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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Paris Biography PARIS (Lat., front Gk. of unknown etymology), known also as ALEXANDER. In Greek legend, the second son of Priam, King of Troy, and Hecuba, and cause of the Trojan War. Before his birth his mother dreamed that she gave birth to a firebrand which set the whole city on fire, a dream interpreted by Helenus or by Cassandra to signify that the child she was about to bear would bring the city to destruction. To prevent this, Priam caused the infant to be exposed upon Mount Ida, where he was found and brought up by shepherds, among whom he distinguished himself. After a time he accidentally discovered his origin and was received by Priam as his son, but continued to live on Mount Ida, where he had won the love of the nymph OEnone, daughter of the river god Cebren. While on Ida he was appealed to as umpire in a strife which had arisen among the three goddesses, Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite, as to which of them was the most beautiful, the goddess Eris (strife) having revengefully flung among them at the marriage of Peleus, to which she had not, been invited, a golden apple (of discord) inscribed To the Most Beautiful. Each of the three endeavored to bribe Paris. Hera promised him dominion over Asia; Athene, military renown; Aphrodite, the fairest of women for his wife, Helen, the wife of Menelaus. Paris decided in favor of Aphrodite; hence the animosity which the other two goddesses displayed against the Trojans in the war that followed. Paris now equipped a ship and sailed to Sparta, where, with the aid of Aphrodite, he persuaded Helen to elope with him to Troy. Upon this followed the Trojan War, in which the princes of Greece joined Menelaus in his endeavor to recover his wife. In the Iliad Paris is at times represented as a cowardly boaster, disliked by his countrymen, while in other portions of the poem he is valiant and skillful in battle, especially with his bow, and is welcomed on his appearance by the Trojans. His manly beauty is more than once praised. In the epic he was said to have killed Achilles, while the latter was trying to force his way through the Scæan gate into Troy, but the later writers elaborated the story of Achilles' love for Polyxena, and represented the Greek hero as enticed to the temple of Apollo and there murdered by Paris and Deiphobus. The Little Iliad told of the death of Paris by the arrow of Philoctetes, who owned the bow and arrows of Heracles. The Alexandrian writers, to whom the OEnone episode is due, added the version that when Paris was wounded by the poisoned arrow he turned for healing to his old love on Mount Ida. She, however, refused to employ her magic skill, and the hero died, whereupon in remorse she destroyed herself. Representations of Paris are common in ancient art. On the earlier vases he appears at the judgment of the goddesses as a shepherd, often with the lyre and amid his flocks. Later he is usually distinguished by the Phrygian cap and sometimes by the close-fitting trousers and jacket worn by Asiatics. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 71-72. |