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APHRODITE Then why do not you take off your helmet, Athena, and show your head bare, instead of tossing your plumes at the judge and frightening him? Are you afraid that you may be criticized for the green glare of your eyes if it is seen without trappings that inspire terror?The word with which Homer describes the eyes of Athena had an uncomplimentary sense in Lucian’s time. “Don’t let it trouble you that her eyes are very green (πανύ γλαυκούς), or that they squint and look at each other!” says a girl to her lover about a rival (Dial. Mer. 2,1). And Hephaestus finds Athena very beautiful, but must except her eyes: “To be sure, she has green eyes, but the helmet makes even that a mark of beauty” (Dial. Deor, 13 (vulg. 8)). So caesius in Latin; cf. Lucretius 4, 1161. ATHENA There is the helmet for.you: I have taken it off.
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APHRODITE There is the girdle for you. HERA Come, let us undress.
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PARIS O Zeus, god of miracles! What a spectacle! What beauty! What rapture! How fair the maiden is! How royal and majestic and truly worthy of Zeus is the matron’s splendour! How sweet and delicious is the other’s gaze, and how seductively she smiled! But I have more than enough of bliss already; and if you please, I should like to examine each of you separately, for at present I am all at sea and do not know what to look at; my eyes are ravished in every direction.
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APHRODITE Let us do that.
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PARIS Then you two go away, and you, Hera, stay here.
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HERA Very well, and when you have examined me thoroughly, you must further consider whether the rewards of a vote in my favour are also beautiful in your eyes. If you judge me to be beautiful, Paris, you shall be lord of all Asia.
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PARIS My decisions are not to be influenced by rewards.
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But go; I shall do whatever seems best. Come, Athena.
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ATHENA I am at your side, and if you judge me beautiful, Paris, you shall never leave the-field of battle defeated, but always victorious, for I shall make you a warrior and a conqueror.
