- Looks after
- Desire, the force that joins things together
- Roman name
- Cupid
- Often shown with
- Wings, a bow and arrows, a torch.
Eros
Ἔρως
In Hesiod, Eros is one of the first beings, the power of desire. Later poets make him Aphrodite's winged son.
In Hesiod's Theogony Eros appears with Gaia and Tartarus right after Chaos. He is called the most beautiful of the immortals, the one who loosens the limbs and overcomes the mind. The idea is that nothing can be born without attraction, so he is needed before any of the couplings in the poem.
Later writers changed him. By the classical period he is more often a youth or a boy, the child of Aphrodite and in different versions of Ares, Hermes or Hephaestus. In Hellenistic art he is a winged child with a bow whose arrows cause love. In Apuleius's tale of Eros and Psyche he is the husband of the mortal Psyche.
Eros had real cult. He was worshipped at Thespiae in Boeotia, and in Athens there was an altar of Eros at the Academy, where a torch race was run in his honour.
In later art and language
Eros, the word, gave English erotic. Eros is also the name of a near-Earth asteroid, the first to be orbited by a spacecraft.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 116-122, 201-206
- Plato, Symposium
- Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4-6
The family of Eros
In Hesiod he is one of the first beings. Later poets make him a child of Aphrodite.