Eros (love)

Eros (/ˈɪrɒs/ or /ˈɛrɒs/; Ancient Greek: ἔρως érōs "love" or "desire") is one of the four words in Ancient Greek which can be rendered into English as "love". The other three are storge, philia, and agape. Eros refers to "passionate love" or romantic love; storge to familial love; philia to friendship as a kind of love; and agape refers to "selfless love", or "charity" as it is translated in the Christian scriptures (from the Latin , dearness).

The term erotic is derived from eros. Eros has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a much wider sense, almost as an equivalent to "life energy".

In the classical world, erotic love was generally referred to as a kind of madness or theia mania ("madness from the gods"). This love passion was described through an elaborate metaphoric and mythological schema involving "love's arrows" or "love darts", the source of which was often the personified figure of Eros (or his Latin counterpart, Cupid), or another deity (such as Rumor). At times the source of the arrows was said to be the image of the beautiful love object itself. If these arrows were to arrive at the lover's eyes, they would then travel to and 'pierce' or 'wound' his or her heart and overwhelm him/her with desire and longing (love sickness). The image of the "arrow's wound" was sometimes used to create oxymorons and rhetorical antithesis concerning its pleasure and pain.

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