Dearum judicium

ZEUS Hermes, take this apple; go to Phrygia, to Priam’s son, the herdsman—he is grazing his flock in the foothills of Ida, on Gargaron—and say to him: “Paris, as you are handsome yourself, and also well schooled in all that concerns love, Zeus bids you be judge for the goddesses, to decide which of them is the most beautiful. As the prize for the contest, let the victor take the apple.”

(To the Gopprsses)

You yourselves must now go and appear before your judge. I refuse to be umpire because I love you all alike and if it were possible, should be glad to see you all victorious. Moreover, it is sure that if I gave the guerdon of beauty to one, I should inevitably get into the bad graces of the majority. For those reasons I 4am not a proper judge for you, but the young Phrygian to whom you are going is of royal blood and near of kin to our Ganymede; besides, he is ingenuous and unsophisticated, and one cannot consider him unworthy of a spectacle such as this.