Once upon a time there was a King who had four daughters. The youngest one was the beautiful Psyche. The girl was so beautiful that nobody dared to ask for her hand, and with the time people started to adore her as a goddess for her beauty and compared her with Aphrodite. As Aphrodite listened that, she became angry and couldn’t accept it. So she ordered to Eros to make Psyche fall in love with a totally ugly man to make her feel ridiculous. So the always beautiful god of desire Eros, for the Romans Amor or Cupidom, went down to the earth to find the palace of Psyche. As he found her and saw such a beauty in front of him he couldn’t stop falling in love with her, something that was happening to him for the first time, since normally he was the one to decide about desire.

So Eros wanted to win Psyche’s heart without letting her know who he really was, and so he asked his friend Apollo. He was sure that he would help him because, once in the past, Apollo fall in love with the nymph Daphne. At the same time, Apollo had a fight with Eros and as a revenge Eros shot a iron arrow in the heart of Daphne so that she felt nothing else than detestation. She tried to escape of him and, as a last solution, she transformed into a laurel. Since that Apollo wears a laurel wreath on his head. Eros didn’t want to feel the same pain again and promised to give him support.

Eros had the following plan: Apollo should send the father of Psyche to his Oracle in Delphi, which would tell him that if Psyche wanted to find a lover she should go to the highest mountain of her area. There she would meet her husband. But for this Apollo needed also the help of Zephyrs, the west wind. Once, both fall in love with the same boy, Hyakinthos, who was giving more preference to Apollo. Zephyrs became jealous of Apollo and, during a discuss competition, Zephyrs steered the discuss to Hyakinthos, hit him and killed him. Since then he still owed Apollo an explanation, so he accepted to help him this time.

So finally Psyche went to the highest mountain. When she arrived there, the west wind appeared and told her to let her drop down the mountain, that nothing would happen to her. So she did and Zephyrs brought her to the palace of Eros. There she found a fully equip palace, with food, water and unbeliavable jewelry. But she was alone and after a while she layed down on one of the sofas and slept. As she fall asleep Eros appeared and woke her up with loving kisses. He told her that it was not possible to see his face, so at daytime she would be alone and just in the night he would appear and take care of her. Psyche agreed without thinking too much, but quite quickly she got totally bored and she asked Eros if he could bring some other people to give her company, her sisters for example.

After thinking a while he agreed, although just for one day. In the same way, the west wind brought the three sisters. They were really enthusiastic but they couldn’t understand why her lover didn’t want to show his face and made Psyche suspicious. They told her that probably her lover was a really ugly man and that this was the reason that he hided himself. However, the following night, after Eros fall asleep Psyche opened a candle and saw amazed that the god of desire Eros was lying next to her. In shock she let some wax drop and it fall on Eros shoulder, who woke up and disappeared. She lost him….

Back home she told her sisters what happened and also how she had arrived to the palace. As a result all her sisters went to the mountain and jumped down, but without the west wind, and none of them survived. Psyche roamed around and one day she came to the palace of Aphrodite. She told her the story and Aphrodite promised to help her to find Eros. But for this she should solve some tasks for Aphrodite. The first two were solved without any problems and with the help of Apollo. The third and important one was to step down in the underworld and to take a basket full of beauty of the queen Persephone.

She arrived regardless the kingdom under the earth and met Persephone who gave her immediately the basket of beauty. The only condition she asked to Psyche was not to look inside the basket before she reached the outside world. But as often happens in the mythological stories Psyche couldn’t wait and, even if she could see the sunshine from far, she opened the basket and looked inside. From there on she had to live for the rest of her life in the underworld.

This was the revenge of Aphrodite.