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Cupid

Mythology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Roman deity of erotic love and desire, often depicted with a bow and arrows, and son of Venus (Aphrodite in Greek myth).

Detailed Definition
Cupid (Amor in Latin) wields arrows that incite love or aversion, embodying love’s irrational and transformative power. In Roman poetry—especially Ovid’s “Amores” and “Metamorphoses”—he is a mischievous yet potent force disrupting reason and order. Renaissance and later poets adopted Cupid as a symbol of passionate love’s capriciousness, using him to explore themes of vulnerability, obsession, and the tension between heart and mind.
Example
Example in poetry:
Cupid, god of desire, appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses as the mischievous archer who wounds Apollo with love for Daphne; In Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, Cupid falls in love with Psyche, illustrating love’s trials; Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” describes Cupid’s arrows as “blindly shot”; Edmund Spenser in The Faerie Queene portrays Cupid as both beautiful and dangerous; John Donne in “The Canonization” mocks Cupid’s power while affirming love’s sanctity; Propertius opens his elegies by blaming Cupid for his poetic suffering.
Additional Notes
Cupid (Greek Eros) is the god of erotic desire, often depicted as a winged boy with bow and arrows; in Roman poetry, he is both playful and cruel—central to Ovid’s Amores and Metamorphoses, and Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche; symbolizes love’s irrational power, capable of humbling gods and mortals alike; useful for exploring paradoxes: love as both divine and disruptive, sweet and painful; students should note his duality—sometimes blind (impulsive), sometimes insightful; related to Venus (his mother) and contrasted with reason or pietas; Renaissance and later poets (e.g., Donne) inherit this complex portrayal.
Also Known As
Eros Amor The Blind Archer Winged Desire
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