Cupid (mythology)
Cupid , often also called Cupid , is the god and personification of love (more precisely: falling in love) in Roman mythology and is seen as a teenage boy, not without mischievous malice, who hits the heart with his arrows and thus awakens love. You can't resist it: Omnia vincit Amor ("Amor conquers everything", whereby the Latin word "amor" can also be translated directly as "love").
Cupid's Greek analog is Eros . According to the descent of the Greek Eros from Aphrodite and Ares , Amor is the son of Venus and Mars . In both Greek and Roman mythology, it is a personification of the abstract term "love". According to the literary evidence, Amor / Cupid is identical with Eros. The Roman personification evidently did not take place independently, but based on the Greek model. From the 5th century BC The Romans were familiar with the figure of the Greek god of love. Cupid is first seen in the Rome area as an inscription on a Faliscian stamnos from the 4th century BC. Chr. Attested. On the vessel he is depicted as Ephebe next to Ganymede and Jupiter , with all gods having their names. The oldest literary evidence is found in the fragmentary comedy Gymnasticus by Gnaeus Naevius from the late 3rd century BC. In the plays of Plautus , a contemporary of Naevius, the oldest evidence can be found that, in addition to Cupid , the name Amor was also used as the name of a god. However, Plautus differentiated, he assumed two love gods that were essentially different: Cupid was responsible for love, Cupid for desire.
The best-known mythical tale of Amor is the tale of Amor and Psyche embedded by Apuleius in his novel Metamorphoses .
In the emblematic Amor is often represented as blind, which William Shakespeare explains in the Midsummer Night's Dream :
Love sees through the imagination,
not through the eyes, and that is why
The gold-swinging Cupid is painted blind.
Winged without eyes, it indicates
love's haste in choosing;
And because she easily leaves what she gets,
He is presented as a boy;
As boys often become monarchs at play,
so the boy Cupid's carelessness also jokes
with his oaths.
Analogous to the Greek erotes , the multiple representations of childish love gods, there are Cupids for Cupid , who are mostly depicted as naked, winged boys. In art, for example, they appear in Watteau's painting Embarkation for Kythera .
literature
- Heinrich Fliedner: Amor and Cupid. Studies on the Roman god of love (= contributions to classical philology. Issue 53). Hain, Meisenheim 1974.
- Bettina Full: Eros. In: Maria Moog-Grünewald (Ed.): Mythenrezeption. The ancient mythology in literature, music and art from the beginnings to the present (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 5). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02032-1 , pp. 262-275.
Web links
- About 2,400 photos of Cupid's depiction in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
Individual evidence
- ^ Antonie Wlosok: Amor and Cupid . In: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Volume 79. Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London, 1975, pp. 175f, ISBN 0674379268 Digitized at Google Books
- ↑ Eric Herbert Warmington (ed. And transl.): Gymnasticus. In: Remains of old latin Vol. 2. Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Pacuvius and Accius. Heinemann, London 1967, p. 92 excerpt from Google Books (Google falsely indicates that the searched book was the edition London and Cambridge 1936, but the location can actually be found in the extended edition London 1967.)
- ^ Heinrich Fliedner: Amor and Cupido , Meisenheim 1974, pp. 3–5, 52 f.
- ↑ Apuleius, Metamorphoses 4, 28–6, 24.
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↑ Act 1, scene 1. Translation by Christoph Martin Wieland . Original text:
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste;
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so often beguil'd.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear.