you're visited by the Greek God Eros. — Benj96

Eros (also Cupid) is the little boy. Aphrodite (also Venus) is the goddess of love. She sends him to shoot people with his little arrow to make them fall in passionate [erotic] love with some specified other person.

What will you choose my dear cupid? — Benj96

Those are two crappy choices! But, not being a Trump, I guess the former is the less bad option.

I would forget the whole thing and go back to directing the traffic at Piccadilly Circus.

I'd go for option two. It will last about 4 to 5 decades and then I'll be dead and after that things will go to normal. It solves the population problem for awhile and since everybody lives for me and to make me happy I have some time to make some demands on how to treat nature and each other.

Good thinking! I couldn't see past the revulsion. But then, too, how much good could I organize in the ??decade I may have left?

I would stop drinking that particular single malt that was causing me to see characters from fables.
BUT, if it was real, then I would tell it to do it's f****** job and stop trying to pass it's chores onto me!

I am afraid you have waded into deeper and hotter water than you supposed.

Eros (also Cupid) is the little boy. Aphrodite (also Venus) is the goddess of love. She sends him to shoot people with his little arrow to make them fall in passionate [erotic] love with some specified other person. — Vera Mont

Cupid is Roman. Eros is Greek.

The name Cupīdō ('passionate desire') is a derivative of Latin cupiō, cupĕre ('to desire'), itself from Proto-Italic *kup-i-, which may reflect *kup-ei- ('to desire'; cf. Umbrian cupras, South Picene kuprí). The latter ultimately stems from the Proto-Indo-European verbal stem *kup-(e)i- ('to tremble, desire'; cf. Old Irish accobor 'desire', Sanskrit prá-kupita- 'trembling, quaking', Old Church Slavonic kypĕti 'to simmer, boil')

Hesiod says that Eros was primordial, the 4th god to come into existence after Chaos, Gaia, and Tartarus. Parmenides says he was the first god to emerge.

Eros is not the fat little imbecile of Valentines Day, "blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest." Further, he is the god of love, yes, but equally SEX.



There are others involved in Eros' life, depending on which biopic one saw. Eros has a complicated relationship with his brother, Thanos, who often tries to destroy the universe. Another brother, Anteros, is the god of requited love (literally "love returned" or "counter-love") and also the punisher of those who scorn love and the advances of others, or the avenger of unrequited love.



One could go on and on here, but that's enough.

Cupid is Roman. Eros is Greek. — Bitter Crank

Sure, but the ancients weren't too fussy about the nationality of the gods and perhaps we shouldn't be either. "Eros, draw back your bow" is not a great lyric, and if you want more than one Cupid then pluralising Eros is a nightmare in English. I don't think the pigeon on his left wing in the photo is part of the myth but it would be a nice addition.

you'll do better than what we have now.

Would I like to be Eros? Sure. God of love and sex--I could work with that.

as you string the bow of love and unite people with their authentic selves — Benj96

Sounds like mission creep. I don't think authenticity was the remit of Eros or Cupid.

Option 2 would become terminally boring pretty quickly.

No one will love you for who you are. You will be alone so that they may be toghether. " — Benj96

Hey, the Greek Gods are not social workers who get lost in their good works. Erotic arrows are lobbed at mortals who are doomed from the get go, anyway. Primordial deities just don't have to worry about 'losing themselves'.

Were I Eros, I could end the war on Ukraine by making Vladimir Putin the sex-slave of Vladimir Zelensky, for instance. Donald Trump could be made to fall for any old horse's ass, just to keep him busy with something besides American politics.

Ha! Didn't notice the pigeon.

Sure, but the ancients weren't too fussy about the nationality of the gods and perhaps we shouldn't be either. — Cuthbert

Well, anyway, the Romans weren't. They not only appropriated the Greek pantheon wholesale, they went on to Ramanize and then Christianize, all the European deities they thought might help them win over the locals.

If my Latin classes memories serve, Eros did end up mating with Psyche, the most beautiful girl in the universe, although she then reported him on Twitter, #metoo.

I like the thought experiment, it is good. Sure you are the God of love and sex, but you would not be seen, unnoticed. You are forever behind the scenes and eventually forgotten. In the second choice you are all that exists, forever in the minds of other and loved, but no one else is seen or loved. You have become, in a philosophical term, actually. Vera is right, both choices are equally crappy, but why?

In choice one you have become nothingness, the simple backdrop for all there is. In 2, you have become pure being, encompassing all and everything. In both instances you have lost who you are, a limited being, a one among many, a certain something. You In scenario 1 you cannot be loved, for all purposes you do not exist and you are alone. You have lost all autonomy vis a vis others, because they cannot know who you are. Your efforts will be only valuable to you. In scenario 2 you equally lost autonomy, because you can never be other than you are. You can never be 'un-loved' no matter how hard you try. That shows something. We are who we are by the grace of being a concrete, bounded other. Robbing one of autonomy means robbing one of concrete existence. You become a mere object, a non-existing object, or an all encpompassing object, but never a subject. So we are subject by the grace of becoming. By becoming other than we are, loved sometimes, unloved at others, we realize our subjectivity.

Eros (also Cupid) is the little boy. Aphrodite (also Venus) is the goddess of love. She sends him to shoot people with his little arrow to make them fall in passionate [erotic] love with some specified other person. — Vera Mont

Cupid is Roman. Eros is Greek. — Bitter Crank

Apologies for my inaccuracies guys. My bad haha. It was somewhat of an impulsive spontaneous musing that I found intriguing. A guess I should have looked up a few definitions first to clear up the post of impurities. Lazy work lol.

However thanks for going along with it all the same. Does this post serve an ethical dilemma? Perhaps. Perhaps not. In either case I've found your considerations and choices interesting.

literally an "All or nothing" question.
All acting, no being or all being no acting. The overlooked backdrop or center stage.

Suppose one night curled up in bed alone, at your darkest most despondent hour, you're visited by the Greek God Eros. She offers you one her greatest gifts - the ability to intuitively know of Love, what it is, where it lies and how it manifests. — Benj96

I realize we've concluded that Eros is a little boy, but in your rendition I am visited in my bedroom by some angelic goddess offering me love.

I so thought this was going to go in a different direction.

But to answer the question, I would choose to offer the world love and peace as I slipped into obscurity because I am all about helping others. My humility and compassion for others knows no bounds.

, I would choose to offer the world love and peace as I slipped into obscurity because I am all about helping others. My humility and compassion for others knows no bounds. — Hanover

That's a mighty and dutiful stance. One I respect very much. Bravo.

I so thought this was going to go in a different direction. — Hanover

Haha. Well that is the second option. That you would be so attractive and lovable that you may have anyone at any time you wish. Maybe even the goddess herself, unimaginable beauty, sensuality and care. Joy, peace and lust incarnate.

Opting for the second, you would be pure sex/love appeal. It is noble for sure to deny it to enable others. Is it fair to have that responsibility? Not so sure.

However, having opted for the first option, would you not feel lonely having sacrificed any chance at your participation in the love/peace dynamic?

Wouldnt you long to be seen, acknowledged, validated, loved yourself? It's a lonesome existence being the cohesion of the system. The invisible "bringer togetherer."

Observing the fruit if everything you are, the love of others for one another. It would be hard to not grow jealous, or allow one's own desire to seep in. To long for what you offer, for yourself.

Would the knowledge of being ultimate providence suffice? That is to say would the choice satisfy you in the long run or might you find yourself eons down the line resentful of being imbued with such powers, tired of not having love of your own? An isolated entity.

Why wouldnt you deserve it for yourself any more or less than your subjects?

Is the greater good enough? Would you be truly at peace with the decision even if you knew it was the right thing to do.

Apologies for my inaccuracies guys. My bad haha. It was somewhat of an impulsive spontaneous musing that I found intriguing. A guess I should have looked up a few definitions first to clear up the post of impurities. Lazy work lol. — Benj96

Apologies are not in order. Greek deities and their multitudinous forms and devious activities are a specialty field. Everything Greek and Roman is specialty stuff. There is so much history, so little time.

The Greek gods were a quirky bunch. Athena sprang out of the head of Zeus, for instance. Dionysius' mother was Semele, a mortal and pregnant by Zeus. Hera, Zeus's jealous wife, told Semele to look at Zeus in his godly thunderbolt form. She did and was promptly fried. Zeus rescued their child, Dionysius, and sewed him up in his thigh for the next few months. Talk about dysfunctional families!

The oldest gods, like Eros, were parentless forces of nature who more 'emerged' than were born.

Love among the Greeks was more complicated than your typical Hollywood romance where girl meets boy, boy screws girl, girl accuses boy of rape, and so on ad nauseum:

Storge = the bond of empathy
Eros = romantic love, sexual love
Philia = friendship or brotherly love
Agape = unconditional love

Eros had romantic love and sex--useful, for sure, but no god was in charge of storge, Philia, and agape, as far as I know. How far is that? Two or three nanometers.

"Accept my gifts, my insight, my power and you will be able to bring people together, you shall be able to imbue them with pure love: love for one another, and love for themself - passion for and awareness of one's own talents, joy for their own life and being. Love in all its forms. You can heal the world."

No greek god could manage all that. They were not that nice, for one thing and "healing the world" is far more complicated herding 8 billion cats. I mean, think: the Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe wasn't able to get the small tribe of Israelites to behave. 8 billion of us?

Was Mars the Roman equivalent of Eros?

In Greek mythology: how does Chronos fit in? I thought he was the first god, who got castrated by his own son. Or he was Chaos's son, Chronos was?

The word Cupid: the roots was mentioning, could be also the roots for couple, coupling, tea cup, coup (as in "military..."), and copulation, population, execution, revolution... oops, sorry, I got switched over to John and Yoko's "Give Peace a Chance".

Greek deities and their multitudinous forms and devious activities are a specialty field. Everything Greek and Roman is specialty stuff. There is so much history, so little time. — Bitter Crank

I think the ancients were heavily leaning on differently evolved mythologies specific to their tribes separated by large distances in time and physical locations. And also the scribes made up stuff as they went... there was no Autodafe or Premier or Secounder Allgemeinen Synod, to unite versions.

how does Chronos fit in — god must be atheist

Wikipedia has a chart of the Greek gods @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_the_Greek_gods

I thought Chronos was one of the ur-generation, but as you said, "the ancients were heavily leaning on differently evolved mythologies specific to their tribes". I didn't think Eros was primordial either, so... The more you learn, the less you know.

For what it's worth Etyonline says

Cupid
Roman god of passionate love, late 14c., from Latin Cupido, personification of cupido "desire, love, passion," from cupere "to desire" (see cupidity). Identified with Greek Eros. Cupid's bow as a shape, especially of lips, is from 1858.

cupidity (n.)
"eager desire to possess something," mid-15c., from Anglo-French cupidite and directly from Latin cupiditatem (nominative cupiditas) "passionate desire, lust; ambition," from cupidus "eager, passionate," from cupere "to desire." This is perhaps from a PIE root *kup-(e)i- "to tremble; to desire," and cognate with Sanskrit kupyati "bubbles up, becomes agitated;" Old Church Slavonic kypeti "to boil;" Lithuanian kupėti "to boil over;" Old Irish accobor "desire."
Despite the primarily erotic sense of the Latin word, in English cupidity originally, and still especially, means "desire for wealth."
kewpie (n.)
1909, American English, coined by their inventor and illustrator, Rose C. O'Neill (1874-1944), as an altered form of a diminutive of Cupid. Kewpie doll is from 1916.

Let's hear a round of applause for our Proto-Indo-European forebears, from Sanskrit to Old Church Slavonic and beyond.

The apotheosis of Cupid is in the song "Stupid Cupid", a song written by Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka which became a hit for Connie Francis in 1958.

Was Mars the Roman equivalent of Eros? — god must be atheist

No. Mars is Roman. "Ares was the ancient Greek god of war or, more properly, the spirit of battle. He represented the distasteful aspects of brutal warfare and slaughter. Ares was never very popular, and his worship was not extensive in Greece." (Brittanica)

Amor (“love”), also known as Cupid. Kupido ( Cupido – “thirst”) was a Roman god and the embodiment of love. He was considered the son of the goddess Venus and the Mars. He was identified with the Greek Eros who fell in love with Psyche.

How can you memorize all these gods? The poetry and prose of the baroque era in my country and culture, Hungary, was replete with names of Greek gods and other characters of their legends. You needed to have a thorough grounding in Latin and Greek before you could understand the romantic literature of the turn of the century from the eighteenth to the nineteenth.

How can you memorize all these gods — god must be atheist

I have not. Google enables me to sound erudite on the Internet, and nobody knows I am actually a dog. But yes, in English literature too, there are period where knowing a fair amount about Greek and Roman culture would help one out a lot. I had no opportunity to study Classics until long after I completed a degree in English Lit.

"Baroque style" covered / smothered European culture. Holy Mother Church had a lot to do with it -- being educated meant learning Latin and Greek, whatever one's native language was. There are poets I find dry-as-dust who were all about marinating their output in classical referents. John Dryden comes to mind. (He was hot stuff in his day among the literati).

Still, some of the baroque era poets were among my favorites, though, on a poem by poem basis. Here's one by George Herbert (1593 -1633) which is "metaphysical" (an English Baroque form):

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                              Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                             From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                             If I lacked any thing.
 
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                             Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                             Who made the eyes but I?
 
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                             Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                             My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                             So I did sit and eat.

John Donne, (1572-1631)

Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

The English baroque (or other) poets I like do not lard their lines with classical bric-a-brac.

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                              Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                             From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                             If I lacked any thing.
 
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                             Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                             Who made the eyes but I?
 
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                             Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                             My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                             So I did sit and eat. — Bitter Crank

Funny you would publish this. There is a very strong parallel between this poem and how our relationship with my wife (before marriage) developed.

There is also a hint of Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" in it. Could it be, that George Herbert was inspired by Sinatra?

And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three. — Bitter Crank

I have a hard time understanding this. He is saying he will have the big O two, or three times? (i.e. "come")

The beginning of the poem was happy, carefree, randomly toying with words that exuded mood, not via reason, but via the senses. A bit like music.

But it went sour when he talked about women the way he did.

Clearly, Frank Sinatra inspired George Herbert, even though they were just three centuries apart. The big question is how: Was the Frank Sinatra we knew a reincarnation of a crooner from a much earlier time, or did George Herbert intuit where music and poetry was heading and simply divined how, by the 20th century, Frank would be singing songs about Strangers in the Night?

It's a conundrum.

Chaucer might have suggested the big O two or three times, but John Donne doesn't seem like the type. He was, after all, a priest and priests are not supposed to whore around or jerk off. As for his misogyny, it was endemic in the 16th century. (We, of course, are totally innocent of misogyny!!)

Misogyny was SO common in the 16th centered it no longer had cultural weight. That women, especially lovely ones, would be unfaithful (with lecherous men) was a given--amongst men. Real women, of course, xhibtrd uc mo police viollll///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;veg/////////////////////////////afgqFFFDCVVVVCZZZZZZZV. /d////////////////////////////eeg

Ooops, dozed off. I was about to make a brilliant point, but I fell into the arms of Morpheus before I could bestow it upon the world.

And Merry Christmas.

And to you.