Cupid is a drug!

Diana the huntress would have far less trouble keeping her nymphs in check if she had a counteractive potion to Cupid's arrows.Many disasters in mythology could have been prevented if we had the ability to fashion an anti-love potion like the New York Times article seems to suggest. Juliet may have survived their love had they not been tempted by the trickery of a magical potion. The whole premise of a love potion has fascinated us for most of our history.Potions and elixirs, the philosopher’s stone etc, are all popular reoccurring themes in literature. If you do a general search on Google for “potions” you come across the term Pharmakon fairly often. The term Pharmakon comes from Greek and is used by Plato in his dialogues to discuss the ambiguity of words. Pharmakon itself has multiple meanings, the two most popular being a poison and the other a beneficial medicine. We find the same double meaning in our modern word “drug”. You can find a pretty interesting discussion of the word from Plato’s Phaedrus (I found a copy in the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory).Just as Plato and Socrates debate the value of the word and the dangers associated with pharmakon, we have to consider the dangers and benefits of having a society that can control its own lusts and desires by chemical means. This same debate seems to be fought by Diana and Aphrodite when they begin to argue the virtues of both chastity and love and the affect that Cupid has on both. Here I like to think of Cupid as the actual love potion (he has the ability to both cause love and stop love in mythology). Aphrodite and Diana are left to evaluate his actions as either good or bad. Diana most definitely sees Cupid’s affect as inherently bad for chastity and purity while Aphrodite considers Cupid’s arrow to be something beneficial and medicinal to all people. sorry if you see html code,tried to get it all out.