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.

APHRODITE Let us do that.

PARIS Then you two go away, and you, Hera, stay here.

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.

PARIS My decisions are not to be influenced by rewards.