Cupīdo

, a celebrated deity among the ancients, god of love, and love itself. There are different traditions concerning his parents. Cicero mentions three Cupids: one, son of Mercury and Diana; another, son of Mercury and Venus; and the third, of Mars and Venus. Plato mentions two; Hesiod, the most ancient theogonist, speaks only of one, who as he says, was produced at the same time as Chaos and the earth. There are, according to the more received opinions, two Cupids, one of whom is a lively, ingenious youth, son of Jupiter and Venus; whilst the other, son of Nox and Erebus, is distinguished by his debauchery and riotous disposition. Cupid is represented as a winged infant, naked, armed with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. On gems, and all other pieces of antiquity, he is represented as amusing himself with some childish diversion. Sometimes he appears driving a hoop, throwing a quoit, playing with a nymph, catching a butterfly, or trying to burn with a torch; at other times he plays upon a horn before his mother, or closely embraces a swan, or with one foot raised in the air, he, in a musing posture, seems to meditate some trick. Sometimes, like a conqueror, he marches triumphantly, with a helmet on his head, a spear on his shoulder, and a buckler on his arm, intimating that even Mars himself owns the superiority of love. His power was generally known by his riding on the back of a lion, or on a dolphin, or breaking to pieces the thunderbolts of Jupiter. Among the ancients he was worshipped with the same solemnity as his mother Venus, and as his influence was extended over the heavens, the sea, and the earth, and even the empire of the dead, his divinity was universally acknowledged, and vows, prayers, and sacrifices were daily offered to him. According to some accounts, the union of Cupid with Chaos gave birth to men, and all the animals which inhabit the earth, and even the gods themselves, were the offspring of love, before the foundation of the world. Cupid, like the rest of the gods, a umed different shapes; and we find him in the Æneid putting on, at the request of his mother, the form of As can i us, and going to Dido’s court, where he inspired the queen with love. Virgil , Æneid , bk. 1 , li. 693 , . — Cicero , de Natura Deorum , bk. 3 .— Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 1 , fable 10.— Hesiod , Theogony , li. 121 , . — Oppian , Halieutic a , bk. 4 .— Cynegetic a , bk. 2 .— Bion , Idylls , bk. 3 .— Moschus. — Euripi des , Hippolytus .— Theocritus , Idylls , poems 3, 11, .