Jealousy, love, fear, and betrayal. Everyone admires Psyche for her beauty, but Psyche wants to be loved for herself, not her appearance. Even her own sisters secretly envy Psyche’s beauty and good fortune. Only Psyche considers herself unfortunate. When people begin worshiping Psyche as the goddess of love despite her best efforts, Psyche unintentionally rouses the anger of Venus herself. Will Psyche escape Venus’ wrath and her sisters’ terrible jealousy? Or will she find herself married to her greatest fear, a truly monstrous snake? Find out in Cupido et Psyche: A Latin Novella!
Cupido et Psyche: a Latin Novella is based on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and its inset myth of Cupid and Psyche. It is intended for high school Latin III or Latin IV students in a four-year sequence. This novella may also be appropriate at other levels depending on the students’ years of study and intended use.
The novella is available for $12.
About the Plot of Cupido et Psyche
The plot of Cupido et Psyche is adapted from Apuleius’ retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. There are, however, some key differences. Psyche, for example, is a more fully fleshed out character with her own dreams and, more importantly, fears. She is less uncertain and more willing to call someone out on their behavior even as she remains almost naive in her trust and love. Cupid is himself a bit of a know-it-all scold in Apuleius. (He is divine!) In addition, the internal conflict that Psyche has about whom to trust is heightened by her own fear of snakes.
You may review the first chapter of Cupido et Psyche here.
About the Vocabulary and Grammar
The vocabulary is intentionally sheltered to allow for more extensive and independent reading. The novella contains 8,800 words, and it uses only 350 words. Of those words, some are clear cognates, names, or glossed words that were essential to the story but appeared fewer than ten times. When those words are removed from the 350 words that constitute the novella’s 8,800 word length, a student would need to know 253 unique words to read this text. In addition, careful attention was paid to the frequency that words appear in Latin literature. When choosing between synonyms, for example, the more common word was chosen.
Unlike the vocabulary, the grammar in this novella is not sheltered. In particular, though, students will encounter subjunctives, particularly for purpose and fear clauses. In addition, students will encounter indirect statement, participles, gerunds, and gerundives. Because the story is set in Roman world, the predominant tense that students will encounter will be the perfect and imperfect tense. The novella, though, is rich with dialogue, so readers will also encounter a significant amount of the future and present tenses as well.
About the Artwork
The cover of Cupido et Psyche is based on François Gérard painting, Psyche and Cupid. However, it was reimagined and redesigned by Nifty Illustration. Inside the work, the artwork is all in the public domain in the United States and the country of origin. The myth of Cupid and Psyche, after all, has inspired numerous artists through the centuries. Several of these public-domain images do contain nudity given the time in which they were created, and none would be out of place in a museum. In fact, many are in museums. Each image is accompanied with a small caption in Latin, and a bibliography with URLs is available to those who would like to incorporate the images into their lessons.
About the Contents of Cupido et Psyche
In addition to an engaging tale with sheltered vocabulary, Cupido et Psyche has a full index of word forms. In the index, the reader can look up all unknown words. Verbs are listed separately, so a reader could independently look up both fuissent and essem without knowing the dictionary entry of the word. The index provides a general translation of the word that is grammatically appropriate and would fit the context of the sentence. Because this text is also more advanced than many other novellas, Cupido et Psyche also contains a dictionary. This dictionary offers all the principal parts. The dictionary notes how frequently the words appear in Latin Literature according to the Core Latin Vocabulary or Essential Latin vocabulary.
If you would like to review the vocabulary used in Cupido et Psyche, the dictionary is available here.
