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
Church of the Holy Mother of God, Asen's Fortress rather than providing the name of the church. At the turn of the 20th century, the Church of the Holy Mother of God was the terminus of two rival religious processions organised by the ethnic Greek and Bulgarian communities of Asenovgrad. A Greek procession took place in 1899 and a comparable Bulgarian one was carried out several years later. These processions began after a man claimed to have seen lights and heard chants while passing near the then-abandoned church. Both processions ended with a Divine Liturgy observed at night by the church. After suffering damage during an earthquake in 1904,