Amor or Cupid. A pagan god, whose birth story has been told in a hundred different ways, and who has been portrayed in a hundred various forms that almost all suit him equally. Amor is constantly asking and Plato therefore could call him a son of poverty; he loves trouble and seems to have been born of Chaos, as Hesiod claims. He is a mixture of sublime feelings and base desires; that is what Sappho had apparently heard when she depicted Amor as the son of heaven and of the earth. I believe that Simonides viewed him as the combination of strength and weakness that marks the behavior of lovers, thinking that Amor was son of Venus and Mars. He was born, according to Alcmaeon, of Flora and Zephyrus, symbols of fickleness and beauty. Some cover his eyes to show how blind he is; and others put a finger over his mouth to signal that he desires discretion. He is given wings, symbols of levity; a bow, symbol of power; and a lit torch, symbol of liveliness. According to some of the Poets, this god is a friend of peace, of harmony, and of all virtues; others say he is a cruel god, and the father of all vices: and in fact, Amor is all of these things according to the souls he over which he has dominion. He even has several of these characteristics in quick succession within the same soul: there are some lovers who show him in one minute as the son of heaven, and in the next as the son of hell. Amor is also sometimes represented holding by its wings a butterfly that he torments and tears apart: this allegory is too clear to require an explanation.