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Psyche

Biographical

A beautiful maiden whose exceptional beauty sparked the envy and wrath of Aphrodite, Psyche was the youngest of a king's three daughters. Aphrodite, angered by the attention Psyche received from men, asked Eros to make her fall in love with the most repellent of men. However, Eros, struck by her beauty, fell in love with Psyche instead. When no man would offer to marry her, the Delphic Oracle decreed that she should be placed on a desolate mountaintop to await a serpent who would be her husband. In one version of the myth, Psyche threw herself from the mountain to escape Aphrodite’s harassment. Either way, she was carried away by the west wind, Zephyr, and found herself in a magnificent palace where she lived happily with Eros, whom she never saw, as he only visited her at night. Despite the bliss of their union, Psyche’s curiosity, fuelled by her jealous sisters, led her to believe that her husband was a monstrous serpent. One night, she lit a lamp while Eros slept and discovered he was the most handsome of gods. In her excitement, a drop of hot oil fell onto his shoulder, waking him, and Eros, enraged by her mistrust, fled. Psyche’s peace shattered, she attempted to end her life by drowning, but was saved by the river-god. She then became a slave to Aphrodite, enduring near-impossible tasks such as sorting grains, collecting wool from man-eating sheep, fetching water from the Styx, and bringing a jar of beauty from Persephone in Hades. Throughout these trials, Eros, still secretly in love, aided her invisibly. Eventually, Psyche overcame Aphrodite’s cruelty, was reunited with Eros, and taken to Olympus, where she was deified and accepted by Aphrodite as her daughter-in-law. In later antiquity, Psyche came to symbolise the human soul, her journey representing the soul’s purification through trials, readying it for true happiness. In art, she is often depicted as a maiden with butterfly wings, alongside Eros, embodying this allegorical transformation.

The daughter of a king of Sicily, according to some sources, she married Eros, and had issue.