At that, the three goddesses took off like Sabre Jets for Mount Ida. But now I must tell you something about this chap Paris.
The Trojan race sprang from Dardanus and the daughter of a shepherd King named Teucer. Their great-grandson was Ilus, and he built the city of Ilion, which was another name for Troy and of the ‘topless towers’ of which my gentle reader must have heard. His son, Laomedon, was a heel. After Poseidon and Apollo had helped Hera to try to put Zeus in the bin and they had bungled the job, both of them had been condemned to put in a spell of servitude on earth. Poseidon got himself taken on by Laomedon as a builder, and it was he who built the impregnable walls of Troy. But when he had done, Laomedon refused him his promised reward.
Poseidon never forgave the Trojans and soon inflicted pain and grief on them. The upshot of this was that Laomedon’s daughter, Hesione, had to be put on the slab and offered up as an appeasing sacrifice. She was rescued in the nick of time by Hercules; but Laomedon did him down, too, so a few years later Hercules returned, did in the King and gave Hesione as a birthday present to one of his pals. However, she managed to wheedle Hercules into sparing her favourite brother, Priam, and letting him succeed his father as King of Troy.
Priam and his Queen, Hecuba, had lots of children, the noblest among them being Hector and the handsomest Paris. But before she had Paris, Hecuba dreamed that she would give birth to a fire-brand. The soothsayer who was called in said that meant the child she was about to have would put paid to Troy; so the usual drill was followed. A slave was sent off with the newborn babe to leave it to die up on the mountain. But, of course, it didn’t. These Kings never did swipe the kitty when playing games of one-upmanship against the Fates.
In the case of Paris, it was a lady bear who came along and suckled him, until he was found by some herdsmen and brought up by them. He made quite a name for himself, pinning back the ears of cattle thieves, and got hitched up to Oenone, the highly desirable nymph of the mountain; so he might have continued to live a quiet and very happy life, if only the Immortals had left him alone.
But no. One fine day, Hermes came zooming down out of the bright blue sky with the three goddesses in tow. Handing the golden apple to the flabbergasted Paris, he said: ‘Look, feller, the Big Chief sent me to give you this, and tell you to pass it on to whichever of these—er—ladies that you think would make the best selling picture on the cover of a glossy magazine,’ or words to that effect.
Of course, all three of the claimants simpered at him like mad. Then they introduced themselves and each of them tried to bribe him. Hera said: ‘I am the Queen of Heaven. Give me the apple and I’ll make you a great King with lots and lots of lolly.’ Athene said: ‘Fame brings more happiness than money. Give the apple to me, and you shall be acclaimed the wisest guy on earth.’ Aphrodite said nothing. She just took off her clothes.
Paris shut his eyes, swallowed hard, then looked again. Handing Aphrodite the apple, he said: ‘The fruit’s yours, ma’am.’
She dished him out one of her sweetest smiles and said: ‘You’re a nice lad and if these other—er—ladies weren’t present I’d have found it a pleasure to—er—help you with your education. But not to worry. I’ll fix things so that the most beautiful girl in the world will fall in love with you, and you can have her for keeps.’ Then the four Immortals all winged it back to Olympus.
As the reader will, I am sure, agree, such an experience would prove somewhat unsettling for any young man. For some days Oenone must have wondered what had got into her handsome husband. Then he put on his best goatskin coat and, for the first time in his life, went down to the city.
It happened that his papa was about to hold some public games. Naturally he went in for them and, naturally, he won all the prizes. This created quite a stir, and one of his sisters, named Cassandra, went up and had a word with him. This wench had the gift of second sight, and at once declared him to be the infant sent out to die on Mount Ida. King Priam and his Queen were so delighted to find that they had such a splendid son that they seem to have forgotten all about the prophecy that he would prove the ruin of Troy. Paris was naturally as pleased as Punch to learn that he was really a royal Prince, and took to the life like a duck to water.
The thoughtful reader will not have forgotten that, when Hercules had given King Laomedon the works, he had more or less white-slaved Priam’s sister Hesione. Somewhat belatedly, Priam appears to have remembered her. As Paris had, in no time, made the grade as a general in the Trojan Army, his papa mustered a great fleet and sent him off to Greece to rescue his aunt.
Unfortunately for all concerned, instead of getting on with the job he had been given Paris turned aside to say ‘hello’ to Menelaus, the King of Sparta. Helen was the King’s wife and, as Aphrodite thought her the most beautiful girl in the world, the moment her husband introduced Paris to her the fat was in the fire.
That Helen really was a sort of mortal edition of Aphrodite there can’t be much doubt. Of course, she had very exceptional parents. As most people know, Zeus thought Leda so beautiful that to have a few minutes’ conversation with her he turned himself into a swan. That night she had the same sort of conversation with her husband, King Tyndareus, and all this chat resulted in her giving birth to two babies and two eggs. The babies were Castor and Clytemnestra, and out of the eggs came Pollux and Helen.
But quite apart from Helen being out of the very top drawer, she was already such a poppet when only ten years old that the hero Theseus could not resist the temptation to abduct her from her parents. Her brothers, Castor and Pollux, hurried after him and got her back, but naturally this titbit of gossip went all round Greece. The result was that chaps from all over the place came to Tyndareus’s palace out of curiosity, just to take a look at this budding Venus. The moment they set eyes on her, they all agreed that they could think of far better ways for her to spend her time than studying to pass her Eleven-Plus.
In fact, so many princes went absolutely potty over her that her step-father, old Tyndareus, saw that, unless he did something about it, she was going to be the cause of a whole packet of trouble. He did his best to solve the problem by getting all these young Lotharios together and saying to them:
‘Listen, boys. I want my little Helen to have a happy marriage and enjoy her life; but she won’t stand an earthly as long as you are set on cutting one another’s throats to get her. Whoever I give her to will find a ticket for Hades under his pillow before the honeymoon is over, and before he is a fortnight older the chap who carries her off will be done in by another of you. To be hauled willy-nilly into a whole succession of beds is no life for a girl. What is more, the papas of those of you who get bumped off are certain to take it badly; so, before we know where we are, there will be half a dozen wars ravaging Greece to avenge the “goners”.
‘Now, to prevent such a slaughter, what I suggest is that when I have decided to which of you I will give Helen, the rest of you should take a solemn oath not only to refrain from any attempt to take her away from the lucky guy but also, should anyone do so, to combine in a war against him until you have got her back for her husband.’
The Princes saw the sense in this; so when Menelaus was chosen as the lucky lad, they all swore to get together and come down like a ton of bricks on any Dirty Dick who tried to take Helen from him. That is why, when she ran away with Paris, pretty well every warrior in Greece started yelling for his field-boots and feathered hat and went chasing after them.
But I’ve got a bit ahead of my story. When Paris stopped off at Sparta, Menelaus put out the red carpet for him and for a week or two a good time was had by all. Then, as Paris showed no sign of packing his grip and Menelaus had a job to do up-country, he rashly left his wife to entertain their guest. By this time they were batty about one another, so Paris found no reason at all to complain to the management. Since Aphrodite had decreed that Helen should fall for Paris, I don’t feel that she was to blame; but he behaved like a most frightful cad. When Menelaus got home
, he found that not only had his guest run away with his wife but that he and his Trojans had looted the palace and made off with the whole vast treasure of Sparta.
Menelaus’s elder brother was Agamemnon, King of Argos, and he had married Helen’s half-sister, Clytemnestra. Moreover, Agamemnon was then top King in Greece and all the others owed allegiance to him. So Menelaus jumped into his fastest chariot and drove hell for leather to Mycenae where he told his tale of woe to Big Brother.
Agamemnon promptly called on all the chaps who had wanted to marry Helen to fulfil their oath, and in addition on all his vassals to bring ships and men to show Paris where he got off. The majority of them—including the giant Ajax, wise old Nestor and brave Diomede—came fairly spoiling for the fray, but two of the best bets in a free-for-all tried to wriggle out.
Odysseus, King of the island of Ithaca, was a most cunning man. Feeling a preference for remaining with his wife, Penelope, and his infant son, Telemachus, rather than join in a war that he thought might prove a long one, he pretended to be mad. However, his bluff was called by a chap named Palamedes, who had been sent to fetch him; so he had to go along.
Once Odysseus had joined the outfit, he proved invaluable. It was he who roped in the other shirker, Achilles. The gentle reader will recall the prophecy that stalled off Zeus and Poseidon from marrying the goddess Thetis—that she would bear a son greater than his father. She did, to the mortal Peleus; and it was Achilles she had by him. Knowing that the Trojan War would be a bloody business, she concealed her son in girl’s clothes among the daughters of the King of Scyros. But Odysseus paid them a visit and showed them a really natty line in swords and javelins. Achilles, being a born fighter, seized on them with enthusiasm, so gave his sex away. But his goddess-mama had taken the precaution to dip him in the Styx, which made him invulnerable to any wound, except in the one heel by which she had had to hang on to him.
It was from Mycenae that all these heralds went galloping off, and it was there that the plans were made for a great Armada to sail to Troy; but Agamemnon still hoped that they might get back Helen without a war; so he sent a diplomatic mission, consisting of Odysseus, Palamedes and Menelaus, to say to King Priam: ‘Look, your son Paris has put up a shocking black, but we don’t want trouble, so if he’ll cough up the loot and return the lovely, we won’t ask any compensation for his having borrowed her,’ or words to that effect.
But their account of Paris’s goings-on left his old pop speechless, because Paris hadn’t even sent him a postcard. He and Helen were still having a high old time on a year-long honeymoon round the eastern Med., renting the biggest villas wherever they stopped off and entertaining the locals to champagne and caviare on the cash that they’d pinched from the Sparta treasury. Knowing nothing of this, Priam told the Ambassadors that he must wait till his boy got home to hear his side of the story; so they returned to Greece empty-handed.
When Paris did get back, there was no end of a rumpus. Lots of the Trojan big-wigs said he could go and boil his head if he thought they were going to war just so that he could keep his girl friend. But Helen had brought along a handpicked beauty chorus to brush her hair and help her into her two-way stretch. This bunch of cuties got busy playing cat’s cradle with the top brass of the Trojan Army, and Paris, still being lousy with Menelaus’s money, paid off the mortgages on their houses for them and that sort of thing; so, what with the cash and the cuties, these chaps were all for Helen staying put.
Cassandra came into the picture with one of her doleful prophecies that, if Helen were not put on the doorstep, Troy would be destroyed. However, Apollo had a ‘thing’ against Cassandra, so he had ordained that nothing she predicted would ever be believed. Finally, Paris’s mum, Hecuba, had a heart-to-heart with Helen and asked her had Paris taken her by force? She said: ‘No, I was batty about him and I still am.’ So, as Paris was Hecuba’s favourite son, she persuaded Priam to defy the Greeks.
The war being on, Agamemnon sailed from the Gulf of Argos and ordered all the other ships to rendezvous with him at Aulis, the most handy port in western Greece for an assault on Asia Minor. Getting them together took months and months, so he killed time by going ashore and doing a bit of hunting. Unfortunately, just before D-Day, he killed a hind sacred to Artemis. She was so put out that she decreed a calm that prevented the Armada from sailing. After the calm had lasted for some weeks, everyone got very fed up, so they consulted a seer named Calchas. He said there would be no wind until Agamemnon had pacified the angry goddess by sacrificing his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to her.
Agamemnon was naturally against this idea, but all the others said he must not let a little thing like the life of one girl stand in the way of their great enterprise, etc., so eventually they nagged him into writing to his wife, Clytemnestra, to bring Iphigenia down from Mycenae to Aulis. But, in his letter, he gave as his reason that he’d fixed up for her to marry Achilles.
Delighted at the thought of this fine match for her girl, Clytemnestra duly arrived and got busy on the trousseau. When she learned the truth, there was hell to pay. Then Achilles found out that he had been used as a lure for this horrid business and he, too, blew his top. What is more, the moment he set eyes on Iphigenia he fell for her in a big way, and threatened to let the daylight into anyone who laid a hand on her.
But Iphigenia turned out to be the whitest girl they ever knew. She said she was quite willing to die for the honour of Greece; so they tied Achilles up, put her on the slab and prepared to cut her throat. Seeing that she had put up such a jolly good show, Artemis’s heart was touched. She whisked the girl off up into the clouds and dumped a faun on the altar to be sacrificed instead. That stopped everyone wailing except Clytemnestra, who was livid at having her daughter taken from her. But a fine wind sprang up, so she was left screaming curses while all the chaps ran to their ships, shouting to the girls: ‘We’ll be back by Christmas,’ and off they sailed for Troy.
The landing was made between the rivers Simois and Scamander. There the Greeks hauled all their thousand ships up the beach and used them to form streets, squares and wooden walls, enclosing a vast camp for their hundred thousand men. But, of course, the Trojans had had loads of time to prepare a hot reception for them. Paris’s brother, Hector, had been made C.-in-C., and as his Second in Command he had his brother-in-law, Aeneas, the Prince of the Dardanians. This Aeneas was no mean ally, as he was the result of one of Aphrodite’s nights out down on earth, and when Priam asked for his help he brought a large army to the support of Troy.
The Heroes on both sides could hardly wait to get at one another, so out came the chariots, the archers, the javelin throwers and the rest, and before long the whole place was littered with corpses. But neither side could get the better of the other; so the battle was renewed week after week, month after month, with truces now and again only for them to lick their wounds and make a bonfire of the dead.
One would have thought that after a while they would have got bored with this senseless slaughter. But not a bit of it. For years on end, they shouted rude things about their enemies’ mothers, got blipped on the head for their pains or stuck the other fellow in the gizzard. The Greeks had a much bigger army, but the Trojans had the advantage of the impregnable walls that Poseidon had built round their city. When they felt like a battle they could sally out, and whenever things got too hot for them they could scamper back inside and cock a snook at the Greeks from their battlements.
As both armies had to be fed, the war spread for miles over the countryside between parties sent out to get supplies, and one of the raids made by the Greeks led to the father of all upsets. With the plunder they brought in some girls. One very pretty one, named Chryseis, was the daughter of a priest of Apollo. Agamemnon liked the look of her, so he sent her to his tent and said: ‘See you later, ducks,’ Another nice little number, named Briséis, he gave to Achilles. Then up came Chryseis’s papa and offered to ransom her. Agamemnon said nothing doing; so the priest called on Apollo for h
elp, and the god sent a plague from which the Greeks started to die off like flies. After nine days they were in a fine dither and they consulted old Calchas, their seer. He told them: ‘The plague won’t let up until the Big Shot returns Chryseis to her clergyman father.’
Evidently this young woman had a lot of what it takes, for Agamemnon was very loath to give her up. As all the others were anxious to die by sword thrusts and not by germs, they eventually badgered him into agreeing; but he was mean enough to stipulate that Achilles must give up Briséis to him to fill Chryseis’s place.
Now Achilles had found Briséis the absolute tops at darning his socks—or something—so he became positively berserk with rage. He was just about to yank out his sword and nail the King to his own tent pole when Athene appeared and lugged him back by the hair, although it seems that the others present didn’t see her. I should explain here that the Greeks had taken an oath not to cut their hair until they got Helen back, so he had plenty of hair for her to hang on to. She whispered to him: ‘Steady, lad. Hand Briséis over and I’ll see you right in some other way’; so he did. But he said he would take no further part in the war. Then, with his very special pal Patroclus and his Myrmidons, as his host of followers were called, he went off to sulk in his tent.
However, that night he was so maddened by the thought that Briséis was now darning Agamemnon’s socks—or doing whatever she had done when with him—that he appealed to his goddess-mama to persuade Zeus to show the Greeks how much they had lost by letting their scurvy King drive their best champion from their ranks.
Thetis said Zeus had just gone off on a hol to preside at a twelve-day feast down in Ethiopia, but when he got back she would do her best. She did, by clasping him round the legs, and, being partial to cuddlesome females, he agreed to oblige. Afterwards he was a bit sorry, because Hera was so strongly pro-Greek that he felt sure she would make trouble for him if he openly helped the Trojans. Hoping to fox her he lay doggo, but sent Agamemnon a false dream to the effect that if he had another crack at Troy he would, at last, take the city.
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