances, so she pretended to leave. Thinking that she was really gone, Hermaphroditos stripped himself naked and went into the pool to bathe. Then Salmacis sprang out from where she was hiding behind a tree and tried to take him by force, wrapping herself around him, kissing him, and pressing her skin against his.

Hermaphroditos tried to fight back, but Salmacis prayed to the deities that she and him would become one flesh. Her prayer was granted and their bodies blended into one. Hermaphroditos was horrified to discover that he had the body and voice of a woman, but the penis and testicles of a man. Therefore, he prayed to his mother Aphrodite and his father Hermes to curse any man who tried to swim in the pool he had tried to bathe in and to make him effeminate like him.

This myth has had particularly great cultural influence; there are a large number of surviving ancient statues of Aphroditos/Hermaphroditos—some of which are very famous—and the word hermaphrodite was widely used until very recently to refer to the people we now describe as “intersex.”