The most beautiful love stories in the ancient Greek Mythology: Psyche and Cupid
POSTED ON AUGUST 5, 2012 UPDATED ON JANUARY 13, 2016
The Greek Mythology has been my favorite book since secondary school. I used to sleep with it under my head and memorized every little tale by heart. In fact, it had influenced my life a lot, especially when I was in college and even now I still think probably I’ll name my kids in the future after some of the heroes/heroines in there(!) To me it is the best literary work ever made and the best stories ever told.
And inspired by a blog post that I read recently “Why boys who play guitar are actually Greek Gods” in which the blogger mentioned about Orpheus and his love for Eurydice I’ve decided to pick 3 love stories that I think are the most beautiful out of hundreds (or thousands) other mostly-sexual-love-affairs in the whole legend. Mind you, ancient people were the lucky ones. While in the modern time love is actually not the most important thing in a love story since it dies out easily over a couple of materialistic / realistic / practical reasons, in the old days when people were in love then love was the only thing that mattered.
1. Psyche and Cupid:
This is my favorite romance of all time. It’s not about how they fell in love but about how they fought to finally be together. There are many versions for this legend. Wikipedia has one of them, but I much prefer what I read in the Vietnamese version edited by Nguyen Van Khoa. That was a truly beautiful one.
“Once upon a time”.. Psyche was the little daughter among the 3 princesses of a king. Her fairness far outshone her sisters’ and any other girls’ in the mortal land and that made Venus (or Aphodite) – the Goddess of Love and Beauty – so envious and anxious because people forgot to worship her power. Thus, she told her son Cupid – the winged God of Love – to shoot his arrows making Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man ever. However, the trouble was that Cupid also fell in love with Psyche from the very first time he saw her as if he had just shot himself (I think this is the best part of this version because the God of Love also got trapped in the “troubles” he brought to mortals and also love does happen even without getting shot with one of those invisible golden arrows).
So he begged for help from Apollo to fake an oracle telling the king that his little daughter had to marry a terrible serpent to save his people. Psyche accepted her fate because it was a princess’s responsibility and she even tried to console her parents’ grieve. She was left alone in a mountain, but no serpent came as said. She only felt a cool breeze taking her to a magnificent palace where she was served like a queen by invisible servants. Her husband only came to her at night and she never saw his face. However, she also quietly fell in love with him.
Then one day her husband allowed her to receive her two sisters as guests but he told her not to listen to them and try to find out who he was: “On the day you know who I am we’ll be parted forever”.
When seeing Psyche again, the 2 sisters became more envious of Psyche’s luxurious life than happy that she was still alive. They persuaded Psyche that her husband was actually a serpent and prompted her to kill him to save herself. Psyche was very naive, she felt too scared by the evil words from her sisters. She couldn’t think about killing her husband who was very nice to her but at least she had to make sure he was not a monster.
One night Psyche waited for her husband to sleep soundly and came back with a lamp. Under the light she finally saw her husband’s face, as beautiful as he always was, the God of Love. She was deeply touched and her hands were trembling so hard that she dropped a bit oil from the lamp on his shoulder and awoke him. He immediately flew away and she could still hear his voice in the wind “Love can’t exist without honesty and trust”.
Psyche felt so awful. She loved him with all her heart and decided to go to look for him. Days.. months.. years passed by but no sight of her beloved husband. She asked all the Olympus Gods and Goddesses for help but no one spared her any sympathy just because they didn’t want troubles with Venus. Thus, Psyche decided to search for Venus herself to beg her permit to meet Cupid again.
Meanwhile, Venus found out her son’s disobedience and locked him in his room to prevent him from going for his wife. Then one day she finally met with Psyche. The envious Goddess thought she would challenge Psyche with difficult tasks so that she would either die or become old and ugly so that Cupid would not love her anymore.
She asked Psyche to separate a mess of grains; then to get some wool from the vicious golden sheep; and then bring back some water from the River Styx, the river lay between the mortal land and the Underworld. Amazingly while all the Gods and Goddesses ignored the poor girl, the little creatures sympathized with her and Psyche