Paris

Also Known As: Greek Πάρις; also and equally called Alexandros, Ἀλέξανδρος, Latinised Alexander, the name Homer uses more often than Paris and the only one the Cypria summary knows
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: He is the most beautiful man in the story and the worst fighter in it, and both facts drive the plot.
Role in Mythos: He judges the three goddesses, takes Helen from Sparta, and kills Achilles with an arrow, which is to say he starts the Trojan War and ends its greatest fighter.
Relation to Humans: He is entirely mortal and dies of an ordinary wound that goes bad. The people who know him best in the poem, his brother and the woman he took, are the two who speak to him most contemptuously.

Before he was born his mother dreamed she gave birth to a burning torch, and that the fire got out of the room and took the city with it. Priam asked his son Aesacus what it meant, because Aesacus had been taught to read dreams by his grandfather, and Aesacus gave the answer nobody wants: the child is being born to destroy his country, so expose him. A servant called Agelaus carried the baby up Mount Ida and left him there. Five days later Agelaus came back and the child was alive, having been nursed by a bear. He took him home and raised him as his own and called him Paris.

That is Apollodorus, and it is worth noticing what the story is doing. Everyone in it behaves sensibly. The dream is read correctly, the order is given, the order is carried out. It fails anyway, and it fails through the one thing nobody planned for, which is that a servant went back to check.

He grew up herding on the mountain, and he got his second name there. Apollodorus says he was called Alexandros because he drove off cattle thieves and defended the flocks, which is a tidy folk etymology for a name that means something close to defender of men. There is a more tempting explanation and it needs handling carefully. A Hittite treaty of the early twelfth century names one Alaksandu, king of Wilusa, and Wilusa is very probably Ilios. It is a genuinely exciting coincidence and it is not evidence. The date sits too early for the Troy that burned, a Greek-sounding name on the throne of an Anatolian vassal city raises more problems than it settles, and the Wilusa equation itself is not universally accepted. The honest position is that a Bronze Age Anatolian king had a name resembling this one, and that nobody has shown they are the same man.

The Judgement is the thing everybody knows about him and it is the thing Homer is least interested in. The Iliad refers to it exactly once, at the very end, in three lines about the folly of Alexandros who insulted two goddesses and praised the one who offered him ruinous desire. That is the whole Homeric account, and ancient editors were suspicious enough of the passage to argue about whether it belonged. The fuller story lived in the epic that came before: the Cypria had Eris start a quarrel about beauty among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite at a wedding, and Zeus send them to Ida to be judged by a herdsman. The apple, the inscription, the three bribes laid out in order like an auction, all of that is later still. The scene painters loved is a scene Homer had no use for.

He brought Helen back to Troy and the poem gives him one long unflattering moment for it. In the third book he offers to settle the whole war by fighting Menelaus alone, and does it well enough for about a minute, and then Menelaus has him by the helmet strap and is dragging him across the ground by the throat. Aphrodite breaks the strap, wraps him in mist, and sets him down in his own scented bedroom, and then goes and fetches Helen to him. Helen arrives and tells him she wishes he had died out there. He suggests they go to bed. They go to bed. Outside, Menelaus is walking up and down the lines looking for a man who is no longer on the field.

He is not a good soldier and the poem never pretends he is. He fights with the bow, which the Iliad treats as the weapon of a man unwilling to come close; Diomedes, hit in the foot by one of his arrows, tells him a real man’s weapon leaves a different kind of mark. But the arrows land. He wounds Diomedes, he wounds Machaon the healer, he wounds Eurypylus, and the cumulative effect on the Greek line is worse than anything his brother manages with a spear. Hector, dying, tells Achilles he will be killed at the Scaean gate by Paris and Apollo, and in the lost Aethiopis that is exactly what happens. The best fighter in the world is brought down by the worst one, with help.

His own death is quieter and nobody records it kindly. In the Little Iliad, Philoctetes meets him in single combat and kills him with the bow of Heracles, and Menelaus, who has been waiting ten years, mutilates the body. Apollodorus adds the ending that hurts. Wounded, Paris went back up Ida to Oenone, the nymph he had married when he was still a herdsman and left when he sailed for Sparta, because she had the skill to heal him. She refused, out of a grievance she had every right to. He was carried back down and died on the road. Then she changed her mind, went after him, found the body, and hanged herself.

What he has, in the end, is one asset. He is beautiful, and beauty in this story is not decoration but a weapon with a specific and limited range: it wins him Aphrodite’s vote and Helen’s bed and nothing else whatsoever. It does not make anyone respect him. It does not stop his brother telling him to his face that Troy would be better off if he had never been born. And it buys him no protection at all once the goddess who granted it has other business, because the arrow that finds him is the same kind he had been putting into other men for ten years. Within the year Helen is married to his brother Deiphobus and the war grinds on without him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Paris in Greek mythology?

Paris was a prince of Troy, son of Priam and Hecuba, who is equally often called Alexandros in the ancient sources. He judged the beauty contest between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, took Helen from Sparta and so began the Trojan War, and later killed Achilles with an arrow at the Scaean gate.

Why is Paris also called Alexandros?

Both names are ancient and Homer uses Alexandros more often than Paris. Apollodorus explains the second name by saying he was called Alexandros because he drove off cattle thieves and defended the flocks while working as a herdsman on Mount Ida. A Hittite treaty naming a king Alaksandu of Wilusa has been proposed as a historical connection, but the date and the context both make that identification doubtful.

What does Homer actually say about the Judgement of Paris?

Very little. The Iliad mentions it only once, in three lines near the end of the poem, describing the folly of Alexandros in insulting two goddesses and favouring the one who offered him desire. Ancient editors questioned whether those lines belonged in the poem at all, and the detailed beauty contest, including the golden apple, comes from the Cypria and from later mythographers rather than from Homer.

Did Paris kill Achilles?

Yes, with help. The dying Hector prophesies in the Iliad that Achilles will be killed at the Scaean gate by Paris and Apollo, and the summary of the lost epic Aethiopis records that Achilles is killed by Paris and Apollo while storming the citadel. Paris fought with a bow rather than in close combat, which the Iliad treats as a mark against him.

How did Paris die?

Philoctetes killed him in single combat using the bow of Heracles, according to the summary of the Little Iliad, after which Menelaus mutilated the corpse. Apollodorus adds that the wounded Paris went back to Mount Ida to ask his abandoned wife Oenone to heal him, that she refused, and that she hanged herself after finding him dead.