Ovid, Aphrodite and Eros in Boston

A show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts features images of Aphrodite from Italy and its own collection, including one of our friend Salmacis from Metamorphoses 4 :

There dwelt a Nymph, not up for hunting or archery:
unfit for footraces. She the only Naiad not in Diana’s band.
Often her sisters would say: “Pick up a javelin, or
bristling quiver, and interrupt your leisure for the chase!”
But she would not pick up a javelin or arrows,
nor trade leisure for the chase.
Instead she would bathe her beautiful limbs and tend to her hair,
with her waters as a mirror.

An article from Apollo magazine about the show is online here, and one from the Daily Beast is here. One image is of Eros wearing Heracles' Nemean Lion skin.

An article about the sleeping Hermaphrodite is here. More slides from the BMFA show, which closes shortly, are on this page under "exhibition highlights."

And a story about theft in the museum in Olympia.

Sleeping Borghese Hermaphroditus