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 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