Tuesday 14 February 2017

EROS PRIMORDIAL

#eros #myth #aristophanes #hesiod


EROS was originally depicted as a young man or a teenager.
The depictions of Eros as a child or baby start appearing in the Hellenistic era.

The myth about his origins seems to have changed sometime in the Classical or Hellenistic era.

People writing about him in Greek and Latin started describing him as the Child of Aphrodite and Ares but in older texts he is a PRIMORDIAL being predating the Olympians.

Hesiod Lines 116 Theogony describes Chaos as being the first being and then Earth line 120-22 Tartaros and EROS "most beautiful among the immortal gods"

One fragment of Parmenides writings also refers to EROS as the first born

Aristophanes uses a variant of  this older myth to support the idea the Birds are the oldest of beings .

Lines 696 >> Eros is the first being to be born from an egg with golden wings and Line 703 hence the Birds are the children of love since they fly ...


Aristophanes version came form the Orphic mysteries but all these writers Hesiod, Parmenides and Aristophanes and the Orphics agree EROS is something primordial and ever young.


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