The Apple of Discord

[whswhs]

In any case, I don't think we need to look to regional ethnic attachments to explain why Aphrodite won. Here we have Paris going on a mission to Greece and bringing home the most beautiful woman in the world, who happens to be another man's wife. Which of the goddesses would have giving him that as a bribe? Probably not Hera, who's the goddess of marriage, and probably not Athena, who's one of the three virgin goddesses and also is the goddess of prudence; it's not in their idiom. But Aphrodite is the goddess of love and beauty and has had more affairs than any other Olympian except Zeus. And she's also the goddess most likely to inspire Helen to forget her home, children, and husband, as Sappho says in one of her surviving poems. Purely in literary terms it's the obvious choice.