Valentine’s Day, celebrated annually on February 14, has always held a romantic theme in the air. It was a day of romance and love, in honor of Saint Valentine, a 3rd-century Roman Saint, famous for his defiance of Emperor Claudius II (also known as Claudius Gothicus) by secretly marrying couples to prevent young men from going to war. And he was executed on February 14th, around the year AD 270.

As the tradition goes on, Valentine’s Day gained an iconic figure during the 18th and 19th centuries, a winged child carrying a bow and an arrow, Cupid. Cupid is the Roman god of love, desire, and affection, with his roots originating from Greek’s Eros. According to mythology, Cupid is the son of Mars (Ares) and Venus (Aphrodite), and in some instances, mainly in early Greek mythology, Eros is depicted as the primordial deity of procreation (Hesiod).

The most notable mention of Cupid was in “Cupid and Psyche”, a story that originated from Apuleius’s 2nd-century AD novel “The Golden Ass”, which tells of the love of Cupid and a mortal princess, Psyche. Originally, Eros was a handsome god whose golden arrows incite love, while the leaden ones sow aversion in those they strike. It wasn’t until the Hellenistic period that he transitioned to the mischievous, winged child we know today.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. Whose your Valentine?