ERIS

Discord. Stife. Yeah, Eris is all that and a bag of wormy chips. The daughter of Nyx (night), Eris was always a bit of a problem child. As such, she wasn’t invited to the wedding of power couple Peleus and Thetis. (Who invites discord to a wedding?) Upset at being slighted, Eris tossed a golden apple into the assemblage marked “To the fairest,” which sparked a squabble among Hera, Aphrodite and Athena, who were all convinced it referred to them. Zeus was smart enough to decline the judge’s chair when it was offered to him and instead thrust a mortal into the line of fire: Paris. You know, prince of Troy. The three goddesses tried to rig the decision. Each promised him something in their wheelhouse should he pick them, but he jumped at Aphrodite’s enticement—to have the most beautiful woman in the world for his wife. I’d comment about the vanity of men, but clearly there was more than enough to go around in this story!

 

The long and short of it is that the most beautiful woman, with the face that launched a thousand (war)ships was Helen, who was already married to Menelaus of Sparta. Now, the movie The 300 hadn’t come out yet, so maybe the fame of the Spartans hadn’t quite spread far and wide, but really, Paris should have known better than to run off with another man’s wife. A powerful man at that. A king and brother to another king, Agamemnon of Mycenae, who was married to Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra. Can you say clusterf*ck, boys and girls? Of course you can.

 

Anyway, Eris accomplished what she set out to (she usually did)—strife, discord, war. As you might imagine, she was one of Ares’ boon companions.

 

Aliases: Discordia