Psyché

Psyché (Gr., 'the soul'), an exquisite creation of the later mythology of Greece. She was the youngest of the three daughters of a king, and so beautiful that mortals mistook her for Aphrodite (Venus) herself, and did not dare to love, but only to worship her. This excited the jealousy of the goddess, who sent Eros (Cupid) to inspire Psyche with a passion for the most contemptible of all men; but Eros was himself wounded as deeply by her glances as ever he had wounded others with his darts. He accordingly caused her to be carried to a beautiful palace of pleasure, and here every night he visited her, unseen and unknown, and left her before morning broke. Thus Psyche might have enjoyed perpetual delight had she remembered the advice of her unknown lover, who warned her not to seek to know who he was. But her jealous sisters, whom against her lover's injunction she had allowed to visit her, played upon her curiosity, and persuaded her that she was embracing a monster in the darkness of night. Lighting a lamp when Eros was asleep, she saw with rapture that she was the mistress of the most handsome of the gods, but in her excitement she let a drop of hot oil fall on the sleeper's shoulder. This awoke Eros, who upbraided her for her mistrust, and vanished. Psyche gave way to the most passionate grief; she tried in vain to throw herself into a river, then wandered about from temple to temple, inquiring for her lover. At length she came to the palace of Venus, where she was seized by the goddess, and kept as a slave. Eros, however, who still loved her, invisibly helped and comforted the hapless maiden, reconciled her to his mother, and was finally united to her in immortal wedlock. In works of art Psyche is represented as a beautiful maiden with the wings of a butterfly. Her story was considered as an allegory of the progress of the human soul through earthly passion and misfortune to pure celestial felicity; but it must not be forgotten that it is merely a version of one of the most widespread folk-tales in the world. See CUPID, and Zingow's Psyche und Eros (1881).