In Ira Veneris: A Latin Novella, Psyche is pregnant and alone in the woods at night without food, help, or shelter. She’s desperate to find her husband Cupid, but he left her after she wounded him. Psyche swears that she will find him and starts off on a long quest that has her wandering homeless and destitute all over the world looking for her husband. Psyche knows that it’s not only her marriage that is at stake, but also the immortality of her future child.
Worse, Venus soon learns of Cupid and Psyche’s marriage, and her anger and hatred of Psyche boils and erupts into a dangerous fury. Psyche is in danger with no one to protect her. What will happen when Venus inevitably finds Psyche? How far is Psyche willing to go for Cupid and their child? Will she go to the Underworld itself?
Ira Veneris: a Latin Novella is the sequel to Cupido et Psyche. Ira Veneris finishes the tale 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 $12.50.
About the Plot of Ira Veneris: A Latin Novella
The plot of Ira Veneris is adapted from Apuleius’ retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. There are, however, some key differences. Psyche, for example, does not immediately despair of her situation and contemplate suicide. Instead, she is resolved to reunite with her husband and swears that her child will be divine. Although she is distraught by her circumstances, she never lets them overwhelm her. Much as in Apuleius, she is helped along her way with the increasingly dangerous tasks that Venus assigns her by other living creatures, from an ant to an eagle. Please note: Venus is violent and cruel in Apuelius, and she is so in Ira Veneris as well.
You may review the first chapter of Ira Veneris here.
About the Vocabulary and Grammar
The vocabulary is intentionally sheltered to allow for more extensive and independent reading. The novella contains 11,000 words, and it uses only 334 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 334 words that constitute the novella’s 11,000 word length, a student would need to know 25o unique words to read this text. Not unexpectedly, many of the words that appear in Ira Veneris also appear in Cupido et Psyche. Students who have already read Cupido et Psyche are well prepared to read its sequel, though new words, such as odium and noceō, do appear. 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. To increase the grammatical complexity beyond Cupido et Psyche, Ira Veneris includes more cum clauses and an abundance of double datives. Much like in Cupido et Psyche, 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 Ira Veneris: a Latin Novella is based on the iconic statue in the Louvre where Cupid awakens Psyche with a kiss. 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.
Master of the Die (Italian, active Rome, ca. 1530–60) Venus Complains to Jupiter, from The Fable of Psyche, Italian, Engraving; sheet: 6 11/16 x 8 7/8 in. (17 x 22.5 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Burton Emmet, 1929 (29.49.32) http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/396185 
About the Text Features of Ira Veneris: A Latin Novella
In addition to an engaging tale with sheltered vocabulary, Ira Veneris 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 eamus and ivit 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, Ira Veneris 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 Ira Veneris, the dictionary is available here.
