The Myth of Siproites

How do we know stuff? 

It might seem like a simple question on the surface, but there’s an entire field of philosophy, called epistemology, dedicated to exploring the topic. 

There’s a particular tool I want to take a look at today that will help us understand today’s topic. 

It’s unfortunately been associated with noted war criminal, “enhanced interrogation techniques” supporter, and nutritious worm food Donald Rumsfeld. He didn’t invent it, but it’s come to be known as the Rumsfeld Matrix (Krogerus and Tschappeler, 87-88). I guess you can separate the art from the artist when they’re dead, huh?

Anyway, it looks at some different types of knowledge. 

The first is what we know we know.

My name is Sophie.

I’m recording a video in my studio.

I’m holding translations of both the Iliad and the Odyssey in my hand.

I know these things, and I’m also aware of my knowledge of them. 

We also know the Iliad and Odyssey were just a small part of the epic cycle of the Trojan War. We know there were several other epic poems that went along with it, taking place both before and after the Iliad. 

First, the Cypria – the Judgment of Paris, which sparked the Trojan War, and the first nine years of the war. 

Then the Iliad, which we all know and love. 

After comes the Aethiopis, where Amazon and Ethiopian forces join the Trojan side of the war, and Akhilles himself dies. (SPOILER ALERT)

There was the Little Iliad, which told the story of what happened after the death of Akhilles, including the construction of the Trojan Horse. 

Then, the Iliupersis – the actual destruction of Troy by the Greeks. 

There was the Nostoi, telling the tale of the Greek generals (except Odysseus) returning home. 

Then the Odyssey, and finally, the Telegony, a final voyage of Odysseus to Thesprotia, return to Ithaka, and death at the hands of the son he didn’t know he had, Telegonus.  

We know these poems existed. They’re referenced throughout classical literature, enough that we know the basic plot points. In the Hypsikrates video, we referenced two different poems called Posthomerica, one by Quintus Smyrnaeus, the other by John Tzetzes. They both cover the events of most of the above poems, after the Iliad but before the Odyssey. 

RELATED: Hypsikrates, the Transgender Spouse of the Poison King Mithradates

These are things we know that we know. 

Then, there are things we don’t know that we don’t know. It’s knowledge that exists, in theory, but not only do we not know it, we aren’t aware of its possibility as knowledge in the first place. 

It’s hard to think of an ancient example of this, so let’s consider the principles of nuclear fission. You know, the process of splitting an atom into two or more smaller pieces, creating an enormous amount of clean, sustainable energy? It wasn’t until 1938 that humans figured out how to do it (Planck Institute). 

A hundred years before then, not only did we not know nuclear fission existed, we didn’t even know we didn’t know. But it was always possible. They can even occur naturally, as is the case with Oklo, in modern day Gabon, west Africa, about 1.7 billion years ago. Did you know about that? A naturally occurring nuclear reactor – absolutely wild stuff (Meshik)! 

But even if nuclear fission had existed in the prehistoric past, it just wasn’t something that had occurred to us to do yet.

Finally, there’s what we know we don’t know. 

Let’s come back to those lost epic poems we talked about a moment ago. We have thirty surviving lines of the Little Iliad, for example, and we know the basics of what happened, but other than that, we don’t know any of the words used in that poem. They were there, once upon a time. Perhaps we’ll rediscover a manuscript of them some day. But currently, we don’t know.  

But we at least know that we don’t know. 

The field of classical studies spends quite a bit of time in this area. There’s so much we know that we don’t know. And that can apply to transgender history, and mythology, as well. 

In case this is your first time joining us, welcome. I’m Sophie Edwards, and this is We Have Always Existed. It’s a series where we look at the wealth of transgender history from the ancient Mediterranean. 

Today, we’ll be living in the known unknowns, as we take a look at the story of Siproites. 

If you’ve not heard of this one, you’re not alone. It only survives in a single literary reference in an obscure ancient text called the Metamorphoses. 

(Hold up Ovid’s Metamorphoses)

No, not that Metamorphoses. We’ve talked about Ovid a lot on this channel, and yeah we’re going to talk about him more today. I guarantee we’ll talk about him more in a future video.

But this Metamorphoses is by Antoninus Liberalis. 

We’ll start by exploring what we know about this author and his work. From there, we’ll take a look at the tantalizingly tiny bit of information we know about Siproites, and what we could possibly draw from it. 

As always, your support on Patreon makes a big difference in helping support this channel. This book was ninety bucks with shipping, and it’s not the only expensive and obscure book I’ve had to track down in the process of making these videos. 

So when I say your Patreon support helps this become more than a very expensive hobby, I’m not kidding. It *is* expensive to do this stuff, and I’m grateful for your support. 

You can also support the channel by offering your likes, comments, and subscribes, or by purchasing a copy of my book, The Bottom Line, which is not ninety bucks, I promise. 

Trans people deserve to know, and own, our own histories. That’s why this channel exists. If you think these stories are worth spreading, your likes, comments, and subscribes go a long way. 

Do it, you coward. 

What are you waiting for? Christmas? 

Let’s go already! 

Chapter I: Antoninus Liberalis

When we look at an ancient source on this channel, I like to start by talking about the writer themselves. It’s nice to remember that while it’s only their writings that survive today, they were real, living, breathing human beings with lives as rich as our own. 

So here’s what we know about Antoninus Liberalis. 

He wrote in Greek, but he had a Latin name. 

That’s it. 

There are a few things we can guess about him, though. 

His first name, Antoninus, was more popular after the emperor Antoninus Pius, who ruled from 138 to 161 CE. 

Most emperors have absolute trainwrecks of names, so we shorten them to make it easier to remember. It’s a lot easier to talk about Antoninus Pius than it is Imperator Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius. 

Some of them had the same name too. For example, both Marcus Aurelius and Caracalla were named Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, and Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus I and Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus II is just a little inconvenient of a naming convention. 

But yeah, you see how the name Antoninus became popular. Commodus also had Antoninus in his name, and so did Diadumenianus and Elagabalus. After that, it seemed to fall out of vogue – no emperor after Elagabalus had the name Antoninus. But that wasn’t because Elagabalus sullied that name or anything – they had the names Marcus and Aurelius as well, and tons of later emperors took those names. 

So the name Antoninus seemed to be the most popular between the reigns of Antoninus Pius and Elagabalus, or 138 to 222 CE. 

RELATED: Elagabalus, the Transgender Roman Emperor (maybe)

As well, his last name, Liberalis, means “befitting a libertus” – libertus (the feminine form is liberta) was a social class in Roman society that meant a person who used to be a slave, but gained their freedom through legal means. You might see them referred to as “freedmen” in other sources. They were, in some cases, granted the same freedoms as a Roman citizen. In others, they were given Latin rights, which is like a step below citizenship (Smith, 705-706). 

Based on all that, we suspect that Antoninus Liberalis lived some time after the reign of Antoninus Pius, he was a former slave who earned his freedom, and he was born somewhere where they spoke Greek predominantly. But there’s currently no way to confirm any of it (Celoria, 2). 

The fact that he could write might give us some hints about his life too. Literacy was by no means a given in the ancient world. It might have been more widespread than we think, however, considering how much graffiti we’ve found in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Harvey, Benefiel). 

Do you know about that? Maybe you don’t, but you should. 

I love this stuff, it’s one of the most fascinating things in the world to me. In the video on eunuchs, I waxed poetic about how beautiful Pompeii and Herculaneum are, and the graffiti is a big part of that. 

RELATED: Eunuchs in the Roman World: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know

We often have the impression that Roman civilization was this enlightened, erudite time of philosophers and high art. And it was, just as today is. But trans people aren’t the only people who’ve always existed. 

Men who love men have always existed. On the side of the house of Orpheus, we found:

“I have sodomized men”

And on the side of a bar:

“Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!”

Best friends have always existed. We found the following written on the side of a bar:

“We two dear men, friends forever, were here. If you want to know our names, they are Gaius and Aulus.” 

I love it, so cute. 

Best friends who hire hookers have always existed too: 

“Two friends were here, and they had a servant named Epaphroditus who was terrible at everything for the whole time, so they finally kicked him out. Then they spent 105 1/2 sestertii most delightfully when they had sex.

Shitposters have always existed. 

We found “Secundus took a shit here” written three times on the same bathroom wall. Absolute champ. 

And in the basilica, “the one who sodomizes a fire burns his penis”

And apparently my girlfriend is a lot older than she says, because on the side of the House of Pinarius we found:

“If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girlfriend”

Gosh I love her…

Anyway, literacy tended to be higher in cities, which is why we’ve got so much stuff like this. But most people didn’t live in cities, so they couldn’t read or write – they didn’t need to. Scholar William Harris estimates in his book “Ancient Literacy” that during the early Roman Empire, likely less than 10% of people were literate. 

So Antoninus Liberalis may have grown up in a city and had more of a privileged upbringing, having been given the opportunity to learn to read and write, and was enslaved later on. It’s also possible he demonstrated an aptitude for literacy while he was enslaved, and had some sort of role as a slave that involved it. Maybe he was a teacher – it wasn’t unheard of for teachers to be slaves. 

But the truth is, all we really know about Antoninus Liberalis is he wrote in Greek, but had a Latin name. 

Chapter II: Metamorphoseses

Earlier, we talked about Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s certainly the most famous work with that title. No, Kafka’s doesn’t count because it’s Metamorphosis – singular. Metamorphoses is plural. It’s a different word, it’s not the same thing. 

Clearly, Antoninus Liberalis wrote a Metamorphoses as well. So did Apuleius – ever read The Golden Ass? Originally it was called Metamorphoses too. It’s also full of transformation stories – mostly people turning into animals, or living people turning into dead people. No gender transformations though, but there are a group of gallae who show up in book 8. 

There are plenty of other magical transformation stories from the ancient world as well. But Ovid’s and Antoninus’ are the most interesting for us today. 

Both Ovid and Antoninus were heavily influenced by a work by the 2^nd century BCE Greek writer Nicander of Colophon. It was called the Heteroeumena, which is Greek for, you guessed it, Metamorphoses, because of course it is. This work is mostly lost, but we have a few fragments. 

Antoninus’ and Ovid’s Metamorphoses have some overlaps, but not entirely. Antoninus doesn’t talk about Hermaphroditus, for example, and Ovid doesn’t talk about Siproites. So either Nicander’s work wasn’t the only source for ancient transformation stories, or Ovid and Antoninus just decided they didn’t like some of Nicander’s stories and left them out. It’s probably the former. 

In fact, there’s another source Antoninus probably drew on quite heavily – Boios. His book is also lost – we don’t even have any fragments – but it seemed to be a catalogue of the various transformations of people into birds in mythology, and thank the muses it’s not called Metamorphoses. It’s called Ornithogonia (Forbes, 33). A fair number of Antoninus’ transformations are about birds too, so it makes sense that he’d have drawn on this one. 

Anyway, Antoninus and Ovid are the two most significant sources of ancient transformation stories that survive today. 

But Ovid’s work is creative, fun, and innovative. Different threads are woven together to connect different myths. The myth of Hermaphroditus, for example, is told along with several others, in the context of the two daughters of Minyas weaving in honour of Athena while the rest of the city of Thebes is celebrating Dionysus. The two sisters then tell each other stories – Pyramus and Thisbe, the affair of Venus and Mars, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and others. It’s part of a broader, creative narrative. 

On the other hand, Antoninus’ stories are brief and lifeless. It’s more of a summary of previous work than it is a unique take on it. Here’s what happened in this story. Here’s what happened in that story. Here’s what happened in the other story. Etc. etc. 

That’s a real drag, because it leaves us with these wonderfully tantalizing little bits of mythology that don’t appear anywhere else, but there’s so little to go on as a result.  

The section involving Siproites is pretty short, so I’ll read the whole thing here, in translation of course, by Francis Celoria. Then, we’ll explore what little we could possibly glean from what we do know. It’s not the only transy bit in this text, so clearly, I’ve gotta make some more videos about this at some point.

Sometimes I wish there were three of me…

Chapter III: Metamorphoses, Book XVII

Galatea, daughter of Eurytius, who was son of Sparton, married at Phaestus in Crete Pandion’s sun, Lamprus, a man of good family but without means. 

When Galatea became pregnant, Lamprus prayed to have a son and said plainly to his wife that she was to expose her child if it was a daughter. When Lamprus had gone off to tend his flocks, Galatea gave birth to a daughter. 

Feeling pity for her babe, she counted on the remoteness of their house and – backed by dreams and seers telling her to bring up the girl as a boy – deceived Lamprus by saying she had given birth to a son and brought the child up as a boy, giving it the name Leucippus.

As the girl grew up, she became unutterably beautiful. Because it was no longer possible to hide this, Galatea, fearing Lamprus, fled to the Temple of Leto and made many a prayer to her that the child might become a boy instead of a girl, just as had happened to Caenis, daughter of Atrax, who by the will of Poseidon became Caeneus the Lapith.

So also Teiresias changed from man to woman because he had encountered and killed 2 snakes that had been mating at a crossroads. He changed again from woman back to man by killing another serpent. Hypermestra had frequently sold her body in the form of a woman for a fee, becoming a man to bring food to her father, Aethon. The Cretan Siproites had also been turned into a woman for having seen Artemis bathing when out hunting.

Leto took pity on Galatea because of her unremitting and distressed prayers and changed the sex of the child into a boy’s. In memory of this change, the citizens of Phaestus still sacrifice to Leto the Grafter because she had grafted organs onto the girl, and they gave her festival in the name of Ecdysia (stripping), because the girl had stripped off her maidenly peplus. It is now an observance in marriages to lie down beforehand beside the statute of Leucippus.

Chapter IV: Angry Goddesses Messing With Men

I was really hoping to make this a shorter video…

*sigh*

No, it’s going to be a shorter video! We’re manifesting the video of our dreams! Not everything has to be dozens of pages long. 

There are tons of gender transformations there. 

Who’ve we got? Caeneus, Leucippus, Teiresias, Hypermestra, and of course Siproites. 

Each of these deserves their own video. We’ll get to them another time, I hope. 

I know this is the second time I’ve said that about Teiresias, but yeah, one of these days we’ll get to their myths. 

You want me to get to it faster? 

PATREON, this ain’t my full-time job. I wish it were. Manifest some more cash in my pocket, and then we’ll talk. 

RELATED: Transgender Wisdom: The Myths of Teiresias

But okay, Siproites. 

“The Cretan, Siproites, had also been turned into a woman for having seen Artemis bathing when out hunting.”

That’s all we’ve got. 

And yeah, is that ever spicy. 

Where can we go with this? 

Actually, there are a few different threads we can pull on there. We’ve got the transformation, the fact that it was Artemis who did it, and the fact that Siproites was a Cretan. 

First of all, the circumstances of Siproites’ transformation aren’t terribly uncommon. Goddesses get mad when men see them bathing in the forest pretty often. 

Actaeon is a great example of this. His story shows up in quite a few sources, and as usual each telling says something different. But the way Ovid tells it, Actaeon was out hunting, and accidentally saw Artemis bathing. As a result, she changed him into a stag, and poor Actaeon was devoured by his own dogs (Ov. Met. III.CXXXVIII-CCL). 

Why did Artemis not do the same with Siproites? We don’t know. 

One version of Teiresias’ myth, from Callimachus’ Hymns, is basically the same premise. But instead of Artemis, it’s Athena he sees, and instead of being turned into a stag, he’s blinded (Callim. Hymn V.LVII-CXXX). We talked about Teiresias in the video on Lucian and Megillus.

Pseudo-Plutarch talks about another similar myth in De Fluviis, a work that explores the mythology, geography, and biology of 25 different rivers. In Book 22, on the Achelous River in Epirus, we learn about Calydon, the son of Mars and Astynome. He accidentally saw Artemis bathing in the river, so she transformed him into a rock. As a result, they changed the name of the nearby mountain to Calydon as well (De Fluviis, XXII).

So if you ever see the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in a river bathing, avert your eyes because it’s probably my girlfriend, give her some privacy you perv! 

Gosh I love her…

And if it’s not her, you should probably still avert your eyes because it seems like your options are:

1. Be blinded
2. Be turned into a stag
3. Be turned into a rock
4. Be turned into a woman

And if that last one sounds appealing to you, I get it, it was more appealing to me too, but there are far less risky ways to make that happen. 

Chapter V: Cretan Mythology

Okay, what else do we know? 

Siproites was from Crete, and that’s pretty notable. 

If you’ve not heard of Crete before, hoo boy. It’s a lot of fun. 

Crete is an island in the Aegean Sea. It’s the fifth largest – Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica are larger. And it was also the home of the Minoan civilization, which is arguably the first actual civilization in Europe. They began somewhere around 3100 BCE (Tomkins & Schoep, 66), and stuck around, with various highs and lows, until the Bronze Age collapse around 1075 BCE (Hallager, 149). In particular, they’re known for their large, elaborate, completely awesome palaces. Knossos is the most famous, but it’s not the only one. 

There’s so much to say about the Minoan civilization that I’m sure you could create an entire channel around them. 

They Minoans left behind tons of fantastic art and architecture, and a lot of writing too. Hundreds of tablets, in fact. 

Is there anything in there that could help us understand Siproites?

From what we can tell, the Minoans had three different written languages. Minoan hieroglyphics, Linear A, and Linear B. 

As far as Minoan hieroglyphics go, we can’t do much in terms of translating them. There are too few pieces surviving to give us much to go on. 

We have quite a bit more Linear A tablets, but thus far scholars have been unable to translate them either (Chadwick, 12-13). 

So, what’s on Linear A? Could we be sitting on a treasure trove of preserved epic tales, each tablet its own Iliad, just waiting to be deciphered? 

Probably not. 

See, we have been able to translate its successor language, Linear B. And its contents are mostly palace records. Tallies of grain, wool, sheep. That sort of thing. Pretty boring stuff (Chadwick, 151-4). 

But either way, it’s unlikely the Classical era Greeks or the Romans could read it any better than we can. 

Scholar EJ Forsdyke mentions an anecdote in Plutarch, where King Agesilaos II of Sparta finds a grave in Boeotia where a bronze tablet is buried. He didn’t know how to decipher it, but thought it looked a bit like Egyptian hieroglyphs, so he sent a copy of it to Egypt to see if they knew what it said (Forsdyke, 41-42). 

And I mean, if you squint, and tilt your head, and drink a couple fingers of scotch, Minoan scripts do kind of look like Egyptian hieroglyphics, in I guess the same way that this (Cancer) looks like a crab, or this (Cygnus) looks like a swan, or this (Cassiopeia) looks like a queen on a throne? These never made any sense to me. Hercules and Orion, okay, I can see that. But how is this (Aries) a ram??? Anyway, consider the frame of reference of a Spartan king from the 4^th century BCE. Egyptian hieroglyphics would have been the closest thing he’d know to this. This anecdote is probably referring to Linear B considering where it was discovered, but they probably couldn’t read Linear A or the Minoan hieroglyphics either. 

Besides, the Minoans stopped using Linear B around 1450 BCE from what we can tell (Chadwick, 12-13), and the other two earlier than that. For reference, it would be around a thousand years before Plato, Herodotus, and the Classical Greek writers showed up. Linear A would make about as much sense to them as Beowulf does to the average person today. 

Alright, so whatever secrets remain sealed behind Minoan Hieroglyphics and Linear A likely won’t help us understand Siproites, but that’s not all we’ve got. 

In fact, there’s plenty of Classical mythology centred on Crete. 

Obviously, there’s a lot to do with bulls. We see bull motifs all over the place in Cretan art – we even know they played some sort of bull jumping game, though we don’t know the details. That’s clearly where the story of King Minos and the Minotaur comes from. The labyrinth part, we think, comes from just how bloody big and complex the Cretan palaces were. If you didn’t know any better, you might think they were a maze, especially if you stumbled upon them centuries after they were abandoned. 

But Antoninus Liberalis doesn’t say anything about a bull or a palace, so that doesn’t help much one way or another. 

Back in the video on the gallae, we talked about Zeus being hidden away after he was born. Hungry Kronos was told his son would overthrow him as ruler of the universe, so every time his wife Kybele gave birth to a new child, Kronos would devour them. That’s what happened with the first five kids, but when it was Zeus’ time, Kybele gave Kronos a boulder to eat instead, which he did. After, Kybele hid Zeus in a cave, where he stayed until he grew to be an adult, and overthrew Kronos. That cave was on Crete. 

But baby Zeus cried, as babies sometimes do. So Kybele’s devotees made a lot of noise as they worshipped near the cave to drown it out, which might be the reason why the gallae were so fond of loud, ecstatic worship in Rome. 

But that doesn’t give us much to go on with Siproites either. 

Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, was worshipped at Phaistos, another Minoan palace – Antoninus Liberalis himself told us that in the passage we read earlier. That, too, was related to a gender transformation. In that case, it was Leucippus’ mother praying to Leto to change her child into a man. 

So okay, there’s some gender happening on Crete. But that story isn’t related to seeing a goddess bathing – it was a deliberate transformation by a goddess who took pity on a human family. 

Earlier, we talked about four different mythological men who saw goddesses bathing, and their various fates. Actaeon was turned into a stag and torn to pieces, Teiresias was blinded, Calydon was turned into a rock, and Siproites was turned into a woman. 

Now, from a mythological perspective, being turned into a woman was generally considered to be a bad thing, a punishment. But even so, it’s clear to see Siproites’ fate was the least bad. And yes, I know my audience – chances are if you’re watching this, you’d definitely choose Siproites’ fate over any of the others. 

But even if you were the ancient equivalent of a cis man, you’d probably rather be a woman than be dead. Teiresias is I think the only one that might give you pause. 

Could Siproites’ lighter sentence, relatively speaking, be related to the fact that they’re Cretan? 

Possibly. Siproites might have been a devoted follower of Artemis, who had the misfortune of stumbling upon her bathing. Artemis might have recognized she had to punish Siproites, but because of his devotion to her, perhaps she simply turned Siproites into a woman. After all, Artemis’ followers, her huntresses, saw her naked as she bathed, and that wasn’t a problem – it was only men who were forbidden from such things. 

But here’s the thing – gender transformations in Greek mythology aren’t just taking a man’s brain and sticking it in a woman’s body. They seem to transform both body and mind. 

In the stories where Teiresias was transformed into a woman, she seemed to largely take it in stride. She became a priestess of Hera, the one who turned her into a woman in the first place. She married a man, and even had a daughter by him as well, before being turned back seven years later. 

Perhaps something similar happened with Siproites. Perhaps she became one of Artemis’ huntresses, continuing her devotion to the goddess who punished her, and continuing to hunt along with her sisters, forever living and hunting together.  

Or perhaps not. 

We don’t know. 

Chapter VI: Really? Is That It?

Unfortunately, yes. 

Ancient history and mythology are like that sometimes. 

Tantalizing, but ultimately disappointing, the story of Siproites is unmistakably transgender mythology. 

There are things we know we know. 

There are things we don’t know we don’t know. 

And there are things we know we don’t know. 

The story of Siproites falls into the last category. 

If not for Antoninus Liberalis, though, Siproites would have joined the countless myths who’ve been lost to the sands of time altogether. 

At least we’ve got something. And should we ever find a manuscript of Nicander’s works, perhaps we can build on it. 

But for now, that’s all we know. 

So, what does this story tell us?

It tells us that stories about people like us, whether in reality or in fiction, have been around for a very long time. 

Nicander’s Metamorphoses doesn’t survive. But two of his other works do, and from there we can glean enough information to think he wrote some time during the 2^nd century BCE. Certainly not the oldest thing we’ve looked at on this series, but not the newest either. 

Was Nicander the originator of the Siproites story? We don’t know that either, but mythological stories are often older than the sources we have for them. 

Either way, people were thinking about, and writing about, gender transformations for thousands of years. This little bit of Antoninus Liberalis’ work gives us five different examples of that – Leucippus, Caeneus, Teiresias, Hypermestra, and Siproites. 

Whether through divine punishment, or through estrogen soaked cheese snacks, through fusion with an obsessed lover, or through division of self with a dagger, the ancient Mediterranean is full of transgender stories. 

We have always existed.

And so long as humanity continues to endure, so to shall we. 

Primary Sources:

►Antoninus Liberalis. “Metamorphoses”. Translated by Francis Celoria, Routledge, 1992. 
►Apuleius. “The Golden Ass”. Translated by Robert Graves, Penguin Classics, 1950.
►Callimachus. “Hymns”. Translated by A.W. & G.R. Mair. Loeb Classical Library, London, 1921.
►Ovid. “Metamorphoses”. Translated by Rolfe Humphries, Indiana University Press, 1955. 
►Pseudo-Plutarch. “De Fluviis”. Translated by William W Goodwin, Boston, Little, Brown & Company, 1874.

Secondary Sources: 

►Benefiel, Rebecca R. “The Ancient Graffiti Project”. 2024.
►Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. “Nicander”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 2024.
►Forbes Irving, P.M.C. “Metamorphosis in Greek Myths”. Oxford University Press, 1990. 
►Forsdyke, EJ. “Greece Before Homer”. New York, Norton, 1964.
►Hallager, Erik. “Crete”. In Cline, Eric (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean. Oxford University Press. pp. 149–159, 2012.
►Hard, Robin. “The Routledge Handbook Of Greek Mythology”. Routledge, 2004.
►Harris, William V. “Ancient Literacy”. Harvard University Press, 1989.
►Harvey, Brian. “Graffiti From Pompeii”. 2007. 
►Krogerus, Mikael, and Tschäppeler, Roman. “The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking.” New York, W.W. Norton & Co. 2012.
►Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. “The Discovery of Nuclear Fission. Mainz, 2024. 
►Meshik, Alex. “The Workings of an Ancient Nuclear Reactor”. Scientific American, 2005. 
►Smith, William. “A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities”. John Murray, London, 1875. 
►Tearle, Oliver. “Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Notes Towards An Analysis”. 2020. 
►Tomkins, Peter, & Schoep, Ilse. “Crete”. In Cline, Eric (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean. Oxford University Press. pp. 66–82, 2012.