Cupid and Psyche 1

Apparently Longfellow had three daughters as well.

The story of Cupid and Psyche is a fairy tale. Apuleius's version is an entire chapter-length diversion in his novel Metamorphoses. An old woman is telling it to a young bride who has just been kidnapped. As a fairy tale, it is very different from the style of the rest of the novel. The plot is more simple, the characters are less nuanced, and the pacing is breathtaking. Great story, though. Because I enjoyed Apuleius so much, I'm going to translate some of it over the summer, to keep my Latin skills up.

In Which We Meet Our Heroine

[4.28] Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina. hi tres numero filias forma conspicuas habuere, sed maiores quidem natu, quamvis gratissima specie, idonee tamen celebrari posse laudibus humanis credebantur, at vero puellae iunioris tam praecipua, tam praeclara pulchritudo nec exprimi ac ne sufficienter quidem laudari sermonis humani penuria poterat. multi denique civium et advenae copiosi, quos eximii spectaculi rumor studiosa celebritate congregabat, inaccessae formositatis admiratione stupidi et admoventes oribus suis dexteram primore digito in erectum pollicem residente ut ipsam prorsus deam Venerem venerabantur religiosis adorationibus. iamque proximas civitates et attiguas regiones fama pervaserat deam, quam caerulum profundum pelagi peperit et ros spumantium fluctuum educavit, iam numinis sui passim tributa venia in mediis conversari populi coetibus, vel certe rursum novo caelestium stillarum germine non maria sed terras Venerem aliam virginali flore praeditam pullulasse.

There was in a certain nation a king and queen. These people had three striking daughters with beautiful figures, but indeed the older daughters, with faces as graceful as you might wish, nevertheless were believed to be able to have been suitably celebrated with human praise, but, in truth, so spectacular was the younger daughter, so stunning was her beauty, she was not able to admired nor indeed even praised sufficiently by the poverty of human speech.

Then the eager rumor of her beautiful face was gathering many men from cities and great property through stupified admiration for her inaccessible beauty, and, moving their right hands to their lips with one finger raised and the thumb down, they worshipped her utterly with adoring religious rites as if she were the goddess Venus.

And now the story spread through the neighboring states and nearby regions that the goddess  whom the blue depths of the sea had brought forth and whom the the splash of the frothy waves had raised, now by a given favor of her divinity was everywhere in the middle of the conversing, milling crowds, or that, certainly, from a new seed from heavenly drops, not the sea but the land had sprouted forth another Venus from a virginal flower.