Eros

Eros – known as Cupid to the Romans – was the Greek god of love and sexual desire, a constant companion of Aphrodite. In Hesiod he is one of the first beings to exist, and he overpowers the mind of gods and men alike. Later poets show him as a winged boy with a bow, whose arrows start love or confusion, and Apuleius tells how he fell in love with the mortal Psyche.

Parentage

There are numerous different versions of Eros’ parentage, and Greek authors were aware of them. Pausanias notes that most people thought Eros the youngest of the gods and the son of Aphrodite, while others told different stories (Pausanias 9.27.2).

Eros as a Primordial Cosmic Force

The first of these is Hesiod’s Eros, a primordial being, “the most beautiful among the immortal gods,” who loosens the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsel in the breast of every god and every man. In the Theogony, Chaos came into being first, then broad-breasted Earth (Gaea) and murky Tartarus, and then Eros (Hesiod, Theogony 116–122). Hesiod names no parents for him, so he is not the son of Chaos in the text; Erebus and Night, by contrast, are said to come from Chaos (Theogony 123). In Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus makes the same point: Eros has no parents, and none are named by any prose writer or poet; he quotes Hesiod’s lines as proof that Eros is among the oldest gods (Plato, Symposium 178b). When Aphrodite was born, Eros went with her, and Himeros (Desire) followed, as her attendants from the beginning (Theogony 201–202).

Eros as One of the Erotes, Children of Aphrodite and Ares

Possibly because Eros was constantly accompanying the goddess of love, later authors made him her son. Apollonius of Rhodes, for example, shows Aphrodite finding her son Eros playing at dice with Ganymede and persuading him to make Medea fall in love with Jason (Apollonius, Argonautica 3.111–166). Several other love gods are named alongside him: at Megara, Pausanias saw statues by Scopas of Eros, Himeros (Desire) and Pothos (Yearning), and he says he cannot tell whether their powers differ as much as their names (Pausanias 1.43.6). Inside Athens there was an altar of Anteros (“Love Avenged”), set up, the Athenians said, by resident aliens after the death of the foreigner Timagoras, who had been spurned by the Athenian Meles (Pausanias 1.30.1). Together such figures are often referred to as the Erotes. Cicero, collecting old Greek stories, even counts three Cupids: one a son of Hermes (Mercury) and Artemis (Diana), one a son of Hermes and Aphrodite, and a third, the same as Anteros, a son of Ares (Mars) and Aphrodite (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.59–60).

Eros as the Son of Zephyrus and Iris

A less famous tradition comes from early Greek lyric poetry. Plutarch quotes a poet who calls Eros “the most terrible of the gods,” born to fair-sandalled Iris, the messenger of the gods, after she lay with golden-haired Zephyrus, the West Wind (Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 765e). Other writers gave Eros still other parents. The Lycian poet Olen, in a hymn to Eileithyia, made her the mother of Love (Pausanias 9.27.2). In Euripides’ Hippolytus, the chorus calls Eros “the child of Zeus” (Euripides, Hippolytus 530–533). In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima says that Eros was conceived on the day of Aphrodite’s birth by Poverty (Penia) and Resource (Poros), the son of Cunning, which is why he is Aphrodite’s attendant and minister, always poor and always scheming after the beautiful (Plato, Symposium 203b–204a).

Eros in Cult

The Thespians, according to Pausanias, honored Eros above all other gods from the beginning and kept a very ancient image of him, an unworked stone. In later times they had famous statues of Eros by Praxiteles and by Lysippus (Pausanias 9.27.1–3). The people of Parium on the Hellespont worshipped him in the same way (Pausanias 9.27.1). Pausanias also records an altar of Eros at the Academy in Athens, with an inscription saying that Charmus was the first Athenian to dedicate an altar to the god (Pausanias 1.30.1).

Eros in Aristophanes’ Birds

In Aristophanes’ comic version of the creation, the chorus of birds sings that black-winged Night laid a wind-egg in the bosom of Erebus, and that from it, as the seasons turned, sprang Eros with shining golden wings, who then mated with winged Chaos in wide Tartarus and hatched the race of birds (Aristophanes, Birds 693–703).

Eros Portrayal · Apollo and Daphne

In Greek poetry, Eros is a winged god with a bow. Euripides gives him a bow and arrows that cannot be avoided: in Iphigenia in Aulis the golden-haired Eros stretches “twin bows,” one for good fortune and one for the confusion of life (Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 543–551), and in Medea Jason claims that Eros, with his inescapable arrows, forced Medea to save him (Euripides, Medea 530–531). Aristophanes calls Eros winged and golden-winged (Birds 574, 696–697), and in Apollonius he shoots Medea from the doorway of Aeetes’ hall, and the arrow burns in her heart like a flame (Argonautica 3.275–290).

The best-known account of the two kinds of arrows comes from Ovid. Eros’ quiver held two shafts of different workmanship: one gold with a sharp point that kindles love, the other blunt with lead beneath the shaft that drives love away (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.468–471).

In Ovid, Apollo, proud of killing the Python, mocked Eros for carrying a bow. Eros answered that Apollo’s arrows might pierce all else, but his own would pierce Apollo, and he shot the golden arrow into Apollo and the leaden one into Daphne, so that Apollo burned with desire while Daphne fled from love (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.452–474). The story continues on the page for Apollo and Daphne.

Eros and Psyche

The only full ancient telling of the story is in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, in the Roman period; it is placed there as a story told by an old woman (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4.28–6.24). A king had three daughters, and the youngest, Psyche, was so beautiful that people honored her as if she were Aphrodite (Venus). The goddess, angry that her honors were going to a mortal, sent her son Eros (Cupid) to make Psyche fall in love with the lowest of men (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4).

Instead, Eros fell in love with her himself, wounded, as he later says, by his own weapons (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 5). Zephyrus, the West Wind, carried Psyche to a splendid house, where an unseen husband came to her in the dark and left before dawn (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4–5). Psyche’s jealous sisters persuaded her that her husband was a monster, and one night she lit a lamp to look at him. She saw the god Eros, but a drop of hot oil from the lamp burned him, and he flew away (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 5).

Psyche wandered in search of him and was set a series of nearly impossible tasks by Aphrodite. In the end Zeus (Jupiter) granted Psyche immortality, and she and Eros were married at a feast of the gods. Their daughter was called Voluptas (Pleasure) (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 6). The full story has its own page, Eros and Psyche.

Eros Sources

Read the birth of the primordial Eros in Hesiod’s “Theogony” (116–122, 201–202) and in Aristophanes’ “Birds” (693–703). Other sources used on this page: Plato, Symposium 178b and 203b–204a; Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 765e; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.59–60; Pausanias 1.30.1, 1.43.6, 9.27.1–3; Euripides, Hippolytus 525–533, Iphigenia in Aulis 543–551 and Medea 530–531; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 3.111–166 and 3.275–290; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.452–474; and the story of Eros and Psyche in Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4.28–6.24. The effects of Eros’ arrows on mortals and gods were a favorite theme of the lyric poets, including Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon and Ibycus.

See Also: Eros and Psyche, Psyche, Aphrodite, Anteros, Apollo, Daphne