Judgment of Paris

Judgment of Paris
Main Story:
The evil goddess of Discord, Eris, was naturally not popular in Olympus, and when the gods gave a banquet they were apt to leave her out. Resenting this deeply, she determined to make trouble — and she succeeded very well indeed. At an important marriage, that of King Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis, to which she alone of all the divinities was not invited, she threw into the banqueting hall a golden apple marked For the Fairest. Of course all the goddesses wanted it, but in the end the choice was narrowed down to three: Aphrodite, Hera and Pallas Athena. They asked Zeus to judge between them, but very wisely he refused to have anything to do with the matter. He told them to go to Mount Ida, near Troy, where the young prince Paris, also called Alexander, was keeping his father's sheep. He was an excellent judge of beauty, Zeus told them. Paris, though a royal prince, was doing shepherd's work because his father Priam, the King of Troy, had been warned that this prince would some day be the ruin of his country, and so had sent him away. At the moment Paris was living with a lovely nymph named Oenone. His amazement can be imagined when there appeared before him the wondrous forms of the three great goddesses. He was not asked, however, to gaze at the radiant divinities and choose which of them seemed to him the fairest, but only to consider the bribes each offered and choose which seemed to him best worth taking. Nevertheless, the choice was not easy. What men care for most was set before him. Hera promised to make him Lord of Europe and Asia; Athena, that he would lead the Trojans to victory against the Greeks and lay Greece in ruins; Aphrodite, that the fairest woman in all the world be his. Paris, a weakling and something of a coward, too, as later events showed, chose the last. He gave Aphrodite the golden apple. That was the Judgment of Paris, famed everywhere as the real reason why the Trojan War was fought
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Based from: Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Other Informations and Background Stories:
Mount Pelion – wooded mountain in Thessaly where the wedding was held.
Tethis – A sea nymph or the goddess of water, leader of the fifty Nereids and the daughter of the ancient sea god, Nereus and Doris. She is the mother of Achilles.
Peleus –The son of Aeacus,king of Aegina and Endeis. He is the husband of Thetis and father of Achilles.
Nymph – minor female nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Nymphs are regarded as divine spirits who animate nature and are usually depicted as beautiful and young maiden.
How Thetis was married to Peleus
Zeus had received a prophecy that Thetis's son would become greater than his father, like Zeus had dethroned his father to lead the succeeding pantheon. In order to ensure a mortal father for her eventual offspring, Zeus and his brother Poseidon made arrangements for her to marry a human, Peleus, son of Aeacus, but she refused him.
Proteus, an early sea-god, advised Peleus to find the sea nymph when she was asleep and bind her tightly to keep her from escaping by changing forms. She did shift shapes, becoming flame, water, a raging lioness, and a serpent. Peleus held fast. Subdued, she then consented to marry him.
Eris – Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord. The one who threw the apple of discord at the banquet.
Kallisti – Greek word which means “To/For The Fairest”
Garden of Hesperides – Hera's orchard in the west, where either a single tree or a grove of immortality-giving golden apples grew. The Hesperides,the nymphs, were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally plucked from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden a never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard. However, in the mythology surrounding the Judgement of Paris, the Goddess of Discord Eris managed to enter the garden.
Mount Ida- also called the “Mountain of the Goddesses”. There are two sacred Mountain Ida, one in Crete and one in Turkey which is also known as Phrygian Ida. It is a mountain associated with Mother Goddess Cybele or its equivalent is Rhea.
Paris – also known as Alexander. He is the son of Priam.
Oenone – a mountain nymph(an oread) on Mount Ida. She was the first wife of Paris whom he also abandoned because of Helen.
How Paris met Oenone at Mount Ida
Paris, son of the king Priam and the queen Hecuba, fell in love with Oenone when he was a shepherd on the slopes of Mount Ida, having been exposed in infancy (owing to a prophecy that he would be the means of the destruction of the city of Troy) but rescued by the herdsman Agelaus.
Helen – She was considered the most beautiful man in the world. She is the daughter of Zeus and Leda and the wife of Menalaus,king of Sparta

Prepared by:
Levi Joshua De Guia
IV-St. Lambert