Eros and Pscyhe, an Epic Love Story

The story of Eros and Psyche is one of the most beautiful love stories in Greek mythology. It includes betrayal, intrigue, jealousy, and most importantly, love. But first, let’s learn about our heroes. 

Aphrodite: Goddess of love, beauty, and charm. In this story, she is the mother of Eros. 

Eros: God of romance and pure love. He can make someone fall in love with his golden arrows and make someone hate with his lead arrows. 

Psyche: The youngest and prettiest daughter of the King of Milet. 

Psyche was the youngest princess of Milet. People loved Psyche; she was the most beautiful woman in Milet. At this point, people began to glorify Psyche instead of Aphrodite. When Aphrodite learned this, she blew up. She told Eros to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man in the world. Eros felt obligated to complete the task because his mother had requested it, and he went to Milet to shoot Psyche. When Eros was about to shoot her, he got distracted by her charm and beauty, and he accidentally shot himself. As a result, he fell in love with Psyche like crazy. 

Meanwhile, Psyche’s father was worried because Psyche was still unmarried. Consequently, he thought that she was cursed by the gods, so he went to Apollo’s fortune tellers. The fortune tellers told her father that Psyche’s husband was not going to be a human. He was going to be a creature that looked like a dragon, and this creature was torturing the world with iron and fire. Even Zeus and the people of the underworld were afraid of him. To meet her husband, Psyche had to wear black clothes and wait for him on steep cliffs. 

After they abandoned Psyche on the cliff, the west wind Zephyrus gently took Psyche and carried her to a resplendent sky palace. The palace had magnificent architecture and the most beautiful flowers in its garden. It also had invisible maids. Psyche wandered around all day. But at night, Eros finally came. He did not reveal himself in the darkness and made Psyche promise never to try to look at him for her own good. They were together that night. 

Days passed like this. Eros always came on the darkest nights, so Psyche did not know that her lover was Eros. After a while, Psyche got pregnant. She was very happy, but she missed her family. So Eros ordered Zephyrus again to bring her sisters to the palace. 

When her sisters came, they became very jealous of her palace. While Psyche was innocently talking about her lover and mentioned that she had never seen his face, they had malicious thoughts. They said that he was not showing his face because he was an ugly monster. Psyche did not believe them at first, but curiosity slowly ate her up. 

They left that afternoon. That same night, Psyche pretended to be asleep and waited for him. He came and lay down beside her. When Psyche was sure that he was sleeping, she grabbed an oil lamp and lit the room. She saw his bow, arrows, wings, and finally his face, and she understood that he was Eros. She was shocked. With curiosity, she took a golden arrow from his quiver and pricked her hand. As a result of her sudden movement, oil dripped from the lamp onto him. Eros woke up instantly. He was furious that Psyche had broken her promise, and he left the palace that night. 

Psyche immediately regretted what she had done. Because of the golden arrow, Psyche was now deeply in love with Eros. From that day on, she searched everywhere to find him. But in the end, she was still human. She could only wander around and ask people about him. She asked the gods for help, but everyone was afraid of Aphrodite, so nobody helped her. As a last chance, she went to Aphrodite herself. 

Aphrodite still hated her. When Psyche went to her, Aphrodite learned everything about Eros and Psyche. As a result, she became very angry. She made fun of Psyche’s pregnancy, humiliated her, and treated her like a slave. 

Aphrodite placed a mixture of wheat, barley, corn, poppy seeds, and peas in front of Psyche and told her to separate them all in one day. Psyche started crying. An ant heard her cries and felt sorry for her, so it called the other ants, and together they helped her separate the seeds. When Aphrodite saw that all the seeds were separated, she became even angrier. 

For the next task, she told Psyche to take wool from the sheep of the sun titan Helios. Helios was very protective of his sheep so Aphrodite thought Psyche would not survive this task. At that moment, a magical reed helped Psyche and told her that instead of taking wool directly from the sheep, she could collect the wool that had gotten caught in the bushes. 

Her third task was to take water from the River Styx in the land of the dead. Psyche reached the place with great difficulty, but a dragon that never slept guarded the river. At that moment, Zeus, who owed Eros a favor, sent his eagle to help Psyche. The eagle took the bottle from Psyche and filled it with the water for her. 

Aphrodite was furious. For the last task, she wanted “Persephone’s one-day beauty” in a box. Persephone was the queen of the underworld, so it was almost impossible to reach her without dying. 

After many hardships, Psyche reached Persephone. Surprisingly, Persephone did not want anything valuable in return. She only asked for a piece of wheat bread and a favor. Psyche immediately accepted and returned to the world of the living. However, before giving the box to Aphrodite, she wanted to use a little of the beauty to make Eros fall in love with her again. When she opened the box, instead of beauty, a deadly sleep came out and caused Psyche to fall into a deep sleep, like a corpse. 

Meanwhile, Eros could no longer resist his love and began searching for Psyche everywhere. When he finally found her, he immediately removed the deadly sleep and sent it back to Aphrodite in the box. Then he asked Zeus for permission to marry Psyche. Zeus gave Psyche ambrosia, the food of the gods, and with it, Psyche became an immortal goddess of the soul. In conclusion, they became equal in status. Aphrodite finally accepted Psyche, and they got married. 

There is a lot of symbolism in this story, but the most meaningful one is that Eros, the god of love, fell in love with the goddess of the soul. This shows that when you are in love with someone, you love their soul and who they truly are. 

Another symbolism is that the creature described by the fortune tellers as torturing the world with iron and fire was actually Eros from the beginning. Iron represented his lead arrows of hate, and fire represented the fire of love. It was said that even Zeus feared him because love is a feeling that belongs to everyone, even the king of the gods. 

Lastly, a fun fact: the word psychology, meaning the science of the soul, comes from Psyche, the goddess of the soul.