40 Fun Facts About Cupid and Psyche

Which Roman goddess grows jealous when people worship the mortal princess Psyche instead of her?

Venus orders her son Cupid to make Psyche love something hideous, but he falls for the princess himself and disobeys.

What spills from Psyche's lamp onto the sleeping Cupid, waking him and sending him fleeing?

Hot oil from the lamp burns Cupid, who flies off and leaves Psyche on a riverbank. He then lies ill in his mother's house while she searches for him.

Which tiny creatures sort a huge heap of mixed grains and beans for Psyche before nightfall?

Ants take pity on Psyche and bring a whole fleet of insects to finish the sorting while her tormentor is away at a wedding feast.

Which fairy tale is often traced back to the myth of Cupid and Psyche?

Beauty and the Beast is a version of Cupid and Psyche, Bruno Bettelheim argued in his book The Uses of Enchantment.

What is the one rule Psyche's mysterious husband sets when he visits her each night in darkness?

Never look at him: he always leaves before sunrise, so Psyche knows her husband only by voice and touch until her sisters stir up doubt.

Psyche carries honeyed barley cakes into the underworld to distract which monstrous guardian?

Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog of the dead, is bought off with the cakes Psyche carries in both hands.

When Psyche opens the box from the underworld hoping for beauty, what does she find inside instead?

A deathlike sleep pours out and leaves Psyche motionless until Cupid, healed at last, wipes it from her face and shuts it back in the box.

The name Psyche, also the root of the word psychology, is the Greek word for what?

Soul is the meaning, which is why the tale has so often been read as an allegory of the human spirit reaching for divine love.

Cupid, the husband of Psyche, is the Roman counterpart of which Greek god of love?

Eros is the Greek name, so the story is also told as Eros and Psyche; the heroine keeps her Greek name even in the Roman version.

Artists often give Psyche the wings of which creature, though the ancient tale never mentions any?

A butterfly became Psyche's emblem in ancient art, and engraved gems found in Britain show Cupid torching one as an image of spiritual torment.

Psyche's father, worried that no suitor will marry her, consults the oracle of which god?

Apollo's oracle gives a chilling reply: expect no human son-in-law, but a fierce creature feared even by Jupiter.

What do Psyche's envious sisters convince her that her unseen husband really is?

A huge serpent that will devour her and her unborn child is the sisters' story, spun from the oracle's warning of a dreadful bridegroom.

Besides a lamp, what does Psyche hide in the bedroom to kill the monster she expects to see?

A sharp blade and a lamp are the sisters' plan, but the light reveals the most beautiful creature Psyche has ever seen.

Startled by her first sight of Cupid, Psyche accidentally wounds herself on which object of his?

An arrow from his cast-aside quiver pricks her, and she is seized by a feverish passion for the husband she had meant to kill.

Which wind god lifts Psyche from the rocky crag and sets her down gently in a meadow?

Zephyrus, the west wind, serves Cupid; he later carries Psyche's sisters down from the same crag to visit her in the hidden palace.

What happens when each of Psyche's sisters leaps from the crag, trusting the wind?

They fall to their deaths because the wind that once carried them does nothing: each had hoped to replace Psyche as Cupid's bride.

At which goddess's temple does Psyche tidy up scattered grain offerings and farm tools?

Ceres appears and admits Psyche deserves help, but will not act against a fellow goddess; a temple of Juno turns her away the same way.

Psyche's third task is to fill a crystal vessel with black water from which underworld river?

The Styx pours from a cliff where dragons slither among the rocks, and the sight alone is enough to make Psyche despair.

Which bird swoops in to fetch the black water Psyche needs for her third task?

An eagle, Jupiter's own bird, comes to her aid out of regard for Cupid, weaving between the dragons to fill the vessel.

Which weakness makes Psyche open the forbidden box on her way back from the underworld?

Curiosity is the flaw Psyche shares with Lucius, hero of the novel around her tale, whose itch to dabble in magic gets him turned into an animal.

Psyche's final task sends her to the underworld to ask which queen for a box of beauty?

Proserpina grants the request; the errand is set on the excuse that nursing a sick son has faded the sender's own looks.

What unlikely object speaks to Psyche and explains how to enter the underworld and return alive?

A tower she climbs, meaning to throw herself off, suddenly speaks and sends her to Taenarus in Greece, where the way down begins.

What does Psyche carry in her mouth into the underworld to give Charon the ferryman?

Two coins, one for each crossing with the ferryman, mean that unlike the dead Psyche can make a return trip.

What does the king of the gods give Psyche to make her immortal before her wedding to Cupid?

Ambrosia turns Psyche into a goddess, so the pair can marry as equals at a banquet attended by all the gods.

Voluptas, the daughter born to Cupid and Psyche, has a Latin name with which meaning?

Pleasure is what Voluptas means; Psyche is already carrying the child when her sisters talk her into lighting the lamp.

Which riverside plant speaks to Psyche, telling her how to gather wool from a flock of violent sheep?

A reed, the kind used to make musical instruments, stops Psyche from drowning herself and tells her to pick the wool off the briers.

Which god finds the abandoned Psyche beside a river just after Cupid flies away from her?

Pan, god of the wilderness, sees the signs of passion on her; she honours his divinity, then begins wandering the earth for her lost love.

How is Psyche dressed when a procession leads her to the mountain crag to meet her fated husband?

In funeral clothes, because her family treats the wedding as her death: marriage and burial merge into a single rite as she is left on the peak.

Which writer, once accused of winning a rich widow by magic, set down the tale of Cupid and Psyche?

Apuleius defended himself in court against the magic charge and published the speech; his is the only full telling of the tale to survive from antiquity.

Cupid and Psyche is told inside which ancient novel, the only Roman one in Latin to survive whole?

The Golden Ass gives the tale about a fifth of its length, placing it at the midpoint of the adventures of its hero Lucius.

Which Italian sculptor carved the marble Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, now in the Louvre?

Antonio Canova gave the statue a handle near Psyche's foot, because it was meant to be turned on its base and seen from every side.

Which Renaissance master frescoed the Cupid and Psyche loggia at Rome's Villa Farnesina?

Raphael and his workshop made the wedding banquet of the gods one of the two main scenes of the cycle, painted around 1518.

Which author retold Cupid and Psyche from an older sister's viewpoint in Till We Have Faces?

C. S. Lewis rated it his best book; the myth had haunted him because he found some of the characters' actions illogical.

Which Romantic poet wrote Ode to Psyche in spring 1819, the first of his great odes that year?

John Keats followed it that year with Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale, and called it the first poem he had taken even moderate pains over.

Which Grimm fairy-tale heroine must sort scattered lentils with animal help, echoing the first task set for Psyche?

Cinderella has her lentils tipped into the ashes and is helped by birds in the Grimm version; like Psyche she has two envious sisters competing for the most desirable man.

NASA launched a spacecraft named Psyche in 2023 to study what kind of object carrying the same name?

An asteroid, 16 Psyche, was found in 1852 by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis and named after Cupid's bride; it is the largest of the M-type bodies.

Which French playwright wrote the lavish 1671 stage spectacle Psyché for the court of Louis XIV?

Molière planned it and wrote the opening, then had Pierre Corneille write the rest of the verse and Philippe Quinault the songs, with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully.

The author who wrote down Cupid and Psyche was born in Madauros, a city in which modern country?

Algeria holds the site of Madauros, a Berber city of Roman Numidia; some scholars argue the tale itself grew out of Berber oral tradition.

Which country's tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon echoes Cupid and Psyche with a white-bear husband?

Norway is where Asbjørnsen and Moe collected it; its heroine is handed a candle to light at night so she can see who is sharing her bed.

Inside the ancient novel, who tells the tale of Cupid and Psyche to a bride kidnapped by bandits?

An old woman tells it to calm Charite, a bride seized on her wedding day and held captive in the bandits' cave.