Introduction

Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους.

War is the father of all and the king of all, and has revealed that the ones are gods and the others humans, and has made the ones slaves and the other free. heraclitus, fr. 22 b53 (diels-kranz), d64 (tr. laks and most) ∵

1 Between Ares and Athena

An apple. Ever since Adam and Eve’s original sin, the apple of temptation has probably been the first and best known example of human responsibility and penalty. The Greek world was not oblivious to the metaphor and that fruit aroused new appetite on the occasion of a second union. After the wedding of divine Tethys and mortal Peleus—future parents of Achilles, the warrior par excellence—, young Paris—son of the king of Troy—was summoned by Olympus to resolve a controversy: he was chosen by Zeus to give a golden apple to the most beautiful goddess.1 Athena, Aphrodite and Hera competed for the triumph and, unable to reach an agreement, Zeus (father of two of them, and husband of the third) asked the messenger, Hermes, to lead the three goddesses to Mount Ida in order for Paris to resolve the dispute. The first debate; the first trial. Each of those goddesses sustained her position with arguments, and the arbitrator was offered gifts aimed at buying his will. The first bribes: Athena promised prudence and victory in all battles; Hera offered absolute power over Asia; Aphrodite, on the other hand, limited her commitment to trying to get the beautiful Helen of Sparta. Not seeking military or political power, the boy was carried away by love: the final decision of Paris in that first trial was in favor of Aphrodite.2 As a result of the award, the abduction of the wife of Menelaus, the most beautiful of all women, was imminent.

1 As regards the origin of the apple in the mythical tradition of Troy, see Severyns (1950–1951). 2 The history of the Judgment of Paris was not discussed in many canonical literary sources (in

While the Trojan War began with an apple, that origin should not however be put down to nature or chance. The story behind the myth is that the fruit was given to the divinities to promote fighting and confrontation by a goddess who had not been invited to a nuptial celebration due to her special character: the apple was thrown by Eris, Strife or Discord, a character as enigmatic and mysterious as the Greeks’ ties with conflict.3 Many sources account for Eris’ ambivalence as a divinity.Thus, in the Iliad— the first attested literary work of the Western world—Homer said that Eris glorifies herself by causing an armed struggle (4.440–445):

… καὶ Ἔρις ἄμοτον μεμαυῖα, … And Discord [Eris] that rageth Ἄρεος ἀνδροφόνοιο κασιγνήτη ἑτάρη τε, incessantly, sister and comrade of ἥ τ᾽ ὀλίγη μὲν πρῶτα κορύσσεται, αὐτὰρ manslaying Ares; she at the first rears her ἔπειτα crest but little, yet thereafter planteth her οὐρανῷ ἐστήριξε κάρη καὶ ἐπὶ χθονὶ βαίνει· head in heaven, while her feet tread on ἥ σφιν καὶ τότε νεῖκος ὁμοίϊον ἔμβαλε μέσσῳ earth. She it was that now cast evil strife ἐρχομένη καθ᾽ ὅμιλον ὀφέλλουσα στόνον into their midst as she fared through the ἀνδρῶν.4 throng, making the groanings of men to wax.

Epic allusions seem to indicate that, when it comes to Eris (as a divinity, or eris simply as “discord”), there always appears an illegitimate disruption of the established order.5 However, that rupture alternates in the text of the Iliad with much more positive notions about dispute, as in the case of the desir- able struggle for status as a warrior (ἀλκή, alke, military force or strength) that liberates warlike emotions and is praised for guaranteeing safety.6 Hence, negative violence alternates with the rage of the fighter. Similarly, in the Theogony,

fact, the Iliad only contains a brief reference in 24.28–30) but in other ancient fragmentary texts, mainly in a fragment of the Cypria, a lost poem of the Trojan cycle composed after the Iliad; cf. Bernabé Pajares (1979: 93–104). 3 For more on Eris, see Grimal (1986: 168), who collects old sources referring to her. In fact, the sources—among them the aforementioned Cypria—indicate that it was Zeus who actually had the idea of starting war among mortals (perhaps to fight against overpopulation) and used Eris and the golden apple as instruments for his great plan; cf. Reeves (1966). 4 The version of the Greek text here, as well as its translation, is Murray’s (1924). A frequent scene: for example, at the beginning of book 11, Eris is sent by Zeus to incite the Greeks (11.1). 5 Hogan (1981) has argued that “oddly” enough, Eris is almost always seen as a negative character in Homer. 6 As to the relation between these concepts, see Nagler (1988), who focused on their antago- nism rather than their overlapping within Homeric passages.