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Salmacis (fountain)
37°01′48.7″N 27°25′15.5″E / 37.030194°N 27.420972°E
Salmacis or Salmakis was the name of a fountain or spring located in modern-day Bodrum, Turkey. According to some classical authors, the water had the reputation of making men effeminate, soft, and 'woman like'. Ovid famously recounts the myth in his story about Hermaphroditus and the nymph of the spring Salmacis. Waters that transform men into women are a recurring motif in Near East folklore.
Salmacis was a fountain, located near the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. In classical times, it had:
the slanderous repute, for what reason I do not know, of making effeminate all who drink from it. It seems that the effeminacy of man is laid to the charge of the air or of the water; yet it is not these, but rather riches and wanton living, that are the cause of effeminacy. —Strabo Geography XIV.2.16
This was believed by contemporary Hellenic people. However, the power of the spring was rejected by other Romans, such as the architect Vitruvius
there is a mistaken idea that this spring infects those who drink of it... it cannot be that the water makes men effeminate. —Vitruvius De architectura 2.8.12
In Book IV of his poem Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts the myth of how the fountain came to be so in the story of the nymph Salmacis (after whom the fountain is, in this account, named), her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus, and his resultant change into an intersex being. Scholars such as Károly Kerényi have asserted that Ovid's account was not a classical one and that the story was invented by him.
In 1995, the so-called 'Salmakis Inscription' was discovered by Turkish authorities on the promontory of Kaplan Kalesi, which juts out into the sea to the south-west of Bodrum harbour.
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Salmacis (fountain)
37°01′48.7″N 27°25′15.5″E / 37.030194°N 27.420972°E
Salmacis or Salmakis was the name of a fountain or spring located in modern-day Bodrum, Turkey. According to some classical authors, the water had the reputation of making men effeminate, soft, and 'woman like'. Ovid famously recounts the myth in his story about Hermaphroditus and the nymph of the spring Salmacis. Waters that transform men into women are a recurring motif in Near East folklore.
Salmacis was a fountain, located near the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. In classical times, it had:
the slanderous repute, for what reason I do not know, of making effeminate all who drink from it. It seems that the effeminacy of man is laid to the charge of the air or of the water; yet it is not these, but rather riches and wanton living, that are the cause of effeminacy. —Strabo Geography XIV.2.16
This was believed by contemporary Hellenic people. However, the power of the spring was rejected by other Romans, such as the architect Vitruvius
there is a mistaken idea that this spring infects those who drink of it... it cannot be that the water makes men effeminate. —Vitruvius De architectura 2.8.12
In Book IV of his poem Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts the myth of how the fountain came to be so in the story of the nymph Salmacis (after whom the fountain is, in this account, named), her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus, and his resultant change into an intersex being. Scholars such as Károly Kerényi have asserted that Ovid's account was not a classical one and that the story was invented by him.
In 1995, the so-called 'Salmakis Inscription' was discovered by Turkish authorities on the promontory of Kaplan Kalesi, which juts out into the sea to the south-west of Bodrum harbour.