""—Strabo "Geography XIV.2.16’'

This was illustrated by Hellenic sculptors, who produced several works depicting a person of dual-gender.The power of the spring was rejected by other Romans, such as the architect Vitruvius ""there is a mistaken idea that this spring infects those who drink of it... it cannot be that the water makes men effeminate"" —Vitruvius ’’On Architecture’’ 2.8.12

In Book IV of his poem Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts the myth of how the fountain came to be so in the story of the nymph Salmacis (after whom the fountain is, in this account, named), her attempted rape of Hermaphroditus, and his resultant change into an intersex being.