Thus, the whole of Greece moved against Troy in force and the Trojan War began. When Paris took her to Troy, Menelaus invoked this oath. Therefore, following Odysseus 's advice, her father Tyndareus made all suitors promise to defend Helen's marriage to the man he chose for her. This triggered the war because Helen was famous for her beauty throughout Achaea ancient Greece, and had many suitors of extraordinary ability. The Spartans' expedition to retrieve Helen from Paris in Troy is the mythological basis of the Trojan War. Helen was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta a fact Aphrodite neglected to mention, so Paris had to raid Menelaus's house to steal Helen from him - according to some accounts, she fell in love with Paris and left willingly. Paris chose Aphrodite and therefore Helen. Aphrodite offered the love of the most beautiful woman on Earth: Helen of Sparta. Athena offered skill in battle, wisdom and the abilities of the greatest warriors. Hera offered ownership of all of Europe and Asia. Still, Paris could not decide, as all three were ideally beautiful, so the goddesses attempted to bribe him to choose among them. Having been given permission by Zeus to set any conditions he saw fit, Paris required that the goddesses undress before him alternatively, the goddesses themselves chose to disrobe to show all their beauty. Escorted by Hermes, the three goddesses bathed in the spring of Mount Ida and approached Paris as he herded his cattle. He thus appointed Paris to select the most beautiful. Knowing that choosing any of them would bring him the hatred of the other two, Zeus did not want to take part in the decision. They started a quarrel so they asked Zeus to choose one of them. The goddesses thought to be the most beautiful were Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, and each one claimed the apple. Every deity and demi-god had been invited, except Eris, the goddess of strife no one wanted a troublemaker at a wedding. In celebration of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, Lord Zeus, father of the Greek pantheon, hosted a banquet on Mount Olympus. It was this apparent honesty in judgment that prompted the gods of Olympus to have Paris arbitrate the divine contest between Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena. Paris gave the crown to Ares without hesitation. Ares responded to this challenge by transforming himself into a bull and easily winning the contest. Paris began to set it against rival herdsmen's own prize bulls and it defeated them all.įinally, Paris offered a golden crown to any bull that could defeat his champion. One bull began to win these bouts consistently. Paris's chief distraction at this time was to pit Agelaus's bulls against one another.
When Paris later left her for Helen, she told him that if he ever was wounded, he should come to her, for she could heal any injury, even the most serious wounds. She was skilled in the arts of prophecy and medicine, which she had been taught by Rhea and Apollo, respectively. Her father was Cebren, a river-god or, according to other sources, she was the daughter of Oeneus.
She was a nymph from Mount Ida in Phrygia. While still a child, he routed a gang of cattle-thieves and restored the animals they had stolen to the herd, thereby earning the surname Alexander "protector of men". Paris's noble birth was betrayed by his outstanding beauty and intelligence. He returned to Priam bearing a dog's tongue as evidence of the deed's completion. The herdsman, unable to use a weapon against the infant, left him exposed on Mount Ida, hoping he would perish there cf. Instead, Paris's father prevailed upon his chief herdsman, Agelaus, to remove the child and kill him. Hecuba was also unable to kill the child, despite the urging of the priestess of Apollo, one Herophile. Though Paris was indeed born before nightfall, he was spared by Priam. On the day of Paris's birth, it was further announced by Aesacus that the child born of a royal Trojan that day would have to be killed to spare the kingdom, being the child that would bring about the prophecy. This dream was interpreted by the seer Aesacus as a foretelling of the downfall of Troy, and he declared that the child would be the ruin of his homeland.