Ambrosia (pronouced am-bro-zia)
(1) In classical mythology, the food (sometimes
called nectar) of the gods and said to bestow immortality.
(2) Something
especially delicious to taste or smell.
(3) A
fruit dish made of oranges and shredded coconut. Sometimes includes pineapple.
(4)
Alternative name for beebread.
(5) Any
of various herbaceous plants constituting the genus Ambrosia, mostly native to
America but widely naturalized: family Asteraceae (composites). The genus includes the ragweeds.
1545-1555. From the Middle English, from the Old French ambroise, from the Latin ambrosia (favored food or drink of the gods) from the Ancient Greek ambrosia (food of the gods), noun use of the feminine of ambrosious (thought to mean literally "of the imortals") from ambrotos (immoratlity; immortal, imperishable). The construct was a- (not) + mbrotos (related to mortos (mortal), from the primitive Indo-European root mer- (to rub away, to harm (also "to die" and used widely when forming words referring to death and to beings subject to death). Writers in Antiquity woud use the word when speaking of theit favorite herbs and it's been used in English to describe delectable foods (though originally of fruit
drinks) since the 1680s and came to be used figuratively for anything
delightful by the 1730s. Applied to certain herbs by Pliny and Dioscorides; used of various foods for mortals since 1680s (originally of fruit drinks); used figuratively for "anything delightful" by 1731. The adjective ambrosial dates from the 1590s in the sense of "immortal, divine, of the quality of ambrosia", the sense of "fragrant, delicious" developed by the 1660s. The other adjectival forms were ambrosiac (circa 1600) & ambrosian (1630s).
Ambrose was the masculine proper name, from the Latin Ambrosius, from the Ancient Greek ambrosios (immortal, belonging to the immortals), The Biblioteca Ambrosian (Ambrosian Library) in Milan (1609), established by Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), is named for Saint Ambrose of Milan (circa 339–397) Bishop of Milan 374-397.
Cupid, Psyche
and the Nectar of the Gods
In
Greek mythology, Psyche was the youngest and loveliest of a king’s three daughters. So haunting was Psyche’s beauty that people travelled from afar to pay homage, neglecting the worship of Venus (Aphrodite),
the goddess of love and beauty, instead venerating the nymph. Venus became enraged at finding her altars
deserted, men instead turning their devotions to the young virgin, watching as she
passed, singing her praises and strewing her way with chaplets and flowers.
Indignant
at the exaltation of a mortal, Venus began her righteous rant. "Am I then to be eclipsed in my honors
by a mere mortal girl? In vain then did that royal shepherd, whose judgment was
approved by Jove himself, give me the palm of beauty over my illustrious
rivals, Pallas and Juno. But she shall not so quietly usurp my honors. I will
give her cause to repent of so unlawful a beauty." Venus summoned her winged son, the mischievous
Cupid and telling him of Psyche, ordered her revenge. "My dear son, punish that contumacious
beauty; give your mother a revenge as sweet as her injuries are great; infuse into
the bosom of that haughty girl a passion for some low, mean, unworthy being, so
that she may reap a mortification as great as her present exultation and
triumph."
Obediently,
Cupid set to his task. In the garden of
Venus lay two fountains, one of sweet waters, the other of bitter. Cupid filled two amber phials, one from each
fountain and suspending them from the top of his quiver, hastened to the
chamber of Psyche, finding her asleep. He
shed a few drops from the bitter fountain over her lips and although though the
sight of her moved him almost to pity, touched her side with the point of his
arrow. At the touch she awoke and her eyes
gazed upon the invisible Cupid which so enchanted him he became confused and pricked
himself with his own arrow. Helplessly
in love, his only thought now was to repair the mischief he had done and he
poured the balmy drops of joy over all her silken blonde ringlets.
Psyche,
henceforth frowned upon by Venus, gained no benefit from her charms. While all cast covetous eyes upon her and all
spoke her praises, not prince, plebeian or peasant ever asked for her hand in marriage. Her two sisters had become betrothed to princes
but Psyche sat in solitude, feeling cursed by the beauty which had failed to
awaken love. The king and queen,
thinking they had incurred the wrath of the gods turned for guidance to the oracle
of Apollo who answered: “The virgin is destined for the bride of no
mortal lover. Her future husband awaits her on the top of the mountain. He is a
monster whom neither gods nor men can resist."
Her
parents, distraught, abandoned themselves to grief but Psyche was fatalistic,
saying "Why, my dear parents, do you now lament me? You should rather have
grieved when the people showered upon me undeserved honors, and with one voice
called me a Venus. I now perceive I am victim to that name. I submit. Lead me to that rock to which my unhappy fate has destined me." Accordingly, amid the lamentations of all,
she was taken to the peak of the mountain and there left alone. When the tearful girl stood at the summit, the
gentle Zephyr raised her from the earth and carried her on the breeze, bringing
her to rest in a flowery dale where she laid down to sleep. When
she awoke, refreshed, she looked around and beheld nearby a grove of tall and
stately trees. Entering the forest, she
discovered in its midst a fountain from which bubbled crystal-clear waters and
nearby, a splendid palace, so magnificent she knew it the work not of mortal
hands, but the retreat of some god. Drawn
by admiration and wonder, she ventured to enter the door. Amazed at what she saw, she walked along a
marble floor so polished it shimmered, golden pillars supported a vaulted roof,
walls were enriched with carvings and paintings of fantastic beasts. Everything upon which her eye fell delighted her.
Soon,
although she saw no one, she heard a voice.
"Sovereign lady, all that you see is yours. We whose voices you
hear are your servants and shall obey all your commands with utmost care. Retire, should you please, to your chamber,
recline upon your bed of down and when you see fit, repair to the bath. Your supper awaits in the alcove”. Psyche took her bath and seated herself in
the alcove, whereupon a table appeared laden with extraordinary delicacies of
food and nectarous wines. While she
ate, she heard the playing of lute and harp and the harmony of song.
That
night she met he husband but he came only in the darkness, fleeing before the
dawn, but his words and caresses were of love and inspired in her a like passion. Often she would beg him to stay so she might behold
him in the light but he refused, telling her never to attempt to see him, for no
good would come of it and that he would rather have her love him as a man than adore
him as a god. This, Psyche accepted but
the days grew long and lonely and she began to feel she was living in a gilded
cage. One night, when her husband came, she
told him of her distress, her charms enough to coax from him his unwilling acquiescence
that her sisters could visit. Delighted,
she summoned the obedient Zephyr who brought them to the mountain and in
happiness, they embraced.
The splendor
and celestial delights of Psyche’s palace astonished her sisters but also
aroused their envy and they began to pepper her with questions about her husband
and she told them he was a beautiful youth who spent his days hunting in
the mountains. Unconvinced, the soon
drew from her that she had never seen him and they began to fill her mind with dark
suspicions, recalling the Pythian oracle had declared her doomed to marry a
direful and tremendous monster. Psyche
protested but they told her the folk living in the valley say the husband is a
terrible and monstrous serpent, amusing himself while nourishing her with
dainties that he may by and by devour her.
They told to one night to take with her a lamp and sharp blade so
that when he slept she might light the lamp and see his true form. If truly he is a monster they told her, "hesitate
not and cut off its head".
Psyche tried
to resist her sisters’ persuasions but knew she was curious and that night she
took to bed a lamp and a long, sharp knife.
When he had fallen to sleep, silently she arose and lit her lamp, beholding but
the most beautiful of the gods, his golden ringlets falling over his snowy neck,
two dewy wings on his shoulders whiter than snow, with shining feathers like
the tender blossoms of spring. Entranced,
as she moved her lamp better to see his face, a drop of hot oil fell on the
shoulder of the god and startled, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. They both were frozen for a few seconds, then
suddenly and without a word, he spread his wings and flew out of the window. Psyche, crying in despair, in vain endeavored
to follow but fell from the window to the ground below.
Hearing
her fall, Cupid for a moment paused in his flight and turned to her saying, "Oh
faithless Psyche, is it thus you repay my love? After I disobeyed my mother's
commands and made you my wife, will you think me a monster and would cut off my
head? Go, return to your sisters, who
you trust more than me. I punish you no more
than to forever leave you for love cannot dwell with suspicion." With those words, he flew off, leaving poor
Psyche crying into the earth. For
hours she sobbed and then looked around, but her palace and gardens had
vanished and she found herself in a field in the city where her sisters dwelt. She repaired thither and told them her story at
which, though pretending to grieve with her, the two evil sisters inwardly
rejoiced for both thought as one: that Cupid might now choose one of them. Both the next morning silently arose and snuck
secretly to the mountain where each called upon Zephyr to bear them to his lord
but leaping up, there was no Zephyr to carry them on the breeze and each fell
down the precipice to their deaths.
The devastated
Psyche meanwhile wandered. Day and
night, without food or rest, she searched for her husband and one evening saw
in the distance a magnificent temple atop a lofty mountain and she felt her heart
beat, wondering if perhaps there was Cupid.
She walked to the temple and there saw heaps of corn, some in loose ears
and some in sheaves, mingled with ears of barley. Scattered about, lay sickles and rakes, the instruments of harvest, without order, as if thrown carelessly from the weary reapers' hands in the sultry hours of the day. This
unseemly confusion disturbed the neat and tidy Psyche and she put herself to
work, separating and sorting everything and putting all in its proper place, believing
she ought to neglect none of the gods, but prove by her piety to prove she was worthy
of their help. The holy Ceres, whose
temple it was, finding her so religiously employed, thus spoke to her, "Oh
Psyche, truly your are worthy of our pity, though I cannot shield you from the
frowns of Venus, I can teach you how best to allay her displeasure. Go, then,
and voluntarily surrender yourself to your lady and sovereign, and try by
modesty and submission to win her forgiveness, and perhaps her favor will
restore you the husband you have lost."
Filled with both fear and hope, Psyche made her way to the temple of
Venus.
Venus met
her with anger. "Most undutiful and
faithless of servants," said she, "do you at last remember you have a
mistress or have you come to see your sick husband, the one injured by the wound
given him by his worthless wife? You are
so ill favored you can be worthy of your lover only by showing industry and
diligence. I shall put you to work". She led Psyche to temple’s storehouse in
which sat vast piles of wheat, barley, vetches, beans and lentils, the food for
her birds. “Separate these grains, put
them all in sacks and have it done by night” she commanded, leaving her to the
task. Shocked,
Psyche sat silent, moving not a finger. While
she despaired, Cupid ordered an ant, a native of the fields, to bring all ants
from the anthill and they gathered on the piles. Quickly and with the efficiency of their
breed, they took grain by grain, making perfect parcels of each and when done, vanished
from sight. As twilight fell, Venus returned
from a banquet of the gods and seeing the sacks neatly stacked, became
enraged. "This is no work of yours,
wicked one, but his, whom to your own and his misfortune you have
enticed." So saying, she threw her
a piece of black bread for her supper and stormed off.
Next
morning Venus ordered Psyche to be called and said to her, "Behold yonder
grove which stretches along the margin of the water. There you will find sheep feeding without a
shepherd, with golden-shining fleeces on their backs. Go now, fetch me some of that precious wool
gathered from every one of their fleeces."
Standing on the riverbank, wondering at the difficulty of her task,
Psyche was about to cross but river god made the reeds speak, telling her "Oh
maiden, tempt not the dangerous flood, nor venture among those rams for as long
as the sun shines, they burn with a cruel rage to destroy mortals with their
sharp horns or rude teeth. But when the
noontide sun has driven them to the shade, and the serene spirit of the
flood has lulled them to rest, you may then cross in safety, and you will find
the woolly gold sticking to the bushes and the trunks of the trees." Psyche
did as they said and returned with her arms full of the golden fleece but Venus
was not pleased. "Well I know it is
by none of your own doings that you have succeeded I do not believe you are of
use but I have another task for you. Here,
take this box and go your way to the infernal shades, and give this box to
Proserpine and say, 'my mistress Venus desires you to send her a little of your
beauty, for in tending her sick son she has lost some of her own'. Be not too
long on your errand, for I must paint myself with it to appear this evening at
the circle of the gods."
Psyche now
believed her own destruction was at hand and, with no wish to delay what was
not to be avoided, dashed to the top of a high tower, preparing to cast herself headlong, thus to descend the shortest way to the shades below. But then, a
voice from the tower said to her, "Why, poor unlucky girl, do you design
to put an end to your days in so dreadful a manner? And what cowardice makes
you sink under this last danger when you have been so miraculously supported in
all your former?" Then the voice
told her how by a certain cave she might reach the realms of Pluto, and how to
avoid all the dangers of the road, to pass by Cerberus, the three-headed dog,
and prevail on Charon, the ferryman, to take her across the black river and
bring her back again. But the voice also cautioned, "When Proserpine has
given you the box filled with her beauty, you must never once open or look into
the box nor allow your curiosity to pry into the treasure of the beauty of the
goddesses."
Encouraged,
Psyche obeyed the advice and travelled safely to the kingdom of Pluto. Admitted
to the palace of Proserpine, she delivered her message from Venus and soon, she
was handed the box, shut and filled with the precious commodity. Then she
returned the way she came, glad once more to be in the light of day. But as she walked along the path, a longing
desire overcame her, an urge to look into the box for, as she imagined, a touch
of the divine beauty would make her more desired by Cupid so, delicately, she opened
the box. But in there was nothing of
beauty but only an infernal and truly Stygian sleep which, being set free from
its prison, took possession of her, and she fell in the road where she stood,
plunged into a deep sleep, lying there without sense or motion.
But
Cupid was now recovered and could no longer bear the absence of his beloved
Psyche and slipping through a crack in the window, he flew to where Psyche lay. He gathered up the sleep from her and closed
it again in the box, waking her with the gentlest touch of one of his arrows.
"Again," said he, "have you almost perished by the same
curiosity. But now perform exactly the
task imposed on you by my mother, and I will take care of the rest." Then Cupid, as swift as lightning, presented
himself before Jupiter with his supplication.
Jupiter was impressed and so earnestly did he plead the cause of the
lovers that he won the consent of Venus and on hearing this, sent Mercury to
bring Psyche up to the heavenly assembly, and when she arrived, he handed her a
goblet ambrosia saying, "Drink this, Psyche, and be immortal; nor shall
Cupid ever break away from the knot in which he is tied, but these nuptials
shall be perpetual." Thus Psyche
became at last united to Cupid, and in time, born to them was a daughter whose name was Pleasure.
The
story of Cupid and the OCD Psyche is told by the Roman writer Apuleius (circa
124-circa 170) in three chapters in his rather risqué picaresque novel, The Metamorphoses of Apuleius (which
Saint Augustine dubbed Asinus aureus (The
Golden Ass (by which it’s today known)).
The Golden Ass is notable as the only full-length work of fiction in
Classical Latin to have survived in its entirety and is a work with aspects
which would be regarded as novel centuries later, including fantastical
imagery, passages like fairy tales and elements which would now be called magic
realism. Like many modern fairy tales,
there is a moral to the story and for Apuleius it was that it is love which
makes to soul immortal and there was no need for subtlety, Cupid the son of the
goddess of desire and Psyche's name originally meant soul.
With the
re-discovery (and some re-invention) of much of antiquity during the
Renaissance, the story gained much popularity and attracted the interest of
artists and from Raphael’s (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1483–1520) studio came
the best known evocation. One of the scenes
is the wedding feast, painted in the form of a hanging tapestry. Psyche’s guest list was a roll-call of the
gods, Ganymede, Apollo, Bacchus and Jupiter are all at the table, the Graces
and the Hours in attendance. The artists
(for some the work was executed by professional painters under Raphael’s
guidance) do have some fun, very much in the spirit of Apuleius for above the
flying Mercury sits, artfully arranged, a suggestive conjunction of certain
vegetables and fruits.
The Wedding Feast of Cupid and Psyche (1532)
by Giulio Romano.
The
romance of Cupid and Psyche drew other artists including the Italian Giulio
Romano (Giulio Pippi, circa 1499-1546), a student of Raphael whose influence permeates. While not highly regarded by critics and
better remembered as an architect, Romano is of note because he was among the
earliest of the artists whose work can be called Mannerist and certainly his wedding
feast painting includes the mythological, a staged and theatrical setting, eroticism and an unusual sense of perspective; all characteristic of Mannerist art although he
remained entirely naturalistic in the callipygian rendering of Psyche’s buttocks.
In Shakespeare's
late drama The Winter's Tale there’s
an allusion to Romano as “that rare Italian master” but despite the bard’s apparent
admiration, historians of art treat him as little more than a footnote; the
shadow Raphael cast was long. Some
critics seem determined to devalue his work, the Catholic Encyclopaedia (1913) noting
it was “prolific and workmanlike, always competent…” but with “…no originality;
as a painter, he is merely a temperament, a prodigious worker. His manual
dexterity is unaccompanied by any greatness of conception or high moral
principle. His lively but superficial
fancy, incapable of deep emotion, of religious feeling, or even of observation,
attracted him to neutral subjects, to mythological paintings, and imaginary
scenes from the world of fable. Therein under the cloak of humanism, he gave
expression to a sensualism rather libertine than poetical, an epicureanism
unredeemed by any elevated or noble quality. It is this which wins for Giulio
his distinctive place in art. His
conception of form was never quite original; it was always a clever and bookish
compromise between Raphael and Michelangelo. His sense of color grows ever
louder and uglier, his ideas are void of finesse, whatever brilliancy they show
is second-hand. His single distinctive characteristic is the doubtful ease with
which he played with the commonplaces of pagandom. In this respect at least,
paintings like those of the Hall of Psyche (1532) are historical landmarks. It
is the first time that an appeal is made to the senses with all the brutal frankness
of a modern work”.
Damning
with faint praise perhaps. Grudgingly,
the editors did concede that despite being “…distinguished by such
characteristics and marked by such defects, Romano occupies nevertheless an
important place in the history of art. More than any other, he aided in
propagating the pseudo-classical, half-pagan style of art so fashionable during
the seventeenth century. It’s mainly through his influence that after the year
1600 we find so few religious painters in Europe”.
One
could hardly expect The Catholic
Encyclopedia (sub-titled An
International work of reference on the constitution, doctrine, discipline and
history of the Catholic Church), to find much worthy in a mannerist (or perhaps anything modern). Mannerism, novel in some ways as it was, was rarely original
in form or content. It was a reaction
against the perceived perfection of the neo-classicism of the High Renaissance
and artists from Romano on were drawn to Greek mythology, characters like Psyche
and Echo able simply and unambiguously to represent the psychological problems muddied
by Christian theology.
