EROS
The walk

VII

When Desire Grew Wings

The traditions overlap. Emphasis changes. Later centuries remembered a child with a bow and took that image for the whole story.

Attic red-figure bobbin showing a winged youth Eros, Louvre CA 1798.
ANCIENT OBJECTClassical: a winged youth. Louvre CA 1798.
Hellenistic terracotta of a winged adolescent Eros in flight, from Myrina.
ANCIENT OBJECTHellenistic Myrina, ca. 200 to 150 BCE. Still an adolescent in flight. Met 28.55.
Bronze statue of a small winged Eros asleep on a rock.
ANCIENT OBJECTHellenistic bronze type: Eros as a sleeping child. Met 43.11.4.

The image changed.

The question remained.

Bow, arrow and torch become common later. Cult at Thespiae, Pausanias says, began with an unwrought stone. Most men, he adds, consider Eros youngest and a son of Aphrodite. The oldest hymns he knew did not all agree.

Terracotta figure of Eros, museum lighting, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ANCIENT OBJECTTerracotta, later body for an older force.
Notes · 4
  1. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.27.1–9.27.3 (Jones, 1918).
  2. Bronze statue of Eros sleeping. Greek, Hellenistic, 3rd–2nd century BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 43.11.4. Rogers Fund, 1943. CC0. Source
  3. Terracotta statuette of Eros flying. Greek, Myrina, ca. 200–150 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 28.55. Gift of Waters S. Davis, 1928. CC0. Source
  4. Attic red-figure bobbin with Eros. Musée du Louvre, CA 1798. Fifth century BCE.

Eve

When Desire Grew Wings

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