Cupid and Psyche Notes - (5.1 - 5.31)
5.1 sweet slumber Sleep, when described, tends to be brief. Cf. Charite's momentary sleep at the end of 4.24, during which she has the violent nightmare that is then described at length. Another brief sleep comes at the beginning of 5.3. Book 6, like other books in The Golden Ass (Books 2, 3, and 7), begins with dawn and waking up.
a grove . . . a spring . . . a palace An ecphrasis, creating a visual scene; such descriptions are the stock-in-trade of display rhetoric and may be found throughout Ovid's Metamorphoses. The perfections of nature and of art together suggest the divine presence.
gems and strings of jewels In Martianus Capella's account (see Appendix II), Psyche's fascination with gold and jewels is a gift of the Vulgar Venus. In a scene of gods giving gifts to the baby Psyche, Venus plays a role like that of the witch giving the cursed gift to Sleeping Beauty.
the house makes its own day and daylight A crucial inconsistency. If the walls of the bedrooms shine at night, how can the bedroom later be dark and require Psyche to use a lamp to see her husband? This description may reflect the palace of Alcinous in Homer's Odyssey (7.81 ff.).
fashioned by great Jupiter himself A guess of Psyche's, evidently; if so, then perhaps the belief that the bedroom walls glow at night is hers also.
5.2 not a single chain The detail is not to suggest that there is no one around to steal, but that the master of the palace is prodigally generous. Contrast the one sister's husband who keeps everything under lock and key at the end of 5.9. This wealth is Cupid's, and Psyche is at first only mistress of it by his permission; this underscores both her dependency and her immaturity.
a disembodied voice Every human presence in the palace is invisible: the servers of dinner, the players of music, and Psyche's personal attendants (5.3, 5.4, 5.15). This makes us think that Cupid is invisible too; it is a surprise that Cupid will turn out to be visible, merely cloaked by the darkness of the bedroom (5.22).
All these things belong to you. These were ominous words when spoken to Lucius by his aunt Byrrhena at 2.5 after he gazed upon her statue of the punishment of Actaeon and did not see that its tale of curiosity chastised would apply to him.
bath A standard demand of hospitality; cf. Index, s.v. baths and bathing. There is something of the folktale fascination with food and bed in all of this: the addition of music in 5.3 elevates the tone. All wants are satisfied.
5.3 Providence Appearing again at 6.15 and 6.29, this represents a belief that the universe conspires for Psyche's happiness; its opposite is Fortune, which is always bad in Cupid and Psyche, though not always so in The Golden Ass. Cf. Index, s.v. Fortune.
5.4 instantly Apuleius always compresses time. The unknown husband is there all night, but the act is described as if it were much more momentary. He always leaves just before dawn (cf. 5.5, 5.13, 5.19).
habit and repetition Even for a folktale, this is brutal: rape and repetition lead to love. There is one thing that softens this: the indeterminate voice must be the husband's, not the servant's, and though we do not know what was said, there must be some sort of conversation. As she says to her sisters at 5.19, when complaining of her invisible husband, "I follow the orders of voices that come to me only at night."
mother and father were growing old Why so fast? We are not to imagine that years have passed because it is conventional that intercourse with a god always results in pregnancy for mortals; once we know that Psyche is pregnant, we can count the months as she does (5.11–12). The idea is that their pining and grief accelerate their aging. It is not clear why the older sisters need to talk to their anonymous parents as often as they do; perhaps they are trying to pass themselves off as good daughters, in contrast to Psyche who never returns. Or perhaps they are overcompensating; they were not present for Psyche's procession and abandonment and so were no comfort to their parents then.
5.5 no part of him that could not be apprehended by her senses Another inconsistency that hurts the story. How can Psyche later be convinced Cupid is a snake when she knows from touching him that he is not? She knows him down to the smell and the fall of his cinnamon curls (5.13). And how does she miss his wings? The point here must be that she does not know his face (5.13: "by this your face that I hope at least to come to know in this our little child"; 5.19: "I have not seen my husband's face, not once"); but at the moment of revelation (5.22) what are described are hair and wings, with only a passing word for cheek and neck.
depths of death and destruction This is Cupid's first warning. It is not a problem that he knows the future, both the sisters' actions and Psyche's response; but it is a problem that Cupid has created this prohibition in the first place. We know that, as a storytelling device, a prohibition inevitably leads to the violation of the prohibition, but it is not clear why Cupid wants Psyche punished for breaking his rules. After all, he disobeyed his mother's orders. The threat must be to ensure her silence and so keep his secret.
shut up in a prison Again, like Charite (4.24): "shut up like a slave in a stockade of stone."
crying floods of tears It is surprising to see Psyche, who had been so resolute when dealing with her role as Bride of Death, here resorting to tears. As Cupid's warnings and Psyche's pleadings proceed, she will become more willing to get her way by emotional appeal.
5.6 Be a slave then to your heart's desire. This is a continuation of the first warning: there will be another pair at 5.11–12. This approaches a philosophical formulation: Soul needs to renounce passion in order to be saved. But it is a passion to see her sisters; sexual passion Cupid has no objection to. The sisters represent a force that not only would come between Cupid and Psyche but would drag her down as well.
sticking her nose in This crucial phrase is a translation of curiositas, a leitmotiv of the whole Golden Ass; cf. Index, s.v. "sticking one's nose in." Lucius' curiosity about magic led to his transformation into an ass (3.24); Psyche's curiosity about Persephone's cosmetics box will nearly lead to her death (6.21).
she would never thereafter regain her husband As the story turns out, this isn't true.
I love you This is the first time that she speaks this truth so clearly. But the qualification, "whoever you are," is crucial: the woman needs to learn the nature of the man she is married to. This would be true both in a folktale and in a philosophical allegory.
pit Cupid against you A similar teasing allusion to the true nature of the invisible husband is attributed to the sisters at 5.14.
the West Wind How else would they get there? The importance of Zephyr to the story is stressed in anticipation of the time when Zephyr will not come when called (5.27).
against his will We should probably take this seriously. Psyche is shown as changing the nature of Cupid, softening him: Love is susceptible to love. This makes good sense in a love story but is less successful as a detail in an allegory about Cupid leading Psyche to heaven. Cupid's being influenced by Psyche's Venus-like (the adjective is, of course, venereal) whisperings in his ear shows a conflict between Cupid and Venus that is hardly at home in a philosophical allegory.
5.7 beat their breasts This is probably sincere grief at this point; they will learn how to feign grief later. Cf. 5.11; 5.17: "they force the tears from their eyes by the rubbing of their eyelids."
Psyche ran out of her house Apuleius compresses distance as well as time. Evidently, Psyche's voice can carry easily up the mountain, and she can easily see the tears on her sisters' cheeks at the distance.
5.8 Envy This is the point at which the sisters turn evil, when they begin to act as Venus acted. The sisters are a problem for any allegorical reading of Cupid and Psyche. The sisters are not a product of romance—no romance heroine has to deal with envious sisters—but of folktale, resenting the beauty and the naïveté of the youngest girl. They are here to motivate the plot to kill Cupid, and they produce a long, drawn-out section that leads to the forbidden revelation of the invisible husband. All philosophical pretense is on hold until Cupid is seen and the sisters are gone.
she extemporizes This is Psyche's first lie; there will be others (5.15, 5.26–27). But true to a coming-of-age story, she first imagines a young man as her husband and later imagines a middle-aged one.
5.9 outcasts The case is overstated. The sisters are in frequent conversation with their parents. The words reflect Psyche's case more accurately: she has been cast into another world and evidently cannot go back.
this god will make her a goddess A similar fear is expressed at 5.16. This sounds like envy but is in fact true, truer than they know. But why will they counsel her to kill the husband if they think he is a god? Their actions will show that they do not expect her to succeed but hope only that she will be banished and thus deprived of the wealth that she currently enjoys. Through the sisters we see what is really at stake: Psyche "exudes divinity."
door-bolts That is, this husband is as unlike Cupid as possible.
5.10 my altar of Venus This sister would like to be taken for a goddess as well.
down to the depths from the pinnacle of her prosperity This was Cupid's threat at 5.6: "she was not to go sticking her nose in like some temple robber and so cast herself down into the abyss from the high throne of Fortune's grace."
survival and salvation Salvation is a key term (Index, q.v.). The underlying word is salus, health; but in the context of The Golden Ass it becomes clear that spiritual well-being is the real issue, and all instances of the root have been translated accordingly. Its religious overtones are certainly relevant here.
5.11 you will never see them again Cupid's warnings come in pairs, first at 5.5 and 5.6, and now at 5.11 and 5.12. Since these last two come on separate occasions, we can find the expected number three. There are also three visits with the sisters: 5.7–8, 5.14–15, 5.17–21. But the story is not so neatly structured that each warning is followed by a visit; and while the sisters have a talk between themselves after their first two visits (5.9–10, 5.16), there is no conversation after the third visit, when they abandon Psyche to put their murderous plot into effect on their own.
those wickedest of witches The Latin is Lamiae; these are monsters who are supposed to devour children. These then are the sisters who will make up the lie that the invisible husband wants to eat Psyche when her pregnancy is at full term (5.18).
you are not even to speak to them Cupid counsels silence here as before (5.5). The expectations of silence and of lack of curiosity (that is, a requirement to be willing to be instructed by others) suggest a religious attitude, appropriate for initiation into higher mysteries. Psyche's near-death experience at 6.21 is often taken as representing the voluntary, symbolic death by which an initiate prepares herself for further, supernatural mysteries.
simplicity of soul A trait mentioned again at 5.16, 5.18, 5.19, 5.24, 6.15 (cf. Index, s.v. Psyche: nature and character). This is not what one would expect from the Psyche we met prior to her meeting with Cupid. Partly, this reflects a belief about the nature of Soul, that it is uniform; but to the extent that it implies simplemindedness, it reflects the fact that Psyche doesn't know who her husband is, a thing obvious to every reader and constantly hinted at.
this belly . . . carries another child Psyche's pregnancy would seem to have no function within a philosophical scheme and may in fact subvert the Platonic preference for abstract over flesh and blood children for the men in Symposium. I think that the reader is expecting a boy; the story then ends with a surprise, a girl named Delight. Again, the threat that the child will be mortal if Psyche reveals their secret turns out to be false.
5.12 the months as they come and go Time passes here, and the only reason is so Psyche's pregnancy will be obvious to the sisters when they next see her (5.14). On the other hand, the sisters do not seem to have waited a number of months when they next appear.
drawn up their battle lines Such military imagery is common in The Golden Ass, the phrase "lay siege to" being particularly common.
5.13 the inflexibility of my mind Psyche has hardly proven to be inflexible: she talks too much to her sisters, though she does try hard not to give away any secrets.
by these your curls This beautiful invocation needs to be compared to the description of the sleeping Cupid at 5.22. But the question remains: How can anyone so intimately familiar with the feel of Cupid's body not feel the wings or come to believe that he is a snake? Her ignorance is part of her comic characterization.
5.14 straight from the ships This journey seems to be the same one that the sisters were on at 5.12. It is never made clear what sorts of ships these are, how far they have to travel, or where and how they dock. They merely function as magical transportation, infinitely adaptable and not worth a second thought.
with a self-satisfied recklessness Clearly anticipating the sisters' fatal leaps at 5.27. The West Wind has a mind of its own, and here fills its function "though unwilling"; cf. Cupid's unwillingness to be persuaded by Psyche at 5.6.
in this little belly of yours Psyche is clearly showing, and this is the only logical way that the sisters can know what Cupid wants kept secret. But the narrative here describes sisters who already know about the pregnancy and have come to make trouble. There is no element of surprise expressed.
be born a Cupid Cf. 5.6, "I wouldn't even pit Cupid against you."
5.15 gives the order for the lyre to speak At this point, Psyche seems not so much to be commanding a person as an instrument, as if it were the magic harp in the giant's castle. At any event, this scene shows Psyche at her most gracious as a hostess; it is not just her largesse that offends her sisters, but the ease with which she now acts as lady of the house.
she fashions a brand-new falsehood Referring to the earlier lie at 5.8.
5.16 they talk back and forth Compare this conversation, following the second visit, to the conversation that followed the first visit (5.9–10). Earlier, they complained about her wealth and their husbands; now they complain about her wealth again but also about her husband.
hang myself Charite imagined the noose at 4.25 as one of a number of possible paths to suicide; the old woman narrator will hang herself soon after the tale is over (6.30). Suicide by hanging is more typical for women—specifically, for tragic heroines.
5.17 their parents The sisters' obsession with their parents serves very little dramatic purpose. The sisters lie to them, keep news of Psyche from them, and hide Psyche's presents from them, but if they weren't mentioned at this point they would hardly be missed. The repetition serves this point: the sisters are pretending to be good daughters in contrast to Psyche, who shows no interest in them at all after her bridal/funeral procession. Psyche, one may say, has moved on.
they cunningly confront their Psyche The third and final visit; as expected, it is the longest and most elaborate of these visits (5.17–21).
it is a snake of vast proportions How can Psyche believe this? She knows better. She should also be suspicious of her sisters: How and when did they investigate the neighborhood to learn what the neighbors say? Their trump card is the oracle: Apollo, a killer of giant snakes himself (the Python), said her husband would be a snake. Psyche now trusts oracles and sisters more than experience; both are proved false. We can presume that they learned about the oracle even though they were not with Psyche at the time it was delivered and were not present for the procession. But it is entirely likely, as far as we know now, that the sisters believe it; after all, they haven't seen the husband either, they know the oracle, and they are in no mood to believe anything that their naïve little sister believes about the matter, as she has already been shown to be a liar about it.
5.18 he will not go on fattening you much longer The victim being fattened up before being eaten is a common motif, known in Hansel and Gretel and elsewhere.
the memory of all her husband's warnings This is the point at which Psyche actually forgets what she was told and the point at which Cupid's warnings are said to come true. The narrator agrees: "she hurled herself headlong into a bottomless pit of trials and tribulations."
Her knees were like water She has the same reaction when she sees Cupid at 5.22.
the words she managed to croak out This phrase introduces us to the speechless Psyche: she will not speak again until 5.26, when she is said to thank Pan and then actually goes about getting revenge on her sisters by lying to them. She gazes on Cupid in silence; she regains her voice when she kills her sisters, the first step in recovering her husband.
5.19 scared out of her wits It is not logic but fear that motivates Psyche here, and the reader, who wonders how much longer Psyche can remain oblivious to what should be obvious, regains sympathy for a scared pregnant girl who has only had occasional visits from her wicked sisters for human contact.
5.20 A lamp Neither the old woman nor Apuleius has taken any thought concerning the practicalities here. A pot would have to have some openings so as not to smother the flame, yet must not allow any light to escape; and if this is kept under lock and key, then the lamp is burning for a long time before it is used and there would need to be some unlocking before it could be used. It may be petty to ask such questions, but it underscores the important point: Apuleius is building to a dramatic and visual climax and doesn't much care how he gets there. Painters, of course, who love the scene, imagine a blazing lamp that reveals the whole of the bed and the body. A typical Roman oil lamp, especially one that could be hidden while lit underneath a pot, would give off a faint glow indeed, even if, "at the sight of the god, the light of the lamp leapt for joy and blazed brighter" (5.22).
You shall not want for our assistance This is a lie; they leave immediately. And their leaving contradicts their next statement: that they want to bring Psyche back to a human husband of their choosing (thereby finally fulfilling Venus' original wishes) and to take her money as well. What are they really thinking about the nature of the husband (snake or god?) and about what will happen to Psyche when she tries to kill him? We can't know; they are leaving in ignorance so as to be susceptible to Psyche's later plot for revenge. They are better troublemakers than plotters.
5.21 they make a swift getaway This time, parents are not mentioned, and the sisters go straight home where Psyche will find them later.
she hates the monster and loves the husband Now that the sisters are gone and Cupid's warnings are forgotten, the story firmly occupies its emotional center. The wife wonders about the nature of her husband (cf. 5.6: "I love you, whoever you are"); she has to find out and destroying it is the only avenue she has left. (The story has, of course, ruled out the possibility of a thoughtful discussion in which Psyche calmly asks her husband why it is necessary that he hide his face.) The husband has too many natures, and Psyche, simple soul that she is, doesn't have enough of one.
5.22 makes herself a man A surprisingly important phrase. At 6.5, Psyche will encourage herself to "wrap a man's courage around" her; Lucius will say the same thing to himself after the story is over at 6.26; Charite will take on "the unflinching bravery of a man" at 6.27, and so the two will escape. Psyche needs to be like a man in order to separate herself from the man in order to become the woman that she truly is (Neumann 1956). She cannot be the equal of her husband when she is so dependent on him and he is so unknown to her; she needs to learn, in the words soon to follow, "the secrets of her bed."
the sweetest of beasts, CUPID himself Finally! The reader breathes a sigh of relief. Not only has Psyche finally found out the truth, but now we are at liberty to visualize the pair. Given the iconographic traditions surrounding Cupid and Psyche, having one half of the pair invisible all this time has been a tease and a frustration to the audience.
the light of the lamp leapt for joy Inanimate objects start to come to life here. The knife will fly out of Psyche's hands; this anticipates the animal and inanimate assistance that Psyche will receive when she is attempting Venus' tasks. In some sense Psyche has lost her own identity here, and will spend some time in a nonhuman world.
the knife . . . in her own breast Psyche's first thoughts of suicide; there will be many more; cf. Index, s.v. suicide.
those features divine Psyche's beauty was so extraordinary that it could not be praised, and so was never described. Instead, we get a detailed description of Cupid's beauty, one that should be compared with Psyche's tactile description of it at 5.13. The emphasis is on hair and wings; Venus also thinks that his beauty resides there (5.30).
feathers gloriously white All this time Psyche has managed not to feel Cupid's wings. Leaving the implausibility of that to one side, the point here is that finally we get the key elements in Cupid's iconography: Cupid always has wings. And this reminds us that Psyche in art often has wings, the wings of a butterfly. This scene reinforces the differences between the two and shows that they are not a pair yet. In a philosophical allegory, the focus on the wings speaks to the transcendent nature of the soul.
great-hearted weapons Conspicuously, there is no torch. Psyche's lamp functions as the torch and thus begins a description of the ways in which the two will prove to be equal.
5.23 a white-hot cupidity for Cupid The language mirrors that of Venus' original decree: "let the maiden be held tight in the grip of a torrid, white-hot love for some man who is the lowest of the low . . . " (4.31).
pricking her thumb Psyche pricks herself; at 5.24, Cupid will admit that he pricked himself with his own arrow as well when he fell in love with Psyche. The reciprocity of this arrangement is emotionally satisfying, but there are two points to be made that are logically prior to that: first, that Psyche wasn't in love until now; second, that falling in love with Love is a paradox. Cupid doesn't function here as the intermediary between Soul and Salvation, but is himself changed by Soul and improved by Soul. There is much room for maturation yet: Psyche is said to fall in love both unknowingly and of her own free will. Both Psyche and Cupid will need to make their thoughts consonant with their desires.
smothered him with kisses When we finally see Cupid and Psyche kissing, as we have been expecting to see all along, one of them is asleep; it is not an equal kiss; Psyche is the aggressor.
Envy Now envy is directed toward Cupid and not just toward Psyche.
a drop of burning oil On the story level, this is merely a mechanism for waking Cupid up; Psyche's kissing evidently didn't impress him sufficiently. But it will soon be the reason he retreats in pain to his mother's house; he swiftly moves from husband to son, from god of love to whining boy, from center to sidelines, as the story focuses again on Psyche.
silence A silence that lasts for only a few lines. Are we to imagine that Cupid just couldn't stay as angry at Psyche as he had planned?
5.24 she falls to earth Plato, Phaedrus 248c, describes the fall of one who cannot stay in flight in the train of a god: "If, on the other hand, [the soul] does not see anything true because it could not keep up, and by some accident takes on a burden of forgetfulness and wrongdoing, then it is weighed down, sheds its wings and falls to earth" (see, "To the Reader," p. xv in the printed volume).
He flew to a cypress The funeral associations of the cypress are well known. Psyche had tried to kill Cupid; now Cupid makes it clear that Psyche has descended into the dead world herself. The old woman narrator will hang herself from a cypress at 6.30.
It was I who forgot It is made obvious that Cupid is being hypocritical here. Both Cupid and Psyche have violated orders that were made more out of spite than honest concern. Psyche did approach Cupid with a knife; but it is also clear that she never tried to kill him.
they shall pay the price How can he know this? The sisters will later die because Psyche tricks them into thinking that Cupid wants to marry them: they leap off the crag, but Zephyr is unwilling to catch them. Does this mean that Cupid is behind the scenes here too, engineering Psyche's wanderings so that she finds herself at her sisters' palaces, perhaps even helping her convince them that he wants to marry them instead? Venus will later suggest that Cupid has been at work in Psyche's labors (6.11, 6.13). It would fit with the theme of the romance genre that the heroine discover in retrospect that the god has been helping her all along; but it is odd to have such an explicit statement of such help delivered prospectively.
5.25 on the oarage of his wings The translation has added as the poets say, for the old woman is quoting from Vergil, Aeneid 1.300–301. The word "oarage" will appear again at 6.15.
in another world The husband has thus been made alienus, no longer in her world, and no longer belonging to her.
threw herself headlong A second suicide attempt. It is characteristic of heroes and heroines in romances to contemplate suicide in any sort of difficulty, but this is presented as a real attempt. At 6.12, Psyche will again try drowning herself.
Pan Pan is a divinity of a lower order than Cupid, belonging to the countryside, not to the world of the city or the palace. Psyche is in between worlds at the moment, and so it is appropriate for her to meet him first; but she shall very soon meet Olympian goddesses as well.
not unaware of her catastrophe Another hint that Cupid has been preparing Psyche's way, though the mechanisms are never mentioned; cf. Apollo's rewritten oracle at 4.32–33.
long-winded and long-winding Translating the adjective prolixus, an adjective appropriate for long speech comically applied here and elsewhere in The Golden Ass to other things that take a long time. It is the author's self-referential joke about his own rhetoric.
philosophers . . . "divination" Another self-referential joke. What have philosophers to do with Pan's world, or with the mythical world in general? And now that we have, after the long interlude with the sisters, fairly explicitly entered into a Platonic and allegorical realm with a fallen Psyche trying to find her way back to Cupid, this is a comic denigration of the reader's pursuit of allegorical interpretation.
staggering steps . . . These are the traditional signs of love-sickness. For Cupid's love-sickness, cf. 6.22.
worship Cupid instead Psyche has not spoken to Pan, so Pan must be relying on information supplied to him, presumably by Cupid himself. This raises an interesting question: Was Cupid so explicit as to direct Pan to instruct Psyche to pursue him through his sensuous side? If so, what we see here is that Cupid, who initiated the love affair between them, now wants her to pursue him. This is egotistical, but it also serves the goal of establishing an equality between the two before they can be properly reunited. The two aspects of Cupid, divine love and sexual love, cannot be separated.
5.26 all unknowing Psyche evidently doesn't know where her sisters live; recall that her sisters were not present at the time of the oracle and the procession. They are to be thought of as much older; perhaps Psyche had not been out of the palace much before the oracle. Cupid directs her steps.
the advice that you two gave me Psyche accurately repeats the advice given at 5.20, cleverly does not complain about how she knows that the sisters lied when they said they would be at her side after the deed was done, and does not mention that they never put their plan of taking her away to some human husband into effect. The sister must be surprised to see Psyche, but that point is not explicitly made. Just what the sisters thought would happen is impossible to determine; but soon they will be out of the way and that part of the tale will be over.
marriage to your sister Psyche is surprisingly effective in her plotting, everything being true up to this final detail. This is not the simple-of-soul Psyche we saw earlier, but experience has given her cunning. On the other hand, once she arranges to dispatch her sisters, she disappears from the action (5.28–31 being taken up with Venus); when she reappears, she will be a much more passive character, subjected to punishments and ordeals and receiving help from others for what she can't do herself.
5.27 threw herself headlong Throwing bodies off a cliff is common in The Golden Ass; Lucius has seen it happen to a recalcitrant ass at 4.5; Tlepolemus will do it to some of the robber band at 7.13. One wonders what Lucius thinks as he overhears this detail.
this sister did no different One detailed revenge story is enough; the second is an afterthought. This brings a substantial portion of the tale to a close, and the expected tale of Cupid and Psyche can resume; how shall Cupid help Psyche to rise?
5.28 moaning and groaning The Cupid who is the cosmic or spiritual principle here takes a back seat to Cupid the petulant boy. It is a surprising and comic detail after his imperious departure at 5.24. He is now back under his mother's control, and in her bed. But given his activity behind the scenes, should we imagine that this is an act, trying to throw his mother off the scent, as it were?
the tern Birds often bring (unwanted) messages to the gods; the sea bird is appropriate for a message to a goddess beneath the Ocean.
no passion, no captivation When the gods absent themselves from the earth, the effects are immediate; similarly, Ceres' mourning for Persephone's time in the underworld results in the season when the grain does not grow. But it is not the case that there are no sexual relations in the world anymore, just bad ones. The ultimate marriage of Cupid and Psyche will restore good sexual relations to the whole world; again, this would be alien to a philosophical tale of Cupid and Psyche.
sticking its beak well in he tern too is motivated by curiositas; he knows too much.
underaged, naked boy Of course, proud Venus is slow to realize that her son has grown up and intends to infantilize him as long as she can; she does not want to acknowledge that she is growing older too. Strictly speaking, this should not be a concern of the immortals.
a mortal girl Venus presumed that Cupid was dallying with demigods; his mortal girlfriend is a blow to her pride in any event, and the fact that it is Psyche makes it even worse. Again, Apuleius makes much out of the delaying of the learning of a name; Venus too has been unaware that she is involved in a tale of the love between Cupid and Psyche.
some go-between A philosophical pun: Cupid is supposed to be the intermediary between Soul and Heaven; Venus objects to playing the intermediary between Soul and Love. The concept of intermediation continues to be toyed with.
5.29 effete old age Remember how the sisters referred to Psyche as her mother's last child at 5.9: "the terminal kid thrown by her dam's failing fertility." Though Venus would object, we are to think of both Cupid and Psyche as last children of parents no longer fertile, of parents who need to be replaced in the procreative order of things.
not your mother but your master As Venus will soon acknowledge (5.30), no one can give orders to Cupid; he has humiliated her regularly, just as he has humiliated Jupiter (6.22). She tries to assert a control that she never really had.
those torches Again, no torch of Cupid's is ever seen or used, though Venus will refer to it again at 5.30; cf. 5.22.
your father's estate Cupid has a number of possible genealogies, and Venus is purposely reminding him of his doubtful paternity here.
5.30 from infancy Cupid's childhood is referred to again at 6.22–23; Cupid grew up, Jupiter says, "cradled in the palm of my hand."
stepfather Mars; Venus wants to contrast a true brave warrior with a clandestine one. If Cupid is the author of the oracle at 4.33, he has already described himself as inhuman, "[assailing] the whole world/Sapping the strength of each thing, fighting with fire and sword."
[Aside] This is of course not marked as such in the Latin text, but it is clear that Venus can't be addressing Cupid directly. She delivers this speech from the doorway; it is easy to imagine her turning aside to speak a dramatic monologue.
Who will take me in? Venus imagines herself now in Psyche's position, wandering, looking for help in her difficult relations with Cupid; cf. Psyche's similar lament at 6.5 and Lucius' at 6.26. Psyche and Venus look alike; and now they briefly act alike.
Abstinence Now we seem to be in the realm of traditional allegory, with abstractions as characters. But Abstinence (Sobrietas) will not appear as a character; the lowercase term will reappear at the end of the story (6.22): "In the meantime, Cupid is deathly afraid of his mother's sudden conversion to abstinence, for he is eaten alive by his inordinate love, and has the love-sick look to prove it." Venus will have Psyche tortured by Anxiety and Melancholy at 6.9; Convention appears at 6.8.
hairs . . . wings Again, Cupid's beauty resides in his hair and his wings; cf. 5.22.
5.31 not unaware of all that had happened Because of the widespread rumors reported by the tern (5.28), we need not imagine that Cupid has instructed Ceres and Juno. They merely do not wish to make him angry, as is made clear below: "the goddesses, out of fear of his arrows, tried to flatter Cupid, though he was nowhere in sight, playing the part of his prejudiced patrons."
what crime is it Finally, an important question is explicitly raised: Why is it that the goddess of love is opposed to love? What seems normal to the other goddesses seems abnormal to Venus, because her function in the tale is not so much that of goddess as that of aging mother, of proud, offended Roman matron.
sticking your nose in Venus stands accused of Psyche's crime of curiositas; again, similarities between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are drawn.
you sowing the seeds of love and lust Ceres and Juno try to deflate Venus, to tell her that she is not the goddess of creation she claimed herself to be at 4.30 and to remind her that she is much more like her son than she thinks. This is the substance of the insult; Venus is offended by this reference to her own sexuality and leaves in a huff.
To return to the Cupid and Psyche supplemental material main page, click Here.