valentine with god of aphrodite (by: wikipedia)

Aphrodite (Latin: Venus) is the classical Greek goddess of love and beauty. According to Greek oral poet hesoid, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus. Cronus threw his severed genitals into the sea, and from the aphros (sea foam) arose Aphrodite.

Because of her beauty, other gods feared that jealousy would interrupt the peace between them and lead to war, and so Zeus married her to Hephaestus who was not viewed as a threat. However, Aphrodite became instrumental in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis' lover and a surrogate mother.

Aphrodite is also known as Kypris and Cytherea after the two places, Cyprus and Kythira, which claim her birth. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. Myrtle, dove, sparrow, and swan are sacred to he

valentine with god of cupid (by: wikipedia)

In Roman mytology, Cupid (Latin cupido) is the god of erotic love and beauty. He is also known by another one of his Latin names, Amor (cognate with kama).

In popular culture Cupid is frequently shown shooting his bow to inspire romantic love, often as an icon of valentine's day.

n the Roman version, Cupid was the son of Venus (goddess of love) and Mars (god of war), and in the Greek version he was the son of Aphrodite and was named Eros, the following story is almost identical in both cultures. He was often depicted with wings, a bow, and a quiver of arrows. When his mother got extremely jealous of the princess Psyche, who was so loved by her subjects that they forgot to worship Venus, she ordered Cupid to make her fall in love with the ugliest and poorest man in the world. When Cupid saw Psyche, though, he was so overcome with her unnatural beauty that he dropped an arrow on his foot, and fell in love with her himself.

Following that, Cupid visited Psyche every night in his invisible form and told her not to try to see him. Psyche, though, incited by her two older sisters who told her Cupid was a monster, tried to look at him and angered Cupid. When he left, she looked all over the known world for him until at last the leader of the gods, Jupiter, gave Psyche the gift of immortality so that she could be with him. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas (pleasure) and Psyche became a goddess of the soul.

Cupid has also become a symbol of valentine's day.

The more common holiday representation of Cupid is a putto with a bow and arrow. Sometimes the arrow will have a heart for its tip. Cupid is most often seen either nude or diapered. Cupid is sometimes blindfolded, as in the expresion "love is blind."

Modern reinterpretations of the Cupid character may leave off traditional details of the character, but the character's main purpose generally remains to help or make people fall in love or possibly engage in physical intimacy.