The Gender Recognition Bill plodding its way through the House of Commons does not deal with hermaphrodites. Bad mistake. Hermaphroditus was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. Ovid tells how the nymph Salmacis fell madly in love with him when she saw him strip and dive into a pool. She did the same, wound herself round him and, as he struggled to free himself, prayed that the gods would ensure that they were never parted. Her prayer was granted, and their two bodies were fused into one, so that they seemed ‘both male and female, and neither, at the same time’.
In his Natural History, the elder Pliny (ad 23–79) acknowledges the existence of hermaphrodites (people ‘with both sexes combined’), records at least one notable sculpture, and adds that, whereas they were once looked on as terrifying portents (and drowned at sea), they were now treated rather as pets or entertainments (the Romans derived considerable pleasure from laughing at prodigies of nature).
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