‘Can You Tell What it is Yet?’ Descriptions of Sex Change in Ancient Literature

Abstract

This paper returns at first to ancient definitions of ekphrasis as vivid description, including that of bodies or persons conjured up before the eyes of the reader. The passages from Ovid and Diodorus Siculus on which I focus (DS Library 32.10-12 and Ovid Met. 9.669-797), represent descriptions not of works of art, but of bodies. To complicate matters, these bodies as objects of description are also undergoing change from one sex to another; they are also events. Nevertheless, although they do not describe works of art, this literary trope (ekphrasis in the modern understanding of the term) does prove to be an important reference point for both these highly aware authors in their description of the phenomenon of sex-change. As generations of writers have done before them, Ovid and Diodorus Siculus allude to the tradition of ekphrasis as a means to reflect upon their own artistry and creative endeavour. They also invoke this trope to introduce into their narratives the issues of illusion and deception, and of viewpoint and interpretation, that are associated with this ekphrastic tradition. They use the concept of ekphrasis to problematise the relationship between text and reader, viewer and object of gaze, reality and appearance, seeing and believing.