Inclassical mythology,Cupid/ˈkjuːpɪd/ (Latin:Cupīdō[kʊˈpiːdoː], meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire,erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddessVenus and the god of warMars. He is also known asAmor/ˈɑːmɔːr/ (Latin:Amor, "love"). HisGreek counterpart isEros.[1]Although Eros is generally portrayed as a slender winged youth inClassicalGreek art, during theHellenistic period, he was increasingly portrayed as a chubby boy. During this time, his iconography acquired thebow and arrow that represent his source of power: a person, or even a deity, who is shot by Cupid's arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire. In myths, Cupid is a minor character who serves mostly to set the plot in motion. He is a main character only in the tale ofCupid and Psyche, in which he is wounded by his own weapons and experiences the ordeal of love. Although other extended stories are not told about him, his tradition is rich in poetic themes and visual scenarios, such as "Love conquers all" and the retaliatory punishment or torture of Cupid.
In art, Cupid often appears in multiples as theAmores/əˈmɔːriːz/ (in the later terminology ofart history, Italianamorini), the equivalent of the GreekErotes. Cupids are a frequent motif of bothRoman art and laterWestern art of theclassical tradition. In the 15th century, the iconography of Cupid starts to become indistinguishable from theputto.
Cupid continued to be a popular figure in theMiddle Ages, when under Christian influence he often had a dual nature as Heavenly and Earthly love. In theRenaissance, a renewed interest in classical philosophy endowed him with complexallegorical meanings. In contemporary popular culture, Cupid is shown drawing his bow to inspire romantic love, often as an icon ofValentine's Day.[2] Cupid's powers are similar, though not identical, toKamadeva, theHindu god of human love.
The nameCupīdō ('passionate desire') is a derivative ofLatincupiō,cupĕre ('to desire'), itself fromProto-Italic*kup-i-, which may reflect*kup-ei- ('to desire'; cf.Umbriancupras,South Picenekuprí). The latter ultimately stems from theProto-Indo-European verbal stem*kup-(e)i- ('to tremble, desire'; cf.Old Irishaccobor 'desire',Sanskritprá-kupita- 'trembling, quaking',Old Church Slavonickypĕti 'to simmer, boil').[3]
The Romansreinterpreted myths and concepts pertaining to the Greek Eros for Cupid in their own literature and art, and medieval and Renaissance mythographersconflate the two freely. In the Greek tradition, Eros had a dual, contradictory genealogy. He was among theprimordial gods who came into existence asexually; after his generation, deities were begotten through male-female unions.[4] InHesiod'sTheogony, onlyChaos andGaia (Earth) are older. Before the existence of gender dichotomy, Eros functioned by causing entities to separate from themselves that which they already contained.[5]
At the same time, the Eros who was pictured as a boy or slim youth was regarded as the child of a divine couple, the identity of whom varied by source. The influential Renaissance mythographerNatale Conti began his chapter on Cupid/Eros by declaring that the Greeks themselves were unsure about his parentage: Heaven and Earth,[6]Ares andAphrodite,[7]Night andEther,[8] or theRainbow andZephyr.[9] The Greek travel writerPausanias, he notes, contradicts himself by saying at one point that Eros welcomed Aphrodite into the world, and at another that Eros was the son of Aphrodite and the youngest of the gods.[10]
InLatin literature, Cupid is usually treated as the son of Venus without reference to a father.Seneca says thatVulcan, as the husband of Venus, is the father of Cupid.[11]Cicero, however, says that there were three Cupids, as well as three Venuses: the first Cupid was the son ofMercury andDiana, the second of Mercury and the second Venus, and the third ofMars and the third Venus. This last Cupid was the equivalent ofAnteros, "Counter-Love", one of theErotes, the gods who embody aspects of love.[12] The multiple Cupids frolicking in art are the decorative manifestation of these proliferating loves and desires. During theEnglish Renaissance,Christopher Marlowe wrote of "ten thousand Cupids"; inBen Jonson's weddingmasqueHymenaei, "a thousand several-coloured loves ... hop about the nuptial room".[13]
In the laterclassical tradition, Cupid is most often regarded as the son of Venus and Mars, whose love affair represented anallegory of Love and War.[14] The duality between the primordial and the sexually conceived Eros accommodated philosophical concepts of Heavenly and Earthly Love even in the Christian era.[15]
Cupid is winged, allegedly because lovers are flighty and likely to change their minds, and boyish because love is irrational. His symbols are the arrow and torch, "because love wounds and inflames the heart". These attributes and their interpretation were established by late antiquity, as summarized byIsidore of Seville (d. 636 AD) in hisEtymologiae.[16] Cupid is also sometimes depicted blindfolded and described as blind, not so much in the sense of sightless—since the sight of the beloved can be a spur to love—as blinkered and arbitrary. As described byShakespeare inA Midsummer Night's Dream (1590s):[17]
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgement taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste. And therefore is love said to be a child Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.[18]
InBotticelli'sAllegory of Spring (1482), also known by its Italian titleLa Primavera, Cupid is shown blindfolded while shooting his arrow, positioned above the central figure of Venus.[19]
Particularly in ancient Roman art, cupids may also carry or be surrounded by fruits, animals, or attributes of theSeasons or the wine-godDionysus, symbolizing the earth's generative capacity.[20]
Having all these associations, Cupid is considered to share parallels with the Hindu godKama.[21]
The god of love (Cupid) shoots an arrow at the lover, from a 14th-century text of theRoman de la Rose.
Cupid carries two kinds of arrows, or darts, one with a sharp golden point, and the other with a blunt tip of lead. A person wounded by the golden arrow is filled with uncontrollable desire, but the one struck by the lead feels aversion and desires only to flee. The use of these arrows is described by theLatin poetOvid in the first book of hisMetamorphoses. WhenApollo taunts Cupid as the lesser archer, Cupid shoots him with the golden arrow, but strikes the object of his desire, the nymphDaphne, with the lead. Trapped by Apollo's unwanted advances, Daphne prays to her father, the river godPeneus, who turns her into a laurel, the tree sacred to Apollo. It is the first of several unsuccessful or tragic love affairs for Apollo.[22] This theme is somewhat mirrored in the story ofEcho and Narcissus, as the goddessJuno forces the nymph Echo's love upon Narcissus, who is cursed by the goddessNemesis to be self absorbed and unresponsive to her desires.[23]
A variation is found inThe Kingis Quair, a 15th-century poem attributed toJames I of Scotland, in which Cupid has three arrows: gold, for a gentle "smiting" that is easily cured; the more compelling silver; and steel, for a love-wound that never heals.[24]
In the tale of Cupid the honey thief, the child-god is stung by bees when he steals honey from their hive. He cries and runs to his mother Venus,[25] complaining that so small a creature should not cause such painful wounds. Venus laughs, and points out the poetic justice: he too is small, and yet delivers the sting of love.
The story was first told about Eros in thenineteenthIdyll ofTheocritus (3rd century BC).[26] It was retold numerous times in both art and poetry during the Renaissance. The theme brought theAmoretti poetry cycle (1595) ofEdmund Spenser to a conclusion,[27] and furnished subject matter for at least twenty works byLucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop.[28] The German poet and classicistKarl Philipp Conz (1762–1827) framed the tale asSchadenfreude ("taking pleasure in someone else's pain") in a poem by the same title.[29] In a version byGotthold Ephraim Lessing, a writer of theGerman Enlightenment, the incident prompts Cupid to turn himself into a bee:
Through this sting was Amor made wiser. The untiring deceiver concocted another battle-plan: he lurked beneath the carnations and roses and when a maiden came to pick them, he flew out as a bee and stung her.[30]
The image of Cupid as a bee is part of a complex tradition of poetic imagery involving the flower of youth, the sting of love as a deflowering, and honey as a secretion of love.[31]
In both ancient and later art, Cupid is often shown riding adolphin. Onancient Roman sarcophagi, the image may represent the soul's journey, originally associated withDionysian religion.[32] A mosaic from lateRoman Britain shows a procession emerging from the mouth of the sea godNeptune, first dolphins and then sea birds, ascending to Cupid. One interpretation of this allegory is that Neptune represents the soul's origin in the matter from which life was fashioned, with Cupid triumphing as the soul's desired destiny.[33]
In other contexts, Cupid with a dolphin recurs as a playful motif, as in garden statuary atPompeii that shows a dolphin rescuing Cupid from an octopus, or Cupid holding a dolphin. The dolphin, often elaborated fantastically, might be constructed as a spout for a fountain.[34] On a modern-era fountain in thePalazzo Vecchio,Florence, Italy, Cupid seems to be strangling a dolphin.[35]
Dolphins were often portrayed in antiquity as friendly to humans, and the dolphin itself could represent affection.Pliny records a tale of a dolphin atPuteoli carrying a boy on its back across a lake to go to school each day; when the boy died, the dolphin grieved itself to death.[36]
In erotic scenes from mythology, Cupid riding the dolphin may convey how swiftly love moves,[37] or the Cupid astride a sea beast may be a reassuring presence for the wild ride of love.[38] A dolphin-riding Cupid may attend scenes depicting the wedding of Neptune andAmphitrite or the Triumph of Neptune, also known as a marinethiasos.
To adapt myths for Christian use, medieval mythographers interpreted them morally. In this view, Cupid is seen as a "demon offornication".[39] The innovativeTheodulf of Orleans, who wrote during the reign ofCharlemagne, reinterpreted Cupid as a seductive but malicious figure who exploits desire to draw people into an allegorical underworld of vice.[40] To Theodulf, Cupid's quiver symbolized his depraved mind, his bow trickery, his arrows poison, and his torch burning passion. It was appropriate to portray him naked, so as not to conceal his deception and evil.[41] This conception largely followed his attachments to lust, but would later be diluted as many Christians embraced Cupid as a symbolic representation of love.
BronzeCupid Sleeping on a lion skin (1635–40), signedF, based on the marble attributed toPraxiteles
Cupid sleeping became a symbol of absent or languishing love in Renaissance poetry and art, including aSleeping Cupid (1496) byMichelangelo that is now lost.[42] The ancient type was known at the time through descriptions in classical literature, and at least one extant example had been displayed in the sculpture garden ofLorenzo de' Medici since 1488.[43] In the 1st century AD,Pliny had described two marble versions of aCupid (Eros), one atThespiae and a nude atParium, where it was the stained object of erotic fascination.[44]
Michelangelo's work was important in establishing the reputation of the young artist, who was only twenty at the time. At the request ofLorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, his patron, he increased its value by deliberately making it look "antique",[45] thus creating "his most notorious fake".[46] After the deception was acknowledged, theCupid Sleeping was displayed as evidence of his virtuosity alongside an ancient marble, attributed toPraxiteles, of Cupid asleep on a lion skin.[47]
In the poetry ofGiambattista Marino (d. 1625), the image of Cupid orAmore sleeping represents the indolence of Love in the lap of Idleness. Amadrigal by his literary rivalGaspare Murtola exhorted artists to paint the theme. A catalogue of works from antiquity collected by theMattei family, patrons ofCaravaggio, included sketches of sleeping cupids based on sculpture from theTemple of Venus Erycina in Rome. Caravaggio, whose works Murtola is known for describing, took up the challenge with his 1608Sleeping Cupid, a disturbing depiction of an unhealthy, immobilized child with "jaundiced skin, flushed cheeks, bluish lips and ears, the emaciated chest and swollen belly, the wasted muscles and inflamed joints". The model is thought to have suffered fromjuvenile rheumatoid arthritis.[48] Caravaggio's sleeping Cupid was reconceived infresco byGiovanni da San Giovanni, and the subject recurred throughout Roman and Italian work of the period.[49]
Earlier in his career, Caravaggio had challenged contemporary sensibilities with his "sexually provocative and anti-intellectual"Victorious Love, also known asLove Conquers All(Amor Vincit Omnia), in which a brazenly naked Cupid tramples on emblems of culture and erudition representing music, architecture, warfare, and scholarship.[50]
The motto comes from theAugustan poetVergil, writing in the late 1st century BC. His collection ofEclogues concludes with what might be his most famous line:[51]
Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori. Love conquers all, and so let us surrender ourselves to Love.[52]
Fragmentary base for an altar of Venus and Mars, showing cupids handling the weapons andchariot of the war god, from the reign ofTrajan (98–117 AD)
The ancient RomanCupid was a god who embodied desire, but he had notemples or religious practices independent of otherRoman deities such as Venus, whom he often accompanies as a side figure in cult statues.[14] A Cupid might appear among the several statuettes for private devotion in ahousehold shrine,[54] but there is no clear distinction between figures for veneration and those displayed as art or decoration.[55] This is a distinction from his Greek equivalent,Eros, who was commonly worshipped alongside his motherAphrodite, and was even given a sacred day upon the 4th of every month.[56] Roman temples often served a secondary purpose as art museums, andCicero mentions a statue of "Cupid" (Eros) byPraxiteles that was consecrated at asacrarium and received religious veneration jointly withHercules.[57] An inscription fromCártama inRoman Spain records statues of Mars and Cupid among the public works of a wealthy female priest(sacerdos perpetua), and another list of benefactions by aprocurator ofBaetica includes statues of Venus and Cupid.[58]
Cupid became more common inRoman art from the time ofAugustus, the firstRoman emperor. After theBattle of Actium, whenAntony andCleopatra were defeated, Cupid transferring the weapons of Mars to his mother Venus became a motif of Augustan imagery.[59] In theAeneid, the national epic of Rome by the poetVirgil, Cupid disguises himself asIulus, the son ofAeneas who was in turn the son of Venus herself, and in this form he beguilesQueen Dido of Carthage to fall in love with the hero. She gives safe harbor to Aeneas and his band of refugees fromTroy, only to be abandoned by him as he fulfills his destiny tofound Rome. Iulus (also known asAscanius) becomes the mythical founder of theJulian family from whichJulius Caesar came. Augustus, Caesar's heir, commemorated a beloved great-grandson who died as a child by having him portrayed as Cupid, dedicating one such statue at the Temple of Venus on theCapitoline Hill, and keeping one in his bedroom where he kissed it at night.[60] A brother of this child became the emperorClaudius, whose motherAntonia appears in a surviving portrait-sculpture as Venus, with Cupid on her shoulder.[61] TheAugustus of Prima Porta is accompanied by aCupid riding a dolphin.[62] Cupids in multiples appeared on thefriezes of theTemple of Venus Genetrix (Venus as "Begetting Mother"), and influenced scenes ofrelief sculpture on other works such assarcophagi, particularly those of children.[63]
Aeneas Introducing Cupid Dressed as Ascanius to Dido (1757) byTiepolo
As a winged figure,Cupido shared some characteristics with thegoddessVictoria.[64] On coinage issued bySulla thedictator, Cupid bears thepalm branch, the most common attribute of Victory.[65] "Desire" in Roman culture[66] was often attached to power as well as to erotic attraction.Roman historians criticizecupido gloriae, "desire for glory", andcupidoimperii, "desire for ruling power".[67] In Latin philosophical discourse,cupido is the equivalent of Greekpothos, a focus of reflections on the meaning and burden of desire. In depicting the "pious love"(amor pius) ofNisus and Euryalus in theAeneid, Vergil has Nisus wonder:
Is it the gods who put passion in men's mind, Euryalus, or does each person's fierce desire(cupido) become his own God?[68]
InLucretius' physics of sex,cupido can represent human lust and an animal instinct to mate, but also the impulse of atoms to bond and form matter.[69] An association of sex and violence is found in the erotic fascination forgladiators, who often had sexualized names such asCupido.[70]
Cupid was the enemy ofchastity, and the poetOvid opposes him toDiana, the virgin goddess of the hunt who likewise carries a bow but hates Cupid's passion-provoking arrows.[71] Cupid is also at odds withApollo, the archer-brother of Diana and patron of poetic inspiration whose love affairs almost always end disastrously. Ovid jokingly blames Cupid for causing him to write love poetry instead of the more respectable epic.[72]
Psyché et l'amour (1626–29) bySimon Vouet: Psyche lifts a lamp to view the sleeping Cupid.
The story of Cupid and Psyche appears inGreek art as early as the 4th century BC, but the most extended literary source of the tale is the Latin novelMetamorphoses, also known asThe Golden Ass, byApuleius (2nd century AD). It concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche.
The fame of Psyche's beauty threatens to eclipse that of Venus herself, and the love goddess sends Cupid to work her revenge. Cupid, however, becomes enamored of Psyche, and arranges for her to be taken to his palace. He visits her by night, warning her not to try to look upon him. Psyche's envious sisters convince her that her lover must be a hideous monster, and she finally introduces a lamp into their chamber to see him. Startled by his beauty, she drips hot oil from the lamp and wakes him. He abandons her. She wanders the earth looking for him, and finally submits to the service of Venus, who tortures her. The goddess then sends Psyche on a series of quests. Each time she despairs, and each time she is given divine aid. On her final task, she is to retrieve a dose ofProserpina's beauty from the underworld. She succeeds, but on the way back can not resist opening the box in the hope of benefitting from it herself, whereupon she falls into a torpid sleep. Cupid finds her in this state and revives her by returning the sleep to the box. Cupid grants her immortality so the couple can be wed as equals.
The story'sNeoplatonic elements and allusions tomystery religions accommodate multiple interpretations,[73] and it has been analyzed as anallegory and in light offolktale,Märchen orfairy tale, andmyth.[74] Often presented as an allegory of love overcoming death, the story was a frequent source of imagery forRoman sarcophagi and other extant art of antiquity. Since the rediscovery of Apuleius's novel in theRenaissance, thereception ofCupid and Psyche in theclassical tradition has been extensive. The story has been retold in poetry, drama, and opera, and depicted widely in painting, sculpture, and various media.[75] It has also played a role in popular culture as an example for "true love", and is commonly used in relation to the holidayValentine's Day.
On gems and other surviving pieces, Cupid is usually shown amusing himself with adult play, sometimes driving a hoop, throwing darts, catching a butterfly, or flirting with anymph. He is often depicted with his mother (in graphic arts, this is nearly always Venus), playing a horn. In other images, his mother is depicted scolding or even spanking him due to his mischievous nature. He is also shown wearing a helmet and carrying a buckler, perhaps in reference toVirgil'sOmnia vincit amor or aspolitical satire on wars for love, or love as war. Traditionally, Cupid was portrayed nude in the style of Classical art, but more modern depictions show him wearing a diaper, sash, and/or wings.
Allegory with Venus, Mars, Cupid and Time (ca. 1625): in the unique interpretation ofGuercino, wingedTime points an accusing finger at baby Cupid, held in a net that evokes the snare in which Venus and Mars were caught by her betrayed husband Vulcan.[80]
Cupid draws his bow as the river godPeneus averts his gaze inApollo and Daphne (1625) byPoussin.
^Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia,The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215.
^This introduction is based on the entry on "Cupid" inThe Classical Tradition, edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis (Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 244–246.
^Leonard Muellner,The Anger of Achilles:Mễnis in Greek Epic (Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 57–58;Jean-Pierre Vernant, "One ... Two ... Three: Erōs," inBefore Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 467.
^Vernant, "One ... Two ... Three: Erōs," p. 465ff.
^Alcaeus, fragment 13. Citations of ancient sources from Conti given by John Mulryan and Steven Brown,Natale Conti'sMythologiae Books I–V (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006), vol. 1, p. 332.
^M.T. Jones-Davies and Ton Hoenselaars, introduction toMasque of Cupids, edited and annotated by John Jowett, inThomas Middleton: The Collected Works (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 1031.
^Jennifer Speake andThomas G. Bergin, entry on "Cupid,"Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation (Market House Books, rev. ed. 2004), p. 129.
^Jean Sorabella, "A Roman Sarcophagus and Its Patron,"Metropolitan Museum Journal 36 (2001), p. 75.
^Jane Kingsley-Smith,Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 12.
^Charles Sterlinget al.,Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-Century European Paintings in the Robert Lehman Collection: France, Central Europe, The Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), pp. 43–44.
^Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,Die Biene; Youens,Hugo Wolf and His Mörike Songs, p. 119.
^Youens,Hugo Wolf and His Mörike Songs, pp. 117–120.
^Janet Huskinson,Roman Children's Sarcophagi: Their Decoration and Its Social Significance (Oxford University Press, 1996),passim; Joan P. Alcock, "Pisces in Britannia: The Eating and Portrayal of Fish in Roman Britain," inFish: Food from the Waters. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1997 (Prospect Books, 1998), p. 25.
^Dominic Perring, "'Gnosticism' in Fourth-Century Britain: The Frampton Mosaics Reconsidered,"Britannia 34 (2003), p. 108.
^Anthony King, "Mammals: Evidence from Wall Paintings, Sculpture, Mosaics, Faunal Remains, and Ancient Literary Sources," inThe Natural History of Pompeii (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 419–420.
^"Archaeological News,"American Journal of Archaeology 11.2 (1896), p. 304.
^Pliny,Natural History 9.8.24; Alcock, "Pisces in Britannia," p. 25.
^Marietta Cambareri and Peter Fusco, catalogue description for a Venus and Cupid,Italian and Spanish Sculpture: Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection (Getty Publications, 2002), p. 62.
^Thomas Puttfarken,Titian and Tragic Painting: Aristotle's Poetics And the Rise of the Modern Artist (Yale University Press, 2005), p. 174.
^Daemon fornicationis in Isidore of Seville,moechiae daemon in Theodulf of Orleans; Jane Chance,Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177 (University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 129ff., especially p. 138.
^"Cupid,"The Classical Tradition, p. 245; Stefania Macioe, "Caravaggio and the Role of Classical Models," inThe Rediscovery of Antiquity: The Role of the Artist (Collegium Hyperboreum, 2003), pp. 437–438.
^Rona Goffen,Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Titian (Yale University Press, 2002, 2004), p. 95.
^Pliny,Natural History 36.22, describes it as on a par with theCnidian Venus both in its nobility and in the wrong it had endured, as a certain main fromRhodes had fallen in love with it and left a visible trace of his love(vestigium amoris); Goffen,Renaissance Rivals, p. 96.
^Deborah Parker,Michelangelo and the Art of Letter Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 11.
^Aldo S. Bernardo,Petrarch, Laura, and the Triumphs (State University of New York, 1974), p. 102ff.; Varriano,Caravaggio, p. 123.
^Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann, "Religion in the House," inA Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 199.
^John R. Clarke,Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 315 (University of California Press, 2003), p. 89.
^Mikalson, Jon D. (2015). The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year. Princeton University Press. p. 186. ISBN 9781400870325.
^Cicero,Against Verres 4.2–4; David L. Balch, "From Endymion in RomanDomus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs: From Houses of the Living to Houses for the Dead. Iconography and Religion in Transition," inCommemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context. Studies of Roman (De Gruyter, 2008), p. 281; Anna Clark,Divine Qualities: Cult and Community in Republican Rome (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 177.
^Leonard A. Curchin, "Personal Wealth in Roman Spain,"Historia 32.2 (1983), p. 230.
^Charles Brian Rose, "The Parthians in Augustan Rome,"American Journal of Archaeology 109.1 (2005), pp. 27–28
^Suetonius,Caligula 7; Robert Turcan,The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001; originally published in French 1998), p. 18.
^Susann S. Lusnia, "Urban Planning and Sculptural Display in Severan Rome: Reconstructing the Septizodium and Its Role in Dynastic Politics,"American Journal of Archaeology 108.4 (2004), p. 530.
^J. C. McKeow,A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 210.
^Janet Huskinson,Roman Children's Sarcophagi: Their Decoration and Its Social Significance (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 41ff.
^Clark,Divine Qualities, p. 199; Huskinson,Roman Children's Sarcophagi,passim.
^J. Rufus Fears, "The Theology of Victory at Rome: Approaches and Problem,"Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 791, and in the same volume, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology," p. 881.
^In antiquity,proper nouns andcommon nouns were not distinguished by capitalization, and there was no sharp line between an abstraction such ascupido and its divine personificationCupido;J. Rufus Fears, "The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology,"Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.2 (1981), p. 849, note 69.
^William V. Harris,War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327-70 B.C. (Oxford University Press, 1979, 1985), pp. 17–18; Sviatoslav Dmitrie,The Greek Slogan of Freedom and Early Roman Politics in Greece (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 372; Philip Hardie,Rumour and Renown: Representations ofFama in Western Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 33, 172, 234, 275, 333ff.
^As quoted by David Armstrong,Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans (University of Texas Press, 2004), p. 181;Aeneid 9.184–184:dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, / Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?
^Diskin Clay, "De Rerum Natura: GreekPhysis and EpicureanPhysiologia (Lucretius 1.1–148),"Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 100 (1969), p. 37.
^H.S. Versnel, "A Parody on Hymns in Martial V.24 and Some Trinitarian Problems,"Mnemosyne 27.4 (1974), p. 368.
^Tela Cupidinis odit: Ovid,Ars Amatoria 1.261; C.M.C. Green, "Terms of Venery:Ars Amatoria I,"Transactions of the American Philological Association 126 (1996), pp. 242, 245.
^Rebecca Armstrong, "Retiring Apollo: Ovid on the Politics and Poetics of Self-Sufficiency,"Classical Quarterly 54.2 (2004) 528–550.
^Stephen Harrison, entry on "Cupid,"The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 338.
^Hendrik Wagenvoort, "Cupid and Psyche," reprinted inPietas: Selected Studies in Roman Religion (Brill, 1980), pp. 84–92.
^Harrison, "Cupid and Psyche," inOxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 339.
^Bottigheimer, Ruth B. (May 1989). "Cupid and Psyche vs Beauty and the Beast: The Milesian and the Modern".Merveilles & Contes.3 (1):4–14.JSTOR41389987.
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![Allegory with Venus, Mars, Cupid and Time (ca. 1625): in the unique interpretation of Guercino, winged Time points an accusing finger at baby Cupid, held in a net that evokes the snare in which Venus and Mars were caught by her betrayed husband Vulcan.[80]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aGuercino_-_cena_mitologica_(venus%2c_marte%2c_cupido_e_o_tempo)%2c_c.1624-27.jpg)
