Anteros

This article covers the Greek deity Anteros. For further meanings, see Anteros (disambiguation) .

Anteros, lustful old man, approaching the coquettishly averted god. Pen drawing by Johann Heinrich Füssli .

Anteros ( Greek  Ἀντέρως "returned love") is in Greek mythology the god of love in return , who avenges spurned love. His brother is Eros , the god of begetting love.

mythology

Procaccini: Eros and Anteros. 17th century

According to a legend given by the rhetorician Themistius , Aphrodite was concerned that her son Eros would not grow. In response to the saying that Eros can only grow when it has a brother and thus a counterpart, she gave birth to Anteros.

According to Cicero , Anteros is the son of Mars and the “third” Venus, the daughter of Jupiter and Diona .

As a god of vengeance, he is nicknamed Alastor . An altar was dedicated to Anteros Alastor near the Acropolis of Athens . Pausanias reports the legend that an Athenian citizen named Meles not only refused the love shown by the Metöken Timagoras, but asked Timagoras to jump from the Acropolis, which Timagoras then did. When Meles saw the consequences of his cold he was so consumed with remorse that he also jumped from the Acropolis. In memory of this sad story, the Athens metics consecrated an altar.

cult

The cult of Eros and Anteros seems to come from the environment of the palaestra as a mythological equivalent of the relationship between Erastes and Eromenos . In the gymnasium of Elis had the two found by Pausanias an altar, and in a local Palaestra was a relief to see the two as they compete for a victory palm and Anteros Eros tried to snatch the palm.

Trivia

Eunapius of Sardis tells an anecdote from the life of Iamblichus of Chalkis . When he was with some students in the baths of Gadara in Syria , he was repeatedly urged by his students to perform a miracle. There were two hot springs there, called Eros and Anteros by the locals . Iamblichus uttered an incantation and touched the water of one spring with his hand, from which a beautiful boy with golden hair rose from, then he did the same at the other spring, from which an equally beautiful boy with dark hair rose. The boys huddled against Iamblichus as if he were their father. Finally he made it disappear again. This proof of his miraculous power convinced his students and did not press him further in the future. Traditionally Eros was ascribed golden hair, so Iamblichus conjured up the apparitions of Eros and Anteros.

See also

• Anterus

literature

• Hans von Geisau : Anteros. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 1, Stuttgart 1964, Col. 369.
• Robert V. Merrill: Eros and Anteros , in: Speculum 19.3 (July 1944) 265-284.
• Craig E. Stephenson: Anteros. A Forgotten Myth. New York, 2011. ISBN 9780415572309 .
• Guy de Tervarent: Eros and Anteros or Reciprocal Love in Ancient and Renaissance Art. In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965) 205-208.
• Konrad Wernicke : Anteros 1 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume I, 2, Stuttgart 1894, Col. 2354 f.

Web links

Commons : Anteros  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Eros & Anteros in the Theoi Project

Individual evidence

1. ^ Themistii orationes. Leipzig 1832, p. 367, quoted in Tervarent, p. 205.
2. ↑ Cicero de natura deorum 3.59f.
3. ↑ Pausania's description of Greece 1.30.1.
4. ↑ Plato Phaedrus 255d.
5. ↑ Pausania's description of Greece 6.23.5.
6. ↑ Eunapius vitae sophistarum 459 (section Iamblichos) Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers and Sophists (1921) pp. 343-565. English translation
7. ↑ Joseph Geiger: Eros and Anteros, the blonde and the dark-haired. In: Hermes , Vol. 114, No. 3 (3rd quarter 1986), pp. 375-376.