Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Cupidity and erotic desire are associated with him, as is the instant and uncontrollable falling in love that results from being pierced by his dart, the arrow that compels its victims to fall for the first person (or even animal) they see after being struck.fn2 Eros can be as capricious, mischievous, random and cruel as love itself.

Love, Love, Love

The Greeks had at least four words for love:

AGAPE – this was the great and generous kind that we would describe as ‘charity’ and which could refer to any holy kind of love, such as parents for their children or the love of worshippers for their god.fn3

EROS – the strain of love named after the god, or after whom the god is named. The kind that gets us into most trouble. So much more than affectionate, so much less than spiritual, eros and the erotic can lead us to glory and to disgrace, to the highest pitch of happiness and the deepest pit of despair.

PHILIA – the form of love applied to friendship, partiality and fondness. We see its traces in words like ‘francophile’, ‘necrophilia’ and ‘philanthropy’.

STORGE – the love and loyalty someone might have for their country or their sports team could be regarded as storgic.

Eros himself, while later portrayed by Renaissance and Baroque artists in the manner I have described – a giggling, pert and dimpled cherub (sometimes wearing a blindfold to signify the wayward and arbitrary nature of his marksmanship) – was to the Greeks a fully grown young man of great accomplishment. An artist, an athlete (both sexual and sporting), he was regarded as a patron and protector of gay male love as well as a presiding presence in the gymnasium and on the running track. He was associated with dolphins, cockerels, roses, torches, lyres and, of course, that bow and quiverful of arrows.

Perhaps the best-known myth involving Eros and Psyche – Physical Love and Soul – is almost absurdly ripe for interpretation and explanation. I think, however, that it is best told like all myths, not as an allegory, symbolic fable or metaphor, but as a story. Just a story. It has many of the rhythms and plot turns we associate with later quest narratives and fairy tales,fn4 perhaps because it comes down to us from what many regard as the strongest candidate for First Ever Novel: The Golden Ass, by the Roman writer Apuleius.fn5 The story’s influence on so much Western thought, folk literature and art – not to mention its charm – justify, I hope, its retelling in long form.

Psyche

Once upon a time, in a land whose name is now lost to us, lived a king and queen and their three beautiful daughters. We will call the king ARISTIDES and the queen DAMARIS. The two eldest girls, CALANTHE and ZONA, were lovely enough to be admired everywhere; but the youngest, whose name was PSYCHE, was so entirely beautiful that many in the kingdom abandoned the cult of Aphrodite and worshipped this young girl in her place. Aphrodite was a jealous and vengeful goddess and could bear no rivalry, least of all from a mortal. She summoned her son Eros.

‘I want you to find a pig,’ she said to him, ‘the ugliest and hairiest in all the land. Go to the palace where Psyche lives, shoot your arrow into her and make sure that the pig is the first thing she sees.’

Used to his mother’s charming ways Eros set off on his errand cheerfully enough. He bought an especially bristly and foul-smelling boar from a swineherd who lived not far from the palace and led it that evening to the window of the room where Psyche slept. More clumsily than you might think of a slim athletic god, he tried to clamber through the window with the pig under his arm without making a noise.

A number of things happened very quickly.

Eros landed safely in the moonlit room.

Psyche slumbered peacefully on.

Eros wedged the pig firmly between his legs.

Eros reached behind his shoulder to pluck an arrow from his quiver.

The pig squealed.

A flustered Eros scratched his own arm with the point of his arrow as he drew the bow.

Psyche woke up with a start and lit a candle.

Eros saw Psyche and fell deeply in love with her.

What a business. The god of love himself lovestruck. You might imagine that the next thing he would do is fire an arrow at Psyche and that all would end happily. But here Eros comes out of the story rather well. So real, pure and absolute was his love that he could not think of cheating Psyche out of her own choice. He took one last longing look at her, turned and leapt out of the window and back into the night.

Psyche saw the pig running round in wild, snuffling circles on her bedroom floor, concluded that she must be dreaming, blew out the candle and went back to sleep.

Prophecy and Abandonment