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Sons of Poseidon and Alcyone, from Troezenia.
Hermaphroditus, (Hermaphroditos). In Greek mythology, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, born on Mount Ida, and endowed with the beauty of both deities. When a grown youth, he was bathing in the Carian fountain of Salmacis, and the nymph of the fountain, whose love he rejected, prayed the gods that she might be indissolubly united with him. The prayer was answered, and a being sprang into existence which united the qualities of male and female. The fable probably arose from the inclination, prevalent in the Eastern religions, towards confusing the attributes of both sexes. In Cyprus, for instance, a masculine Aphroditus, clad in female attire, was worshipped by the side of the goddess Aphrodite. Figures of hermaphrodites are common in art, one of the finest being the Sleeping Hermaphrodite in the Museo delle Terme at Rome. Less modest representations are given by Clarac.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Hermaphroditus, (Hermaphroditos). The name is compounded of Hermes and Aphrodite, and is synonymous with androgunes, gunandros, hemiandros, &c. He was originally a male Aphrodite (Aphroditus), and represented as a Hermes with the phallus, the symbol of fertility (Paus. i. 19.2), but afterwards as a divine being combining the two sexes, and usually with the head, breasts, and body of a female, but with the sexual parts of a man. According to a tradition in Ovid (Met. iv. 285, &c.), he was a son of Hermes and Aphrodite, and consequently a great-grandson of Atlas, whence he is called Atlantiades or Atlantius. (Ov. Met. iv. 368; Hygin. Fab. 271.) He had inherited the beauty of both his parents, and was brought up by the nymphs of Mount Ida. In his fifteenth year he went to Caria; in the neighbourhood of Halicarnassus he laid down by the well Salmacis. The nymph of the well fell in love with him, and tried to win his affections, but in vain. Once when he was bathing in the well, she embraced him, and prayed to the gods that they might permit her to remain united with him for ever. The gods granted the request, and the bodies of the youth and the nymph became united in such a manner that the two together could not be called either a man or a woman, but were both. Hermaphroditus, on becoming aware of the change, prayed that in future every one who bathed in the well should be metamorphosed into an hermaphrodite. (Ov. l.c.; Diod. iv. 6; Lucian, Dial. Deor. 15. 2; Vitruv. ii. 8; Fest. s. v. Salmacis.) In this, as in other mythological stories, we must not suppose that the idea is based on a fact, but the idea gave rise to the tale, and thus received, as it were, a concrete body. The idea itself was probably derived from the worship of nature in the East, where we find not only monstrous compounds of animals, but also that peculiar kind of dualism which manifests itself in the combination of the male and female. Others, however, conceive that the hermaphrodites were subjects of artistic representation rather than of religious worship. The ancient artists frequently represented hermaphrodites, either in groups or separately, and either in a reclining or a standing attitude. The first celebrated statue of an hermaphrodite was that by Polycles. (Plin. H. N. xxiv. 19, 20; comp. Heinrich, Commentatio qua Hermaphroditorum Artis antiquae Operibus insignium Origines et Causae explicantur, Hamburg, 1805; Welcker, in Creuzer and Daub's Studien, iv.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Hermaphroditus. A person partaking of the attributes of both sexes, so called from Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite.
P. Ovidius Naso: Salmacis and Hermaphroditus
Hermaphroditus: Various WebPages
A fountain in Caria producing effeminacy, an effeminate person - A fountain in Caria, where a nymph finding Hermaphroditus, the son of Mercurie and Venus naked, she embracing him, desiced of the Gods, that of the etilde two might be made one body, and so it happened.
A fountain. Ornamental edifices were erected by both the Greeks and Romans over natural springs, such as the temple of Erechtheus at Athens and of Poseidon at Mantinea (both over salt springs), that of Salmacis at Halicarnassus, and that of the so-called Grotto of Egeria near Rome.
This extract is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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