Eros

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Mural featuring the winged Eros

Eros is the Greek god of sensual love and desire. He is a son of Ares and Aphrodite and is the brother of Adrestia, Anteros, Phobos, Deimos and Harmonia. In the Roman mythology, he is known as Cupid or Amor. Eros is one of the Erotes, a group of winged gods, which includes also his brother Anteros. The Roman equivalent of this group is called the Cupids.

Mythology

Eros was ordered by his mother, Aphrodite, whom after becoming jealous of a human woman, Psyche and her beauty that rivaled the goddess, told Eros to make her fall in love with an ugly and unworthy man. Eros instead, fell in love with the woman himself after accidentally pricking himself with his own arrow after shooting her. After various trials and tribulation on both lover's parts, they overcome them and are eventually married.

Legacy and influence

During the Peloponnesian War, the Spartan misthios Kassandra visited the altar dedicated to Eros and Anteros. She also recovered a bow in the Andania Mine which was dedicated to Eros.

When the zodiac was created, the story of Eros and Aphrodite fleeing the monster Typhon by becoming fishes and leaping into the sea was used as the basis for the sign of Pisces.

By the 2nd century CE, Eros and Psyche's love story was written about by Apuleius in his book, The Golden Ass. A book that the Assassin Mentor Ezio Auditore da Firenze would later purchase a copy of in the early 16th century.

The oil painting, Sacred and Profane Love by Titian was completed in 1514, and was later displayed at Monteriggioni after being purchased by a young Ezio Auditore. In 1526 or 1528, the Italian painter and sculptor Giulio Romano painted a scene of the two lovers, and entitled it simply as Cupid and Psyche. Circa 1600, Mars Venus en Amor was painted by the Dutch painter Pieter Isaacsz. In 1808, another painting by the same name as Romano's was completed by the British-American painter Benjamin West.

In 2012 Clay Kaczmarek included the story of Psyche and Cupid in a set of puzzles he'd hidden within the Animus for his successor to find. In Clay's puzzle it was suggested that their story was one of those in which "the seeds were planted as two worlds became one" and included the painting by Benjamin West. In a former puzzle, Cupid was excluded from a list of individuals known to have possessed an Apple of Eden, represented by the Giulio Romano's painting of the lovers. Another puzzle that excluded Cupid was one that showed depicitions of the sun. Later that year a picture of Eros with the Greek pantheon was included in the Abstergo Files dossiers given to participants of the Animi Training Program. The specific file, "File.0.20\FC_Entities" labeled Eros and the other Greek gods as "Mankind's progenitors".

Gallery

Cupid beside Venus in Sacred and Profane Love by Titian

Cupid and Psyche by Benjamin West

Cupid and Pysche by Giulio Romano

Mars Venus en Amor by Pieter Isaacsz

Eros (bottom) amongst the Greek pantheon

Eros and Aphrodite engraved on stone as the sign Pisces

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed II (painting only)
• Assassin's Creed: Revelations (painting only)
• Assassin's Creed: Pirates (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR (mentioned in Database entry only)