But when he wished to give himself some little comfort from his suffering, after first addressing the goddess, he would count out on the table four knuckle-bones of a Libyan gazelle and take a gamble on his expectations. If he made a successful throw and particularly if ever he was blessed with the throw named after the goddess herself, and no dice showed the same face, he would prostrate himself before the goddess, thinking he would gain his desire. But, if as usually happens he made an indifferent throw on to his table, and the dice revealed an unpropitious result, he would curse all Cnidus and show utter dejection as if at an irremediable disaster; but a minute later he would snatch up the dice and try to cure by another throw his earlier lack of success. But presently, as his passion grew more inflamed, every wall came to be inscribed with his messages and the bark of every tender tree told of fair Aphrodite. Praxiteles was honoured by him as much as Zeus and every beautiful treasure that his home guarded was offered to the goddess. In the end the violent tension of his desires turned to desperation and he found in audacity a procurer for his lusts. For, when the sun was now sinking to its setting, quietly and unnoticed by those present, he slipped in behind the door and, standing invisible in the inmost part of the chamber, he kept still, hardly even breathing. When the attendants closed the door from the outside in the normal way, this new Anchises was locked in. But why do I chatter on and tell you in every detail the reckless deed of that unmentionable night? These marks of his amorous embraces were seen after day came and the goddess had that blemish to prove what she’d suffered. The youth concerned is said, according to the popular story told, to have hurled himself over a cliff or down into the waves of the sea and to have vanished utterly.

CUPID AND PSYCHE

The Golden Ass

Apuleius

Translated by Walter Pater, 1885

Psyche is the youngest and most gorgeous of a king’s three daughters. As news spreads of her beauty, people begin to worship her and neglect Venus, the beautiful goddess of love. Psyche’s father obtains an oracle that advises him to set her on a rock, for she is to wed a winged serpent. Psyche is brought to the rock but then events take a very different turn. The story of Cupid and Psyche, extracted here, is told within the Golden Ass, a Latin novel by Apuleius (c. AD 124–c. 170). Walter Pater’s translation from the late nineteenth century is rendered in exquisitely stylish prose, well befitting a founding father of the Aesthetic movement.