Eros (Roman Cupid, also Amor)

The arrow goes in without a sound. There is no wound to show for it, no blood, nothing a physician could find, and yet the man who takes it is no longer entirely his own. He will follow a stranger across a kingdom. He will forget his name, his oath, his good sense. Somewhere above him a winged figure is already fitting the next shaft to the string, unbothered, because this is simply the work, and the work never ends.

The Greeks could not agree on where Eros came from, and the disagreement says something about how large he loomed. In the oldest account, the one Hesiod sang, he was nobody’s child. He came into being near the very start of things, the fourth power to exist after Chaos, broad-breasted Earth, and the pit of Tartarus. In that telling Eros is not a boy with a bow at all but a vast and ancient pressure, the force that makes separate things reach for one another, the reason the cosmos bothered to assemble itself instead of staying a scatter of cold pieces. Without him nothing would have joined to anything. He is older than love stories because he is the condition that makes them possible.

The other Eros is the one most people picture. In this version he is the son of Aphrodite, conceived in her long affair with Ares, so that desire and violence share a parent and a roof. Some named his father Hermes instead, or Zeus, and the philosophers kept their own genealogy: in Plato’s telling he is the child of Resource and Poverty, forever needy and forever scheming, which is as good a description of wanting someone as anyone has managed. The accounts do not reconcile. They were never meant to.

In the early images he is a beautiful winged youth, lean and quick, two broad feathered wings carrying him so he can drop on a target from any angle. Over the centuries the artists kept making him younger, until by the Hellenistic age he had become a plump infant, the chubby winged baby the Romans called Cupid or Amor, the kind of thing you might want to pinch. The danger did not actually leave. The bow stayed the same size. His quiver held two kinds of arrows, and the gap between them was the gap between a ruined life and a saved one. The gold-tipped shafts, bright and needle-sharp, kindled helpless love in whoever they struck. The lead-tipped ones, blunt and dull, did the reverse, flooding the heart with cold refusal. Love, in his hands, was not a feeling. It was an injury.

His temper was a child’s, and a child with that bow is a frightening thing. After Apollo killed the great serpent Python, the bright god came on Eros bending his little bow and mocked him: leave the weapons to those who can use them. Eros answered with his hands. He drew two arrows, sank the golden one into Apollo and loosed the leaden one at the river-nymph Daphne, then sat back to watch. Apollo burned for her. She could not stand the sight of him. He chased her through the woods with all the desperate eloquence of a god in love, and she ran until her own father turned her into a laurel tree to spare her, so that Apollo was left pressing his mouth to bark. The smallest god on the field had humbled the proudest with two flicks of his wrist.

He was not always immune to his own craft. The Romans told the longest story about him, in which his mother, jealous of a mortal princess named Psyche whose beauty had begun drawing the worship owed to a goddess, sent him to make the girl fall in love with something hideous. He went to do it. Then he saw her, and in the dark of her sleeping chamber he scratched himself on one of his own arrows, and the god who had undone everyone undid himself. What followed was a marriage conducted entirely in darkness, a forbidden lamp, a single drop of hot oil that woke him and sent him fleeing, and a long season of trials before the two were reunited and Psyche was made immortal to keep him. They had a daughter. Her name was Pleasure.

For all the mischief he was genuinely worshipped, and not as a joke. At Thespiae in Boeotia his oldest sanctuary kept his image as a plain unworked stone, a rough block with no face, which is a strange thing to pray to for love until you remember that the thing itself has no face either. Later the town set up a marble Eros carved by Praxiteles, and every four years held games and a festival in his honour. People left offerings and asked him, carefully, to be kind. They knew what he was. A force that could bind the universe together could just as easily pull a single life apart, and he was known to enjoy both.

His power was total within its narrow band. He could not throw lightning or raise the dead, but he could make a king abandon a war, a goddess debase herself, a sensible woman walk willingly toward her own ruin, and against that the usual defences meant nothing. Strength did not help. Wisdom did not help. The gold arrow reached the marrow of the bone and the will simply reorganised itself around the wound. His limits were the limits of his own nature. He answered to his mother and could be sent on errands like the boy he resembled. He was careless, ruled by whim, as likely to start a catastrophe out of pique as out of any design. And he could be caught by his own weapon, which is the one true vulnerability of a god whose entire business is making other people lose control. The arrow that found Psyche found him too. He, of all of them, should have known to be careful.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Eros (Cupid)?

Eros is the Greek god of love, desire, and sexual attraction, known to the Romans as Cupid or Amor. He appears in two forms: a primordial cosmic force present near the creation of the universe, and a younger winged god, usually the son of Aphrodite, who fires arrows to make gods and mortals fall in love.

What do Eros’s gold and lead arrows do?

Eros carries two kinds of arrows with opposite effects. The gold-tipped arrows are sharp and bright and kindle helpless, irresistible love in whoever they strike, while the blunt lead-tipped arrows do the reverse, filling the target with cold aversion and refusal. He used both in the same myth when he made Apollo fall for the nymph Daphne and made Daphne despise Apollo.

Who are the parents of Eros?

The sources disagree. The oldest tradition, from Hesiod’s Theogony, makes Eros a primordial god with no parents, born near the beginning of creation after Chaos, Earth, and Tartarus. Later tradition makes him the son of Aphrodite, with his father variously named as Ares, Hermes, or Zeus, and Plato gives him a philosophical parentage as the child of Resource and Poverty.

What is the myth of Cupid and Psyche?

In the Roman tale, Cupid’s mother sent him to make the beautiful mortal princess Psyche fall in love with a hideous creature, but he pricked himself on his own arrow and fell in love with her instead. They married in secret darkness, and after Psyche broke the rule against looking at him he fled, leaving her to complete a series of trials set by his mother. The couple were ultimately reunited, Psyche was made immortal, and they had a daughter named Pleasure.

Are Eros and Cupid the same god?

Yes. Eros is the Greek name and Cupid (also Amor) is the Roman name for the same god of love and desire. The Romans inherited the figure from Greek mythology, and in art he was increasingly shown as a plump winged infant rather than the lean winged youth of earlier Greek depictions.

Related Entries

Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus, Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, Daphne, Anteros, Chaos, Gaia, Nyx, Erebus, Kama, Turan, Hathor