Ovid, Metamorphoses 1st CE
Hear how the magic pool of Salmacis found its ill fame, and why its strengthless waters soften and enervate the limbs they touch... To Hermes and Aphrodite, a boy, Hermaphroditos, was born... When thrice five years had passed, the youth forsook Mount Ida, eager to roam strange lands afar, to have hardships softened by delight.
The town of Lycia he reached at last... and there he saw a pool... the water was crystal clear, its margin ringed with living tuft... always green. A Nympha dwelt there, who in her pool would bathe her lovely limbs, and with a comb dress her hair, or gather flowers. She chanced to see the boy. He was her heart's desire.
‘Fair boy, how worthily you seem to be a god, and, if a god, Cupid/Eros himself, or if a mortal, happy pair are they who gave you birth... Blest is she, your betrothed, found worthy of your love! If there is one, let stolen joy be mine; if none, let me be her, make me your bride!’
A rosy blush dyed the boy's cheeks; he knew not what love was, but blushes well became him... The Nympha pleaded, begged, besought at least a sister's kiss, and made to throw her arms around his ivory neck. ‘Enough!’ he cried ‘Stop! Or I shall quit this place--and you.’
Fear struck her heart; ‘I yield the place,’ she said, ‘Stranger, to you,’ and turned away as if to leave him. Then, with many a backward glance, she vanished in the leafy undergrowth and crouched in hiding there.
The boy, alone (he thought) on the empty sward unobserved, strolled to and fro... Charmed by the soothing coolness of the pool, he stripped his light garments from his slender limbs. Salmacis gazed spellbound. Desire flamed for his naked beauty and her eyes blazed bright as when the sun's unclouded orb shines dazzling in a mirror. She could scarcely bear to wait, hardly postpone her joy. She longed to embrace him. She could barely contain her frenzied beating heart. He clapped his hollow palms against his sides and dived into the pool and, as he swam arm over arm, gleamed in the limpid water like, in a guarding dome of crystal glass, white lilies or a figure of ivory.
‘I've won, he's mine!’ she cried, and flinging aside her clothes, plunged far out into the pool and grappled him and, as he struggled, forced her kisses, fondled and caressed him willy nilly... as he fought to escape her hold; and so at last entwined him, like a snake seized by the king of birds and borne aloft, which, as it hangs, coils round his head and claws and with its tail entwines his spreading wings, or, in the sea, a squid whose whipping arms seize and from every side surround their prey.
Hermaphroditos fought back, denied the Nympha her joy; she strained the more; her clinging body seemed fixed fast to his. The waters of her pool gave her other-wordly power. ‘Fool, fight me as you will,’ she cried, ‘You'll not escape! The gods ordain no day shall ever dawn to part us!’ Her prayer found gods to hear; both bodies merged in one, blended in one form and face. As when a gardener sets a graft and sees growth seal the joining, and both mature together, thus, when in the fast embrace their limbs were knit, the two were two no more, neither man or woman--becoming one body that seemed neither and both.
When he saw the waters of the pool, where he had dived a man, had rendered him half woman, and his limbs now weak and soft, raising his hands, Hermaphroditos cried, his voice unmanned, ‘Dear Father Hermes and Mother Aphrodite, both of whose names I bear, grant me, your child, that whoso in these waters bathes a man emerge half woman, weakened instantly.’
Both parents heard, both, moved to gratify their bi-sexed son, his purpose to ensure, drugged the bright water with that power impure.
