The event is named after Psyche, a figure in Greek mythology, a character from a novel by Apuleius and also the title of the tragédie et ballet Psyché.
The 2nd century Roman writer and philosopher Apuleius in his Apologia XV says "What is the cause of the prismatic colours of the rainbow, or of the appearance in heaven of two rival images of the sun, with sundry other phenomena treated in a monumental volume by Archimedes of Syracuse."
Apuleius |
To support his arguments, Espinosa Medrano refers to, among others, Apuleius, Augustine of Hippo, the Bible, Camoens, Cervantes, Erasmus, Faria, Garcilaso, Homer, Lope de Vega, and Pedro de Oña.
Definite references do not occur before the 2nd century (Fronto, Ep. ad ~k~. Caes. i. 3; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. i~. 24, Xii. 10, XjX. 9 Apuleius, De magic, 30; Porphyrion, Ad Horat. carm. iii. 1, 2).
Dissatisfied, he turned to Apuleius's Golden Ass, translated by William Adlington in 1566, and read through the earlier version of the Cupid and Psyche myth.
Below the frieze of seals in the central hall hang five seventeenth-century Flemish Gobelin tapestries portraying Apuleius' romance of Cupid and Psyche.