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In Greek mythology, Eros was the primordial god of lust, love, and intercourse; he was also worshipped as a fertility deity. His name is the root of words such as erotic. He was the son of the deity Aphrodite. Like Dionysus, he was sometimes referred to as Eleutherios, "the liberator". His Roman equivalent was Cupid, "desire", also known as Amor, "love". According to tradition, Eros was the patron of male love, while Aphrodite ruled the love between men and women. His statue could be found in the palaestrae or wrestling schools, one of the principal venues for men to associate with their beloveds, and it was to him that the Spartans sacrificed before battle. Meleager records this role in a poem preserved in the Greek Anthology: "The Cyprian queen, a woman, hurls the fire that maddens men for women; but Eros himself sways the passion for males." Throughout Greek thought, there appear to be two sides to the conception of Eros; in the first, he is a primeval deity who embodies not only the force of erotic love but also the creative urge of ever-flowing nature, the firstborn Light that is responsible for the coming into being and ordering of all things in the cosmos. Eros sprang forth from the primordial Chaos together with Gaia, the Earth, and Tartarus, the underworld; he burgeons forth from an egg laid by Night conceived with Darkness. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, he was worshiped as Protogonus', the first-born.

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