14 February: Cupid

Happy Valentine's Day to those who celebrate. Here are 10 facts about Cupid:

1. Cupid is the Roman god of love, desire, and attraction. His Roman equivalent is Eros, and he has also been compared to the Hindu god Kama.

2. He is the son of Venus, and his father is thought to be either Vulcan or Mars.

3. These days he is usually portrayed as a chubby cherub with wings and a bow, but originally he was pictured as a young man with wings and a bow. It is probably the Victorians who popularised the former image and its association with Valentine’s Day.

4. In one tale, the boy Cupid steals honey from a beehive and gets stung. When he runs to his mother crying about how a creature that small shouldn’t be allowed to cause so much pain, Venus reminds him that he, too is small and yet delivers the sting of love.

5. Cupid has two, perhaps even three, types of arrow in his quiver. One is the familiar golden-tipped arrow which causes anyone it hits to fall in love; but he also has arrows tipped with Lead, which cause the opposite, revulsion. In one myth, Cupid shot Apollo with a Gold arrow, so he fell madly in love with the nymph Daphne, but then launched a leaden arrow at Daphne so she would find him repulsive. The Kingis Quair, a 15th-century poem attributed to James I of Scotland, suggests there is also a Silver arrow that causes a temporary attraction, a crush, perhaps, which is easily cured.

6. There’s one myth in which Cupid takes centre stage rather than simply appearing on the sidelines and causing other people, or gods, to become inflamed with lust. Venus was insanely jealous of a beautiful mortal called Psyche, and sent Cupid to cause her to fall in love with a hideous monster. Cupid, however, fell in love with Psyche himself and married her. However, possibly to throw Venus off the scent, there was a condition – that Psyche could never see his face. Psyche eventually became so curious to know what her husband looked like that she peeked. Cupid was furious and stormed off. Psyche roamed the world looking for him until they were reunited and Psyche became immortal.

7. Many believe that the story of Beauty and the Beast is a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.

8. In some depictions of Cupid, the character is wearing a blindfold. Love is blind, after all.

9. In others, he’s seen riding a Dolphin.

10. When Christianity came along, Cupid was cast by religious puritans as a "demon of fornication", whose main purpose was to tempt people into sin and vice.