Cupid- Roman GodDeity"God of Love"

Cupid and Apollo

Apollo, fresh from slaying the serpent Python, found Cupid stringing his bow and laughed. A toy weapon for a child, he said. Cupid answered with two arrows. The first, golden and tipped with dove feathers, struck Apollo and kindled a love that burned without relief. The second, leaden and heavy with owl feathers, struck the nymph Daphne and filled her with cold revulsion.

Apollo chased Daphne through forests and across rivers, calling out his titles and powers. None of it mattered. She ran from him the way a hare runs from a hound. When he closed the distance and his breath stirred the hair on her neck, she cried out to her father, the river god Peneus. Bark climbed her skin. Her arms stiffened into branches and her hair burst into leaves. Apollo could only embrace the tree and claim the laurel as his own. He wore it in his hair and hung it from his lyre, and the laurel crowned victors at his games ever after.

Venus's Weapon

Venus sent Cupid where her own hands could not reach. In the Aeneid, she dispatches him to Carthage disguised as Aeneas's young son Ascanius. When Queen Dido lifted the boy onto her lap during a feast, Cupid's touch kindled in her an obsessive love for Aeneas. The stratagem kept the Trojan refugees safe. It destroyed the queen.

In Ovid's telling of Proserpina's abduction, Venus spotted Pluto surfacing near Enna and ordered Cupid to shoot him. The arrow struck, and the king of the dead seized Proserpina and dragged her below. Venus wanted the underworld brought under love's rule. She got the seasons: Proserpina's absence withered the earth, and her return each spring restored it.

Cupid and Psyche

Apuleius tells the fullest version in his Golden Ass. Psyche was a mortal princess so beautiful that people began to worship her instead of Venus. The goddess, jealous and offended, sent Cupid to make Psyche fall in love with the most wretched creature on earth. But when Cupid saw Psyche, he scratched himself with his own arrow and fell helplessly in love.

He arranged for her to be transported to a magnificent palace where he visited her only at night, in complete darkness, forbidding her ever to see his face. His voice was gentle and his touch tender; he gave her everything she wished except knowledge of his identity. They lived in bliss until Psyche's jealous sisters convinced her that her mysterious husband must be a monster. One night, Psyche lit an oil lamp to look upon her sleeping lover. She saw not a monster but the most beautiful of the gods, wings folded on his shoulders, his bow and quiver beside the bed. A drop of hot oil fell on his shoulder. He woke. He fled into the night sky, and the palace dissolved around her.

The Trials of Psyche

Desperate to regain Cupid, Psyche wandered the world and eventually submitted herself to Venus, who set impossible tasks designed to destroy her.

First, Venus told her to sort an enormous pile of mixed grain before dawn. Psyche sat before the heap and wept. Ants came by the thousands and sorted every grain before sunrise. Next Venus sent her to gather golden wool from fierce sheep that went mad in the sun. She waited until sunset and collected tufts of golden fleece caught on the brambles. Then she had to fetch water from the source of the River Styx, a spring cascading down a cliff too sheer to climb. Jupiter's eagle carried her vessel there and brought it back full.

Finally, Venus demanded that Psyche descend to the underworld and bring back a portion of Proserpina's beauty in a sealed box. A speaking tower gave her instructions: carry two coins for Charon and barley cakes for Cerberus, and above all, do not open the box. Psyche reached Proserpina and obtained the gift, but on her return she opened the box. Instead of beauty, it contained the sleep of death. She collapsed.

Cupid, healed of his burn and his anger, found her and wiped the deathly sleep from her eyes. He carried her to Jupiter, who made Psyche immortal and blessed their union. Their daughter was named Voluptas: Pleasure.