Cupid:God of passion and lust.

Cupid, The cherub of love and passion.

Cupid is the Roman equivalent to Eros the  Greek of Lust.

Cupid (lust or desire) and Amor (affectionate love) are to  different names for the same Roman love-god, ( in some versions cupid is a set of twins) erith was he is the son of Venus, fathered by Mercury, Vulcan or Mars (depending on which version of the story you read.) is young Childlike figure with  wings  who accompany Venus and has also been  identified as Amores, Cupids, Erotes or other forms of  Eros.

The oldest version of cupid   is Eros, whom Hesiod categories as a primordial deity, emerging from Chaos as a generative power with neither mother nor father. Eros was the patron deity of Thespiae, where he was embodied as an aniconic stone as late as the 2nd century AD. From at least the 5th century BC he also had the form of an adolescent or pre-adolescent male, at Elis (on the Peloponnese) and elsewhere in Greece,  acquiring wings, bow and arrows, and eventually divine parents in the love-goddess Aphrodite and the war-god Ares. He had temples of his own, and shared others with Aphrodite.


Fragmentary base for an altar of Venus and Mars, showing cupids or erotes playing with the war-god's weapons and chariot. From the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD)

 

 

 

 In Elis, and  Athens, Eros shared a cult with a twin, named Anteros. Xenophon's Socratic Symposion 8. 1, features a dinner-guest with eros (love) for his wife; in return, she has anteros (reciprocal love) for him. Some sources suggest Anteros as the  avenger of "slighted love".

In Servius' 4th century commentary on Virgil's Aeneas, Cupid is a deceptive agent of Venus, impersonating Aeneas' son and making Dido, queen of Carthage, forget her husband. When Aeneas rejects her love, and covertly leaves Carthage to fulfill his destiny as ancestor of the Roman people, Dido is said to invoke Anteros as "contrary to Cupid". She falls into hatred and despair, curses Rome, and when Aeneas leaves, commits suicide.

Ovid's Fasti, Book 4, invokes Venus not by name but as "Mother of the Twin Loves", the gemini amores. "Amor" is the Latin name preferred by Roman poets and literati for the personification of "kindly" love. Where Cupid (lust) can be imperious, cruel, prone to mischief or even war-like, Amor softly persuades. Cato the Elder, having a Stoic's outlook, sees Cupid as a deity of greed and blind passion, morally inferior to Amor. The Roman playwright Plautus, however, has Venus, Cupid and Amor working together.

In Roman cult inscriptions and theology, "Amor" is rare, and "Cupido" relatively common. No Roman temples seem dedicated to Cupid alone but the joint dedication formula Venus Cupidoque ("Venus and Cupid") is evidence of his cult, shared with Venus at her Temple just outside the Colline Gate and elsewhere. He would also have featured in many private household cults. In private and public areas alike, statues of Venus and Mars attended by Cupid, or Venus, Cupid and minor erotes were sometimes donated by wealthy sponsors, to serve both religious and artistic purposes.

 Cupid's roles in literary myth are usually limited to actions on behalf of Venus; in Cupid and Psyche, one of the stories within the Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass)  by the Roman author Apuleius, the plot and its resolution are driven by Cupid's love for Psyche ("soul"), his filial disobedience, and his mother's envy.

 

 

 

Venus The Goddess of Love.

🌹🖤 Happy Valentine's Day🖤🌹

(More posts pre-scheduled for the next month or so)

Venus is the Roman goddess of love.


Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love and beauty, and Venus is the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Venus is the Roman counterpart to the Greek Aphrodite, as the Romans borrowed heavily from Greek mythology. However, Venus has attributes that Aphrodite does not, including also being a goddess of victory and battle.



In the later classical art , literature and poetry Venus became one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality. She is usually depicted nude in paintings.


As the goddess of Love and sexuality Venus had several  lovers and suitors, including the gods Mercury, Bacchus, and Ares. She had children with each of these suitors. Venus was also married to the god Vulcan, albeit unhappily and without children.


Venus represents  love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy and fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles

The importance of the worship of Venus  was increased by the political ambitions of the gens Iulia, the clan of Julius Caesar and, by adoption, of Augustus.

They claimed to be direct descendants  of  Iulus, the son of Aeneas; Aeneas was the alleged founder of the temple of Eryx and, in some legends, of the city of Rome.

From the time of Homer onward, he was made the son of Aphrodite, so that gave his son Iulii and his decendents  a divine origin. Others later sought to connect themselves with a deity grown so popular and important, one of the more notably individuals was Gnaeus Pompeius, the triumvir. He dedicated a temple to Venus as Victrix (“Bringer of Victory”) in 55 bce. Julius Caesar’s own temple (46 bce), however, was dedicated to Venus Genetrix, and as Genetrix (“Begetting Mother”) she was best known until the death of Nero in 68 ce. Despite the extinction of the Julio-Claudian line, she remained popular, even with the emperors; Hadrian completed a temple of Venus at Rome in 135 ce.



Being a counterpart, Venus had no original myths of her own. The Romans inspiration from Aphrodite  as well as several other goddesses. Along with  her association with   the planet Venus. The planet was at first the star of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar and later  of Aphrodite. Because of her association with love and with feminine beauty, the goddess Venus has been a favorite subject in art since ancient times; notable representations include the statue known as the Venus de Milo (c. 150 bce) and Sandro Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus (c. 1485).

                                                               Venus de Milo 

Some of the celebrations in her honor.

Veneralia

Vinalia Rustica

Vinalia Urbana


Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and balance of life. Her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan and Mars, are active and fiery. 

Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection. She is essentially assimilation and benign, and embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions. She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune and prosperity. In one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes; in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue. Varro's theology identifies Venus with water as an aspect of the female principle. To generate life, the watery matrix of the womb requires the virile warmth of fire. To sustain life, water and fire must be balanced; excess of either one, or their mutual antagonism, is unproductive or destructive



In some Latin mythology, Cupid was the son of Venus and Mars, the god of war. At other times, or in parallel myths and theologies, Venus was   the consort of Vulcan or as mother of the "second cupid", fathered by Mercury.


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Romance by Edgar Allan Poe.

 

                  Happy Early Valentines Day

                                               More Paranormal posts coming soon :)

  🖤Romance 🖤

By Edgar Allan Poe.

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

With drowsy head and folded wing,

Among the green leaves as they shake

Far down within some shadowy lake,

To me a painted paroquet

Hath been—a most familiar bird—

Taught me my alphabet to say—

To lisp my very earliest word

While in the wild wood I did lie,

A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years

So shake the very Heaven on high

With tumult as they thunder by,

I have no time for idle cares

Through gazing on the unquiet sky.

And when an hour with calmer wings

Its down upon my spirit flings—

That little time with lyre and rhyme

To while away—forbidden things!

My heart would feel to be a crime

Unless it trembled with the strings