joy. Now she longs to
embrace him; and now, distracted, she can hardly contain herself. He,
clapping his body with his hollow palms, swiftly leaps into the stream,
and throwing out his arms alternately, shines in the limpid water, as if
any one were to cover statues of ivory, or white lilies, with clear
glass.

"I have gained my point," says the Naiad; "see, he is mine!" and, all
her garments thrown aside, she plunges in the midst of the waters, and
seizes him resisting her, and snatches reluctant kisses, and thrusts
down her hands, and touches his breast against his will, and clings
about the youth, now one way, and now another. Finally, as he is
struggling against her, and desiring to escape, she entwines herself
about him, like a serpent which the royal bird takes up and is bearing
aloft; and as it hangs, it holds fast his head and feet, and enfolds his
spreading wings with its tail. Or, as the ivy is wont to wind itself
along the tall trunks {of trees}; and as the polypus[50] holds fast its
enemy, caught beneath the waves, by letting down his suckers on all
sides; {so} does the descendant of Atlas[51] {still} persist, and deny
the Nymph the hoped-for joy. She presses him hard; and clinging to him
with every limb, as she holds fast, she says, "Struggle as thou mayst,
perverse one, still thou shalt not escape. So ordain it, ye Gods, and
let no time separate him from me, nor me from him." Her prayers find
propitious Deities, for the mingled bodies of the two are united,[52]
and one human shape is put upon them; just as if any one should see
branches beneath a common bark join in growing, and spring up together.
So, when their bodies meet together in the firm embrace, they are no
more two, and their form is twofold, so that they can neither be styled
woman nor boy; they seem {to be} neither and both.

Therefore, when Hermaphroditus sees that the limpid waters, into which
he had descended as a man, have made him but half a male, and that his
limbs are softened in them, holding up his hands, he says, but now no
longer with the voice of a male, "O, both father and mother, grant this
favor to your son, who has the name of you both, that whoever enters
these streams a man, may go out thence {but} half a man, and that he may
suddenly become effeminate in the waters when touched." Both parents,
moved, give their assent to the words of their two-shaped son, and taint
the fountain with drugs of ambiguous quality.

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