the inhabitants of the historical town of
Ilium, who offered no worship to Heracles.

Among all the sons of Laomedon, Priam was the only one who had
remonstrated against the refusal of the well-earned guerdon of
Heracles; for which the hero recompensed him by placing him on the
throne. Many and distinguished were his sons and daughters, as well by
his wife Hecuba, daughter of Cisseus, as by other women. Among the sons
were Hector, Paris, Deiphobus, Helenus, Troilus, Polites, Polydorus;
among the daughters, Laodice, Creusa, Polyxena, and Cassandra.

The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presage; for Hecuba
dreamed that she was delivered of a firebrand, and Priam, on consulting
the soothsayers, was informed that the son about to be born would prove
fatal to him. Accordingly he directed the child to be exposed on Mount
Ida; but the inauspicious kindness of the gods preserved him; and he
grew up amid the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair
and symmetrical in person, and the special favorite of Aphrodite.

It was to this youth, in his solitary shepherd's walk on Mount Ida, that
the three goddesses, Here, Athene, and Aphrodite, were conducted, in
order that he might determine the dispute respecting their comparative
beauty, which had arisen at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis,--a
dispute brought about in pursuance of the arrangement, and in
accomplishment of the deep-laid designs of Zeus. For Zeus, remarking
with pain the immoderate numbers of the then existing heroic race,
pitied the earth for the overwhelming burden which she was compelled to
bear, and determined to lighten it by exciting a destructive and
long-continued war. Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphrodite, who
promised him in recompense the possession of Helen, wife of the Spartan
Menelaus,--the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women. At the
instance of Aphrodite, ships were built for him, and he embarked on the
enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster to his native city, in
spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother Helenus, and the always
neglected warnings of Cassandra.

Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by Menelaus as
well as by Castor and Pollux, and was enabled to present the rich gifts
which he had brought to Helen. Menelaus then departed to Crete, leaving
Helen to entertain his Trojan guest--a favorable moment, which was
employed by Aphrodite to bring about the intrigue and the el