Before he started the Trojan War, Paris was a baby left to die
Hecuba dreamed she gave birth to a burning torch, and a seer warned the child would destroy Troy. Paris was abandoned on Mount Ida, nursed by a she-bear, and raised by a herdsman. He returned to win his own funeral games, then picked Aphrodite in a beauty contest and set the Trojan War in motion.
The prince of Troy, son of Priam and Hecuba and younger brother of Hector, goes by two names. Homer mostly calls him Alexandros, said to mean protector or protected, a title earned by surviving exposure as an infant. Scholars have noticed its resemblance to Alaksandu, a Bronze Age king of Wilusa, the city identified with Troy. Paris itself is probably Luwian, perhaps meaning foremost man, and has nothing to do with the French capital, which is named after the Gallic Parisii tribe. One scholar, Leo Klejn, argued that Alexandros was the original heroic name and Paris a later addition.
The herdsman Agelaus could not bring himself to kill the baby and left him on the mountain; returning nine days later he found the child alive and raised him, handing Priam a dog's tongue as fake proof. The boy grew up handsome and clever. When the god Ares, disguised as a bull, beat Paris's champion animal, Paris handed over the promised golden crown without argument. That fairness, the story goes, is why the gods later made him judge of the goddesses. Priam's annual games for his supposedly dead son brought Paris to Troy, where he beat the nobles; when his brother Deiphobus tried to kill him, Cassandra revealed who he was.
The contest began with Eris, goddess of strife, snubbed from a wedding feast, tossing in a golden apple marked for the most beautiful. Zeus refused to choose between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite and passed the task to Paris. Hera offered rule over Europe and Asia, Athena wisdom and martial skill, and Aphrodite the love of Helen of Sparta, already married to Menelaus.
Most ancient sources say Helen left willingly, and the Iliad treats her as Paris's lawful wife. Because her former suitors had sworn to defend her marriage, Menelaus could summon most of Greece. Homer's Paris is an uneven hero: he offers a duel, flees Menelaus, and is rescued by Aphrodite when he starts to lose.
Source: Paris (mythology)
