Author's Note

For those of you looking for a faithful adaptation of Lucius Apuleius’s second-century myth of Cupid and Psyche, we’ll just get this out of the way: This is not it. 

In fact, we probably should have titled the book Eros and Psyche in keeping with Greek nomenclature, but, sorry, Cupid is the better name. And that’s pretty much the rule of thumb that we used throughout the book. Of course, as you’ll find, this is just the first of maybe a thousand anachronisms and idiosyncrasies in the pages that follow, but, for us, this wasn’t really the point. 

Much like when you see The Matrix for the first time, and you realize, “Oh, this is where all of the references come from,” the Greek and Roman myths are the origin for the bones of most of the stories you love. The stories are timeless. They have endured millennia because they reveal something true about human nature: The Iliad shows us that people will burn everything down for love, while the Odyssey maintains that love can endure through years of challenge and change. Oedipus Rex demonstrates that, well, shit happens, and even with your best efforts, love can be pretty messed up. The stories have been told and retold countless times. So, what on earth (or Olympus) could we possibly add?

When setting out to retell these myths from the point of view of the goddesses, we mainly wanted to be able to live in the world of our favorite stories for a little bit longer. And we just found them so funny. How would anyone, let alone Hera, react to her husband turning himself into a golden shower to conduct a particularly creative extramarital affair? Is Aphrodite touchy about being the oldest goddess in Olympus? What are you supposed to do when you are the king of Crete and your wife has developed an insatiable horniness for the bull you forgot to sacrifice?!

In our retelling, we aimed to honor the heart of the story while also poking fun at just how insane and imaginative storytellers have always been. We decided to start with Psyche’s story because it has been a favorite for a long time. In telling the story to friends over drinks or to siblings who couldn’t fall asleep, the narrative changed with our voices. It became a little more “ours” when we wondered what Psyche would have said as a reasonable protagonist faced with truly impossible obstacles. After all that and despite our sweeping liberties, we hope what remains is a story that poses very real questions about love in its many forms. Mostly, though, we hope it will make you laugh.