In the ancient world, sex and desire were considered an essential part of life, but dangerous if they become too dominant. For philosophers like Empedocles, Eros and Eris personified attraction and division at an elemental level, the natural powers that cause matter to bring life into existence and then tear it apart again. For the early Greek philosopher Empedocles, Eros was paired with Eris, the goddess of strife and conflict, as the two most influential forces in the universe. Balancing conflict and desireĪnd yet, Eros was not all about the sexual act. At the beginning of Hesiod’s “Theogony” – a poem telling the history of the creation of the universe told through the reproduction of the gods – Eros appears early as a necessary natural force since he “ troubles the limbs and overcomes the mind and counsels of all mortals and gods.” This line was an acknowledgment of the power of the sexual desire even over gods. The god Apollo, for example, could heal people of disease or cause a plague to ruin a city.Įarlier Greek myths also made it clear that Eros was not merely a force for distraction. Such depiction of Greek and Roman deities holding the power to do both good and bad was common. The Roman poet Ovid writes about two types of Cupid’s arrows: one that metes out uncontrollable desire and another that fills its target with revulsion. also shows him as a child.īy the time of the Roman Empire, however, the image of chubby little Cupid became more common. A famous sleeping bronze of Eros from the Hellenistic period of second century B.C. show Eros as a child pulling a cart on a red figure vase. Art depictions from the fifth century B.C. There were younger, more playful versions of Eros, however. These ancient figures were often pictured as older adolescents – winged bodies sometimes personified as a trio: eros (lust), himeros (desire) and pothos (passion). The Greek Eros often appears in early Greek iconography along with other Erotes, a group of winged gods associated with love and sexual intercourse. The Louvre via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA The winged cupid was a favorite of artists and authors in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but he was more than just a symbol of love to them.Ī painting of Eros from 470 B.C.– 450 B.C. As Candida Moss, a scholar of theology and late antiquity, explains, the courtly romance of holiday advertisements may have more to do with the Middle Ages than with ancient Rome. The Feast of Saint Valentine started out as a celebration of St. This history isn’t often reflected in the modern-day Valentine celebrations. But in the odd combination of a baby’s body with lethal weapons, along with parents associated with both love and war, Cupid is a figure of contradictions – a symbol of conflict and desire. But for ancient audiences, as myths and texts show, she was really the patron deity of “sexual intercourse” and “procreation.” The name Cupid, which comes from the Latin verb cupere, means desire, love or lust. In Roman culture, Cupid was the child of the goddess Venus, popularly known today as the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war. Each Valentine’s Day, when I see images of the chubby winged god Cupid taking aim with his bow and arrow at his unsuspecting victims, I take refuge in my training as a scholar of early Greek poetry and myth to muse on the strangeness of this image and the nature of love.
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