Eros makes Eros the first of all the gods to come into existence. The Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries featured Eros as a very original god, but not quite primordial, since he was the child of Night (Nyx). Aristophanes (c. 400 BC), influenced by Orphism, relates the birth of Eros: In later myths, he was the son of the deities Aphrodite and Ares: it is the Eros of these later myths who is one of the erotes. Eros was associated with athleticism, with statues erected in "gymnasia", and "was often regarded as the protector of homosexual love between men." Eros was depicted
433 Eros into an Earth-crosser within as short an interval as two million years, and has a roughly 50% chance of doing so over a time scale of 10–10 years. It is a potential Earth impactor, about five times larger than the impactor that created Chicxulub crater and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Eros is named after the Greek god of love, Erōs. It is pronounced or sometimes . The rarely used adjectival form of the name is "Erotian" . Eros is also the first masculine name for an asteroid. The NEAR Shoemaker probe visited Eros twice, first with a