The Judgement: Return to Mount Ida
We’ve seen how and why history’s first beauty pageant became an enduring theme for three millennia of artists. The smaller story bookending it is almost as intriguing.
Paris, for all his faux shyness in womanly things, had been around. Mostly around the place shown above — Mount Ida, from whose summit the gods watch and diddled with the horse race in Troy. There is snow in the heights in this Google Earth image, not quite the fine summer’s day seen in the Judgement paintings, but matching, by one tradition, the death of Paris and his first wife, Oenone.
Today Mount Ida is known as Kaz Dağı, the Goose Mountain, 1,800 metres tall and ringed with hiking trails that ramble past waterfalls. Those climbers who are wheezing are here for the oxygen cure. Şahin Deresi — Hawk Valley — is a canyon that funnels pine-scented air out to the gulf and breathes in the iodised sea breeze.
Troy today is called Troia, not to be confused with nearby Truva, a bit of a tourist trap cashing in on the war story, complete with a giant wooden horse on which the kids can play. The archaeological site itself has been dug up and looted so many times that it’s been described as “a ruin of a ruin”. Thank the gods Mount Ida still has her mysteries.
Mount Ida was once home of the Mother Goddess, Cybele, chockfull of sibyls and soothsayers, and a tremendous make-out spot for young couples in lust.
As a tot Paris was suckled here by a she-bear. It’s a long story but loads of fun.
When Paris was born, his mother, Hecuba, had a horrific (and accurate) premonition that he would one day be responsible for the destruction of Troy. She told her husband Prodarces, who everyone called Priam simply for confusion’s sake, and he called in Aesacus, the dream decipherer. Best get the boy the hell away from here then, said Aesacus. Get him out way in the countryside someplace. Paris’ big brother Hector wanted to go too, but they were still working out the movie script at this point and casting was causing problems.
Agelaus, a family servant, dumped Paris on Mount Ida, where a sympathetic bear loaned him a teat for five days. Agelaus came back, found that the toddler had done alright for himself, and decided to raise him as his own son on his nearby farm. A shepherd was born from a castaway prince.
And now for a quick detour into a parallel universe: Among the several rival versions of this made-for-TV myth, one has Priam having a fling on the side with Hecabe (aka Hecuba), resulting in a son named Alexandros (aka Paris).
Before the birth, Hecabe dreamed of a blazing torch that exploded into hundreds of snakes, and the dream unweavers recommended that “whatever” comes out of her womb ought to be put to death to save the homeland. So Alexandros was a marked baby, but the family servants took pity on him and stuck him in the wilderness, where shepherds found him, renamed him Paris and brought him up as their son.
As soon as Paris was old enough to have a pet bull, Priam’s servants showed up looking for a bull to be the prize for the winner of the “funeral games” about to be held for the late and somehow much-missed Alexandros. Paris, naturally, competed and won, causing a rival to threaten his life, but then Priam’s daughter Cassandra intervened and pronounced that he was her brother. Seeing that this was true, Priam took Paris back into his palace.
Now, this version doesn’t explain what Paris was doing back on Mount Ida, so we’re reverting back to the original script …
Paris the shepherd grew tall and strong, blah blah blah, and one day while out grazing he was spotted by a Naiade (or an Oread, take your pick) — a water nymph — named Oenone (pronounced ee-non-EE or ee-NON-ee, take your pick).
The illustration here is from “Children of the Dawn”, to which there’s a link below.
Detail from John William Waterhouse’s “Hylas and the Nymphs” (1896)
“Paris et Oenone” by Agostino Carracci (1557-1602)
Oenone was the daughter of the river god Cebren, and being a nymph, she was sexy as hell. Jump past the censored bit and they’re married and have a son, Corythus. Everything was fine until Hermes showed up with his bevy and his assignment, and suddenly Paris wanted to go get this Helen of Troy person.
Oenone holds off on the music while Paris listens to what Eros has to suggest in this detail on a Roman sarcophagus from Hadrian’s time.
Oenone, being fairly divine herself, knew a thing or two about prophecy, and she told him he was on a fast boat to classic Greek tragedy if he went through with this crazy idea. Paris’ penis had made up his mind for him, though, and he packed his suitcase. If you get hurt then, Oenone said (and you will), come back to me because no one else will be able to heal you.
What a wife! Or perhaps she wasn’t so altruistic: Some versions of the tale have Oenone dispatching Corythus to guide the Greeks to Troy, others that she sent the boy to screw up Paris’ new fling, and that Paris, not recognising his own son, killed him.
Anyway, the Trojan War got started, Homer scribbling away furiously, movie cameras whirring in the background. Paris took an arrow in the gut, fired by Philoctetes, who happened to be using Hercules’ bow. Paris crawled back to Oenone on Mount Ida and said, “About that cure you promised …”
“Oenone refuse de secourir Pâris, blessé par Philoctète” from 1816, by Thomas Degeorge (1786-1854), one of Jacques-Louis David’s prize pupils.
“Paris Begs His Estranged Wife Oenone for Forgiveness for Having Run Away with Helen of Troy” is the gabby title of this etching by Henry Ford (not that Henry Ford).
His ex, being a woman, had of course changed her mind. She refused to heal his wound and told him he could just climb right back into bed with Helen for all she cared.
American sculptor Harriet Hosmer was moved to make her marble “Oenone” after reading Tennyson’s earlier poem on the affair (see below). The nymph meditates mournfully, but it’s not clear whether she’s stewing over Paris’ desertion or his death.
Select Version A: Paris is carried back to Troy to die and Oenone, having changed her mind yet again, brings him some magic healing balm, only to find that she’s too late. Distraught, she hangs herself.
Select Version B: Paris dies on Mount Ida and the locals hoist him onto a funeral pyre. Oenone comes along and says, “What’s that burning smell?”
“That’s your husband!” replies a man holding a marshmallow on a stick.
Overcome with remorse, Oenone throws herself onto the fire.
THE END
Wait! Tennyson wants to read some of his poetry.
There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn.
Skip ahead, Alfred!
“O mother, hear me yet before I die.
Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone,
Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me
Walking the cold and starless road of death
Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love
With the Greek woman. I will rise and go
Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth
Talk with the wild Cassandra, for she says
A fire dances before her, and a sound
Rings ever in her ears of armed men.
What this may be I know not, but I know
That, wheresoe’er I am by night and day,
All earth and air seem only burning fire.”
Sir Alfred, Lord Tennyson was quite wrapped up in the story. The preceding was from his 1832 poem “Oenone”. He returned to the subject a full 60 years later with “The Death of Oenone”:
“Œnone, by thy love which once was mine,
Help, heal me. I am poison’d to the heart.”
“And I to mine,” she said “Adulterer,
Go back to thine adulteress and die!”
The saga is somewhat more sweetly retold online by Elsie Finnimore Buckley as a chapter in “Children of the Dawn”, part of the Baldwin Project (”Bringing Yesterday’s Classics to Today’s Children”).
But for something completely different, here’s Lea Graham’s take on the tale, which was evidently written after she saw Pieter Lastman’s version of “The Judgement of Paris”:
Country faces. She’s between sit and lean,
into or against him, yielding her body’s weight
and breadth — no small thing for a woman these days.
His left hand half cups half clutches her breast,
reclining into landscape,
a pleasure to himself …
Not sure I would like
being half naked and felt up in a pasture
for the faithful dog and farm couple’s view, birch
tall behind sown okra, summer squash;
but his thigh and bicep are muscled like Brando
as Kowalski and I want to feel him right back, rock hard,
immutable, amazed at how much I love
men and careless to the bad
times around the bend:
goats and bagpipes,
dark vines lolling in darkness,
that other woman
shining, unearthly
far off
and out of sight.
There was another film linked to Mount Ida besides “Troy” — the 1954 musical “The Golden Apple”, the setting shifted, however, to Washington state, where a travelling salesman is coerced into judging which local lass has made the tastiest cake for the church social. He ends up with the town floozy. That would be Helen.
