Longing for love Online
By Suzanne Fields
February 13, 2006

St. Valentine's Day, like a lot of other things, is rooted in love and war, tragedy and comedy. Emperor Claudius II is the man responsible for the February traffic in notes of love and romance. He needed disciplined soldiers to fight his Third Century wars, and reckoned that men unhindered by wives and children would make the best fighters. He outlawed marriage for his men. Valentine, a priest in Rome, didn't think that was right. He secretly tied young lovers in knots.

He was beheaded for his trouble, which got him canonized, and lovers have been losing their heads on St. Valentine's Day ever since. Cupid became the symbol of the holiday, armed with bow and arrow to stitch the hearts of lovers. Cupid shot himself in the foot so that Psyche would fall in love with him, but on the condition that she never look at him. When she opened her eyes, as a woman is wont to do, Cupid, suffering commitment terror, fled. There's a modern moral hidden somewhere in that story. The rest