Cupid and Psyche, the tale of the soul in Apuleius' Metamorphoses

The tale of Cupid and Psyche has come down to us through a single ancient author, Apuleius of Madauros, a North African writer and orator of the 2nd century AD. He placed it in the Metamorphoses, the Latin novel also known as The Golden Ass, where it fills part of books four, five and six. It is told by an old woman who, in a robbers' cave, wants to comfort a kidnapped girl, Charite.

A princess too beautiful

Psyche is the youngest of a king's three daughters. Her beauty is such that men stop honouring Venus in order to worship her. The offended goddess orders her son Cupid to make the girl fall in love with the most wretched of beings. Meanwhile an oracle of Apollo commands her parents to leave the maiden on a crag, in bridal dress, as the bride of a monster feared even by the gods.

Instead the west wind Zephyrus lifts her and sets her down in a flowering valley, where there stands a marvellous palace attended by invisible voices. Every night a mysterious husband comes to her in the dark and leaves before dawn, asking her never to try to see him. It is Cupid himself who, disobeying his mother, has fallen in love with the girl.

The lamp and the drop of oil

Her two sisters, jealous of her happiness, suggest that the husband is truly a monstrous serpent. One night Psyche lights a lamp and grasps a razor. In the light she discovers the most beautiful god imaginable, but a drop of burning oil falls on Cupid's shoulder; he wakes and flies away. The happiness built on a prohibition is lost.

The motif of the hidden husband who must not be seen recurs in many European folk tales. Folklorists place it in the type of the animal bridegroom, the same family to which stories such as Beauty and the Beast belong. In Apuleius, however, the tale also takes on a philosophical colour, because in Greek Psyche means soul.

The trials of Venus

Psyche wanders in search of her husband and finally gives herself up to Venus, who sets her impossible tasks. She must sort a heap of mixed seeds in one night, and the ants help her. She must gather the golden wool of savage sheep, and a speaking reed advises her to wait for evening. She must draw water from the Styx, and Jupiter's eagle flies for her.

The last trial takes her to the underworld, to ask Proserpina for a little of her beauty, sealed in a small box. On the way back Psyche, curious once more, opens it and falls into a deathly sleep. Cupid, healed of his wound, wakes her and obtains from Jupiter permission to marry her. Psyche drinks ambrosia, becomes immortal, and from their union a daughter is born, Pleasure.

From the novel to the palaces

The Renaissance rediscovered the tale with enthusiasm. In the Roman villa of Agostino Chigi, today the Villa Farnesina, the Loggia of Psyche was frescoed around 1518 to designs by Raphael and by his workshop. Between 1787 and 1793 Antonio Canova carved the reclining group of Cupid and Psyche, now in the Louvre, which captures the moment of awakening.

Allegorical readings of the tale, begun in late antiquity by Fulgentius, saw in it the journey of the soul that, through trial, is united with the divine. Even without that key it remains a perfect story, in which curiosity loses happiness and faithfulness wins it back. It is no coincidence that it has been rewritten, painted and staged in every century, from Molière's play to the verses of many Romantic poets.