The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander

locks, when you rolled in the dust, nor all your beauty.
No, but the Trojans are cowards in truth, else long before this
you had worn a mantle of flying stones for the wrong you did us.”
    Alone of the Iliad ’s heroes, Paris bears two names: the Greek “Alexandros,” which is the epic’s name of preference (an ancient name appearing in Linear B tablets), and “Paris,” which like “Priam” is likely to have originated in pre-Greek Asia Minor: tantalizingly an “Alaksandu” of Wilusa is named in Hittite texts. 24
    The encounter between Paris and Menelaos through the dust of impending battle is, like a number of events of Book Three, more reasonably suited to the first weeks than to the tenth year of the war. But certain iconographic scenes, such as the encounter between the two most personally inimical protagonists—the cuckolded husband and the interlop ing lover—are necessary to the emotional, if not the logical, completeness of this story. Moreover, the introduction of Paris in this manner, his cowardice directly contrasting with Menelaos’ old-fashioned, lionhearted courage as he steps from the ranks to meet the young pretender, is particularly effective and naturally leads to one of the most determinedly presented realities of this war—the hatred and contempt with which Paris is held by his own people.
    â€œ ‘Evil Paris,’ ” says his own brother Hektor, “ ‘. . . better had you never been born.’ ” Disparagement of the Trojan responsible for the war is to be expected, of course, in a Greek epic performed before mostly Greek audiences. The vehemence of the disparagement, however, is striking, as is the fact that it comes from his brother. In the entire epic, no Trojan ever attempts to mitigate or diminish either Paris’ crime or the unfair, intolerable burden it has placed on the Trojan people: “ ‘the Trojans are cowards in truth, else long before this / you had worn a mantle of flying stones for the wrong you did us,’ ” as Hektor says—in other words, Paris should have been stoned. Bound by tribal and familial bonds of unyielding if resentful loyalty, the whole of Troy is engulfed in a war fought for what is universally acknowledged as a wrongful, hateful cause.
    Paris’ response to his brother’s contemptuous rebuke is entirely characteristic of his response to the several stinging rebukes he receives throughout the epic. Swiftly, almost agreeably, he acknowledges the correctness of Hektor’s words—“ ‘you have scolded me rightly, not beyond measure’ ”—demurring only with the scorn his brother shows for his beauty and infatuation with the fair sex: “ ‘do not / bring up against me the sweet favours of golden Aphrodite. / Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods.’ ” Paris never exerts the energy of a defense and instead evinces languid self-acceptance that he is only as the gods have made him and does only what the gods direct. That the gods initiate and direct all human events is, in fact, a view supported by the epic. Paris is unheroic, however, not because of his religious belief in divine agency but because of his passive acquiescence to it; as will be seen, heroism is achieved by striving in the face of unconquerable destiny.
    Now, languidly, Paris offers up to his brother one of his intermittent acts of courage; as he is without shame, so Paris is sometimes without fear, again on the principle that the gods alone will in any case determine the outcome. His suggestion is that he and Menelaos fight a duel, man to man, for “ ‘Helen and all her possessions’ ”:
    â€œThat one of us who wins and is proved stronger, let him
take the possessions fairly and the woman, and lead her homeward.
But the rest of you, having cut your oaths of faith and friendship,
dwell, you in Troy where the soil is rich, while those