Slick smooth chocolate and sugar-filled shaped candies. Do you smell that because I do! It is love and it’s spreading through the air like wildfire. Love isn’t the only thing in the air but so is a question. Who’s responsible for all this love? Here’s a hint; he is a baby with wings and a belt full of arrows. It’s Cupid!

The story of Cupid is a part of Greek Mythology but hasn’t always been a baby with wings. During the Greek 700 BC, he was characterized as a young man in his late teens. Containing sharp handsome looks and threatening for his unique power to force people to fall in love. Cupid can also be known as Eros, the Greek God of love and the son of Aphrodite. Aphrodite is an ancient Greek Goddess and she symbolizes loves, beauty, passion, and procreation.

Cupid was also a victim of his love when he fell for a moral princess of outstanding beauty, Psyche. Something Aphrodite did not approve of. “In another allegory, Cupid’s mother, Venus (Aphrodite), became so jealous of the beautiful mortal Psyche that she told her son to induce Psyche to fall in love with a monster,” Laura Schumm.

Cupid would visit Psyche at night when no one, not even his lover could see him. Until one day Psyche’s curiosity got the best of her and she lit a lamp exposing the person who she has been in love with this whole time had been Eros. In a fit of disappointment and anger, Cupid had left her all alone. Psyche wandered all over the place to find Cupid until she stumbled upon the temple of Aphrodite. Knowing Psyche would do anything to be reunited with Cupid, Aphrodite gave Psyche some tedious tasks. The last one being a little box that needed to be delivered to the underworld. She was warned not to open the box but curiosity, once again, got the better of Psyche. Opening this box left her in a deadly slumber leaving Cupid devastated and heartbroken. Unlike other Greek Mythology stories, the one of Cupid and Psyche ends off on a better note. Psyche had been granted the gift of immortality, reuniting the two lovers once more.

Seeking individuals to pierce with his magical arrows tipped with love cupid may be depicted in many various ways. The image of Cupid has traveled, but it always seems to stay relatively similar from the last. An angel-like figure with arrows and blindfolds even. A symbolism of love and how blind it can be. “Without warning he selects his targets and forcefully strikes at their hearts, bringing confusion and irrepressible feelings or, in the words of Hesiod, he ‘loosens the limbs and weakens the mind’ (Theogony, 120). Love is blind and most importantly does not discriminate. Whether or not someone is open for love is completely thrown out the window.

Valentine’s Day started booming near the 18th century and pushing the image of Cupid more prominently to the public. Spotted almost everywhere when the love season of February rolls around the corner, Cupid has turned from a simple Greek God to a new modern symbol of love and how blind it can be. Now the ethereal Cupid is showcased on the store shelves for many to see as a simple symbol of love. “Quite frankly I think I see him too often,” Luke complains. During this era; Cupid had morphed from a symbol or an erotic handsome God to a known image we see of him now, the baby with wings.