Judgement of Paris

• 1. The Discordant Apple

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  Eris, the goddess of discord, arrived at a wedding feast she had not been invited to. She carried a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides and threw it into the proceedings as a prize of beauty. The apple bore an inscription in ancient Greek that read kallistēi, meaning "to the fairest one". Three guests claimed the prize immediately. Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite argued over who deserved the golden object. They demanded Zeus judge which of them was fairest. He refused to decide himself because he feared angering any of the three powerful women.

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• 2. Paris The Judge

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  Zeus appointed Paris, a Trojan mortal prince, to settle the dispute. Hermes guided the three goddesses to Mount Ida where they met him. Paris had recently shown exemplary fairness when Ares in bull form bested his own prize bull. The shepherd-prince unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the god in that earlier contest. Now he faced three immortal women standing before him on the mountain slope. Each attempted to bribe him with her powers. Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia. Athena promised wisdom and skill in war. Aphrodite offered the world's most beautiful woman.

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• 3. Bribery And Betrayal

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  Aphrodite won the contest by promising Helen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus. She enhanced her charms with flowers and song using the Charites and Horai according to fragments from the Cypria. Paris accepted Aphrodite's bribe and awarded the apple to her. Consequently, Paris carried Helen off to Troy. The Greeks invaded Troy for Helen's return. This event became the instrumental casus belli of the Trojan War. Some stories claim Helen was kidnapped by Paris and Trojans while others say she followed willingly because she felt affection for him too. Hera joined the Greeks in battle against Paris's Trodians as punishment for losing the judgment.

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• 4. Ancient Artistic Depictions

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  Greek vase painters depicted the subject as early as the sixth century BC. An Attic black-figure neck amphora by Swing Painter dates between 540 and 530 BC and now resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ancient artists usually showed all three goddesses nude though only Aphrodite appears unclothed in ancient art sometimes. A storage jar depicting the scene from Athens around 360 BC shows three women facing right. The subject appeared wordlessly on an ivory and gold votive chest from the seventh-century BC tyrant Cypselus at Olympia. Pausanias described this chest as showing the Judgement of Paris without words.

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• 5. Renaissance Revival

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  Northern Mannerist painters revived the subject frequently to showcase female nudes in easel paintings. Lucas Cranach the Elder painted the subject many times, supposedly twenty-three compositions. Marcantonio Raimondi created an engraving around 1515 that made Paris's Phrygian cap an attribute in most later versions. Rubens painted several compositions of the subject at different points in his career. Watteau and Angelica Kauffman were among artists who painted the subject in the eighteenth century. Academic artists of the nineteenth century painted the Judgement of Paris frequently while progressive contemporaries like Renoir and Cézanne did so less often. Later artists including Salvador Dalí continued to use the classic myth.

• 6. Operatic Adaptations

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  The story became the basis for operas set to music by composers from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Thomas Arne composed a highly successful score to William Congreve's libretto in 1742. Christoph Willibald Gluck concluded his opera Le Cinesi with a ballet sequence called The Judgement of Paris sung as a vocal quartet in 1754. Francesco Cilea included a Judgement of Paris ballet sequence in his 1902 opera Adriana Lecouvreur. Antonio Cesti wrote Il pomo d'oro with a prologue and five acts using a libretto by Francesco Sbarra between 1611 and 1668. Four composers set music to Congreve's libretto in London during 1700 and 1701.

• 7. Discordian Symbolism

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  Modern post-modern religion Discordianism adopted the apple inscription as a central symbol of its faith. Kallisti written on a golden apple has become a principal symbol within this movement. Most versions of Principia Discordia spell the word as καλλιχτι though this is incorrect according to Gregory Hill. He explained that an IBM typewriter he used did not have all Greek letters coinciding with Latin ones. Zeus's failure to invite Eris refers to as The Original Snub in Discordian mythology. The word kallistēi appears in ancient Greek texts meaning "to the fairest one" while modern non-philological texts often misspell it.

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