A romantic painting of the mythical Cupid and Psyche.
By Joselin Ramos
Valentine’s Day, so profitable for greeting card and candy companies, is both a hated and a beloved holiday. Being an annual reminder of the highs and lows of human affection, February 14 is famously infamous. But as many know, this day is also associated with Cupid’s birthday. In Greco-Roman mythology, Cupid or Eros, is the ancient god of sexual passion and romantic desire, and is Aphrodite’s son.
Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and beauty who was also meant to be the most beautiful woman not only of all Greece but in the entire world. When the Titan Uranus was killed by his son Cronus (aka Saturn, god of Time) the generative part of his corpse fell into the sea and transformed into Aphrodite who was born as a pregnant woman.
After she gave birth to Eros, Aphrodite also gave birth to Anteros (god of family love), Porthos (god of wishing to find love) and Himeros (god of lust). The blacksmith Hephaestus, Eros’s adoptive father, made Eros a magic bow with gold arrows and lead arrows. The gold tips would cause people to fall in love and the lead tips would cause someone to run away from another. Eros also had wings which gave him the ability of invisible flight.
At first Eros was mischievous and used his abilities mostly for fun or his own amusement. Yet he ended up taking his job more seriously once he began to suffer from true love. Eros was initially forbidden by Zeus (god of the sky and ruler of Mount Olympus) to ever fall in love since Eros is the god of love himself. However, the mortal woman Psyche changed all that. Psyche was so beautiful that everyone in her father’s kingdom began comparing her to Aphrodite. Some even began to worship her as the most beautiful woman in Greece which brought great anger and jealously to Aphrodite, who sent her son Eros to make Psyche fall in love with a cruel and ugly person who would beat her and ruin her face.
But instead of following his mother’s plan, Eros fell in love with Psyche at first sight and placed a spell on her so no other man would fall for her. According to one version of the legend, Psyche grew lonely after all her sisters married, causing her to ask the Oracle for help. She was given instructions to climb to the top of a mountain where she would find a lovely mansion where she would find a husband and live happily with him as long as she never tried to figure out his true identity. The mystery husband, who only visited at night, was secretly Eros.
One night, Psyche sneaked a peak at him while he was asleep. She was so shocked by the beauty of his divine form, she accidentally burned him with oil from her lamp, which caused Eros to fly away. Miserable, she searched everywhere for him and asked the Gods for their help. Ultimately she had to serve and earn the forgiveness of an angry Aphrodite to win her husband back from the vengeful goddess. Aphrodite gave her a series of dangerous tasks to complete and during the final one Psyche fell into an eternal sleep.
After escaping his mother, Eros rushed to save her, begging Zeus for help. Zeus agrees to give Psyche an immortality drink (Ambrosia) followed up by Eros’s kiss. Psyche (whose name means “the soul” in English) wakes to find herself immortal and endowed with butterfly wings. Zeus then orders Aphrodite to accept her as Cupid’s bride, and makes Psyche the goddess of life and breath. Their daughter, Voluptas, became the goddess of bliss.
In the Roman version of this tale Venus is the name of the goddess of love, who is Cupid’s mother. Other versions of the myth say that Cupid turned blind after falling in love, and now goes around shooting couples randomly or not hitting both halves of a couple, leaving some individuals to love people who don’t return their love. In some artworks we see Cupid is portrayed wearing a blindfold and that’s where the phrase “love is blind” may come from.
Nowadays, Cupid is the face of St. Valentine’s Day, a day named after a Christian saint who is the patron of courtly love and happy marriages.
Many poems, stories, and art works have been inspired by Cupid. Even a fairytale like “Sleeping Beauty” was. Even though the image we mostly associate with this day of romantic passion is a cute baby Cupid and not a full grown, gorgeous Eros, his inspirational tale of how romantic passion succeeded in giving immortality and wings to the soul (or to Psyche) stays alive to this day.