Cupid

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In the Heaven of Venus, Carlo Martello recalls how the ancient peoples paid divine honors not only to Venus but also to Dione, her mother, and to Cupid, her son. The note on the verse specifies that Cupid is the winged boy son of Venus, armed with a bow and arrows with which he wounded the hearts of men, and recalls the Virgilian episode in which, having assumed the likeness of the boy Ascanius, he sat in Dido's lap and wounded her treacherously. Dante thus places the figure among the ancient false and deceitful gods of paganism, whose erroneous worship is overcome by the Christian truth revealed in Paradise.