Cupid and Campaspe: Betting More Than You Can Afford

Whether it is in the casino, at the race tracks, while gambling online, or even in a casual bet between friends, gambling can be a high-risk activity. This is especially true if stakes are high, and large amounts of money have been put in the pot. After all, in gambling, the results are unpredictable. In any gambling game, things can turn out in a lot of different ways. Regardless of how carefully a person researches, manages their money, or hedges their bets, when someone puts their funds into something that poses the very real threat of failure, they are essentially placing themselves, and their investment, in the capricious hands of fate. If a person is imprudent and bets more than they can afford, they run the risk of financially foundering.

There are a lot of references to gambling in Ancient Greek mythology, Roman mythology, and literature. One example would be a story of how love became blind, as written in the poem by Englishman John Lyly in the 16th Century. Cupid, son of Venus, was playing a game of cards with Campaspe, a mortal woman who was said to have been the mistress of Alexander the Great. Perhaps the game they were playing was an ancestor of today's Texas Hold'em poker. In the poem, the game they played had been referred to as "cards for kisses." They had been at it for several rounds. Eros was losing, and in a last ditch attempt to recoup his losses, he wagered his eyes. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, he lost once again, and this is why, they say, love is blind.

There could have been a lot of ways for poor Cupid to have avoided this unfortunate situation. He could have set a gambling budget, so that he could limit how much he was spending. That way, he may have been able to stop gambling long before he would have reached the point where he would get desperate enough to bet one of his own senses. He could have created a bankroll, so that he would have had some money set aside specifically for gambling. He could have even practiced a little; familiarized himself with certain poker techniques -if indeed, the card game he and Campaspe had been playing had been a form of poker, so that he could have gotten better at the game itself and even defeated Campaspe. Perhaps if he had been a little more prudent in his earlier bets, he would have been able to avoid losing everything early on. Unfortunately, he had bet much more than he could afford, and he paid for that imprudence in a way that has gone down in legend.