Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Paris.
The gallery
The Judgement of Paris
Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1632-1635
Oil painting by Peter Paul Rubens, now in the National Gallery, London. Seated with Mercury at his side, the shepherd-prince of Mount Ida is about to award the golden apple — the prize of beauty thrown by Strife — to Venus, while Juno and Minerva await his fateful verdict; the choice will win him Helen and doom Troy.
The Loves of Paris and Helen
Jacques-Louis David, 1788
Oil painting by Jacques-Louis David, commissioned by the comte d'Artois, the future Charles X, and now in the Louvre, Paris. Paris, lyre in hand, draws Helen to him in his chamber — the lovers of the third book of the Iliad, where Aphrodite spirits Paris away from his duel with Menelaus and brings Helen to him.
The Judgement of Paris
Enrique Simonet, 1904
Oil painting by the Spanish artist Enrique Simonet, now in the Museo de Málaga. Under the trees of Mount Ida, Hera, Athena and Aphrodite present themselves before Paris, who sits at the right in his herdsman's skins among his grazing flock, weighing the judgement that ancient tradition made the seed of the Trojan War.
On screen
Troy
Wolfgang Petersen
Orlando Bloom's Paris is the lover who brings Helen home and the archer who finds Achilles' heel — the prince whose choice and whose arrow bookend Petersen's war.
Helen of Troy
Robert Wise
Wise's Paris is the shepherd-prince of the Judgement and the abduction — the face that launches the widescreen fleet.
Troy: Fall of a City
Owen Harris
The BBC/Netflix retelling opens on the golden apple and stays with Paris' bargain — love as the spark that burns Ilion.
Helen of Troy
John Kent Harrison
Matthew Marsden's Paris is the abandoned prince returned — the Judgement, the flight with Helen, and death in Agamemnon's camp.
The Trojan Horse
Giorgio Ferroni
Warner Bentivegna plays Paris in Ferroni's peplum — the prince among Troy's last defenders as Aeneas takes the lead.
In music & on stage
The Golden Apple
Jerome Moross
Broadway's through-sung Homer pastiche makes Paris the judge at an angel-food bake-off — the Judgement of Paris restaged as a Washington-state town fair.
La belle Hélène
Jacques Offenbach
Offenbach's opéra bouffe makes Paris the tenor seducer of the Second Empire — the shepherd who wins Helen with wit and a wink.
The Judgment of Paris
John Eccles
Congreve's libretto, set by Eccles and rivals in the 1701 London competition — and later by Arne — stages the golden-apple contest that starts the war.
King Priam
Michael Tippett
Tippett's Iliad opera follows Paris from the prophecy of his birth to the death he brings his father — the prince as Priam's fatal choice.
Paris
Jon English
English and Mackay's musical puts the Trojan prince in the title role — Judgement, Helen, and the war sung for a modern audience.
In play
Judgement of Paris
The myth gave English a byword for any beauty contest with disastrous stakes — Paris' apple still names a choice that starts a war.
A Thousand Ships
Natalie Haynes
Haynes' mosaic keeps Oenone and Helen among the women Paris leaves behind — the prince as the choice that wrecks Troy.
Troy (novel series)
David Gemmell
Gemmell's bestselling trilogy restages the Trojan War with Paris among the royal house — the shepherd-prince in modern heroic fantasy.