Iphis - Daughter of Ligdus

Daughter of Ligdus

According to the Roman poet Ovid, who wrote about transformations in his Metamorphoses, Iphis (or Iphys) was the daughter of Telethusa and Ligdus in Crete. Ligdus had already threatened to kill his pregnant wife's child if it wasn't a boy. Telethusa despaired, but was visited in the middle of the night by the Egyptian goddess Isis, attended by Anubis and Apis, who assured her that all would be well. When Telethusa gave birth to Iphis, she concealed her daughter's sex from her husband and raised her daughter as a boy. Having reached the age of adolescence, Iphis fell deeply in love with another girl, Ianthe, and prayed to Juno to allow her to marry her beloved. When nothing happened, her mother Telethusa brought her to the temple of Isis and prayed to the goddess to help her daughter. Isis responded by transforming Iphis into a man. The male Iphis married Ianthe and the two lived happily ever after. Their marriage was presided over by Juno, Venus, and Hymenaios, the god of marriage.

The story of Iphis is similar to that of Leucippus from Phaestus, Crete, and could be a variant thereof.

The 17th-century publisher Humphrey Moseley once claimed to possess a manuscript of a play based on the Iphis and Ianthe story, by William Shakespeare. Scholars have treated the claim with intense skepticism; the play has not survived.