Eros was desire itself given a body — the god of love, attraction, and the irresistible pull that draws beings together. To the Greeks he was no mere chubby cherub (that softening came later); he was one of the most ancient and powerful forces in existence, the energy without which nothing in the cosmos would ever have joined, mated, or been born.
The Primordial Force — or the Mischievous Son
Greek myth gives Eros two very different origins, and both are true in their way. In the oldest cosmogonies, Eros was a primordial god, born near the beginning alongside Chaos and Gaia — the fundamental attractive force that caused the first beings to come together and create. In later, more familiar myth, he is the son of Aphrodite, a winged youth (or boy) who serves as the agent of his mother's power. The Greeks held both: love is at once the oldest power in the universe and a capricious, personal thing that strikes without warning.
The Arrows of Desire
Eros carried a bow and two kinds of arrows: golden-tipped ones that kindled uncontrollable love, and lead-tipped ones that bred aversion. With these he played havoc among gods and mortals alike, often on his mother's orders — or his own whim. It was Eros who, stung by Apollo's teasing, shot the sun-god with a golden arrow and the nymph Daphne with a leaden one, dooming Apollo to a love that fled from him. No one, not even the great gods, was safe from his aim.
Eros and Psyche
His own great love story is among the most beautiful in myth. Sent to punish the mortal princess Psyche, whose beauty rivalled Aphrodite's, Eros instead fell in love with her himself. Their romance — her forbidden glimpse of him by lamplight, her loss of him, her impossible trials to win him back, and their final reunion when Psyche was made immortal — is a profound allegory of the soul (psyche) seeking and ultimately uniting with love.
The Power That Moves the World
Eros endures because he names the force the Greeks recognised as one of the strongest in existence — stronger, often, than reason, duty, or will. To be struck by Eros was to lose control utterly, for good or ruin. He is the god of the most universal and the most ungovernable of all experiences.
His arrows still fly — we just call the wound by other names now.