Love and Psyche are the two protagonists of a well-known story told by Apuleius within his work The Metamorphoses , although it is considered to date back to an oral tradition that predates the author.
In the story told by Apuleius, Psyche, a mortal with beauty equal to Venus, becomes the bride of Love-Cupid without, however, knowing who her husband is, who presents himself to her only in the darkness of the night. Discovering at the instigation of her envious sisters her identity, she is forced, before she can be reunited with her divine consort, to perform a series of tests, at the end of which she will gainimmortality. Other versions, different from Apuleius’s, instead narrate the girl’s death before the last test; still others narrate that the girl failed the last test and thus had to leave Love-Cupid.