Hermaphroditus [SEP] sex or gender
a great-grandson of Atlas, sometimes he is called Atlantiades (). Hermaphroditus' father, Hermes, was also called Atlantiades because his mother, Maia was the daughter of Atlas.
Hermaphroditus' name is the basis for the word hermaphrodite.
Symbolism.
Hermaphroditus, the two-sexed child of Aphrodite and Hermes (Venus and Mercury) had long been a symbol of androgyny or effeminacy, and was portrayed in Greco-Roman art as a female figure with male genitals.
Theophrastus's account also suggests
in this account, the modern heterosexual man and woman descend from the original androgynous sex. The myth of Hermaphroditus involves heterosexual lovers merging into their primordial androgynous sex.
Other creation myths around the world share a belief in three original sexes, such as those from northern Thailand.
Many have interpreted the "eunuchs" of the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean world as a third gender that inhabited a liminal space between women and men, understood in their societies as somehow neither or both. In the Historia Augusta, the eunuch body is