The Tale of Cupid and Psyche (Hackett Classics)

The tale of Cupid and Psyche is inserted in Apuleius' "Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass," a novel written around 150 AD. The whole novel is well worth reading--a combination of wild humor, painful pictures of ancient life, a quest for wisdom (Apuleius wrote about Socrates and was a late disciple of Plato), all in a dazzling style. Relihan has extracted the most famous part of the novel and rendered it into readable English with some stylistic quirks that give a glimpse of the original Latin. He adds a good introduction, excerpts from other relevant ancient texts, and a good bibliography. This is an inexpensive and admirable version.

my eldest niece like it and book is in great condition.

Blargle

As promised

This is a quite the story. A tale of jealousy, and regret. It is a very good story!

required for school but never opened it

The tale of Cupid and Psyche is from chapter 22 of the Golden Ass and was written in the second century CE. The story, like many of the other accounts, uses the magical number three frequently. A king has three daughters, all beautiful, but the youngest, Psyche, exceeds them both in beauty. She is so pretty that thousands of men come to gaze upon her, but because she is so beautiful, they are afraid to ask her in marriage. Hence she is very lonely. But people begin to worship this virgin and Venus the goddess is virtually ignored.Venus is enraged and tells her son Cupid, who had mischievously used his fire and arrows to seduce females and ruin marriages, to shoot an arrow into Psyche and cause her to fall in love with the ugliest man alive and marry this ugly man. Cupid agrees, but when he sees Psyche, he falls in love with her and wants to marry her himself.Meanwhile, Psyche’s father receives an oracle that instructs him to send his daughter to a top of a mountain for she will find a man there to marry. He persuades Psyche to do so. During the night, a wind, working for Cupid, takes her to his castle. She sees no one at the castle, but hears a voice telling her she can have whatever she wants at the castle.Cupid comes to her bed every night and has sex with her, but warns her not to look at him. He also warns her that her sisters will come looking for her. She can see them, but she shouldn’t listen to their advice because it will ruin everything. She meets her sisters who see the delights she has with her husband. They become jealous and give her bad advice: since you never saw him, take a lamp and a razor to bed with you. When he is asleep, light the lamp, see his hideous face, and cut off his head. She takes the two items and lights the lamp, sees how handsome Cupid is, leans over to kiss him, accidently pores three drops of wax on him, and awaken him. He is furious, tells her about his mother Venus’ anger at her, and says he must now leave. The story continues telling how Psyche looks for and finds Cupid, Venus’ reaction upon seeing her, the three tasks that Venus places upon Psyche, and how Cupid gets Jupiter’s help in solving his problem and making Psyche immortal so she can marry him.

For the price, I excepted a proper cover but it is just a red book. Quite dissatisfied