Eros, Greek God of Desire

Eros (Greek Ἔρως) is one of the oldest and at the same time most transformative figures of the Greek pantheon. As the Greek god of love, he is at once regarded as a cosmic primordial force. Unlike the Olympian gods, who appear as fixed personalities in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Eros is at first less an individual figure than a cosmic power. Only in the Hellenistic period does the image of the winged boy with bow, which later tradition made famous, become fixed.

Hesiod and the Theogony

The earliest literary source is Hesiod’s Theogony (around 700 BCE). There, Eros is among the first beings to arise after Chaos, together with Gaia (the Earth) and Tartaros (the Underworld). Hesiod describes him as the most beautiful among the immortal gods, who loosens the limbs and robs both gods and men of their reason and wise counsel (Theog. 120, 122). This position makes Eros a cosmogonic principle: he is the force that makes union possible and thereby initiates the further course of the divine world. This early form differs fundamentally from the later personal love-god figure.

Orphic Tradition and Phanes

In the Orphic tradition, Eros is identified with Phanes, the primordial god of creation born from the cosmic egg. The Orphic Hymns (probably 2nd to 3rd century CE) celebrate Eros as the unbegotten first god, creator of all things. This theogonic reading develops in parallel with philosophical speculations that interpret Eros as a cosmic binding principle. Empedocles’ concept of love (philia) and strife (neikos) as cosmic fundamental forces belongs to this discourse, as does the Platonic doctrine of Eros.

Plato and the Philosophy of Eros

In the Symposium, Plato develops a multilayered theory of Eros. Various speakers put forward different views: Phaedrus praises Eros as the oldest god, Pausanias distinguishes a heavenly from a common Eros, Aristophanes tells the myth of the divided primordial human seeking its missing half. Socrates’ famous speech reporting Diotima describes Eros as a daimon, that is, a mediating being between man and god, and outlines a ladder of desire that ascends from the body through the soul to the idea of the beautiful. This philosophical conception of Eros shaped the Platonic tradition (Plotinus, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola) into the Renaissance.

Eros and Aphrodite

The popular image links Eros with Aphrodite as her son and companion. This connection appears late in the literary tradition: in Hesiod, Eros has no parents, and in Homer he is absent as a personal figure. Only in Hellenistic poetry (Apollonius, Theocritus) does he appear as the childlike son of the goddess of love, striking gods and humans with bow and arrow. The image in Apollonius’s Argonautica of Eros shooting Medea in the heart belongs to this tradition. The merging of the archaic cosmic Eros figure with the Hellenistic archer boy has dominated later reception.

Iconographic Tradition and Symbolism

The ancient iconographic tradition depicts Eros with changing attributes. On red-figure vases of the 5th century, he is a young man with wings, often accompanying Aphrodite. On Hellenistic reliefs he appears as a boy with bow and quiver, sometimes blindfolded, symbolizing the blindness of love. In the Roman imperial period, Eros merges with Cupid and Amor; sarcophagus reliefs show him as a companion of the deceased. This iconographic tradition influenced the Renaissance through Baroque painting into Christian angel iconography, from which the winged putti of the Eros tradition derive.

Modern Echo and Religious-Historical Classification

In modern religious studies, Eros is discussed chiefly under two aspects. First, as a cosmogonic principle in pre-Socratic and Orphic speculation, which can be typologically compared with similar concepts in other cultures (the Chinese yin-yang, the Hindu Kama, the Egyptian pair Geb-Nut). Second, as an ethical-philosophical category that in the Platonic-Augustinian tradition became the foundation of a theology of love. C. S. Lewis, in The Four Loves (1960), described Eros as one of four kinds of love alongside Storge, Philia, and Agape, thereby introducing the ancient distinction into modern theology. Walter Burkert (Greek Religion, 1977) places Eros within the archaic spectrum of gods and emphasizes the cosmogonic depth of Hesiod’s position.

Related topics: Aphrodite | Hermes | Hades

Eros in the Roman Tradition

In Roman mythology, Eros is called Cupido (desire) or Amor (love), and he moves closer to his mother Venus than in the older form. The story of Amor and Psyche from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (2nd century CE) gives Eros a narrative depth he lacked in the Greek tradition: here he becomes the lover who falls for a mortal woman and, after a long trial, raises her to divine status. This story is read in Christian late antiquity as an allegory of the soul being led to perfection through divine love.

Eros in Modern Psychology

Sigmund Freud takes up the concept of Eros from 1920 onward in Beyond the Pleasure Principle: Eros becomes the life drive that works against the death drive (Thanatos), the impulse toward cohesion against dissolution. This psychoanalytic reading has ancient roots (Empedocles’ strife between love and hate) but gives the concept of Eros a biological dimension it lacked in ancient mythology. C. G. Jung expands the term into a symbol of relational force as such, placing it as a psychological function alongside the Logos.

Eros and Kinship with Other Love Deities

Eros belongs to a broad family of love deities across the history of religion. In the Mesopotamian pantheon, Inanna/Ishtar fills a similar role, though with a markedly more combative component. In the Egyptian sphere, Hathor is the central deity of love and sensuality. In the Germanic north, Freya corresponds to him as the goddess of love and magic. In the Hindu tradition, we find Kamadeva, the bow-bearing god of love, remarkably closely related to the Greek Eros in iconography and symbolism, which in the 19th century led to the theory of an Indo-European primordial deity of desire. This theory is disputed in religious studies today, but the parallels remain remarkable.

Eros in Contemporary Spirituality

In contemporary neopagan, Neoplatonic, and tantrically influenced spiritual currents, Eros is often understood as a cosmic force of attraction, the movement by which what is separated strives toward union. This reading is Platonic at its core but mediates well between mythical tradition and psychological experience. In practical spirituality, Eros serves as a mediator between sensory and spiritual experience, a function already hinted at in Plato’s Symposium speeches.

Sources

Hesiod: Theogonie, ed. Albert von Schirnding, Tusculum 1991.
Plato: Symposion, German trans. Reinhard Brandt, Reclam 1996.
Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche, ed. Edward J. Kenney, Cambridge UP 1990.
Sigmund Freud: Jenseits des Lustprinzips, Vienna 1920.
Walter Burkert: Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, Kohlhammer 1977.

Eros, the Greek god of desire, appears in Hesiod’s Theogony as a primordial deity.

Eros as primordial deity and as child of Aphrodite

Greek tradition preserves two very different conceptions of Eros that cannot easily be reconciled. The older, cosmogonic tradition makes Eros one of the very first powers to exist. In Hesiod’s Theogony, from the late eighth or early seventh century BCE, Eros comes into being right after Chaos, Gaia, and Tartaros. He is not a charming figure there but a primordial, driving force that overpowers gods and humans alike and without which no union and no procreation would be possible.

Eros also plays a role as a creative power in Orphic cosmogony, there sometimes under the name Phanes or associated with him, as a luminous being that emerges from an egg. These cosmogonic conceptions of Eros emphasize his function as a principle of connection that brings together the separated elements of the world.

The younger and more popularly known tradition makes Eros the son of Aphrodite, often with Ares as his father. In this form he is his mother’s youthful or childlike companion, who kindles love with bow and arrow. This version becomes especially established in the poetry of the classical and Hellenistic periods.

Scholarship sees in this duality not a mere misunderstanding but two different functions of the same concept. The Greek word eros denotes both cosmic attraction and individual erotic desire. Mythology expressed this breadth of meaning in two divine figures without ever fully unifying them.

Eros and Psyche in Apuleius

The most famous connected narrative about Eros is found not in a Greek text but in a Latin one: the novel Metamorphoses by Apuleius from the second century CE, also known as The Golden Ass. There, the story of Amor and Psyche is inserted as a longer embedded tale.

Psyche is a king’s daughter of such beauty that people worship her like Aphrodite. The jealous goddess sends her son Eros to drive Psyche into a disgraceful love, but Eros falls in love with her himself. He brings her to a hidden palace but visits her only in darkness and forbids her to see his face. Incited by her envious sisters, Psyche lights a lamp to look at him while he sleeps; a drop of hot oil wakes him, and Eros flees.

Psyche must now complete a series of seemingly impossible tasks set by Aphrodite, including sorting a heap of grain and fetching water from an inaccessible spring. In the end she even descends into the underworld. Finally, Eros and Psyche are united among the gods, and Psyche becomes immortal.

Scholarship has interpreted this narrative in many ways. The Greek word psyche means soul, which is why the story was already read allegorically in antiquity as a journey of the soul. Others emphasize its fairy-tale structure with its tasks and helpers. Regardless of interpretation, the story became one of the most influential subjects in European art and literature and shaped the modern image of Eros lastingly.

Eros in the philosophical thought of Plato

Eros is not only a figure of mythology and poetry but also a central concept in Greek philosophy. The most important engagement with it appears in Plato’s dialogue Symposium from the fourth century BCE, in which several speakers deliver speeches in praise of Eros at a banquet.

The climax is Socrates’ speech, in which he recounts the teaching of the priestess Diotima. There Eros is not presented as a full god but as a daimon, a mediating being between gods and humans. According to Diotima, Eros is the son of Poros, resourcefulness or plenty, and Penia, poverty. He is therefore neither rich nor poor, neither beautiful nor ugly, but always seeking, always striving.

From this definition Plato develops his famous doctrine of ascent. Eros begins with attraction to a beautiful body but is meant to detach gradually: from one body to the beauty of all bodies, from there to the beauty of souls, of laws, of forms of knowledge, up to the contemplation of beauty itself. Eros is thus the force that drives humans beyond the sensory toward knowledge.

This philosophical interpretation gave the word an influence reaching far beyond mythology. The concept of platonic love goes back to this teaching, even though it is often understood in a reduced sense in modern usage. Scholarship emphasizes that Plato deliberately reinterpreted the mythological Eros in order to make him productive for his philosophical system.

Iconography and the changing depiction of Eros

The visual depiction of Eros changed significantly over the course of Greek and Roman art history. In the archaic period, Eros usually appears as a beautiful young man, often winged, in the bloom of youth. This depiction matches his early cosmogonic significance and his role as a powerful, serious force.

In the classical period, the youthful type remains common, but Eros increasingly appears as a companion of Aphrodite and tends to be depicted as younger. The famous sculptor Praxiteles and his school contributed to the spread of graceful Eros figures.

In the Hellenistic period the decisive change occurs: Eros becomes a child, a chubby-cheeked boy with a bow, often depicted playfully or asleep. From this tradition develops the Roman Amor or Cupid, frequently appearing in the plural as an entire host of winged love-boys, the so-called erotes or amoretti, populating wall paintings, sarcophagi, and mosaics.

This late, childlike form shaped the post-antique image most strongly. Through Roman art, the winged love-boy entered the art of the Renaissance and Baroque, where he became ubiquitous as the putto. Scholarship sees in this transformation from primordial power to childlike putto a gradual sentimentalization that almost completely obscured the figure’s original gravity. Anyone who wishes to understand the early, powerful Eros must deliberately look past this later image.