Metamorphoses · Chapter
Story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus explained
The nymph Salmacis falls in love with the beautiful youth Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite.
What happens
The nymph Salmacis falls in love with the beautiful youth Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite. When he rejects her advances and bathes in her spring, she leaps in and prays that they be forever united. The gods grant her wish, merging them into a single androgynous body, and the spring thereafter weakens any man who enters it.
Themes in this chapter
Transformation and Metamorphosis
The physical merging of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus into one body is a literal metamorphosis, altering both their forms forever.
Love and Desire
Salmacis's intense desire for Hermaphroditus drives her to pray for union, blurring the line between love and possession.
Characters to notice
- Salmacis
A river nymph who falls in love with Hermaphroditus and prays for their eternal union.
- Hermaphroditus
The beautiful youth, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who is merged with Salmacis against his will.
Key passages
“How Salmacis, with weak, enfeebling streams, Softens the body, and unnerves the limbs, And what the secret cause, shall here be shown; The cause is secret, but the effect is known.”
The narrator introduces the story of Salmacis, whose waters are said to weaken those who bathe in them, promising to reveal the hidden reason behind this effect.
Opening lines setting up the aetiological explanation for the fountain's properties.
“O may the gods thus keep us over join'd! O may we never, never part again! So pray'd the nymph, nor did she pray in vain: For now she finds him, as his limbs she press'd. Grow nearer still, and nearer to her breast, Till, piercing each the other's flesh, they run Together, and incorporate in one.”
Salmacis prays that she and Hermaphroditus never be separated, and the gods answer by physically fusing them into a single being.
Climactic moment where the metamorphosis occurs, fulfilling the nymph's wish.