Cupid and Psyche

Content Warning: The source text and study guide both contain references to suicide.

“Cupid and Psyche” is a story from the ancient Roman novel The Metamorphoses (also known as The Golden Ass) by Apuleius, written around 160 CE. The story describes the love between Cupid, the god of love, and Psyche (pronounced SY-kee), a young woman, and the trials they undergo as the result of human and divine meddling.

Although the legend of Cupid and Psyche was widespread in the ancient world, the retelling by Apuleius is the only surviving version. The discovery of the manuscript during the Renaissance reintroduced Cupid and Psyche to the Western world, where their story enjoyed renewed popularity in art and literature.

Apuleius was a respected rhetorician and wrote several works on the philosophy of Plato. Because Psyche is the ancient Greek word for “soul,” some scholars read Cupid and Psyche as an allegory representing how the human soul is led by love to union with the divine.

“Cupid and Psyche” has been translated from Latin several times and can be found in many different versions. This guide uses the translation by P. G. Walsh found in The Golden Ass, published in the Oxford World’s Classics series in 1995.

In the frame story of the novel, the title of which means “transformations,” a young man called Lucius, through a combination of foolishness and meddling with magical practices, gets turned into a donkey. For this reason—and possibly to prevent confusion with another book called Metamorphoses, written by the poet Ovid—Saint Augustine nicknamed Apuleius’s novel The Golden Ass, by which it is now popularly known.

Lucius the donkey spends the book in various predicaments as he attempts to transform back into a human, and his escapades provide opportunities for the author to insert several smaller stories into the narrative. The tale of Cupid and Psyche is the longest of these and occupies Books 4 through 6 of the text’s 11 chapters. Lucius the donkey has been captured by pirates who have also abducted a young woman. The old woman left to guard the maiden tells her the story of Cupid and Psyche while Lucius listens.

A king and queen have a daughter who is so surpassingly beautiful that people come from abroad to see her. They hail her another Venus (the goddess of love), a human possessing the beauty of the divine. The girl draws so much attention that people neglect to make offerings to Venus herself. Seeing her temples deserted and a mere mortal enjoying the adoration due to her, Venus grows enraged.

She summons her son Cupid, who is known for making mischief. His torch and arrows kindle a passionate desire in anyone they touch. Venus commands Cupid to “punish harshly this girl’s arrogant beauty” (76) by making her fall in love with the ugliest, most unpleasant man he can find.

Psyche pines with loneliness because no one wants to marry her. While her sisters find husbands, everyone seems content to admire Psyche from afar. The king consults the oracle of Apollo, who pronounces that Psyche is destined to wed not a man but a “fierce, barbaric, snake-like monster” (78). The oracle says that the king must abandon his daughter on a mountaintop so her bridegroom might claim her.

A great procession takes Psyche to the mountaintop, mourning as if it were her funeral, not her wedding. Bravely, Psyche tells her parents they should lament not her fate but the misplaced veneration given her, saying, “my one undoing has been the title of Venus bestowed on me” (79). Abandoned on the peak, Psyche weeps. But then Zephyr, the West Wind, carries her to a meadow, where she falls asleep.

Psyche wakes to see a beautiful forest and flowing stream, as well as a royal palace standing open and empty. As she enters, marveling at the columns of gold, walls carved of silver, and mosaic floors patterned with jewels. A disembodied voice whispers, “Lady, all these things are yours” (81). Psyche enjoys a bath and a banquet laid by unseen hands, while music from invisible musicians fills the room.

That night, in darkness, her “unknown bridegroom” comes to her (81) and then departs before dawn. Psyche settles into a delightful new life, attended by unseen servants during the day and visited by her husband at night.

One night, her husband advises Psyche that though her sisters seek her, she should not meet with them, as they will “bring utter destruction” (82). Psyche is lonely during the day, however, so her husband agrees to let her sisters visit. But he warns her that she must not try to discover what he looks like. She assures him that she will obey, for she would rather die than be without him.

Zephyr wafts her sisters to the meadow and Psyche welcomes them with joy, showing them her palace and serving them a meal. When her sisters question her about her husband, Psyche tells them he is a handsome youth who spends his days hunting. She heaps them with jewels as parting gifts before Zephyr returns them home.

Psyche’s good fortune stirs envy in her sisters. Psyche’s husband warns her again that her sisters will “persuade you to pry into my appearance,” but “a single glimpse of it will be your last” (86). She must keep his secret, he says, for the sake of their unborn child.

Overjoyed that she is pregnant, Psyche again begs her husband to let her sisters visit. She welcomes them a second time with a bath, meal, and music, all provided by unseen servants. The jealous sisters press for details about her husband, and Psyche tells them this time that he is a respected, middle-aged man who travels a great deal. Again, she showers them with gifts before they depart.

The sisters’ envy torments them. They insist she doesn’t deserve her good fortune. Visiting Psyche for the third time, they convince her that her husband must be the “monstrous dragon” of the prophecy (89). They claim that he is fattening her so he might eat her and her child. Her sisters instruct Psyche to hide a lamp and a knife in her bedroom and cut off the monster’s head as it sleeps.

After they leave, Psyche is “tossed in her grief like the waves of the sea” (92). She has been happy with her husband, but he threatens calamity if she ever sees him. Attempting to save herself and her baby, she hides a lamp and knife as her sisters advised. That night, when her husband is asleep, Psyche lights the lamp and raises the blade to strike.

In the lamplight, she sees Cupid with blonde hair, milk-white skin, and dewy wings. She is overcome with love at the sight of his beauty. As she leans over to kiss him, oil from her lamp splashes on his shoulder. Cupid leaps out of bed and flies away. Psyche clings to his leg, but she slips and falls to earth. Cupid scolds her for her betrayal, revealing that he defied Venus to make her his wife only to have her try to kill him.

In despair, Psyche attempts to drown herself in a river, but out of respect for Cupid, the river washes her gently onto the bank. Pan, the god of wild things, advises Psyche to try to win Cupid back. Psyche visits her sister and tells her that her husband was Cupid but, because she betrayed him, he left her. The jealous sister runs to the mountaintop begging Cupid to take her as his wife. However, when she leaps, Zephyr refuses to catch her, and she falls to her death. The same fate meets the second sister when Psyche visits her with the same tale.

The wounded and grieving Cupid goes to his mother’s home to recover. When she learns what happens, Venus is furious that her son married her enemy. Venus makes her anger known far and wide. When a weary, wandering Psyche comes to a temple of Ceres and tries to make an offering, Ceres says she cannot help because she does not dare to anger Venus. Psyche then begs for help at the temple of Juno, queen of the gods and the goddess of marriage and childbirth. But Juno, too, refuses to oppose Venus.

Psyche then goes to Venus to beg for mercy. The goddess cackles in delight and calls her maidservants, Melancholy and Sorrow, to torment Psyche by tearing her dress, pulling her hair, and striking her. Then Venus challenges Psyche to prove her devotion by sorting a huge pile of tiny seeds including poppyseed, lentils, and millet. Psyche is dismayed by the impossible task, but a small ant sees her distress. He summons an army of ants to carry the seeds into separate piles. Venus is furious when she returns, knowing Psyche had help.

Psyche’s second task is to gather golden fleece from a flock of divine sheep. The animals are so terrifying that Psyche considers throwing herself into the river again. But a reed at the riverside speaks and tells her that she can gather wool that the sheep shed attached to the bushes. Psyche returns with an armload of gold, but Venus is still not satisfied. She commands Psyche to gather water from a spring that gushes from a high cliff. The spring is impossible to access, and fierce snakes lie on the banks. Psyche despairs, but then Jupiter’s eagle appears and, flying up to the spring, fills the jug for her.

When Psyche brings the water to Venus, the goddess assigns the most fearsome task. She commands Psyche to travel to the underworld and fetch a beauty ointment from Proserpina, wife of Hades, god of the underworld.

Psyche climbs a tower, thinking that a leap to her death will be the most direct route to the underworld. But the tower speaks and tells Psyche where to find the entrance to the underworld. She must carry two barley cakes baked in wine and two coins. She must pay one coin to Charon, who ferries souls across the river of death. She must feed one cake to the three-headed dog that guards the gate. She must accept nothing but plain bread to eat. When she returns, she must offer the second cake to the dog and the second coin to Charon. And she must, under no circumstances, look inside the box that Proserpina will give her.

Psyche does exactly as instructed. But when she returns with the precious box, she realizes that she might be more pleasing to Cupid if she uses some of the beauty ointment. She opens the box and the sleep of Hades overcomes her. She falls to the ground as if dead.

Cupid, meanwhile, longs for Psyche. He leaves his room and finds her beside the road. He wipes the death-like sleep from her eyes and returns it to the box. Then he pricks her lightly with one of his arrows to wake her. “Poor, dear Psyche!” he exclaims. “See as before your curiosity might have been your undoing!” (112).

While Psyche delivers Proserpina’s gift to Venus, Cupid approaches Jupiter to ask for his help. Jupiter agrees to intercede and calls Mercury, the messenger, to summon the gods to an assembly. Jupiter proclaims that Cupid shall marry Psyche, and he will make them equals in status. Mercury brings Psyche before all the gods, and she drinks a cup of ambrosia that makes her immortal. Jupiter decrees, “Cupid will never part from your embrace; this marriage of your will be eternal” (113).

A marriage feast follows. Bacchus serves wine; Apollo plays the lyre while the Muses sing in harmony; and Venus dances. A daughter is born to Psyche and Cupid, and they name her Pleasure.