Which Roman god of love was the son of Venus?

Which Roman god of love was the son of Venus? Cupid was the Roman god of desire and love traditionally identified as Venus’s son.

Cupid, also called Amor, embodied desire, erotic love, attraction, and affection. Roman writers and artists adapted him from the Greek god Eros. In the later classical tradition, Cupid was usually presented as the child of Venus and Mars, the god of war—a pairing that symbolized the attraction between love and conflict.

His familiar bow and arrows emerged especially strongly in Hellenistic and later artistic traditions. Anyone struck by one of Cupid’s arrows was overwhelmed by desire. Wings suggested that love is changeable or difficult to control, while his childlike appearance hinted at love’s irrational and mischievous nature.

Cupid was not simply a Valentine’s Day mascot in antiquity. He often appeared alongside Venus in art and household devotion, and his best-known literary story is Cupid and Psyche, preserved in Apuleius’s second-century novel The Golden Ass. Some ancient sources vary on his father, but Venus is the consistent maternal figure and the key clue here.