i. He was herding his cattle on Mount Gargarus, the highest peak of Ida, when Hermes, accompanied by Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite, delivered the golden apple and Zeus’s message: ‘Paris, since you are as handsome as you are wise in affairs of the heart, Zeus commands you to judge which of these goddesses is the fairest.’
Paris accepted the apple doubtfully. ‘How can a simple cattle-man like myself become an arbiter of divine beauty?’ he cried. ‘I shall divide this apple between all three.’
‘No, no, you cannot disobey Almighty Zeus!’ Hermes replied hurriedly. ‘Nor am I authorized to give you advice. Use your native intelligence!’
‘So be it,’ sighed Paris. ‘But first I beg the losers not to be vexed with me. I am only a human being, liable to make the stupidest mistakes.’
The goddesses all agreed to abide by his decision.
‘Will it be enough to judge them as they are?’ Paris asked Hermes, ‘or should they be naked?’
‘The rules of the contest are for you to decide,’ Hermes answered with a discreet smile.
‘In that case, will they kindly disrobe?’
Hermes told the goddesses to do so, and politely turned his back.
j. Aphrodite was soon ready, but Athene insisted that she should remove the famous magic girdle, which gave her an unfair advantage by making everyone fall in love with the wearer. ‘Very well,’ said Aphrodite spitefully. ‘I will, on condition that you remove your helmet – you look hideous without it.’
‘Now, if you please, I must judge you one at a time,’ announced Paris, ‘to avoid distractive arguments. Come here, Divine Hera! Will you other two goddesses be good enough to leave us for a while?’
‘Examine me conscientiously,’ said Hera, turning slowly around, and displaying her magnificent figure, ‘and remember that if you judge me the fairest, I will make you lord of all Asia, and the richest man alive.’12
‘I am not to be bribed, my Lady…. Very well, thank you. Now I have seen all that I need to see. Come, Divine Athene!’
k. ‘Here I am,’ said Athene, striding purposefully forward. ‘Listen, Paris, if you have enough common sense to award me the prize, I will make you victorious in all your battles, as well as the handsomest and wisest man in the world.’
‘I am a humble herdsman, not a soldier,’ said Paris. ‘You can see for yourself that peace reigns throughout Lydia and Phrygia, and that King Priam’s sovereignty is uncontested. But I promise to consider fairly your claim to the apple. Now you are at liberty to put on your clothes and helmet again. Is Aphrodite ready?’
l. Aphrodite sidled up to him, and Paris blushed because she came so close that they were almost, touching.
‘Look carefully, please, pass nothing over…. By the way, as soon as I saw you, I said to myself: “Upon my word, there goes the handsomest young man in Phrygia! Why does he waste himself here in the wilderness herding stupid cattle?” Well, why do you, Paris? Why not move into a city and lead a civilized life? What have you to lose by marrying someone like Helen of Sparta, who is as beautiful as I am, and no less passionate? I am convinced that, once you two have met, she will abandon her home, her family, everything, to become your mistress. Surely you have heard of Helen?’
‘Never until now, my Lady. I should be most grateful if you would describe her.’
m. ‘Helen is of fair and delicate complexion, having been hatched from a swan’s egg. She can claim Zeus for a father, loves hunting and wrestling, caused one war while she was still a child – and, when she came of age, all the princes of Greece were her suitors. At present she is married to Menelaus, brother of the High King Agamemnon; but that makes no odds – you can have her if you like.’
‘How is that possible, if she is already married?’
‘Heavens! How innocent you are! Have you never heard that it is my divine duty to arrange affairs of this sort? I suggest now that you tour Greece with my son Eros as your guide. Once you reach Sparta, he and I will see that Helen falls head over heels in love with you.’
‘Would you swear to that?’ Paris asked excitedly.
Aphrodite uttered a solemn oath, and Paris, without a second thought, awarded her the golden apple.
By this judgement he incurred the smothered hatred of both Hera and Athene, who went off arm-in-arm to plot the destruction of Troy; while Aphrodite, with a naughty smile, stood wondering how best to keep her promise.13
n. Soon afterwards, Priam sent his servants to fetch a bull from Agelaus’s herd. It was to be a prize at the funeral games now annually celebrated in honour of his dead son. When the servants chose the champion bull, Paris was seized by a sudden desire to attend the games, and ran after them. Agelaus tried to restrain him: ‘You have your own private bull fights, what more do you want?’ But Paris persisted and in the end, Agelaus accompanied him to Troy.
o. It was a Trojan custom that, at the close of the sixth lap of the chariot race, those who had entered for the boxing match should begin fighting in front of the throne. Paris decided to compete and, despite Agelaus’s entreaties, sprang into the arena and won the crown, by sheer courage rather than by skill. He also came home first in the foot-race, which so exasperated Priam’s sons that they challenged him to another; thus he won his third crown. Ashamed at this public defeat, they decided to kill him and set an armed guard at every exit of the stadium, while Hector and Deiphobus attacked him with their swords. Paris leaped for the protection of Zeus’s altar, and Agelaus ran towards Priam, crying: ‘Your Majesty, this youth is your long-lost son!’ Priam at once summoned Hecabe who, when Agelaus displayed a rattle which had been found in Paris’s hands, confirmed his identity. He was taken triumphantly to the palace, where Priam celebrated his return with a huge banquet and sacrifices to the gods. Yet, as soon as the priests of Apollo heard the news, they announced that Paris must be put to death immediately, else Troy would perish. This was reported to Priam, who answered: ‘Better that Troy should fall, than that my wonderful son should die!’14
p. Paris’s married brothers presently urged him to take a wife; but he told them that he trusted Aphrodite to choose one for him, and used to offer her prayers every day. When another Council was called to discuss the rescue of Hesione, peaceful overtures having failed, Paris volunteered to lead the expedition, if Priam would provide him with a large, well-manned fleet. He cunningly added that, should he fail to bring Hesione back, he might perhaps carry off a Greek princess of equal rank to hold in ransom for her. His heart was, of course, secretly set on going to Sparta to fetch back Helen.15
q. That very day, Menelaus arrived unexpectedly at Troy and inquired for the tombs of Lycus and Chimaerus, Prometheus’s sons by Celaeno the Atlantid: he explained that the remedy which the Delphic Oracle had prescribed him for a plague now ravaging Sparta was to offer them heroic sacrifices. Paris entertained Menelaus and begged, as a favour, to be purified by him at Sparta, since he had accidentally killed Antenor’s young son Antheus with a toy sword. When Menelaus agreed, Paris, on Aphrodite’s advice, commissioned Phereclus, the son of Tecton, to build the fleet which Priam had promised him; the figurehead of his flag-ship was to be an Aphrodite holding a miniature Eros. Paris’s cousin Aeneas, Anchises’s son, agreed to accompany him.16 Cassandra, her hair streaming loose, foretold the conflagration that the voyage would cause, and Helenus concurred; but Priam took no notice of either of his prophetic children. Even Oenone failed to dissuade Paris from the fatal journey, although he wept when kissing her good-bye. ‘Come back to me if ever you are wounded,’ she said, ‘because I alone can heal you.’17
r. The fleet put out to sea, Aphrodite sent a favouring breeze, and Paris soon reached Sparta, where Menelaus feasted him for nine days. At the banquet, Paris presented Helen with the gifts that he had brought from Troy; and his shameless glances, loud sighs and bold signals caused her considerable embarrassment. Picking up her goblet he would set his lips to that part of the rim from which she had drunk; and once she found the words ‘I love you, Helen!’ t
raced in wine on the table top. She grew terrified that Menelaus might suspect her of encouraging Paris’s passion; but, being an unobservant man, he cheerfully sailed off to Crete, where he had to attend the obsequies of his grandfather Catreus, leaving her to entertain the guests and rule the kingdom during his absence.18
s. Helen eloped with Paris that very night, and gave herself to him in love at the first port of call, which was the island of Cranaë. On the mainland, opposite Cranaë, stands a shrine of Aphrodite the Uniter, founded by Paris to celebrate this occasion.19 Some record untruthfully that Helen rejected his advances, and that he carried her off by force while she was out hunting; or by a sudden raid on the city of Sparta; or by disguising himself, with Aphrodite’s aid, as Menelaus. She abandoned her daughter Hermione, then nine years of age, but took away her son Pleisthenes, the greater part of the palace treasures, and gold to the value of three talents stolen from Apollo’s temple; as well as five serving women, among whom were the two former queens, Aethra the mother of Theseus, and Theisadië Peirithous’s sister.20
t. As they steered towards Troy, a great storm sent by Hera forced Paris to touch at Cyprus. Thence he sailed to Sidon, and was entertained by the king whom, being now instructed in the ways of the Greek world, he treacherously murdered and robbed in his own banqueting hall. While the rich booty was being embarked, a company of Sidonians attacked him; these he beat off, after a bloody fight and the loss of two ships, and came safely away. Fearing pursuit by Menelaus, Paris delayed for several months in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt; but, reaching Troy at last, he celebrated his wedding with Helen.21 The Trojans welcomed her, entranced by such divine beauty; and one day, finding a stone on the Trojan citadel, which dripped blood when rubbed against another, she recognized this as a powerful aphrodisiac and used it to keep Paris’s passion ablaze. What was more, all Troy, not Paris only, fell in love with her; and Priam took an oath never to let her go.22
u. An altogether different account of the matter is that Hermes stole Helen at Zeus’s command, and entrusted her to King Proteus of Egypt; meanwhile, a phantom Helen, fashioned from clouds by Hera (or, some say, by Proteus) was sent to Troy at Paris’s side: with the sole purpose of provoking strife.23
v. Egyptian priests record, no less improbably, that the Trojan fleet was blown off its course, and that Paris landed at the Salt Pans in the Canopic mouth of the Nile. There stands Heracles’s temple, a sanctuary for runaway slaves who, on arrival, dedicate themselves to the god and receive certain sacred marks on their bodies. Paris’s servants fled here and, after securing the priests’ protection, accused him of having abducted Helen. The Canopic warden took cognizance of the matter and reported it to King Proteus at Memphis, who had Paris arrested and brought before him, together with Helen and the stolen treasure. After a close interrogation, Proteus banished Paris but detained Helen and the treasure in Egypt, until Menelaus should come to recover them. In Memphis stands a temple of Aphrodite the Stranger, said to have been dedicated by Helen herself.
Helen bore Paris three sons, Bunomus, Aganus, and Idaeus, all of them killed at Troy while still infants by the collapse of a roof; and one daughter, also called Helen.24 Paris had an elder son by Oenone, named Corythus, whom, in jealousy of Helen, she sent to guide the avenging Greeks to Troy.25
1. Apollodorus: iii. 10.8; Hyginus: Fabula 81; Ovid: Heroides xvii. 104; Hesiod: The Catalogues of Women, Fragment 68, pp. 192 ff., ed. Evelyn-White.
2. Hesiod: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: iii. 10. 9; Pausanias: iii. 20. 9; Hyginus: Fabula 78.
3. Stesichorus, quoted by scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 249; Hyginus: loc. cit.; Apollodorus: iii. 11. 2.
4. Homer: Odyssey iv. 12–14; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad iii. 175; Cypria, quoted by scholiast on Euripides’s Andromache 898; Pausanias: ii. 18. 5.
5. Cypria, quoted by Proclus: Chrestomathy 1; Apollodorus: Epitome iii.1–2; Cypria, quoted by scholiast on Homer’s Iliad i. 5.
6. Apollodorus: iii. 12. 5; Hyginus: Fabula 91; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 86; Pindar: Fragment of Paean 8, pp. 544–6, ed. Sandys.
7. Tzetzes: On Lycophron 224 and 314; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid ii. 32; Pausanias: x. 12. 3; Scholiast on Euripides’s Andromache 294; and on Iphigeneia in Aulis 1285; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 91; Konrad von Würzburg: Der trojanische Krieg 442 ff. and 546 ff.
8. Dictys Cretensis: iii. Rawlinson: Excidium Troiae.
9. Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Ovid: Heroides xvi. 51–2 and 359–6c.
10. Ovid: Heroides v. 12–30 and 139; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 57; Apollodorus: iii. 12.6.
11. Trojanska Priča p. 159; Rawlinson: Excidium Troiae.
12. Ovid: Heroides xvi. 71–3 and v. 35–6; Lucian: Dialogues of the Gods 20; Hyginus: Fabula 92.
13. Hyginus: loc. cit.; Ovid: Heroides xvi. 149–52; Lucian: loc. cit.
14. Rawlinson: Excidium Troiae; Hyginus: Fabula 91; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid v. 370; Ovid: Heroides xvi. 92 and 361–2.
15. Dares: 4–8; Rawlinson: loc. cit.
16 Tzetzes: On Lycophron 132; Cypria, quoted by Produs: Chrestomathy 1; Homer: Iliad v. 59 ff.; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 2; Ovid: Heroides xvi. 115–16.
17. Cypria, quoted by Proclus: loc. cit.; Ovid: Heorides xvi. 119 ff. and 45 ff.; Apollodorus: iii. 12. 6.
18. Ovid: Heroides xvi. 21–3; xvii. 74 ff.; 83 and 155 ff.; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 3; Cypria, quoted by Proclus: loc. cit.
19. Ovid: Heroides xvi. 259–62; Cypria, quoted by Proclus: loc. cit.; Pausanias: iii. 22. 2; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Homer: Iliad iii. 445.
20. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid i. 655; Eustathius on Homer, p. 946; Apollodorus: loc. cit.; Cypria, quoted by Proclus: loc. cit.; Dares: 10; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 132 ff.; Hyginus: Fabula 92.
21. Homer: Odyssey iv. 227–30; Proclus: Chrestomathy 1; Dictys Cretensis: i. 5; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 4; Tzetzes: OnLycophron 132 ff.
22. Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid ii. 33.
23. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 5; Euripides: Electra 128 and Helen 31 ff.; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid i. 655 and ii 595; Stesichorus, quoted by Tzetzes: On Lycophron 113.
24. Herodotus: ii. 112–15; Dictys Cretensis: v. 5; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 851; Ptolemy Hephaestionos: iv.
25. Conon: Narrations 22; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 57 ff.
1. Stesichorus, the sixth-century Sicilian poet, is credited with the story that Helen never went to Troy and that the war was fought for ‘only a phantom’. After writing a poem which presented her in a most unfavourable light, he went blind, and afterwards learned that he lay under her posthumous displeasure (see 164. m). Hence his palinode beginning: ‘This tale is true, thou didst not go aboard The well-benched ships, nor reach the towers of Troy,’ a public declamation of which restored his sight (Plato: Phaedrus 44; Pausanias: iii. 19. 11). And, indeed, it is not clear in what sense Paris, or Theseus before him, had abducted Helen. ‘Helen’ was the name of the Spartan Moon-goddess, marriage to whom, after a horse-sacrifice (see 81. 4), made Menelaus king; yet Paris did not usurp the throne. It is of course possible that the Trojans raided Sparta, carrying off the heiress and the palace treasures in retaliation for a Greek sack of Troy, which Hesione’s story implies. Yet though Theseus’s Helen was, perhaps, flesh and blood (see 103. 4), the Trojan Helen is far more likely to have been ‘only a phantom’, as Stesichorus claimed.
2. This is to suggest that the mnēstēres tēs Helenēs, ‘suitors of Helen’, were really mnēstēres tou hellēspontou, ‘those who were mindful of the Hellespont’, and that the solemn oath which these kings took on the bloody joints of the horse sacred to Poseidon, the chief patron of the expedition, was to support the rights of any member of the confederacy to navigate the Hellespont, despite the Trojans and their Asiatic allies (see 148. 10; 160. 1 and 162. 3). After all, the Hellespont bore the name of their own goddess Helle. The Helen story comes, in fact, from the Ugarit epic Keret, in which Keret’s lawful wife Huray is abducted to Udm.
3. Paris’s birth follows the mythical pattern of
Aeolus (see 43. c), Pelias (see 68. d), Oedipus (see 105. a), Jason (see 148. b), and the rest; he is the familiar New Year child, with Agelaus’s son for twin. His defeat of the fifty sons of Priam in a foot-race is no less familiar (see 53.3 and 60. m). ‘Oenone’ seems to have been a title of the princess whom he won on this occasion (see 53.3; 60. 4; 98. 7 and 160. d).
He did not, in fact, award the apple to the fairest of the three goddesses. This tale is mistakenly deduced from the icon which showed Heracles being given an apple-bough by the Hesperides (see 133. 4) – the naked Nymph-goddess in triad – Adanus of Hebron being immortalized by the Canaanite Mother of All Living, or the victor of the foot-race at Olympia receiving his prize (see 53. 7); as is proved by the presence of Hermes, Conductor of Souls, his guide to the Elysian Fields.
4. During the fourteenth century B.C., Egypt and Phoenicia suffered from frequent raids by the Keftiu, or ‘peoples of the sea’, in which the Trojans seem to have taken a leading part. Among the tribes that gained a foothold in Palestine were the Girgashites (Genesis x. 16), namely Teucrians from Gergis, or Gergithium, in the Troad (Homer: Iliad viii. 304; Herodotus: v. 122 and vii. 43; Livy: xxxviii. 39). Priam and Anchises figure in the Old Testament as Piram and Achish (Joshua x. 3 and 1 Samuel xxvii. 2); and Pharez, an ancestor of the racially mixed tribe of Judah, who fought with his twin inside their mother’s womb (Genesis xxxviii. 29), seems to be Paris. Helen’s ‘bleeding stone’, found on the Trojan citadel, is explained by the execution there of Priam’s nephew Munippus: Paris remained the queen’s consort at the price of annual child sacrifice. Antheus (‘flowery’), is a similar victim: his name, a title of the Spring Dionysus (see 85. 2), was given to other unfortunate princes, cut down in the flower of their lives; among them the son of Poseidon, killed and flayed by Cleomenes (Philostephanus: Fragment 8); and Antheus of Halicarnassus, drowned in a well by Cleobis (Parthenius: Narrations 14).