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"YOU WILL FIND that the STATE is the kind of
ORGANIZATION which, though it does big things badly, does small things
badly too."
- JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
THE MYTH OF THE APPLE OF DISCORD
It seems that Zeus was preparing a wedding banquet for Peleus and Thetis and
did not want to invite Eris because of Her reputation as a trouble maker. *
This made Eris angry, and so She fashioned an apple of pure gold** and
inscribed upon it KALLISTI ("To The Prettiest One") and on the day of the fete
She rolled it into the banquet hall and then left to be alone and joyously
partake of a hot dog.
Now, three of the invited goddesses,*** Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, each
immediately claimed it to belong to herself because of the inscription. And they
started fighting, and they started throwing punch all over the place and
everything.
Finally, Zeus calmed things down and declared that an arbitrator must be
selected, which was a reasonable suggestion, and all agreed. He sent them to a
shepherd of Troy, whose name was Paris because his mother had had a lot of gaul
and married a Frenchman; but each of the sneaky goddesses tried to outwit the
others by going early and offering a bribe to Paris.
Athena offered him Heroic War Victories, Hera offered him Great Wealth, and
Aphrodite offered him The Most Beautiful Woman on Earth. Being a healthy young
Trojan lad, Paris promptly accepted Aphrodite’s bribe and she got the apple and
he got screwed.
As she had promised, she maneuvered earthly happenings so that Paris could
have Helen (the Helen) then living with her husband Menelaus, King of Sparta.
Anyway, everyone knows that the Trojan War followed
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