Love, one of the biggest and oldest emotions. All cultures, countries, ages have some form of a symbol that represents love, one of the most popular ones being Cupid. Everyone knows Cupid, that naked winged baby who is allegedly shooting arrows and messing with us, but where did that legend start? Cupid, as he is called in Roman mythology, is the god of love. He is also called Eros in Greek mythology, where it is stated that he is the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Ares, the god of war. This would mean he is the result of two opposite things, peace and chaos.
The myth says that as Eros was the son of Ares, Zeus chased him to kill him, so Aphrodite hid him in the woods, where several wild animals took care of him. While he was in the woods, he made a bow and arrow to protect himself, but later his mother gave him his famous gold set.
Thanks to his parents, Cupid would have a double personality, one when he is benevolent and the other when he is capricious. His double personality can also be represented in his arrows. When he wants two people together, he uses gold points, but if he wants to break them up, he would bring lead points.
However, as time went by, his bad side was forgotten and he started to represent only love and good things. Still, he would be often represented with a blindfold since “love is blind”. No one would be immune to the power of love, not even himself. Not everyone knows the story about Cupid’s eternal love, but even he had a partner.
Later when Cupid was older, he met a mortal called Psique, who was never able to find a proper partner to her immense beauty. She was so pretty that Aphrodite was jealous of her, and sent Cupid to make her fall in love with the ugliest man in the world. However, things went totally different, he fell deeply in love with her and married her even though he was going against his mother’s wishes.
That is one of the stories, another says that he was his mother’s helper and he liked to take his love to the mortals. Furthermore, he could be cruel sometimes and would make them suffer through their hearts. Either way, Cupid is always related to blind love and irrational suffering.
