Eros, Greek god of desire

Eros is one of the oldest and most protean figures in the Greek pantheon. Unlike the Olympian gods, who appear as fixed persons in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Eros is at first less an individual character than a cosmic force.

In Hesiod’s Theogony he belongs among the first beings after Chaos. Only in the Hellenistic period does the image of the winged boy with bow solidify into the form that shaped later tradition.

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Quick Overview: Eros

Type: Greek god of love and desire, also a cosmogonic primordial force
Origin: Greek mythology, archaic to Hellenistic period
Function: Principle of union, instigator of erotic desire
Sources: Hesiod, Orphic Hymns, Plato’s Symposium, Hellenistic poetry
Related: Aphrodite, Phanes, Roman Cupido and Amor

Classification

Period of the Sources

The earliest literary source is Hesiod’s Theogony, dating to around 700 BCE. From there the tradition runs through classical poetry and Plato’s Symposium in the 4th century BCE, continuing into the Hellenistic period, where Apollonius and Theocritus give shape to the child archer.

The Orphic Hymns, which link Eros to Phanes, are thought to have been written down only in the 2nd or 3rd century CE, but draw on older cosmogonic speculation.

Area of Diffusion

Eros belongs to the Greek cultural sphere and spreads with Hellenism across the eastern Mediterranean. In the Roman imperial period he merges with Cupido and Amor, becoming part of the Latin pictorial and narrative tradition.

Through Roman art, the winged boy of love passes into the Renaissance and Baroque, where he becomes ubiquitous as a putto.

State of the Sources

The tradition is broad but not uniform. Homer has no personal figure of Eros; Hesiod presents him without parents as a cosmogonic power.

The philosophical interpretation derives chiefly from Plato’s Symposium, while the most detailed narrative appears in a Latin novel with the story of Amor and Psyche. These sources are complemented by vase paintings, reliefs, and sarcophagi that document the transformation of the figure over centuries.

Name

The name derives from the Greek word eros (Ἔρως), which designates both the cosmic force of attraction and individual erotic desire. This breadth of meaning explains why mythology developed two very different divine figures under the same name without ever fully reconciling them.

In the Orphic tradition, Eros is identified with Phanes, the primordial god of creation born from the cosmic egg. In Roman mythology he is called Cupido (desire) or Amor (love). In Hellenistic and Roman art he frequently appears in the plural, as a group of winged love-boys referred to as Erotes or Amoretti.

Description

The Greek tradition contains two conceptions of Eros that cannot easily be reconciled. The older, cosmogonic tradition makes him one of the very first powers. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Eros arises immediately after Chaos, together with Gaia and Tartarus.

Hesiod describes him as the most beautiful among the immortal gods, who loosens the limbs and robs both gods and humans of their reason and good counsel. In this form Eros is not a charming figure but a driving primordial force, without which no union and no procreation would be possible.

The younger and more popularly familiar tradition makes Eros the son of Aphrodite, frequently with Ares as father. In this form he is the youthful or childlike companion of his mother, who kindles love with bow and arrow.

This version prevails especially in the poetry of the classical and Hellenistic periods. The image of Eros shooting Medea through the heart in Apollonius’ Argonautica belongs to this tradition.

Scholarship sees in this duality not a simple misunderstanding but two different functions of the same concept. Mythology distributed the full range of meaning of the word eros across two divine figures: cosmic attraction and personal desire.

Profile: Eros

The following fields summarize the central features of the Eros tradition.

Origin

In Hesiod, Eros arises without parents immediately after Chaos and thus belongs to the primordial deities. The later tradition makes him the son of Aphrodite, frequently with Ares as father. In Orphic cosmogony he is a luminous being that emerges from a cosmic egg.

Function

Eros is the principle of union that brings together the separated elements of the world, making the continuation of the divine order possible. In the later tradition he acts as an archer who deliberately kindles erotic desire in gods and humans.

Appearance

In the archaic period Eros appears as a handsome, often winged youth in the prime of life. In the Hellenistic period the image shifts to a chubby-cheeked boy with bow and quiver, frequently depicted as playful or sleeping.

Veneration

Eros did not have a broad independent cult on a par with the Olympian gods, but he was associated with shrines of Aphrodite and locally venerated in Boeotia, particularly at Thespiae. More than in formal cult practice, he lived on in poetry, philosophy, and the visual arts.

Symbols

Arrow, bow, and quiver identify Eros as the instigator of desire. The wings point to his unpredictable movement; the blindfold worn in certain depictions symbolizes the blindness of love.

Parallels

In the history of religions he stands close to numerous deities of love, including Aphrodite and the Roman Venus, the Mesopotamian pair Inanna and Ishtar, the Egyptian Hathor, the Germanic Freya, and the bow-bearing Kamadeva of the Hindu tradition.

Reception and Legacy

Eros is not only a figure of mythology and poetry but a central concept of Greek philosophy.

In the Symposium, Plato conveys the teaching of the seeress Diotima, according to which Eros is not a god in the full sense but a daimon, a mediating being between gods and humans, son of Poros (resourcefulness) and Penia (poverty).

From this definition Plato develops the doctrine of ascent: Eros begins with attraction to a beautiful body and releases itself step by step until it reaches the vision of Beauty itself. This teaching is the origin of the concept of Platonic love, even if that phrase is often understood in a reduced sense today.

The most famous continuous narrative appears in a Latin text, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius from the 2nd century CE. There Eros falls in love with the princess Psyche, whose name means “soul.” After separation, arduous tasks, and a descent into the underworld, both are united among the gods and Psyche becomes immortal.

Already in antiquity the story was read allegorically as the journey of the soul; in the Christian late antique period it was read as an image of the soul led to fulfillment through divine love.

Modern psychology also takes up the concept. Sigmund Freud introduces Eros from 1920 onward in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as the life drive, acting against the death drive Thanatos. C. G. Jung extends it to a symbol of relational force and places it alongside Logos.

C. S. Lewis describes in The Four Loves (1960) Eros as one of four kinds of love alongside Storge, Philia, and Agape, thereby carrying the ancient distinction into modern theology.

Eros, Parallels in Other Cultures

Eros belongs to a broad family of love deities across the history of religions. In the Mesopotamian pantheon, Inanna, later Ishtar, fills a similar role, though with a markedly more martial component.

In the Egyptian sphere, Hathor is the central deity of love and sensuality; in the Germanic north, Freya corresponds to him as goddess of love and magic.

In the Hindu tradition one finds Kamadeva, the bow-bearing god of love, who is closely related to the Greek Eros in pictorial tradition and symbolism. This proximity led in the 19th century to the hypothesis of an Indo-European primordial deity of desire.

That hypothesis is now considered contested in the study of religion, but the parallels remain noteworthy. As a cosmogonic principle, Eros can also be compared typologically with the Chinese Yin-Yang relationship or the Egyptian divine pair Geb and Nut.

Further Links

Gods: Overview of gods
Greece: Greek mythology
Aphrodite: Goddess of love and mother of Eros
Hades: God of the underworld

Selected Bibliography

Hesiod: Theogony, ed. Albert von Schirnding, Tusculum 1991.
Plato: Symposium, trans. Reinhard Brandt, Reclam 1996.
Apuleius: Metamorphoses, ed. Edward J. Kenney, Cambridge UP 1990.
Sigmund Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Vienna 1920.
Walter Burkert: Greek Religion of the Archaic and Classical Periods, Kohlhammer 1977.

Frequently Asked Questions about Eros

Who is Eros?

Eros is one of the oldest figures in the Greek pantheon, a god of love and desire and at the same time a cosmogonic primordial force. Unlike the Olympian gods, he is at first less an individual character than a principle of union. Only in the Hellenistic period does the familiar image of the winged boy with bow solidify.

Where does Eros come from, and who are his parents?

The Greek tradition contains two conceptions that cannot easily be reconciled. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Eros arises without parents immediately after Chaos and belongs among the primordial deities. The later tradition makes him the son of Aphrodite, frequently with Ares as father; in Orphic cosmogony he emerges as a luminous being from a cosmic egg.

What role does Eros play in cosmogony?

In the older cosmogonic tradition, Eros in Hesiod arises immediately after Chaos, together with Gaia and Tartarus. He is there not a charming figure but a driving primordial force, without which no union and no procreation would be possible. As the principle of union he brings together the separated elements of the world, making the continuation of the divine order possible.

How was Eros received in philosophy and psychology?

In Plato’s Symposium, Eros according to Diotima’s teaching is not a god in the full sense but a daimon, a mediating being between gods and humans. From this Plato develops the doctrine of gradual ascent, which is the origin of the concept of Platonic love. Modern psychology also takes up the concept, for example Sigmund Freud, who positions Eros as the life drive against the death drive Thanatos.