Eros important than that of Aphrodite. However, in late antiquity, Eros was worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, and the fourth day of every month was sacred to him (also shared by Herakles, Hermes and Aphrodite). According to Hesiod's "Theogony" (c. 700 BC), one of the most ancient of all Greek sources, Eros (the god of love) was the fourth god to come into existence, coming after Chaos, Gaia (the Earth), and Tartarus (the abyss). Homer does not mention Eros. However, Parmenides (c. 400 BC), one of the pre-Socratic philosophers,
433 Eros 433 Eros Eros ( ; minor planet designation: 433 Eros), provisional designation , is a stony and elongated asteroid of the Amor group and the first discovered and second-largest near-Earth object with a mean-diameter of approximately 16.8 kilometers. Visited by the NEAR Shoemaker space probe in 1998, it became the first asteroid ever studied from orbit. The eccentric asteroid was discovered by German astronomer Carl Gustav Witt at the Berlin Urania Observatory on 13 August 1898, and later named after Eros, a god from Greek mythology. Eros was discovered on 13 August 1898, by Carl Gustav Witt at Berlin Urania