PART TWO - CAMBRIDGE

- 3 -

"What do you know about Hermaphroditus in graeco-roman mythology?" Professor Cavendish asked.

"I know the poem," Saphy replied, quoting, "'Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love, blind love that comes by night and casts out rest.' 'To what strange end hath some strange god made fair the double blossom of two fruitless flowers?'"

"Ah, Swinburne, how very decadent," Professor Cavendish smiled.

"Who's Swinburne?" Gabe inquired.

"Algernon Swinburne," the professor explained, "Something of a controversial, scandalous poet in the Victorian age. He wrote about homosexuality and sadomasochism and a lot of other less seemly subjects. Most famously, he wrote about your companion's near namesake and heroine, the Greek poet Sappho."

"'I feel thy blood against my blood; my pain Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein. Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour,'" came Saphy's quoting voice once more, "He writes so sensually about the force of desire in Sappho for another woman."

"Well, maybe, but Swinburne wasn't the first nor the last person to write about Hermaphroditus," Professor Cavendish went on.

"Love's Children," said Gabe, much to the surprise of the two women, "The story of Hermaphroditus was in that. He went swimming in the stream of a nymph called Salmacis and she wanted him so badly that she dived in too and grabbed him, not letting go until their bodies became one. And the stream is supposed to be cursed to bring the same transformation on people who swim there or drink it."

"Wow, that was unexpected," Saphy replied, "And you gave the impression that you knew nothing at all about classics, art and mythology."

"It was one of my favourite books as a child," Gabe blushed.

"You know that Robert White teaches here at Pembroke," Professor Cavendish, "Or taught, rather."

"What happened?"

"He just disappeared," she replied, "He was always heading off around the world on one wild archaeological goose chase or another. Finally, a few months ago, he left on a trip and hasn't come back since."

"That's a shame, it would have been good to get his opinion too," Gabe said.

"I don't know how much you'd have got out of him," Professor Cavendish told him, "He never wanted to talk about Love's Children. It was his only attempt at a fictional book and its failure was really devastating to him. He was always a bit strange after that." She paused for a moment, lost in thought, before going on, "Anyway, Gabe, you're right. The story in White's book is the story usually told about Hermaphroditus. It's mostly forgotten today, but in classical times the figure of Hermaphroditus was a common, popular one."

She went over to her huge shelves full of books and browsed along their spines until she pulled down a few that caught her interest. Sitting back down at the desk, she opened one of the books, The Hermaphrodite in Classical Art, and opened a page in the middle of the book with big glossy photographs of Greek statues. They resembled the usual style of classical statues of beautiful, elegant goddesses except in one detail. One showed a tall beautiful woman in a heroic pose with a robe draped over her shoulder, it dropped away at the front to reveal her naked breasts and, between her legs, a small but perfectly sculpted penis. Another almost cheekily raised up the skirt of her flowing dress to reveal a similar penis beneath it.

"Images like these were very popular with the ancient Greeks. They appreciated things that seemed strange or unusual and their attitudes to sexuality and gender were much freer than many people's today. The birth of a hermaphrodite was thought to be something divine and a good omen of things to come," Professor Cavendish explained, "They saw the union of male and female as something special and complete. In fact the image of the hermaphrodite was often used as being symbolic of a marriage, the idea being that marriage is the perfect union of man and woman into one whole. The married couple as one individual rather than two."

"But Hermaphroditus and Salmacis were hardly a perfect union in the legend," Gabe said, "It's more like she raped him!"

"Quite," Professor Cavendish replied.

"It's actually pretty rare in graeco-roman mythology to have the woman rape the man," Saphy said, "There's loads the other way, nice to see the balance redressed a little!"

"Anyway, the popularity of the hermaphrodite in art and legend kind of went into decline after the end of the Roman Empire," Professor Cavendish continued, "You don't really see any images like these during the mediaeval period. However, suddenly, in the renaissance they become popular again. In the 16th century writers like Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney wrote some of the major works of English poetry containing characters crossdressed and acting like the other gender. Of course, this is the age of boys dressing as girls to act on the stage. Just look at Shakespeare's plays, all the female parts would have been played by boys. In quite a lot of the plays these female characters then disguise themselves as boys once more. So, you've got boys playing girls playing boys. Obviously people in that age were interested in how fluid gender roles could be.

"This was also an age of new scientific interest in people being born intersex. In 1573, the French surgeon Ambroise Pare wrote about hermaphrodites in his On Monsters and Prodigies. In 1612, the Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin wrote On the Nature of the Births of Hermaphrodites and Monsters, complete with illustrations that recalled the classical beauty of the ancient hermaphrodite statues. In the same year, a woman condemned to death as a lesbian was given a reprieve because she was a hermaphrodite and, therefore, could legitimately claim to be male."

"I know all this already, Jane," Saphy said, a little frustrated, "This was all on your course."

"Yes, it's all very interesting," Gabe agreed, "But I don't see what it has to do with the Venus painting."

"I'm getting to that, have a little patience," Professor Cavendish gently chided. She took another book from the pile on her desk and opened it to another glossy photo of a statue, "The real thing that made the legend of Hermaphroditus particularly popular in the 1600s was this. It's a Roman copy of a bronze statue by Polycles, a Greek sculptor about 150 years before the birth of Christ. The statue was lost for centuries, but in around 1600 it was rediscovered in Rome when digging for the foundations of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. The Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a man with a huge amount of power in the church, an art collector rumoured to have been gay, took ownership of the statue, which became known as the Borghese Hermaphroditus. It was an image that was hugely popular and much reproduced over the next few decades. It's now on display in the Louvre in Paris."

"So?" Gabe asked.

Professor Cavendish turned the open page of her book around on the desk so Gabe and Saphy could see the image of the statue. Beside it, she opened a second book, Venus in Renaissance Art, with a glossy reproduction of the Rokeby Venus, an image that had embedded itself into Gabe's mind over the past few days.

"Look familiar?" she asked.

She was right. The image of the Borghese Hermaphroditus showed the statue of what appeared to be a beautiful woman viewed from behind. She was reclining, lying on her side slightly propped up on her elbow with her head raised above this, emphasising the curve of the narrow waist and wide hips. It was the exact same posture as that of Venus in the painting. However, while the painting could only be viewed from that one angle, with the statue the other side was visible in another reproduced image and that showed the beautiful reclining feminine figure to have a penis resting between her thighs.

"So, what you're saying is..." Gabe began

"The secret of the Rokeby Venus is that she isn't Venus at all," Professor Cavendish confirmed, "It's a painting of Hermaphroditus!"