This eroticised image of Eros by Caravaggio (from his Amor Vincit Omnia, c. 1602), showing a capricious winged boy holding his arrows aloft, is in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin. |
Eros
Roman name: Cupid
God of love and sexual desire.
Associated iconography: Eros is commonly depicted as a winged boy with bow and arrows, sometimes blindfolded.
Alternative name: Protagonus (first born). Note that eros is a Greek word meaning 'love', and cupido is a Latin word meaning 'lust'.
Eros functioned as the god of love and sexual desire by shooting arrows into the hearts of both gods and mortals, filling them with a passion that they were powerless to resist. Eros carried two types of arrow in his quiver: golden arrows with dove feathers that aroused passionate love, and leaden arrows with owl’s feathers that inspired equally vehement hate. The arrows were made by the blacksmith god Hephaestus.
Eros is sometimes depicted blindfolded to indicate that love is blind. He certainly fired his arrows indiscriminately or at times maliciously. Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book I) tells how Eros punished the god Apollo for taunting him that his bow and arrow were less warlike than Apollo’s own weapons. Eros shot a golden arrow into Apollo’s heart so that he fell hopelessly in love with the nymph Daphne, but penetrated her heart with a leaden arrow so that she despised all men. Apollo pursued Daphne so relentlessly that she asked her father, the river god Peneus, to protect her. He transformed her into a laurel tree. The remorseful Apollo adorned himself with some of its leaves and adopted the tree as his personal symbol.
Eros’ Parentage
There are competing stories describing Eros’ origins. Most literary sources make Eros the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, because they draw upon the Roman version of Greek myths in which Cupid is the son of Venus (thus the goddess of love is always attended by cupido or lust). Different versions of the story give Eros different fathers, including Hermes, Zeus and Ares. Virgil, for example, made Ares (Mars) – the god of war – responsible for siring Eros, thereby producing the appealing explanation that sexual desire is the product of love and conflict.
In earlier mythology Eros is one of the oldest gods, following the logic that without sexual desire there would be no procreation. According to Greek Creation Myths, Eros was the first-born (Protagonus), produced by the union of Eurynome (‘far-ruling’) the Goddess of All Things with the powerful snake Ophion. Eros was then responsible for the union of Uranus (Heaven or Sky) and Gaia (Earth) and the birth of everything in those spheres. Aristophanes’ The Birds describes Eros creating human beings out of Chaos, in the underworld regions of Tartarus, where he hatched them out and led them up to the light of earth.
Eros and Psyche
The story of Eros most frequently depicted in art, and alluded to in literature, concerns his love for the mortal Psyche.
Psyche was so beautiful that she aroused the jealousy of Aphrodite, who asked Eros to shoot her with an arrow to make her fall in love with the ugliest man in the world. But when Eros saw Psyche he fell in love with her himself. Each night he visited her, concealing his identity under the cover of darkness. But overwhelmed by curiosity, Psyche lit a lamp to see his face while he slept. A drop of the hot oil awoke Eros, and he fled, angry that his identity had been discovered.
The distraught Psyche travelled far and wide, searching for her lover. Eventually Zeus took pity on the lovers: he reunited them and permitted them to marry.