y were both turned into flowers.

The story of the Curetes being sprung from rain, is possibly founded
on the report that they were descended from Uranus and Tita, the
Heaven and the Earth. Some suppose them to have been the original
inhabitants of the isle of Crete; and they are said to have watched
over the infancy of Jupiter, by whom they were afterwards slain, for
having concealed Epaphus from his wrath.

FABLE V. [IV.285-388]

The Naiad Salmacis falls in love with the youth Hermaphroditus, who
rejects her advances. While he is bathing, she leaps into the water,
and seizing the youth in her arms, they become one body, retaining
their different sexes.

Learn how Salmacis became infamous, {and} why it enervates, with its
enfeebling waters, and softens the limbs bathed {in it}. The cause is
unknown; {but} the properties of the fountain are very well known. The
Naiads nursed a boy, born to Mercury of the Cytherean Goddess in the
caves of Ida; whose face was such that therein both mother and father
could be discerned; he likewise took his name from them. As soon as he
had completed thrice five years, he forsook his native mountains, and
leaving Ida, the place of his nursing, he loved to wander over unknown
spots, {and} to see unknown rivers, his curiosity lessening the fatigue.
He went, too, to the Lycian[46] cities, and the Carians, that border
upon Lycia. Here he sees a pool of water, clear to the {very} ground at
the bottom; here there are no fenny reeds, no barren sedge, no rushes
with their sharp points. The water is translucent; but the edges of the
pool are enclosed with green turf, and with grass ever verdant. A Nymph
dwells {there}; but one neither skilled in hunting, nor accustomed to
bend the bow, nor to contend in speed; the only one, too, of {all} the
Naiads not known to the swift Diana. The report is, that her sisters
often said to her, "Salmacis, do take either the javelin, or the painted
quiver, and unite thy leisure with the toils of the chase." She takes
neither the javelin, nor the painted quiver, nor does she unite her
leisure with the toils of the chase. But sometimes she is bathing her
beauteous limbs in her own spring; {and} often is she straitening her
hair with a comb of Citorian boxwood,[47] and consulting the waters,
into which she looks, what is befitting her. At other times, covering
her body with a transparent garment, she reposes either on the soft
leaves or on the