Eros: the Primordial of Love and Desire

Eros was the Primordial entity of Love and Desire, one of the first beings born out of Chaos at the beginning of creation. He came into existence in the Void before the world had form, a sibling of Gaia, Ouranos, Erebus, Nyx, and Tartarus, the eldest generation of the Primordials. Where his brothers and sisters embodied the earth, the heavens, the darkness, the night, and the abyss, Eros was the act of procreating new life through love, the force that drove generation itself in the early cosmos. He took no known part in the recorded wars of gods and mortals, yet his name survived on mortal tongues into the age of Kratos, and his dominion over desire was held to exceed even that of Aphrodite.

Born out of Chaos#

In the beginning there was Chaos, the void from which all of creation came, at once a disordered state of the universe and the deity embedded within it. Out of that formlessness emerged the first of the Protogenoi, the primordial gods who came before Titans and Olympians alike. The earth, named Gaia, came out of Chaos first, and after her the infernal pit named Tartarus. Then came the act of procreating new life through love, and that force the Greeks called Eros. Soon afterward Chaos spawned the darkness, Erebus, and the night, Nyx, who joined together to bring forth the light, Aether, and the day, Hemera. So the young cosmos filled with its first powers, and Eros was counted among the most prominent of the Primordials beside Chaos, Gaia, Ouranos, Erebus, Nyx, and Tartarus.

Eros emerged self-formed at the beginning of time alongside his siblings, and he was the driving force behind the generation of new life in the early cosmos. Where the other elder Primordials were places and states of being, Eros was a principle at work within all of them, desire itself given divine form. Certain Greek traditions named him Phanes, a primal being hatched from the world egg at creation, while others equated him with Thesis, meaning Creation, and with Physis, meaning Nature, for in their understanding the increase of life and the order of the living world were both his doing.

Power over love and desire#

As the god of Love and Desire, Eros held absolute control and divine authority over love, lust, and desire. His command of those passions was far superior to that of Aphrodite, the Olympian goddess of love who governed the same domain in a later age. Born directly out of Chaos, he carried power on the scale of the eldest beings of creation, though its full measure was never put to record, for he was never known to loose it in any conflict the histories preserved.

Little else was written of his deeds through the long ages that followed. When Ouranos prevailed in the great war of the Primordials and assumed lordship over creation, no account preserved what part, if any, Eros took in the fighting. The Furies, born from the rage and madness of that same war, were reckoned among his sisters. Of the eldest generation, Gaia and Ouranos both eventually perished, while Erebus, Nyx, and Tartarus endured within their own domains. Eros's own end, if it ever came, was never recorded. His last known dwelling was Mount Olympus, the seat of the Olympian gods, and his condition thereafter remained unknown.

The winged son of Aphrodite#

The Greeks did not tell a single story of Eros. In some accounts he was the eldest of powers, self-created out of Chaos before the world began. In others he was a far younger god, the son of Ares and Aphrodite, pictured as a winged youth armed with a bow and arrows. That younger likeness was honored in the home of the love goddess herself: two statues of a winged youth bearing bows and arrows crowned the frame of Aphrodite's bed within her chamber, images in the manner of her demigod son.

One tradition told of a trouble in his childhood. Aphrodite grew worried that her son remained a child and might stay one forever, and she brought the boy to Themis for counsel. Themis judged that Eros was not growing because of his solitude, and she told Aphrodite to give him a brother. Aphrodite then bore a second god of love, Anteros, and in his brother's company Eros at last began to grow. In this younger form he was the god of erotic desire, the kindler of passion between mortals and immortals alike, a gentler office than the world-shaping generation the eldest accounts ascribed to him.

A name invoked in the age of Kratos#

Eros took no known hand in the wars that consumed the Olympian age, yet his name endured among mortals. When the Spartan Kratos broke his blood oath to Ares and was hunted by The Furies, the Fury Tisiphone sought to snare the Spartan's mind with illusions of pleasure and ease. Within one such vision, a woman, delighted by Kratos's presence, hailed him as a gift Eros had sent them, glorying in his arrival.

The greeting was spoken inside a Fury's deception, yet it reflected how the mortals of that age understood the god. To them Eros remained the giver of love's gifts, a power to be praised when desire was answered, and his name came readily to those who lived for pleasure. Whether the Primordial himself still watched the mortal world by then, no record tells. Among the first beings of creation, he remained the least seen and the most quietly present, at work wherever new life was made.