ShmoopTube

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Eros <<air-OSE>>, a la Shmoop.

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A lot of you think you know me.

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To you, I’m that little winged guy on Valentine’s Day cards.

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I’m that mischievous imp...

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...whose only pleasure in the world is pricking people with my golden arrows

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and making them fall in love with somebody they shouldn’t.

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Like...oh say...a family member or a dog. Fun stuff like that.

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I won’t deny any of that.

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I mean, c’mon, isn’t it hilarious when somebody randomly marries a dog?

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Well, I get a kick out of it.

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Your general impression of me is right.

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I am Eros, aka Cupid.

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My names are synonymous with lust and desire.

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I am what I am, and I’m not ashamed of it.

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There’s something you probably don’t know about me, though.

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I don’t admit this to a lot of people, so listen up.

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There’s one thing I love more than causing havoc in other people’s love lives.

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You’ll never guess. It is...

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My wife!

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Did you see that one coming? It’s true, though.

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I love her more than anything in the world.

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No doubt, we had a rocky start. The first time I saw her I was actually breaking and

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entering into her bedroom with full intentions of doing her harm.

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Hey, don’t look at me like that. My mom Venus, aka Aphrodite, ordered me to do it

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because she was jealous of Psyche’s beauty.

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She wanted me to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest guy around.

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Before you get all judge-y, you should know that I didn’t go through with it.

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I saw how beautiful she was and was so taken aback that I grazed myself with my own arrow.

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Mom wouldn’t let her grudge drop, though. Forgiveness isn’t exactly her strong suit.

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She caused nobody to love Psyche at all. So, even though Psyche was fabulously beautiful,

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nobody would marry her.

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At this point, Psyche’s parents got worried.

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They asked an oracle of Apollo if she would ever get married.

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The oracle told them she’d marry a monster, so her parents abandoned her in the wilderness.

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And people say I’m heartless?

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I knew this was going to be my one and only shot at making Psyche mine, so I jumped on it.

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I built an amazing mansion in the woods for her. It was full of treasure, awesome

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food, and even an invisible singing chorus.

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If you’re thinking that I stole this idea from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,

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it's the other way around.

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I made a deal with Psyche. She could live in my phat pad and be my wife.

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The only thing was that she could never look at me.

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I’d come to her each night in the dark, and she was never allowed to light a candle to see my face.

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Why did I make his stipulation? I don’t know. I’m just shy, I guess.

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That may seem weird for a dude who flies around naked, but what can I say?

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One night, when I was sleeping I awoke to a feeling of burning on my skin.

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There was Psyche standing over me with a drippy oil lamp.

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My first thought was that this was some new game she’d read about in Cosmo,

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but then I realized she was using the lamp to see me.

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Turns out, she was so amazed by my handsomeness that she inadvertently let the lamp tip.

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I was ticked. She’d lied to me. Broken her promise. My one true love!

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I flew out of the room in a huff, telling her I never wanted to see her again,

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taking the fabulous mansion with me.

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Psyche didn’t give up on me. She made her way to my mom and begged forgiveness.

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Mom gets a kick out of making people do crazy stuff...guess that’s where I get it from...

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so she sent Psyche on an insane quest.

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She had to get some golden fleeces from some super mean rams.

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And even travel through the dangers of the Underworld to ask Persephone <<per-SEF-uh-knee>>

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for a box of beauty.

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I had some suspicions about the box that Persephone gave Psyche, so I made myself invisible

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and warned her not to open it no matter what.

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Hm, if I can make myself invisible, why didn’t I just

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do that before so that she couldn’t see me?

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Details, details..

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Of course, Psyche has never been good with curiosity, and she opened the box anyway.

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Not sure what kind of beauty Persephone put in that box,

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but whatever it was plunged Psyche instantly into a coma.

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Now, I could’ve been mad at Psyche for letting her curiosity get the better of her again.

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But after all she’d done to get me back, I just couldn’t be angry with her anymore.

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So I used one of my golden arrows to wake her.

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Then we zipped up to talk to Zeus, who got mom off of our backs.

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Zeus was actually super cool and made Psyche immortal.

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Now she’s the goddess of the soul, and we live together in eternal bliss.

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She’s my everything, my one and only, and all that other cheesy stuff you read in Valentine’s Day cards.

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So there you go, people.

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You tell that story next time somebody says Cupid doesn’t have a heart.

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