Cupid & Psyche Flashcards
(7 cards)
Summary of Cupid and Psyche form Golden Ass
Why was Cupid and Psyche one of the most popular and most imitated ancient Greek/Roman myths in the area that would become Europe after antiquity?
It’s in Latin
It’s easier to assimilate
Who wrote the Golden Ass?
Apuleius
Who is Apuleius?
Lived around 124-170 CE, in north Africa
His first language would have been Punic, but he was fluent also in Latin and Greek, and wrote in very literary, ornate Latin
Platonist
Initiated in several mystery cults
What is the Golden Ass?
Fun Latin prose novel featuring the misadventures of a hapless, curious young man, Lucius, who gets inadvertently turned into a donkey
The story of Cupid and Psyche is the longest of many inset digressions in the novel
Why might it matter that the two lovers have names from different languages?
Cupido: Latin name
Psyche is Greek
Showing them as different since they are due to one is a mortal and the other is a god
Cupid and Psyche: a myth about wandering
It begins “in a certain city”
Cupid’s palace is inaccessible to normal mortals
Psyche has to wander all over the world for redemption, until she finds a permanent home in heaven
