PSYCHE

Psyche, whose name means “soul” in Greek, was a beautiful young woman who became the lover of Cupid, the divine son of Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Before Psyche could win Cupid, however, she was forced to undergo many trials and seemingly impossible challenges.

The main source for the story of Psyche is Roman writer Lucius Apuleius (c. 124— c. 170 CE), who lived in northern Africa, then part of the Roman Empire. His most famous work is Metamorphoses (also known as The Golden Hss), which concerns the adventures of a young man who is changed into an ass by a witch and then wanders about looking for a cure for his metamorphosis. In the course of his adventures, the young man overhears a story told to a young woman who has been abducted on the day of her wedding by robbers and is being held hostage by them. The story is intended to encourage the woman not to give up hope. It concerns two young lovers—

Cupid and Psyche—who, against all odds, succeed in coming together and living happily ever after.

The story of Cupid and Psyche may have been well

Right: Psyche Abandoned

(1790) by French sculptor Augustin Pajou. The statue depicts Psyche just after she has been deserted by her lover, Cupid.

Known in the Greek-speaking world before the time of Apuleius, but no one knows for sure. The tale is very unusual in the field of Greek myth in that the version told by the later Roman writer is the only one to have survived from antiquity. There are no other independent accounts or even casual references to the story before this time, and the only other version that survives was written by Christian allegorist Fulgentius, who lived over 300 years after Apuleius. Historians believe that an earlier Greek writer did produce a long account of the story, but this version is

Completely lost and no one knows when it was written. However, elsewhere in Metamorphoses, Apuleius drew on earlier Greek sources for his material, and it is likely that he also did so in the case of the story of Cupid and Psyche.

Because of the comparative lack of ancient sources, some modern scholars have suggested that the story of Cupid and Psyche somehow belongs in a different category from other Greek myths and have labeled it as a fairy tale or popular legend. Others, however, dismiss this claim. They argue that, while the story certainly has many traditional fairy-tale components, the same is true of many of the myths from ancient Greece.

According to Apuleius, Psyche was the youngest of three princesses. All three were very beautiful, but Psyche’s beauty far exceeded that of the other two, and she came to be regarded, first by her own people and then throughout the world, as being more lovely even than Venus herself. People traveled on pilgrimages from other lands in order to catch sight of her, and the traditional centers of Venus’s worship began to be ignored.

Below: In The Legend of Cupid and Psyche by Swiss painter Angelica Kauffmann (1741—1807), Psyche is depicted with her two sisters. The winged figure of Cupid looks on.

The theme of mortal beauty becoming excessively regarded is widespread in Greek myth, and it almost always resulted in severe punishment, with some sort of dramatic or horrific reversal imposed by Venus. So it was with Psyche. Even though neither Psyche nor her parents claimed that she rivaled Venus (as was the case in most such instances of this theme), the goddess of love acted to put Psyche in her place. She instructed her son Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with the lowest and most wretched of all mortals.