"Most men consider Love [Eros] to be the youngest of the gods and the son of Aphrodite. But Olen the Lycian, who composed the oldest Greek hymns, says in a hymn to Eileithyia that she was the mother of Love. Later than Olen, both Pamphos and Orpheus wrote hexameter verse, and composed poems on Love, in order that they might be among those sung by the Lycomidae to accompany the ritual. I read them after conversation with a Torchbearer. Of these things I will make no further mention. Hesiod, or he who wrote the Theogony fathered on Hesiod, writes, I know, that Chaos was born first, and after Chaos, Earth, Tartarus and Love." [9.27.2]
Oppianos of Apamea was a third century AD author whose surviving work focusses solely on hunting. The Halieutica is made up of four parts of which the fourth seems incomplete. In this fourth part, however, we find a beautiful description of love as it affects Gods, mankind, and animals alike:
"O cruel Love [Eros], crafty of counsel, of all gods fairest to behold with the eyes, of all most grievous when thou dost vex the heart with unforeseen assault, entering the soul like a storm-wind and breathing the bitter menace of fire, with hurricane of anguish and untempered pain. The shedding of tears is for thee a sweet delight and to hear the deep-wrung groan; to inflame a burning redness in the heart and to blight and wither the bloom upon the cheek, to make the eyes hollow and to wrest all the mind to madness. Many thou dost even roll to doom, even those whom thou meetest in wild and wintry sort, fraught with frenzy; for in such festivals is thy delight.
Whether then thou art the eldest-born among blessed gods and from unsmiling Chaos didst arise with fierce and flaming torch and didst first establish the ordinances of wedded love and order the rites of the marriage-bed; or whether Aphrodite of many counsels, queen of Paphos, bare thee a winged god on soaring pinions, be thou gracious and to us come gentle and with fair weather and in tempered measure; for none refuses the work of Love.
Everywhere thou bearest sway and everywhere thou art desired at once and greatly feared; and happy is he who cherishes and guards in his breast a temperate Love. Nor doth the race of Heaven suffice thee nor the breed of men; thou rejectest not the wild beasts nor all the brood of the barren air; under the coverts of the nether deep dost thou descend and even among the finny tribes thou dost array thy darkling shafts; that naught may be left ignorant of thy compelling power, not even the fish that swims beneath the waters."
While Cupid is better know nowadays, Eros has much of the same attributes--including His quiver of arrow. Nonnus of Panopolis was a Greek epic poet, wrote in his Dionysiaca about this quiver of arrows, of which twelve were dedicated and meant for Zeus:
"Now Eros the wise, the self-taught, the manager of the ages, knocked at the gloomy gates of primeval Chaos. He took out the divine quiver, in which were kept apart twelve firefed arrows for Zeus, when his desire turned towards one or another of mortal women for a bride. Right on the back of his quiver of lovebolts he had engraved with letters of gold a sentence in verse for each:
"The first takes Cronion to the bend of heifer-fronted Io.”
"The second shall Europa woo for the bold bull abducting.”
"The third to Pluto’s bridal brings the lord of high Olympos.”
"The fourth shall call to Danaë a golden bed-companion.”
"The fifth shall offer Semele a burning fiery wedding.”
"The sixth shall bring the King of heaven an eagle to Aigina.”
"The seventh joins Antiope to a pretended Satyr.”
"The eighth, a swan endowed with mind shall bring to naked Leda.”
"The ninth a noble stallion gives unto Perrhaibid Dia.”
"The tenth three fullmoon nights of bliss gives to Alcmena’s bedmate.”
"The eleventh goes to carry out Laodameia’s bridal.”
"The twelfth draws to Olympias her thrice-encircling husband.”" [110]
Eros has let loose many an arrow on the Gods of Olympos; whenever a God falls for a mortal--or even another God--Eros is involved. He, however, had his own love story as well, described beautifully and lavishly by Apuleius, in 'The Golden Ass', which I will not post here for length. I can summarize the tale, however.
Psyche (Psykhê, Ψυχη) was once a mortal princess who was so beautiful, men stated worshipping her instead of Aphrodite. Aphrodite commanded Eros make Psyche fall in love with the most hideous of men, but Eros couldn't; He fell in love with her Himself, and carried her away to His secret palace. He commanded Psyche to never look at His face, and hid His true identity, but of course, Psyche eventually was tricked into looking at the God. Quickly, He abandoned her. In her despair, she searched throughout the world for her lost love, and eventually came into the service of Aphrodite. The goddess commanded her perform a series of difficult labours which culminated in a journey to the Underworld. In the end Psykhe was reunited with Eros and the couple wed in a ceremony attended by the Gods.
I hope you have a beautiful Valentine's day with a loved one, friends, or family, and that Eros may bless you richly in life. Like the God of love itself, I wish you love as well, and hope his arrows touch your life, and guide your heart.
Image source: theoi.com
1 comment:
Lovely quotes - and I hope you had a great Valentine's Day, too!
It's good that you provide sources for all the quotes, too, since rather than provide a blanket 'this is what myth said' statement about Eros, it allows your readers to determine for themselves which quotes are the most trustworthy! I know in Hellenism that people place varying degrees of reliability on myth, some disregarding almost altogether as just stories, others (like me) regarding them as important illuminations of the gods, albeit one's that need considerable scrutiny.
Personally, I worry about the use of later, particularly AD sources but even tragedian and post-tragedian sources for myths. There's a worry tendency (one the later Greeks themselves were prone to) to synthesise everything together to create one story, regardless of when the original stories were written, who wrote them and so on. Indeed, people now seem to think that if a story is
1) Old
2) Written about the gods
That makes it a myth and necessarily a descriptor of the gods!
So with Nonnus, who lived in Egypt in either the 4th or 5th century AD, was a Christian (although he may have only converted to Christianity while he was writing The Dionysiaca) is very unreliable as a source. Indeed, HJ Rose says the Dionysiaca is "interesting as the longest and most elaborate example we have of Greek myths in their final stage of degeneracy," but cautions that "anyone who uses Nonnos as a handbook to any sort of normal and genuinely classical mythology will be grievously misled".
Equally, Apuleius was a Roman writer and although there is definitely a story involving Psyche and Eros attested to from as early as the 4th century BC in Greek art, the version in the Golden Ass is the first literary version we have and obviously involves Cupid and Psyche, not Eros and Psyche, and probably isn't in any sense the same as the the story of Eros and Psyche. Pausanias, of course, was a Greek travel writer of the 2nd century AD and while he's very useful in some senses, particularly in terms of what he records on his travels of ritual and worship, he also tends to get things wrong a lot about myths.
Personally, I usually prefer to look to Gantz's Early Greek Myths first, since that tells us who said what and when, rather than trying to synthesise everything into an equally valid whole. Indeed, on the subject of Eros, he usefully points out that "In Symonides, we first find his familiar role as the offspring of Aphrodite and Ares, but this is not as commonly agreed upon as we might suppose: Sappho makes him the child of Ouranos and Gaia according to one source, of Ouranos and Aphrodite according to another, while Alkaios calls him the offspring of Zephyr and Iris, Akousilaos that of Erebos and Nyx or Aither and Nyx, and the undatable 'Olen' the child of Eileithuia… the bows and arrows with which we are so familiar do not appear in literature until the late fifth century, when Euripides speaks of them as the god's weapon of love in the Medeia and the Iphigenia at Aulis as producing good and bad effects; previously, Sappho had used the notion of being shaken when she discusses his power.' Indeed, in 5th century vase art, the Erotes in the earlier fifth century wield either a whip or a goad!
However, there's also the rather good Aphrodite and Eros: The Development of Erotic Mythology in Early Greek Poetry and Cult, which discusses in a lot more detail the evolution of Eros as a god in Greek culture, in both literature and vase art, which I recommend, albeit somewhat belatedly for Valentine's Day… ;-)
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