Paris

Prince of Troy, also called Alexander — son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba. Exposed at birth because of a prophecy that he would burn the city, he survived on Mount Ida as a herdsman until Hermes brought the three goddesses to him to judge for the golden apple of Eris. He awarded the prize to Aphrodite in exchange for the most beautiful woman in the world — Helen, queen of Sparta — and abducted her, igniting the Trojan War. Hector scorns him in the *Iliad* as fair-faced but unworthy; Aphrodite has to rescue him bodily from his duel with Menelaus in book 3. The post-Homeric *Aethiopis* and Apollodorus give him the bow-shot that kills Achilles, before Philoctetes's arrow brings him down in the city's last days.

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