Mary Beard

And three goddesses start to squabble about who owns the apple.

And there's Hera, the quote, queen of the gods.

There's Athena, the oversimplifying goddess of wisdom.

And there's Aphrodite.

And they can't work out who owns the apple, therefore.

And in order to adjudicate, and I think the quite hard to see

the details of how this adjudication came into being, it was decided that Paris, who was the, at that point, estranged son of King Priam of Troy and his wife, Queen Hecuba, should decide which goddess had the apple.

So he meets them and they all kind of, each one tries to sort of bribe him saying, if you choose me,

I'll give you something you really need.

Hera's going to give him power.

Athena's going to give him wisdom.

Paris chooses Aphrodite as the fairest because her bribe is the best.

She is offering him the most beautiful, desirable woman in the world for himself.

And that woman is Helen.

What is going to happen?

is that Paris is going to go and get Helen.

That's what he does.

Now, Helen was so beautiful and had been so lovely and had been such a prize for Menelaus when he won her as his wife.

in order to kind of stop future trouble and civil war amongst the Greeks, they had agreed that if anybody came and pinched Helen, all the Greek kings and leaders would gang up and support Menelaus and go and get her back.

And in a nutshell...