It shares several elements with the myth of Iphis, another female Cretan child raised as and transformed into a male from Ovid's poem the Metamorphoses.

Following the advice of seers, Galatea gave her child a masculine name, Leucippus, and told her husband that she had given birth to a son.

[1] Leucippus was raised as a boy, but upon approaching puberty, it became necessary to conceal his female sex from Lamprus, presumably to avoid drawing his ire.

[5] The festival became an annual initiation ritual, focused on the transition of boys to men as they joined the youth corps, agela.

[6] The "young [men] were required to put on women's clothes and swear an oath of citizenship,"[6] after which "herds of youth [would] strip off their peploi publicly," reenacting Leucippus's transformation.