How far Cupid has fallen in majesty and dignity, perhaps a sentence ordained by the gods for all the little archer's mischievous plots of unrequited love.
Once a stately, fully matured, celestial Greek god — the incarnation of all that was masculine beauty and passionate love — Cupid today is a toddleresque, bare-bottomed matchmaker.
How did it come to this, oh venerated son of Venus and Mars?
When did the esteemed, paradoxical god of love and war become a spokesman for a commercial holiday? And when did he cast his lot with the lower-tier of holiday mascots, the likes of Baby New Year and (gasp!) the Groundhog?
"If I saw a little naked baby flying around with wings and arrows, I'd call the cops," says Matt Cantrell, 18, of Walhalla.
How hard the mighty fall.
Once upon a time, an arrow from Cupid's bow was sufficient explanation for the mystery of unquenchable romantic passion.
But in today's world of online computer matchmaking and assessing your five-year plan before making a commitment, Cupid has gotten the shaft.
"I don't believe in Cupid," says Dannyalle Houston, 23, of Mauldin. "I just think the right person comes at the right time and you choose him."
Indeed, Cupid's fall from popular romantic theory — he was exalted in Shakespeare's sonnets, but rap duo OutKast sings that Cupid gets no respect — mirrors how society's view of love has changed.
Too often these days, lonely, would-be lovers are trying to pick when they will fall in love, shunning Cupid in favor of a modern-day contrived formula for partner procurement, says Hadley Mullen, a marriage counselor at Compass of Carolina.
"The whole dating thing has completely changed," Mullen says. "It appears to be more methodical and planned."
Tradition has taught us about love at first sight and happily ever after, and that isn't entirely a relic, she says. But people seem more these days to try to force love and commitment rather than leave it up to chance and fate.
So many seekers, she says, are overly committed to the mission of acquiring a mate, which oftentimes seems a commando raid carried out at a properly designated time.
People are becoming increasingly creative in how they seek out a mate, Mullen says, going to civic clubs and shopping online for love.
Cupid is not allowed to work his magic, she says, and the overzealous and overprepared often find that "when you look too hard, you don't find it."
But Cupid?
Beth Davis just isn't buying it.
Whatever fate there is in the grand scheme of amore, says Davis, 18, of Walhalla, it lies in the hands of a power much higher than a frisky cherub. To find a lover is to find a soulmate, she says, citing a far more spiritual outlook on love.
And that divine love includes looking at Valentine's Day differently than the ancient ideas of passion. The notion of Mom and Dad and Little Sister being struck by Cupid's arrow for your sake on a day like today is kind of … well, weird.
"It's important to share Valentine's Day with all the people you love — and not just in a romantic way," Davis says.
This is not what Cupid once represented, classical literature historians say.
"We view him today in one facet, when really he's multifaceted," says Noelle Zeiner, assistant professor of classics at the College of Charleston.
Cupid's beginnings are found in early Greek mythology and under a different name, Eros, Zeiner says .
At first, she says, Eros was an abstract universal incarnation of the powerful, life-giving force of procreation.
As the story goes, she says, Eros was the son of Aphrodite (the goddess of love and desire) and Aries (the god of war).
When the Romans adopted the Greek gods and changed their names, Eros became Cupid, Aphrodite became Venus and Aries became Mars.
Cupid, the embodiment of masculine beauty, was an indentured servant to his mother, carrying out her will to inflict love on those of her choosing, far from the free-willed assassin of today.
By the 4th century B.C., the harsh, militaristic undertones of imperial Rome transformed Cupid into a winged warrior of love replete with arrows.
Love, in Roman terms, was a force to be feared and reckoned with, one in which raging infatuation could mean disaster, says Alan Miller, professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of South Carolina.
"Desire can be violent, hence the arrows," Miller says. "That's the way the ancients thought of desire."
Romanticism went on hiatus in the Middle Ages as church leaders shunned such vagaries, he says.
But with the revival of romance and the rediscovery of love poetry during the Renaissance, Cupid returned to his rightful occupation: a playful image of winged desire.
This image is carried on into classic literature, with the likes of Shakespeare, who pulled from archetype of Cupid to create characters such as the mischievous, match-making Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Today, in modern American culture, Cupid has lost his once-glorious luster and has instead become a gimmicky, marketable caricature to sell Valentine's Day gifts.
"In Greek myth, he's not the kind of baby Kewpie doll thing," Miller says. "The resonance of the image has lost its meaning."
Even if Cupid is a shell of himself, his arrows still may penetrate, at least in metaphorical terms.
Though love may no longer bow to the whims of a winged archer, says Houston, the unbeliever, the spirit of Cupid isn't entirely lost in commercial oblivion.
"In a way, you are Cupid," Houston says, "because you are the giver and you make the choice."
Not quite a naked cherub with wings and a bow, but perhaps enough.
