In Ancient Roman culture and mythology, Eros, his counterpart Cupid, was the youthful god of erotic love, desire and affection. He was capable of making divine or mortal individuals fall in love with his enchanted arrows. Cupid was generally represented as a cute chubby boy with wings, carrying a bow and quiver of arrows. During the Hellenistic period, the representation of Eros, underwent a significant change. The god who had previously been depicted as a slender, nude youth was re-envisioned as a chubby toddler. This shift in Cupid’s form seems to run parallel to the increasing interest in the representation of children as subject matter in Hellenistic art. This notably youthful image of Eros carried over into that of Cupid in the Roman period, not only in representations of the god himself but also in mythological or genre scenes depicting multiple Erotes or putti.
To find out more about Roman gods, please visit our relevant blog posts: Roman Gods in Mythology.
