Cupid

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Cupid

In Roman mythology

Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
, Cupid (Latin cupido) is the god of erotic

Eroticism

Eroticism is an aesthetic focus on sexual desire, especially the feelings of anticipation of sexual activity. It is not only the state of arousal and anticipation, but also the attempt through whatever means of representation to incite those feelings....
love

Love

Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment . The word wikt:en:love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure to intense interpersonal attraction....
and beauty

Beauty

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, Location , Object , or idea that provides a perception experience of pleasure, Value , or satisfaction....
. He is also known by another one of his Latin names, Amor (cognate with Kama

Kama

Kama is pleasure, sensual gratification, sexual fulfillment, pleasure of the senses, desire, eros, the aesthetic enjoyment of life in Sanskrit....
). He is the son of goddess Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
.

In popular culture Cupid is frequently shown shooting his bow to inspire romantic love, often as an icon of Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day or Saint Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14 by many people throughout the world. In the English-speaking countries, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending greeting card, Valentine's Day flowers, or offering confectionery....
.

For the equivalent deity in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, see Eros

EROS

EROS may refer to:* Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science, the Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science, the United States national archive of remotely sensed images of the Earth's land surface...
.
Legend
In the Roman version, Cupid was the son of Venus (goddess of love) and Mars (god of war).

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Legend

In the Roman version, Cupid was the son of Venus (goddess of love) and Mars (god of war). In the Greek version he was named Eros

EROS

Greek primordial gods

The Ancient Greece Greeks proposed many different ideas about Primordialism deities in their Greek mythology, which would later be largely adapted by the Romans....
(though other myths exist as well). The following story is almost identical in both cultures. Cupid was often depicted with wings, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. When his mother got extremely jealous of the princess Psyche, who was so loved by her subjects that they forgot to worship Venus, she ordered Cupid to make her fall in love with the ugliest and poorest man in the world. When Cupid saw Psyche, however, he was so overcome with her astounding beauty that he dropped an arrow on his foot, and fell in love with her himself.

Following that, Cupid visited Psyche every night in his invisible form and told her not to try to see him. Psyche, though, incited by her two older sisters who told her Cupid was a monster, tried to look at him and angered Cupid. When he left, she looked all over the known world for him until at last the leader of the gods, Jupiter, gave Psyche the gift of immortality so that she could be with him. Together they had a daughter, Voluptus, or Hedone, (meaning pleasure) and Psyche became a goddess of the soul.

Cult

Cupid's cult was closely associated with that of Venus

Venus (mythology)

Venus was a major Roman mythology goddess principally associated with love, beauty and sexual reproduction, the equivalent of the Greek mythology Aphrodite....
, with Cupid being worshiped as devotedly as she. Additionally, Cupid's power was supposed to be even greater than his mother's, since he had dominion over the dead in Hades

Hades

Hades refers both to the ancient Greek underworld, the abode of Hades, and to the god of the underworld. Hades in Homer referred just to the god; the genitive case , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades"....
, the creatures of the sea and the gods in Olympus

Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece at 2,919 metres high . Since its base is located at sea level, it is one of the highest mountains in Europe in terms of topographic prominence, the relative altitude from base to top....
. Some of the cults of Cupid suggested that Cupid as son of Night and Hell mated with Chaos to produce both men and gods, making the gods the offspring of love.

Portrayal in art and literature

In painting and sculpture, Cupid is often portrayed as a nude (or sometimes diaper

Diaper

A diaper or nappy is a sponge-like garment which people wear who are incapable of controlling their Urinary bladder or bowel movements, or are unable or unwilling to use a toilet....
ed) winged boy or baby armed with a bow and a quiver of arrows.

The Hindu Kama

Kamadeva

Kamadeva is the Hindu deity of love. His other names include Ragavrinta , Ananga , Kandarpa , Manmatha , Manasija , Madana , Ratikanta , Pushpavan, Pushpadhanva or just Kama ....
also has a very similar description. On gems and other surviving pieces, he is usually shown amusing himself with childhood play, sometimes driving a hoop, throwing darts, catching a butterfly, or flirting with a nymph

Nymph

In Greek mythology, a nymph is any member of a large class of mythological entities in human form. They were typically associated with a particular location or landform....
. He is often depicted with his mother (in graphic arts, this is nearly always Venus), playing a horn. He is also shown wearing a helmet and carrying a buckler, perhaps in reference to Virgil

Virgil

Political satire

Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly forbidden....
on wars for love or love as war.

Cupid figures prominently in ariel poetry, lyrics and, of course, elegiac

Elegiac

Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegy or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter....
love and metamorphic poetry. In epic poetry, he is less often invoked, but he does appear in Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
's Aeneid
Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
changed into the shape of Ascanius

Ascanius

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Ascanius was the son of Aeneas and Creusa. After the Trojan War, as the city burned, Aeneas escaped to Latium in Italy, taking his father Anchises and his child Ascanius with him, though Creusa died during the escape....
inspiring Dido's love. In later literature, Cupid is frequently invoked as fickle, playful, and perverse. He is often depicted as carrying two sets of arrows: one set gold-headed, which inspire love; and the other lead-headed, which inspire hatred.

The best-known story involving Cupid is the tale of Cupid and Psyche

Cupid and Psyche

The legend of Cupid and Psyche first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Apuleius' novel, The Golden Ass, written in the second century A.D....
.

In the Artemis Fowl

Artemis Fowl (series)

Artemis Fowl is a series of fantasy novels written by Irish author Eoin Colfer, starring the teenage criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl II. The series is written in half-serious language, alternating dark moments with humorous ones, a style favoured by a number of popular children's authors....
book series, the character Holly Short

Holly Short

Holly Short is a fictional character and a Lower Elements Police#LEPrecon Captain in the Artemis Fowl book series by Eoin Colfer....
's great-great grandfather is Cupid.

Valentine's Day

Cupid has become a symbol

Symbol

A symbol is something such as an entity, picture, written word, sound, or particular mark that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention....
for Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day

Holiday

The words holiday or vacation have related meanings in different English language countries and continents, but will usually refer to one of the following activities or events:...
representation of Cupid is a putto

Putto

The putto is a figure of a pudgy human baby, almost always male, often naked and having wings, found especially in Italian Renaissance art....
with wings, wearing a diaper, holding a bow and arrow. Sometimes the arrow will have a heart for its tip.

Modern reinterpretations of the Cupid character may leave off traditional details of the character, but the character's main purpose generally remains to help or make people fall in love or possibly engage in physical intimacy

Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetics traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into male and female types ....
.

Cupid

Legend

Cult

Portrayal in art and literature

Valentine's Day

See also