Cupid: God of Desire – The personification of affection and aversion

Cupid: God of Desire

The personification of affection and aversion

Cupid. Most of us associate the famous winged cherub with Valentine’s Day – the Hallmark card occasion, not the one born of pagan rituals and martyrdom. Of course, Cupid stands as more than merely a symbol of rampant consumerism. Portrayed in Roman mythology as the God of Desire, Cupid personifies some of our most fervent feelings: affection, sexual attraction, and eroticism. As well as our most malevolent: scorn, spite, and aversion. What else can one expect from a lineage that includes a paternal god of war and a love goddess matriarch?

Cupid was never going to be an angel. Cupid was born out of an affair – one of many – that his married mother, the love Goddess Venus, was having with Cupid’s father – the God of War, Mars. A turbulent conception by parents with turbulent personalities. Fitting, then, that in Roman mythology Cupid is the God of Desire.

The story of this winged young boy exists in Greek mythology too – in the equivalent Greek God Eros, born of Aphrodite and Ares.

Cupid’s arrows

Whether you know him as the Greek Eros or the Roman Cupid, you won’t find him without his bow and quiver of arrows. You’re probably familiar with his gold-tipped arrows, which in classical mythology render lovestruck those whose hearts they pierce.

But a purely altruistic archer he is not. Cupid’s arrow arsenal also includes arrows tipped with lead, which kill desire and inflict aversion onto their victims. Indeed, Cupid’s arrows pierced many a heart with scorn and spite without so much as a box of heart-shaped chocolates to apologize.

Take, for example, the story of the Roman god Apollo and Daphne. Insulted by the God Apollo – the god of music, poetry, art, and the sun – over his archery prowess, the winged Cupid fires a golden arrow into his heart. This causes him to feel uncontrollable desire and fall in love with the nymph Daphne. Daphne, however, has been shot by a lead arrow, causing her to loath Apollo. What could be crueler than to spitefully cast unrequited love?

The origins of Cupid

There are plenty more pedestrian examples that illustrate the conniving Lothario’s penchant for misdeeds. Lucius Apuleius, who spawned the story of Cupid in ancient Rome with his revelatory novel The Golden Ass, portrayed the little winged demon Cupid as »rash and hardy, who by his evil manners, contemning all public justice and law, armed with fire and arrows, running up and down in the nights from house to house, and corrupting lawful marriages of every person, doth nothing but evil«. Most youths when they’re bored just run from house to house at night toilet-papering the neighbourhood.

You might be wondering about the symbolism of Cupid’s wings. These wings represent the change in heart that can overcome two lovers; where one is always free to fly away in the absence of desire. Or when a lover desires someone else.

So why isn’t this duality – of falling in and out of love – more familiar in our perception of Cupid? The Roman Cupid began as a very troublesome God of Love. How did his story get all warm and fuzzy?

Christian influence

The thing about myths is that they’re passed on by unreliable narrators and through selective filters like a game of broken telephone. This often results in a euphemized version of the original story, like the way you might gloss up a routine brunch on Instagram. In Cupid’s case, the Roman Catholic church Christianized his pagan origins. Cupid should inspire eternal romantic love between two committed partners without room for a wandering eye. There shall be no infidelity; no erotic attraction or sexual desire prior to holy matrimony.

That Cupid’s powers could evoke such feelings of erotic love in gods and mortals alike was too off-white for an institution flaunting purity. Cupid’s image therefore softened over the centuries to become the winged ambassador of love we see in marketing campaigns for chocolate and flowers every mid-February.

The duality of Cupid

The problem with failing to recognize that the arrow tip of desire can be merely fool’s gold-plated lead is that we develop an unrealistic perception of love. Perhaps there is value in understanding that Cupid’s infliction can spell a one-way ticket to the second circle of hell (a place in Dante’s Inferno for those overcome by sexual love).

Contrary to Cupid’s modern image as a philanthropist of love, his origins in Roman culture invoked not only romantic bliss but also a fair share of misery. In other words, the perfect representation of love and desire.