Flora Unveiled

The “Plantheon” j 203

203 203

to all their offerings and devotions, but at the same time they couldn’t let them

get altogether out of hand.

Finally, Zeus devised a way to weaken them without destroying them by simply cutting

them in half. Bisecting the original humans would also have the salutary effect of doubling

their number, resulting in twice as many offerings to the gods. Pleased with his idea, Zeus

lost no time in implementing it.

Aristophanes concludes his parable by explaining how Zeus’s surgical solution gave rise

to heterosexuals as well as to lesbian and gay lovers:

And so, gentlemen, we are all like pieces of the coins that children break in half for

keepsakes. ... The man who is a slice of the hermaphrodite sex, as it was called, will

naturally be attracted by women. ... But the woman who is a slice of the original

female is attracted by women rather than by men— in fact she is a Lesbian— while

men who are slices of the male are followers of the male, and show their masculinity

throughout boyhood by the way they make friends with men, and the delight they

take in lying beside them and being taken into their arms.

Around 400 bce, a new cult arose in which the androgynous Hermaphrodite was

worshipped. According to the first- century bce Greek historian Diodorus Siculus,^41

the deity was the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, whereas in Ovid’s Metamorphosis

Hermaphrodite is strongly associated with vegetation. According to Ovid, at the age of

fifteen, Hermaphrodite, who was born a boy, wandered from his home in Mount Ida’s caves

to the land of the Carians, where he came upon a tempting pool of water surrounded by

delicate grasses and ferns. This pool was the home of Salmacis, a water nymph who spent

her time combing her hair and picking garlands of the sweet- smelling flowers that grew

nearby. When she beheld Hermaphrodite by her pool, she was instantly smitten. Upon

recovering her composure, she declared her love to him and proposed marriage. Having

spoken, she approached him to give him a kiss, but the boy blushed and threatened to run

away. Retreating at once, Salmacis begged him not to leave. The boy relented and Salmacis

departed; after she was gone, he took off his clothes and dived into the pool. But Salmacis

was only hiding. From behind a hedge she saw his nude body and was overcome with pas-

sion. “I’ve won, for he is mine!” she cried. Stripping naked, she dived into the pool, and

embraced the struggling youth, “as though she were quick ivy tossing/ her vines around the

thick body of a tree”:

“Dear, naughty boy,” she said, “to torture me;

But you won’t get away. O gods in heaven,

Give me this blessing; clip him within my arms

Like this forever.” At which the gods agreed;

They grew one body, one face, one pair of arms

And legs, as one might graft branches upon

a tree, so two became nor boy nor girl,

Neither yet both within a single body.^42