When all their talk was done, Alcithoe—
whose turn to tell a story now had come—
running her shuttle swiftly through the threads
upon her loom, said: “Daphnis’ love is too
well known to be retold: that shepherd boy
of Ida, whom a nymph—as her revenge
against a rival—turned to stone; so sharp
are wounds that pierce a jealous lover’s heart.
Nor shall I tell how Sithon, when the laws
of nature had been overturned, was now
a woman, now a man—ambiguous.
Nor how the faithful friend of the boy Jove
has now become hard metal; nor how those
Curetes sprang from heavy rains; nor how
Crocus and Smilace were changed to flowers.
I set these tales aside: to charm your mind,
it is a newer tale that I’ll recite.
You’ll hear just how Salmacis’ fountain gained
so much ill-fame, why it can enervate
the limbs of any man: who dares to bathe
within its waves is rendered soft and weak.
Latin [266–87]
Although that fountain’s power is well known,
its cause has been revealed to few alone.
“Within the caves of Ida, Naiads nursed
a little boy, the son of Hermes and
the Cytherean goddess. In his face
one saw his father and his mother traced:
his name—Hermaphroditus—linked their names.
Three-times-five years had passed, and now he left
his Ida—mountain that had nurtured him.
The toils of traveling were lightened by
his curiosity; for him, the sight
of unknown lands and rivers brought delight.
The Lycian towns were also on his way,
as were the Carians, who lived beside
the Lycians. Here he saw a gleaming pool—
so clear that one could see the very bottom.
No marsh reeds and no random weeds had clogged
its waters, and no spiky rushes marred
the surface: it was clear. And it was ringed
by meadows: ever fresh, that grass was green.
Those waters were a Naiad’s home, but she
had little taste for hunting, archery,
or racing with her feet—the only nymph
who never was inclined to join the swift
Diana’s company. Her sisters—so
they say—would urge her: ‘Do take up the bow
or javelin, Salmacis; it is best
to vary ease with tougher tasks—hard tests.’
But hardships did not draw her; she took up
no spear, no colored quiver, and she shunned
the hunt. Instead, she bathes her lovely limbs
in her own pool: there, with a boxwood comb,
she often smooths her hair; that she may see
what best becomes her, she consults the waves;
and now, in a transparent robe, she rests
along the tender leaves, the tender grass,
or—often—gathers flowers. And by chance,
Latin [287–315]
just when the boy had come, she was among
the flowers. What she saw, she wanted: him.
“Though eager to approach him, she held back.
She needed calm, and so she smoothed her dress
and studied what expression would seem best;
she would have nothing mar her loveliness.
Then she began with this: ‘Dear boy, you are
most worthy to be taken for a god;
and if a god, you must be Cupid; if
you are a mortal, they are surely blessed—
those who gave birth to you. Much happiness
must be your brother’s; and most fortunate,
your sister, if you have one, and the nurse
who gave you suck; but blessed above them all
must be your promised bride—if there’s a girl
whom you have graced with such great dignity!
If that’s the case, let us love furtively.
But if you have no bride as yet, choose me;
together, on one bed, we two can wed.’
“Then she fell still; he blushed (in truth, the boy
was ignorant of love). But that blush just
made him more handsome; for his color was
like that of apples on a sun-drenched tree,
or ivory when painted, or the tone
the moon takes when, beneath its whiteness, glows
some redness—and the brazen cymbals clash
in vain, trying to ward off the eclipse.
But she can’t stop; again, again the nymph
pleads for his kisses, even if they are
the sort a sister gets; she was about
to fling her arms around his ivory neck,
when he cried out: ‘Enough! If you don’t stop,
I’ll leave and you—alone—can keep this spot.’
Salmacis shuddered, and ‘Dear stranger, I
will yield this place to you’ was her reply.
At that, she feigned departure—but she kept
Latin [315–38]
her eyes upon him, always turning back.
Then, hiding in a nearby thicket, she
crouched low among the hedges, on her knees.
He—thinking he was now alone, not seen—
roams freely round the meadow; and he bathes
from toe to heel his feet within the waves,
which come to welcome him, as if in play.
Charmed by the warm, caressing pool, he slips
his thin clothes from his slender body. This—
his naked form—indeed ignites Salmacis:
the Naiad’s eyes are glittering, much like
the image of the Sun when—facing him—
a mirror mimes the rays of his bright disk.
The Naiad cannot wait; she can’t delay
delight; she aches; she must embrace; she’s crazed.
With hollow palms he claps his sides, then dives
with grace into the waves; his left, his right
arms alternating strokes, he glides; the light
shines through the limpid pool, revealing him—
as if, within clear glass, one had encased
white lilies with the white of ivory shapes.
“‘I win—now he is mine!’ the Naiad cries.
She flings her clothes aside, and then she dives,
as he had done, into the waves; he tries
to fend her off, but she insists; her grip
is firm; against his will she snatches kiss
on kiss; she feels his chest; upon all sides
she fondles him. At last, although he strives
to slip away, he’s caught, he’s lost; she twines
around him like a serpent who’s been snatched
and carried upward by the king of birds—
and even as that snake hangs from his claws,
she wraps her coils around his head and feet,
and with her tail, entwines his outspread wings;
or like the ivy as it coils around
enormous tree trunks; or the octopus
that holds its enemy beneath the sea
Latin [339–66]
with tentacles, whose vise is tight. But he,
who does indeed descend from Atlas’ line,
won’t yield; what she desires he still denies.
At that, her body presses fast, and as
she clutches him, she cries: ‘However hard
you try, you won’t escape, you wayward one!
O gods, do grant my plea: may no day dawn
that sunders him from me, or me from him.’
Her plea is heard; the gods consent; they merge
the twining bodies; and the two become
one body with a single face and form.
As when one grafts a twig around a bough
and wraps the bark around them, he will see
those branches, growing to maturity,
unite: so were these bodies that had joined
no longer two but one—although biform:
one could have called that shape a woman or
a boy: for it seemed neither and seemed both.
“And when he saw just what the pool had done,
how he who was a man had now become
a half-man—one whose limbs had lost the force
they had before he plunged—as he stretched out
his hands, Hermaphroditus, though deprived
of manly voice, now cried: ‘Do grant this gift,
dear father and dear mother, to the son
who carries both your names: whoever comes
into this pool as man, may he emerge
a half-man; at these waters’ touch, may he
be weakened, softened.’ And they heard his plea;
moved by their biform son, his parents poured
into the pool a potion that endowed
those waters with a pestilential power.”