Eros (Cupid)

God of love. Early Greek myths see Eros as a primordial being. According to Hesiod, from Chaos, Eros was born together with Nyx, Erebus, Gaea, and Tartarus. Eros, Gaea and Tartarus seemed to be self-created. Hesiod doesn't write much about Eros except that he was "the fairest among the deathless gods".

Eros was a sexual force that would permit the work of creation to continue. Eros enabled personified abstractions, such as Nyx and Erebus, to produced offspring as well as Gaea producing offspring of her own (without a father): Uranus, Ourea and Pontus. (See Creation.) Eros doesn't appear at all in Homer's works.

See Creation, Theogony of Hesiod.

According to a pre-Homeric myth, Eros was the son of Aether (Upper Air) and Hemera (Day). In the Orphic Theogony, Eros was identical to the golden-winged god Phanes/Protogonus, who was born from the World Egg. According to the Orphic myth, as Phanes (Protogonus), he was the first Creator, where he was not just identified with Eros but also to Dionysus. Both Dionysus and Eros even have the same epithet - Bromios - which means "Thunderer".

That Phanes or Eros was born from the Cosmic Egg bears a striking resemblance to the comedy titled the Birds by Aristophanes, an Athenian comedy playwright of the late 5th century BC. Aristophanes wrote that Night (Nyx) mated with the Storm(?) so that she bore a large silvery egg. When the World Egg hatched, Love was born, bringing with it light. Here, Eros also appeared as having golden wings.

Eros only appeared more popularly as the youngest god, and was the youthful and roguish son of Aphrodite and Ares in works of later writers, during the Hellenistic and Roman period. This makes him the brother of Phobus (panic), Deimus (fear) and Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus of Thebes.

One poet (Olen) says that Eros was the son of Eileithyia, a goddess of childbirth.

In the later tradition, Eros appeared as a youth, almost like a cherubic angel, except that he carried a bow and arrows. His gold-tipped arrows could make a deity or human fall in love, while his lead-tipped arrows would make them immune to love.

Eros was identified by the Romans as Cupid. Cupid was also called Amor. According to the Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius, Cupid (Eros) married Psyche. He became the father of a daughter named Volupta ("Pleasure"). (See Cupid and Psyche in the Roman Deities page.)