and Psyche" story from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. The catabasis of Psyche In the 2nd-century "Cupid and Psyche" narrative by Apuleius, Psyche, whose name is a Greek word for "soul," is sent on an underworld quest to retrieve the box containing Proserpina’s secret beauty, in order to restore the love of Cupid. The tale lends itself to multiple interpretational approaches, and it has frequently been analyzed as an allegory of Platonism as well as of religious initiation, iterating on a smaller scale the plot of the Metamorphoses as a whole, which concerns the protagonist Lucius’s journey towards salvation through the cult of Isis. Ritual elements were associated with the story even before Apuleius’s version, as indicated in visual representations; for instance, a 1st-century BC sardonyx cameo depicting the wedding of Cupid and Psyche shows an attendant elevating a liknon (basket) used in Dionysiac initiation. C. Moreschini saw the Metamorphoses as moving away from the Platonism of Apuleius’s earlier Apology toward a vision of mystic salvation. Before embarking on her descent, Psyche receives instructions for navigating the underworld: The two coins serve the plot by providing Psyche with fare for the return; allegorically, this return trip suggests the soul’s rebirth, perhaps a Platonic reincarnation or the divine form implied by the so-called Orphic gold tablets. The myth of Charon has rarely been interpreted in light of mystery religions, despite the association in Apuleius and archaeological evidence of burials that incorporate both Charon’s obol and cultic paraphernalia. And yet "the image of the ferry," Helen King notes, "hints that death is not final, but can be reversed, because the ferryman could carry his passengers either way." A funeral rite is itself a kind of initiation, or the transition of the soul into another stage of "life." Coins on the eyes? Contrary to popular etiology there is little evidence to connect the myth of Charon to the custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, though the larger gold-foil coverings discussed above might include pieces shaped for the eyes. Pairs of coins are sometimes found in burials, including cremation urns; among the collections of the British Museum is an urn from Athens, ca. 300 BC, that contained cremated remains, two obols, and a terracotta figure of a mourning siren. Ancient Greek and Latin literary sources, however, mention a pair of coins only when a return trip is anticipated,