I shall enchant your souls with something new,” storyteller Alciothe tells her audience at the beginning of the tale of Salamicis and Hermaphroditus. Many of the vignettes in Ovid’s The Metamorphoses are grim, ranging from subjects such as jealousy, unrequited love, and death. As a result, I found the tale of Salamicis and Hermaphroditus humorous and refreshing. It was a clever way to fictionalize the existence of hermaphrodites.

            It is common knowledge that a hermaphrodite is a human being who has male and female sex organs. In Ovid’s tale, Salamicis, a beautiful nymph, develops a burning passion for a boy she encounters. The boy is the son of Mercury and Venus. He tries to repel her affections but Salamicis is persistent. She retreats while the boy dives into the waters of her “turf.” When she sees his naked body, Salamicis is overcome with desire and joins him in the water. She clings to him and envelops him, praying to the gods that he remains in her arms forever. The gods form a being which is half man, half woman. The son demands for a curse over the waters, declaring that all who swim them should meet the same fate he did. As a result, any man who swims in the waters will become “effeminate, or less than zero” according to Alcithoe.

Since humor is such a subjective concept, it was difficult to determine whether seeing humor in this story was appropriate. It is not the particular idea of a hermaphrodite that is funny because it is considered a genetic defect. Upon reflection on the story, I realized that it was the story itself that was funny. The idea of a woman attaching herself to a man while the man tries to escape was humorous. She enveloped him as though “she was quick ivy tossing her vines around the thick bounds of a tree.” Even if I am alone in thinking that it is humorous, the story is certainly captivating.

Why did this story capture my interest more than any other story in the Metamorphoses? All of the tales were fascinating, but many have similar themes and plot twists. The tales are full of descriptions of jealous lovers, murder, and the evil of mankind. Alcithoe seemed to realize that the reader (or, in the context of the book, the listeners) needed a new story:

I shall not bore you with telling how young Daphnis of Mount Ida

was turned to stone: this by a girl, who, jealous