The Golden Apple

The ancient Greeks may have lived in very different ways, but they all spoke the same language—Greek. And they all worshipped the same gods. The Greeks were polytheists. Remember: Polytheists believed in many gods.

The Greeks believed in a whole family of gods. They thought that these gods lived up on the top of Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece. And they also thought that the gods were very interested in what men were doing.

Sometimes the Greek gods were kind and helpful to men. But at other times, they were cruel. As a matter of fact, the chief god of the Greeks, Zeus, started a horrible war down on earth:

eus sat on the top of Mount Olympus and looked down over Greece. All over the countryside, he could see men, swarming like ants. Men cutting down trees, men building houses all over the beautiful green fields, men pulling fish out of the sea. Men killing deer for food, shooting birds for fun, and blocking up streams for water. Zeus sighed.

“There are too many people on the earth,” he said gloomily. “I should get rid of some of them.”

He thought and thought. And finally he came up with a plan. He knew that the gods were all going to a big wedding, and that it would be the perfect time to start a fight. So he made a golden apple, so beautiful that it made the sun look dim, and wrote around the top, “For the Most Beautiful.” Then he called Eris, the goddess of strife. “Here,” he said, “take this apple to the wedding, and drop it on the floor in front of my wife Hera.”

Eris liked to cause trouble. So she took the apple to the wedding, and waited until Hera and two other goddesses were standing next to each other, chatting.

“For the Most Beautiful!” she read. “Why, thank you! That’s obviously me!”

But the two goddesses with her disagreed. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, twirled her shining golden hair around one hand and blinked her huge blue eyes.

“Hera, my dear,” she said sweetly, “I think the apple must be for me.”

“Oh, no,” put in Athena, the goddess of war. She reached for the apple. “The apple is obviously for me.”

“No!” Hera snapped, clutching the apple. “It’s mine!”

The wedding guests all started to argue about which of the goddesses was the most beautiful. But then Hera said, “I know. Let’s ask my husband to judge which of us deserves the apple. After all, he is the chief of the gods.”

Zeus was standing innocently by the punch bowl. “What?” he said. “How can I judge my own wife? No, no. You must ask a mortal man to judge you. Ask Paris, the prince of Troy. He’s the handsomest man on earth, so surely he can decide who is most beautiful among the goddesses.”

Paris was lying happily on a mountainside, staring at the sky without a care in the world, when the three goddesses suddenly appeared in front of him with the apple in hand. They demanded that he judge them. Which was the most beautiful?

“Hmm,” Paris said, wondering whether one of them would strike him dead if he chose the wrong goddess. “Well, let me see …”

“Pick me,” whispered Hera, “and I’ll make you the king of the whole world of men.”

“Really?” Paris said.

“No, no,” hissed Athena. “Pick me, and I’ll give you victory in every battle you ever fight!”

“That would be wonderful!” Paris said.

“Wait!” said Aphrodite. “Pick me, Paris, and I will give you the most beautiful woman on earth.”

Paris’s eyes lit up. “That’s what I want!” he said, and gave the apple to Aphrodite.

Aphrodite went back to Mount Olympus, with Hera and Athena behind her, grumbling and complaining. There, Aphrodite made Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, fall in love with Paris. As soon as she saw him, she was his forever. And she ran away to live with him in Troy.

Unfortunately, Helen was already married—to Menelaus, the king of the Greeks! Menelaus was furious. And he called on the gods to help him fight against Troy, defeat Paris, and get his wife back. Hera was still angry with Paris, so she chose to fight against Troy. Aphrodite was on Troy’s side. The sun god decided to be on Troy’s side as well. Poseidon, the god of the sea, wanted to see Troy destroyed. And so it went; all of the gods lined up for or against Troy, as the Greeks sailed to attack it. And so the Trojan War began, and lasted for years and years of bloodshed and death—all because of Zeus and his golden apple.