Once, as the gods were at the wedding-feast of Peleus and Thetis, Eris (Strife) flung among them an apple, inscribed: Let the fairest take it. Straightway a discussion arose as to whom it was meant for, and Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each claimed it. Zeus decided that the quarrel should be adjudged by reference to the handsomest of all mortal men, Paris, son of Priam, who was then living on Mt. Ida. Therefore Hermes announced the contest to him, and led before him the three goddesses, upon whom he looked in all the divine glory of their beauty. Each of them offered him a bribe to decide in her favour; Hera promised him royal greatness, Athena success in war, and Aphrodite the loveliest of alI women for his wife. Paris decided in her favour, and by her help carried off Helen from Menelaos, thereby earning the undying hatred of the other two goddesses, and also the vengeance of all the other wooers of Helen, who had sworn to respect her choice and champion her husband (see the file about Tyndareos).
So began the War of Troy, and so also was achieved the plan of Zeus, who saw that mankind were growing too numerous and burdening Earth with their weight, and therefore wished to lessen their numbers by a destructive war.
Such is the tale; how it originated is less easy to say. It seems to be unknown to Homer—and to anyone else among the ancient Greeks whose writings have survived—before the Epic Cycle. This raises a suspicion at least that the famous Judgment of Paris is merely part of the epic machinery of the Kypria, a (lost) poem which appears in language and in plot to have presupposed the existence of the lliad and Odyssey. Homer accounts for the animosity of Hera and Athene towards Paris and the Trojans by a different story, namely that Paris ‘railed against the goddesses (Hera and Athene) when they came into his courtyard, but praised her who gave him woeful lust’ (Aphrodite). Here is no contest of beauty, no mention of bribes (Aphrodite is not said to have given him the means of satisfying his lusts, or any other gift, on that occasion); nor does Homer anywhere explain how Hera and Athene happened to ‘come into his courtyard.’ Although this incomplete allusion by Homer to a lost legend in which Paris managed to behave insultingly to Hera and Athene might even have given the hint for the later story of the Judgement, indiscriminately to identify the two is quite uncalled for.
When Thetis was married to Peleus, Zeus is said to have called together all the gods to a banquet, except Eris (that is, Discord); when she arrived unexpectedly, she was not admitted to the feast, and from the doorway she threw an apple into their midst, saying that she who was the most beautiful should claim it. 2. When Hera, Aphrodite, and Pallas Athene each began to argue in vindication of her own beauty, great discord arose among them, so Zeus commanded Hermes to take them away to Mount Ida, to Alexandros Paris, and to order him to judge them. 3. If he should judge her favorably, Hera promised him that he would hold sway over everyone in countries everywhere and surpass everyone else in wealth; if she should depart victorious from that place, Pallas Athena promised that he would be the strongest amongst mortals and skilled in every cunning; Aphrodite, however, promised to give him Helen, the daughter of Tyndareos, the most beautiful of all women, in marriage. 4. Paris preferred the latter gift to the former ones, and judged Aphrodite to be the most lovely; on account of this, Hera and Pallas Athena became incensed against the Trojans. 5. Alexander was impelled by Aphrodite to go to Lakedaimon, and there stole Helen from his host Menelaos and brought her to Troy, and held her in wedlock, she being accompanied by her two slave women, Aithra and Thisiadie, former queens who were captives of Kastor and Pollux, and whom the latter had assigned to her to be her maidservants.