CUPID AND PSYCHE

Cupid is the Roman god of love, known as Eros in Greece. The Romans considered him the son of Venus and Mercury, while to the Greeks, he was the son of Aphrodite and Hermes. The breathtaking beauty of a mortal woman, Psyche, and his own accidental arrow, caused him to fall in love not only with a mortal, but one his mother Venus had hired him to trick.

Venus's jelousy of Psyche's beauty rouses her to call in her son for help. The mischievous winged Cupid was ordered by his mother to "punish that contumacious beauty; give thy mother a revenge as sweet as her injuries are great; infuse into the bosom of that haughty girl a passion for some low, mean, unworthy being, so that she may reap a mortification as great as her present exultation and triumph.”

Cupid prepared to obey the commands of his mother. Touching his arrow to her side as she lay sleeping, she awoke, and saw him. He was so startled, he then wounded himself with his own arrow.

Psyche married Cupid, but was not allowed to see her husband, lest his mother might kill the beauty. He came only in the hours of darkness and left before dawn. But he spoke tender words of love and inspired a romantic passion in her. She often begged him to stay and let her see him, but he would not consent. On the contrary he asked her to make no attempt to see him.

But Psyche did take a look late one night. It caused Cupid to fly away, and his mother Venus to become enraged. Following a series of difficult trials, the lovers were finally reunited. Eventually, they had a daughter whose name was Pleasure.

Blufinch writes that the story is allegorical. "The fable of Cupid and Psyche is usually considered allegorical. The Greek name for a butterfly is Psyche, and the same word means the soul. There is no illustration of the immortality of the soul so striking and beautiful as the butterfly, bursting on brilliant wings from the tomb in which it has lain, after a dull, grovelling, caterpillar existence, to flutter in the blaze of day and feed on the most fragrant and delicate productions of the spring. Psyche, then, is the human soul, which is purified by sufferings and misfortunes, and is thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness."

Excerpts from Bulfinch and a more complete story of Cupid and Psyche can be found in The Age of Fable: Stories of Gods and Heroes by Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867).