#paris (ancient greece)

[sforzesco]

paris of troy! during those years he was a shepherd.

I was reading cartledge's book on thebes and every now and then the spartan focuses wrt to the pantheon of gods comes up. sparta has nothing to do with this except for where it does, but apollo karneios was discussed and that got my attention, which circled back to paris, and then I started thinking about the paris + apollo link

I also started thinking about narrative rejections bc paris has a funky absence in the iliad that's giving a kind of...a vibe. your parents shouldn't have had you, the story doesn't want you around, but oh boy are you there anyway, manifested into existence. no matter what, doom must manifest in flesh form. it's a narrative necessity, the actual incident (the judgement) is secondary.

The Judgement of Paris in Later Byzantine Literature, E. M. Jeffreys

weird! love it! almost (but not quite) reminds me of troilos' murder at achilles' hands lurking in the guts of the iliad. it's there, even when it's not. more importantly tho: sheep. I miss working on a farm with sheep and goats and cows and--

[restlesskeychains]

the judgment of paris :3

[dacenturion]

Basically Paris talking with Helen after his duel with Menelaus

I saw this post by @thoodleoo and had to make a comic out of it. Stupid Paris (lovingly)

[skopsidopsi]

Trojan war but it's a group project

Patroclus doing the whole project alone and still dying 🎀

[yujiniani]

PARIS AND HELEN DESIGNS

[enlitment]

Trying to trick my beloved classics mutuals into getting excited about the French Olympic Games' mascot! ->

[chilaquilesheel]

This is so Patroclus Iliad book 16 coded

(Pat my love you should have never put on your bf's armor in the first place ☹️)

[ophii]

listened to paris the musical and now i love helen even more

[lisztoaf]

Iliad characters but if they had zodiac sign

· m a l e c h a r a c t e r s

A R I E S - Hector of Troy

T A U R U S - Ajax the great

G E M I N I - Odysseus

C A N C E R - Achilles

L E O - Menelaus

V I R G O - Palamedes

L I B R A - Teucer

E S C O R P I O - Diomedes

S A G G I T T A R I U S - Patroclus

C A P R I C O R N - Agamemnon

A Q U A R I U S - Aeneas

P I S C I S - Paris

I have my reasons for each one of them I'm just lazy now, just hear me it's literally them you can't tell me I'm wrong

· f e m a l e c h a r a c t e r s + t h e o d y s s e y

A R I E S - Clytemnestra

T A U R U S - Penelope of Ithaca

G E M I N I - Hecuba

C A N C E R - Andromache

L E O - Circe

V I R G O - Iphigenia

L I B R A - Nausicaa

S C O R P I O - Briseis

S A G G I T T A R I U S - Calypso

C A P R I C O R N - Elektra

A Q U A R I U S - Cassandra of Troy

P I S C E S - Helena

I do have my reasons for most of them but I'm not 100% sure for some... If you wanna switch them or add other characters like Chryseis it's alright

Edit; AT WHAT MOMENT THIS GOT POSTED

[ancientgreektrash]

How did you fall in the Greek mythology rabbit hole?

how did yall get into greek mythology? Were you introduced via movies/books? or something else

Ill start, blame my addiction to freaking technoblade yes you heard that right

Him talking about myths during his streams made me curious and i started watching overly sarcastic productions then reading PJO then all of a sudden im listening to epic the musical, paris the musical, and making a hermes cosplay

[elianzis]

She was my light

[sforzesco]

DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis

Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie

Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson

Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong

[pelideswhore]

If the apple of discord was thrown down at the wedding feast of Peleus and Thetis, how did Achilles, their son, fight in the Trojan war? The timeline does not make sense to me unless you just chalk that up to the timing of the Eternal, Deathless Gods but mortals are involved. Like Paris is presumably asked right after the wedding to judge who gets the apple then he picks Aphrodite who has promised him the most beautiful woman. Does she like wait to find out who that is and that causes the delay? The story seems to go that she promises Helen, they kidnap Helen and then the war begins so like that’s a year tops in my mind but how would that give Achilles time to become the teenager he is in the war? Please help. If there is a definitive answer excellent but I also just want theories.

i really love love love this question, cus i’ve thought about it a lot, especially because i consider Paris and Achilles to be around the same age, which, as you said, would make no sense.

sadly, i don’t have a definitive answer, but i do have a theory. it’s quite long though so buckle up.

As you probably know, Aphrodite, Hera and Athena asked Zeus to solve the issue before resorting to Paris. Zeus couldn’t answer and by the timeline of the Gods, many mortal years had passed so Paris would have been born, sent away from the palace and had enough time to grow up at this point. Ares suggests him, the goddesses ask and Paris gets bribed. But he doesn’t take Helen straight away, because he’s still a goatherd at this point.

Before I finish with that, let’s get back to Achilles. One would probably assume that within the first year of Thetis’ and Peleus’ marriage, he was already born, but that’s actually not true. The couple had six sons before Achilles, but they all passed away somehow (which, i like to think, is the reason Thetis is so protective). That means, even if they all died on Day 1 of their life and Thetis conceived the very same day: 9 months x 6 = 54 months aka. 4,5 years. That’s at least 4 and a half years before Achilles was born, but I think I can safely assume it took a little longer. Let’s say 6 years (which btw is still unrealistic and would probably be horrible for Thetis’ health but I digress).

So now, Achilles is born, stuff happens: Achilles meets Phoenix and Patroclus, he gets sent to Chiron, and eventually Scyros etc. Let’s say he’s 17 when that happens. Still a teen, but old enough to get Deidamia pregnant. Realistically, Thetis would only send him away when the threat of the war is imminent, so Helen’s kidnapping happens when Achilles is 17. I tend to say Helen was around 24, Paris was maybe 21. I believe however that the Judgement of Paris happened a couple years before.

Because, consider, Paris picks Aphrodite as a goatherd, but he kidnaps Helen as a prince. So somewhere in between, Cassandra must've found him and brought him back. He then had to get used to royal life, but, more importantly, all the ships had to be ready to go to Sparta. It could've happened in a couple of days, but a couple of years isn't unrealistic either, and it fits the timeline better.

It's a bit all over the place, so here's summary:

0 years: Peleus' and Thetis' wedding, Golden Apple incident (Paris/Achilles not born)

2 years: Paris is born and abandoned.

6 years: Achilles is born.

19 years: The Judgement of Paris happens, Paris is still a goatherd.

23 years: Paris kidnaps Helen, start of the war, Achilles is aged 17

The only time ‘divine timing’ really plays a role is between the wedding the Judgement of Paris. In divine timing 19 years is nothing, just enough time for Zeus and Ares to get involved. Paris would’ve probably already held one or two bullfights at the age of 17 when he is chosen to judge between the goddesses and from then on everything runs pretty smoothly, bearing in mind the 4 years between Aphrodite promising Helen to him and Paris actually kidnapping Helen.

sorry it took so long to post this, had to get my thoughts in check then type it up :D

[ditoob]

I think that one of my favorite parts of studying the Iliad and the Trojan war is how incredible the world building is. The fact that you can research any of the characters and find their life prior to and (in some cases) after the Trojan War, their families and typically fathers which themselves form parts of different epics (Telamon, Peleus and Laertes all being Argonauts who sailed with Jason for the golden fleece) (Depending on the version Herakles, Orpheus, Theseus and Atalanta could’ve also been there with them), and just how much content there is about each figure in the war that you wouldn’t know just by reading the Iliad.

Why was Paris chosen by the gods to pick which goddess was the most beautiful? He proved to the gods on a previous ocassion in a bull competition he hosted which Ares won that he was a fair and honest judge (I guess he lost that fairness in judgement by the time the goddesses appeared before him)

How did Achilles become such an almost undefeatable warrior? He was the son of an Argonaut and a sea-nymph raised by Hera whom both Poseidon and Zeus wanted to bed, and was trained by mighty Chiron who taught heroes like Orpheus and Herakles.

Why are the walls of Troy “impenetrable”? They were built by Apollo and Poseidon disguised as humans due to a punishment from Zeus.

And this is all known with thousands of lines of the Trojan War’s story being lost to time. Imagine if we had more of the Nostoi or Cypria or Little Iliad, if we still had plays like “Myrmidons” or had a better historical understanding of Mycenaean Greece.

And still, with all this content, the Trojan War is just a section of the greater greek myths. The mythologized greek world existed far before Troy, and it continued to push forward far after.

[soldierpoetconqueror]

Chat gpt is something else 😭

[phia-myth]

jason, theseus and paris: the fratboy trinity