Cupid
Who was Cupid in love with?
Did Cupid have a wife?
Cupid, ancient Roman god of love in all its varieties, the counterpart of the Greek god Eros and the equivalent of Amor in Latin poetry. The conception of Cupid developed from the Greek tradition of Eros, reflecting the broader Roman adoption of Greek religious and artistic traditions. However, Cupid eventually acquired a distinct identity and iconography of his own.
According to myth Cupid was the son of Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods, and Venus, the goddess of love. He was commonly depicted as a winged infant carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows, some of which were tipped with gold and others with lead. The wounds inflicted by the gold arrows inspired love or passion in Cupid’s victims, while the lead arrows caused indifference or revulsion. He was sometimes portrayed wearing armor like that of Mars, the god of war, perhaps to suggest ironic parallels between warfare and romance or to symbolize the invincibility of love.
Although some literature portrayed Cupid as callous and careless, he was generally viewed as beneficent on account of the happiness he imparted to couples both mortal and immortal. At worst he was considered mischievous in his matchmaking, this mischief often directed by his mother, Venus. In the Greek tradition that Roman mythology borrowed from, Apollo’s unrequited love for Daphne was caused by Eros, whose bow and arrows Apollo had mocked. This legend was carried over to stories about Cupid.
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In one tale Venus’s machinations backfired when she used Cupid in revenge on the mortal Psyche, only to have Cupid fall in love with Psyche and succeed in making her his immortal wife. Although the legend originated in the Greek tradition, the fullest version of the tale is that told by the Latin author Lucius Apuleius in the 2nd century ce in his Metamorphoses, Books IV–VI (The Golden Ass). It features Cupid and Venus (rather than Eros and Aphrodite) and portrays Cupid as a young man instead of an infant.
In this account Psyche’s beauty provoked a jealous Venus to command Cupid to inspire Psyche with love for the most despicable of men. Instead the lovestruck Cupid placed Psyche in a remote palace where he could visit her secretly and, at his insistence, only in total darkness. One night Psyche lit a lamp and found that the figure at her side was the god of love himself. Awakened by a drop of oil that fell from the lamp and burned him, Cupid reproached Psyche and fled. Venus then imposed several difficult tasks on the distraught Psyche. Finally, touched by Psyche’s repentance, Cupid rescued her, and, at his instigation, Jupiter made her immortal and gave her in marriage to Cupid.