<P> A variation is found in The Kingis Quair, a 15th - century poem attributed to James I of Scotland, in which Cupid has three arrows: gold, for a gentle "smiting" that is easily cured; the more compelling silver; and steel, for a love - wound that never heals . </P> <P> In the tale of Cupid the honey thief, the child - god is stung by bees when he steals honey from their hive . He cries and runs to his mother Venus, complaining that so small a creature shouldn't cause such painful wounds . Venus laughs, and points out the poetic justice: he too is small, and yet delivers the sting of love . </P> <P> The story was first told about Eros in the Idylls of Theocritus (3rd century BC). It was retold numerous times in both art and poetry during the Renaissance . The theme brought the Amoretti poetry cycle (1595) of Edmund Spenser to a conclusion, and furnished subject matter for at least twenty works by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop . The German poet and classicist Karl Philipp Conz (1762--1827) framed the tale as Schadenfreude ("taking pleasure in someone else's pain") in a poem by the same title . In a version by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a writer of the German Enlightenment, the incident prompts Cupid to turn himself into a bee: </P> <P> Through this sting was Amor made wiser . The untiring deceiver concocted another battle - plan: he lurked beneath the carnations and roses and when a maiden came to pick them, he flew out as a bee and stung her . </P>

Why is cupid the symbol of valentines day