Abstract

The Judgement of Paris is a key event in understanding the ancient Greek identity. It states a separation between gods and men, the fall of ancient glories, and the appearance of the positive out of the negative. Artistic and literary renderings of the Judgement exhibit some formal differences when they differ in regard to some aspects of the plot, but finally match in regard to how they assess Paris. Representations of the Judgement show narrative divergences, rational arguments, and mockery of both the shepherd and the goddesses. This paper’s goal is to perceive the signs that both poets and visual artists left on how they estimated Paris. The Trojan prince could have been the judge of the goddesses, but he himself shall be judged numerous times by writers and craftsmen of antiquity. The main inspiration of this text is tracing both coincidences and divergences of those who depicted the Judgement during antiquity in a Greek context. The plurality of both testimonies and interpretations suggests a symbolic and comunicative richness in this myth.