Paris

Paris, also called ALEXANDER, was, according to Homer, the second son of Priam and Hecuba, sovereigns of Troy. His mother dreamed during her pregnancy that she gave birth to a firebrand, which set the whole city on fire, a dream interpreted by Æsacus or Cassandra to signify that Paris should originate a war which should end in the destruction of his native city. To prevent its realisation Priam caused the infant to be exposed upon Mount Ida by a shepherd named Agelaus, who found him five days after alive and well, a she-bear having given him suck. Agelaus brought him up as his own son, and he became a shepherd on Mount Ida. An accident having revealed his parentage, old Priam became reconciled to his son, who married Ænone, daughter of a river-god. But his mother's dream was to come true for all that. He was appealed to, as umpire, in a strife which had arisen among the three goddesses, Hera (Juno), Athene (Minerva), and Aphrodite (Venus), as to which of them was the most beautiful, the goddess Eris (Strife) having revengefully flung among them, at a feast to which she had not been invited, a golden apple (of discord) inscribed 'To the Most Beautiful.' Each of the three endeavoured to bribe him. Hera promised him dominion and wealth; Athene, military renown and wisdom; Aphrodite, the fairest of women for his wife—to wit, Helen, the wife of King Menelaus. Paris decided in favour of Aphrodite—hence the animosity which the other two goddesses displayed against the Trojans in the war that followed. Paris now carried Helen away from Lacedæmon in her husband's absence. 'The rape of Helen' is the legendary cause of the Trojan war (see HELEN, TROY). Paris deceitfully slew Achilles in the temple of Apollo. He was himself wounded by a poisoned arrow, and went to Mount Ida to be cured by Ænone; but she avenged herself for his unfaithfulness to her by refusing to assist him, and he returned to Troy to die.