A king and a queen had three fair daughters. But by far the most beautiful was Psyche, the youngest. So extraordinary was her loveliness that words could not describe it. Soon people began to worship her as a goddess, and rumors spread around the country that she was no other than a new incarnation of the foam-born Aphrodite, created when “heaven had rained fresh procreative dew, and earth, not sea, had brought forth as a flower a second Aphrodite in all the glory of her maidenhood.”

When Aphrodite heard of those rumors, fury and rage engulfed her, and thus she said to herself: “Behold, I the first parent of created things, the primal source of all the elements; behold, I the kindly mother of all the world, must share my majesty and honor with a mortal maid, and my name that dwells in the heavens is dragged through the earthly muck. Shall I endure the doubt cast by this vicarious adoration, this worship of my godhead that is shared with her?… this girl, whoever she be, that has usurped my honors shall have no joy thereof. I will make her repent of her beauty, even her unlawful loveliness.”

And so she summoned Eros, her son, and cried: “I implore you to avenge and punish this maiden. Strike her heart with your arrow, and cause her to be consumed with passion for the vilest, most horrid of men. She shall have no fortune, no honor, and her misery shall have no peer in all the world.”