PARIS, son of Priam, king of Troy, by Hecuba, also named Alexander. He was decreed, even before his birth, to become the ruin of his country; and when his mother, in the first months of her pregnancy, had dreamed that she should bring forth a torch which would set fire to her palace, the soothsayers foretold the calamities which were to be expected from the imprudence of her future
future son, and which would end in the ruin of Troy. Priam, to prevent so great and so alarming an evil, ordered his slave Archelaus to destroy the child as soon as he was born. The slave, either touched with humanity, or influenced by Hecuba, did not obey, but was satisfied to expose the child on Mount Ida, where the shepherds of the place found him, and educated him as their own. Some attribute the preservation of his life, before he was found by the shepherds, to the motherly tenderness of a she-bear who suckled him. Young Paris, though educated among shepherds and peasants, gave very early proofs of courage and intrepidity; and from his care in protecting the flocks of Mount Ida from the rapacity of the wild beasts, he was named Alexander, "helper or defender." He gained the esteem of all the shepherds, and his graceful countenance and manly deportment recommended him to the favours of Oenone, a nymph of Ida, whom he married, and with whom he lived with the most perfect tenderness. Their conjugal peace was, however, of no long duration. At the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the goddess of discord, who had not been invited to partake of the entertainment, showed her displeasure, by throwing into the assembly of the gods who were at the celebration of the nuptials, a golden apple, on which were written the words Deiur pulchriori. All the goddesses claimed it as their own; the contention at first became general; but at last only three, Juno, Venus, and Minerva, wished to dispute their respective right to beauty. The gods, unwilling to become arbiters in an affair so tender and so delicate in its nature, appointed Paris to adjudge the prize of beauty to the fairest of the goddesses; and indeed the shepherd seemed sufficiently qualified to decide so great a contest, as his wisdom was so well established, and his prudence and sagacity so well known. The goddesses appeared before their judge without any covering or ornament, and each endeavoured by promises and entreaties to gain the attention of Paris, and to influence his judgement. Juno promised him a kingdom; Minerva military glory; and Venus the fairest woman in the world for his wife, as Ovid expresses it, Hesiod 17. v. 118.
Unaque cum regnum; belli daret altera laudem;
Tyndaridis conjux, tertia dixit, eris.
After he had heard their several claims and promises, Paris adjudged the prize to Venus, and gave her the golden apple, to which perhaps she seemed entitled as the goddess of beauty. This decision of Paris drew upon the judge and his family the resentment of the two other goddesses. Soon after, Priam proposed a contest among his sons and other princes, and promised to reward the conqueror with one of the finest bulls of Mount Ida. His emissaries were sent to procure the animal, and it was found in the possession of Paris, who reluctantly yielded it. The shepherd was anxious to regain his favourite, and he went to Troy and entered the lists of the combatants. He was received with the greatest applause, and obtained the victory over his rivals, Nestor the son of Neleus, Cyenus son of Neptune, Polites, Helenus, and Deiphobus, sons of Priam. He likewise obtained a superiority over Hector himself; which prince, enraged to see himself conquered by an unknown stranger, pursued him closely; and Paris must have fallen a victim to his brother's rage, had he not fled to the altar of Jupiter. This sacred retreat preserved his life; and
Cassandra the daughter of Priam, struck with the similarity of the features of Paris with those of her brothers, enquired his birth and age. From these circumstances she soon discovered that he was her brother, and as such she introduced him to her father and to her brothers. Priam acknowledged Paris as his son, forgetful of the alarming dreams which had caused him to meditate his death, and all jealousy ceased among the brothers. Paris did not long suffer himself to remain inactive; he equipped a fleet, as if willing to redeem Hefione his father's sister, whom Hercules had carried away and obliged to marry Telamon the son of Aeacus. This was the pretended motive of his voyage, but the causes were far different. Paris remembered that he was to be the husband of the fairest of women; and, if he had been led to form those expectations while he was an obscure shepherd of Ida, he had now every plausible reason to see them realized, since he was the acknowledged son of the king of Troy. Helen was the fairest woman of the age, and Venus had promised her to him. On these grounds, therefore, he went to Sparta, the residence of Helen, who had married Menelaus. He was received with great respect; but he abused the hospitality of Menelaus, and while the husband was absent in Crete, Paris persuaded Helen to elope with him, and to fly to Asia. Helen consented; and Priam received her into his palace without difficulty, as his sister was then detained in a foreign country, and as he wished to show himself as hostile as possible to the Greeks. This affair was soon productive of serious consequences. When Menelaus had married Helen, all her suitors had bound themselves by a solemn oath to protect her person, and therefore the injured husband reminded them of their engagements, and called upon them to recover her. Upon this all Greece took up arms in the cause of Menelaus; Agamemnon was chosen general of all the combined forces, and a regular war was begun. Paris, meanwhile, who had refused Helen to the petitions and embassies of the Greeks, armed himself, with his brothers and subjects, to oppose the enemy; but the success of the war was neither hindered nor accelerated by his means. He fought with little courage, and at the very fight of Menelaus, whom he had so recently injured, all his resolution vanished, and he retired from the front of the army, where he walked before like a conqueror. In a combat with Menelaus, which he undertook by means of his brother Hector, Paris must have perished, had not Venus interfered, and stolen him from the resentment of his antagonist. He wounded, however, in another battle, Machaon, Euryphius, and Diomedes; and, according to some opinions, he killed with one of his arrows the great Achilles.
The death of Paris is differently related: some say that he was mortally wounded by one of the arrows of Philoctetes, which had been once in the possession of Hercules; and that when he found himself languid on account of his wounds, he ordered himself to be carried to the feet of Oenone, whom he had basely abandoned, and who in the years of his obscurity had foretold him that he would solicit her assistance in his dying moments. He expired before he came into the presence of Oenone; and the nymph, still mindful of their former loves, threw herself upon his body, and stabbed herself to the heart, after she had plentifully bathed it with her tears. According to others, Paris did not immediately go to Troy.
Troy when he left the Peloponnese, but he was driven on the coasts of Egypt, where Proteus, who was king of the country, detained him; and when he heard of the violence which had been offered to the king of Sparta, he kept Helen at his court, and permitted Paris to retire. Whatever was the mode of his death, it took place, we are told about 1188 B. C. See TROY, &c.