After being left off the guest list for the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, goddess of discord Eris dropped among the guests a golden apple bearing the legend “For the fairest” (248, italics in original). Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite all assumed the apple was for her, and Trojan Prince Paris, who was living with a nymph called Oenone, was chosen to judge which goddess should receive it. Athena promised him military glory, Hera to make him the ruler of Asia and Europe, and Aphrodite to give him the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris chose Aphrodite.

The most beautiful woman was Helen, daughter of Zeus and Leda. She had been beset by suitors, and after compelling all her suitors to promise to defend her marriage, her father chose Menelaus (brother of Agamemnon) and made him king of Sparta. Aphrodite contrived for Paris to visit Sparta and leave with Helen, thus violating the rules of hospitality and activating the suitors’ oath. An expedition gathered at Aulis to sail to Troy, but Artemis kept back the winds until Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia.

The war continued for nine years, neither side able to overcome the other. After Agamemnon refused to return Chryseis, a priest of Apollo’s daughter captured in a raid, the priest sent a plague to ravage the Greeks.