ZEUS 
Hermes, take this apple; go to Phrygia, to Priam’s
son, the herdsman—he is grazing his flock in the
foothills of Ida, on Gargaron—and say to him:
“Paris, as you are handsome yourself, and also well
schooled in all that concerns love, Zeus bids you be
judge for the goddesses, to decide which of them is
the most beautiful. As the prize for the contest, let
the victor take the apple.” (To the Gopprsses) You
yourselves must now go and appear before your judge.
I refuse to be umpire because I love you all alike and
if it were possible, should be glad to see you all
victorious. Moreover, it is sure that if I gave the
guerdon of beauty to one, I should inevitably get into
the bad graces of the majority. For those reasons I
4am not a proper judge for you, but the young
Phrygian to whom you are going is of royal blood
and near of kin to our Ganymede; besides, he is
ingenuous and unsophisticated, and one cannot consider him unworthy of a spectacle such as this.