A Prince of Troy. Lindsay Clarke
their gift to Peleus, the Olympian gods presented him with a suit of armour made of shining gold, together with two immortal horses sired by the West Wind. King Cheiron gave the groom a matchless hunting spear, the head of which had been wrought by the lame god Hephaestus in his forge, while its ash-wood shaft had been cut and polished by the hands of Divine Athena. With the whole remaining tribe of Centaurs gathered in garlands for the occasion, and all the other revellers carousing on nectar served by Zeus’s cup-bearer Ganymede, everyone agreed that there had been no more joyful marriage-feast since the Olympians had honoured the wedding of Cadmus and Harmony with their presence many years before.
Yet alone among the immortal gods, Eris had not been invited. Her name means Strife or Discord, and she is twin-sister to the war god Ares. Like him she delights in the fury and tumult of human conflict. It is Eris who stirs up trouble in the world by spreading rumours. She takes particular pleasure in the use of malicious gossip to create envy and jealousy, and for that reason none of the gods and goddesses other than her brother cares to have too much to do with her. For that same reason her name had been omitted from the list of guests at the wedding-feast of Peleus and Thetis. Yet all of the immortals have their place in the world and we ignore any of them at our peril.
Furious and slighted that she alone among the immortals had not been invited, Eris looked on at the festivities from the shadows of a nearby grove, waiting for the right moment to take her revenge. That moment came as Hera, Athene and Aphrodite were congratulating Peleus. The groom’s eye was caught by a flash of light as something rolled towards him across the ground. All three of the goddesses exclaimed in wonder when he picked up a golden apple that lay glistening at his feet. With their curiosity excited by the goddesses’ cries of delight, other guests quickly gathered round. Only Cheiron, to his dismay, saw the figure of Eris in her chequered robe slip away into the trees.
‘Look’, Peleus exclaimed, ‘there’s an inscription here.’ Holding the apple to catch the light, he read aloud, ‘To the Fairest.’ He turned to appraise the three goddesses standing beside him, and his smile instantly faded with the realization that he could not give the apple to any one of them without immediately offending the others.
‘But I’m surrounded by beauty,’ he prevaricated. ‘This riddle is too hard.’
Aphrodite smiled at him. ‘To the Fairest, you say? Then there’s no difficulty. The apple must be meant for me.’ The goddess was holding out her hand to take it when Hera said that as wife to Zeus, Lord of Olympus, there could hardly be any doubt that the apple should be hers.
‘There is every possibility of doubt,’ Athena put in. ‘Any discriminating judge would agree that my claim to the apple is as strong as either of yours – if not a good deal stronger.’
Aphrodite laughed, dismissing Athena’s claim as ridiculous. Who would look twice, she asked, at a goddess who insisted on wearing a helmet even to a wedding? Smiling in reparation, she conceded that Athena might be wiser than she was, and there was no doubting Hera’s matronly virtue, but if beauty was the issue, then she had the advantage over both of them. Again, sidling closer to Peleus who stood in a consternation, wondering how he had got into this quandary and how to get out of it again, she held out her hand.
‘Can’t you see you’re embarrassing our host, flaunting yourself like that with his bride looking on?’ Athena protested. ‘Perhaps one day you’ll learn that true beauty is also modest.’
Sensing the imminence of an unseemly quarrel, Hera intervened, warning her divine sisters to restrain themselves. Then she smiled at Peleus and suggested that it would be best to settle the matter quickly by giving the apple to her. At which both the other goddesses turned on her, each clamouring to be heard over the other until all three were tangled in a rancorous exchange. The Muses faltered in their song, the Nereids ceased their dance, a nervous silence fell across the Centaurs, and the bride and groom looked on in dismay as the dispute became ever more acrimonious.
Hera spoke sharply above the others. ‘If you two won’t see reason, there’s only one way to resolve the matter – Zeus must decide.’ But neither of the others was about to accept that solution, nor did Almighty Zeus show any enthusiasm for it. Though he’d been drinking nectar all afternoon, he remained too astute to put himself in a position where his life would be made miserable by his wife if he was honest, or by two resentful goddesses if he was not. Hoping the row would peter out, he turned away. Only moments later, netted in a trance of rage, all three contenders began hurling insults at each other.
‘Enough!’ bellowed Zeus in a voice that briefly silenced everyone. ‘If it’s golden apples you want, all three of you can have a whole orchard of them any time you like.’
‘It’s not the apple!’ Hera answered hotly. ‘None of us cares about the apple!’
‘Of course we don’t,’ Athena agreed.
‘Then why are you embarrassing us all like this?’ Zeus demanded. When no immediate answer came, he said it was time the goddesses remembered who they were and where they were. They should stop this bickering and sit down and enjoy themselves, so that everyone else could do the same. Again he tried to turn away but Aphrodite widened her eyes, protesting that the dispute was a matter of simple justice. She wasn’t about to let some pretender lay claim to a title that everyone knew was rightly hers.
Sensing that her husband might be wavering, Hera hissed, ‘Don’t you dare take any notice of that mindless bitch.’
‘And you shouldn’t let your wife push you around,’ Athena put in, ‘not if you expect anyone ever to respect your judgement again.’
At which point Zeus shouted that he was damned if he would choose between them. Looking around in embarrassment, he turned back to the goddesses and said more quietly that, in his opinion, they were all beautiful. All three of them. Each in her own inimitable way. They should forget the apple and let that be an end to it.
‘Things have gone too far for that,’ said Hera. ‘We demand a decision.’
Zeus met his wife’s eyes with gloomy displeasure. For all his might, he could see no way of resolving this argument without causing endless resentment on Olympus. Yet when he shifted his gaze, it was only to see the assembled mortals staring at him, aghast and bewildered. Part of him already begrudged having ceded a nymph as beautiful as Thetis to a mere human. Now he was thinking that this trouble had come from mixing up the affairs of mortals and immortals, and when he caught himself thinking that way, he realized that Eris must be at the back of this quarrel and, if that was the case, there could be no reasonable solution. But the harm was done and he couldn’t yet see how to undo it. Neither could he allow this disgraceful performance to carry on in front of mortal eyes.
‘My decision,’ he said at last, ‘is that we shall return to Olympus immediately, and leave these good people to their feast.’
Moments later the immortals were back among the clouds on high Olympus. But when it quickly became clear that Zeus was still not prepared to make a judgement, the goddesses resumed their argument with uninhibited vehemence and no sign of a solution.
Meanwhile, having begun so joyfully, the wedding feast faltered to a dismal end. Thunderheads had been building over Pelion for some time and the gods had vanished in a livid flap of lightning. Now came the rain, and people ran for shelter, slipping among the rocks and stumbling about as though the storm had wrecked all expectations of peace and order in the world. As soon as the downpour eased, they made their apologies and dispersed back down the mountainside to their comfortable lives in the cities of the plain.
Dismayed that Sky Father Zeus had not been able to contain the fractious energy of the goddesses, Cheiron withdrew gloomily to his cave. The last time his Centaurs had attended a wedding-feast they had been depraved by wine and then hunted down like wolves. That had been the fault of men; but now it seemed even the gods had lost their senses. With the world so out of joint he decided that his people would keep to themselves from now on. If Peleus and his friends wanted to send their sons to be educated in the mountains, he would care for them, instruct them in music and the healing arts, and do what he could to set them on the