Editing Judgement of Paris (section)

==Sources of the episode==
[[File:Painting on terracotta panels of the judgement of Paris from Cerveteri (Boccanera tomb) - London BM 1889-0410-1 - 02.jpg|thumb|left|[[Paris (mythology)|Paris]] receives [[Hermes]] who leads [[Athena]], [[Hera]] and [[Aphrodite]], four women facing to the right. Painting on terracotta panels, 560–550 BC]]
[[File:Judgement of Paris Met 98.8.11 cca2 img by Marie-Lan Nguyen edited by K Vail.jpg|thumb|left|Attic black-figure neck amphora by [[Swing Painter]] (c. 540–530 BC), now in the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]]]

As with many mythological tales, details vary depending on the source. The brief allusion to the Judgement in the ''[[Iliad]]'' (24.25–30) shows that the episode initiating all the subsequent action was already familiar to its audience; a fuller version was told in the ''[[Cypria]]'', a [[Lost literary work|lost work]] of the [[Epic Cycle]], of which only fragments (and a reliable summary<ref>The outline of Proclus, summarized by Photius, found in English translation in ''Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica,'' ed. Evelyn-White, London and Cambridge, Massachusetts (Loeb series), new and revised edition 1936.</ref>) remain. The later writers [[Ovid]] (''Heroides'' 16.71ff, 149–152 and 5.35f), [[Lucian]] (''Dialogues of the Gods'' 20), [[Pseudo-Apollodorus]] (''[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Bibliotheca]]'', E.3.2) and [[Gaius Julius Hyginus|Hyginus]] (''Fabulae'' 92), retell the story with skeptical, ironic or popularizing agendas. It appeared wordlessly on the ivory and gold votive chest of the 7th-century BC tyrant [[Cypselus]] at [[Olympia, Greece|Olympia]], which was described by [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] as showing:

{{Blockquote|... Hermes bringing to [[Paris (mythology)|Alexander]] [i.e. Paris] the son of [[Priam]] the goddesses of whose beauty he is to judge, the inscription on them being: 'Here is Hermes, who is showing to Alexander, that he may arbitrate concerning their beauty, [[Hera]], [[Athena]] and [[Aphrodite]].<ref>Pausanias, ''[[Description of Greece]]'', [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Paus.+5.19.5 5.19.5].</ref>}}

The subject was favoured by ancient Greek vase painters as early as the sixth century BC,<ref>Kerenyi, fig. 68.</ref> and remained popular in Greek and Roman art, before enjoying a significant revival as an opportunity to show three female nudes, in the [[Renaissance]].