Eris

A daughter of Night

Eris is strife in the form of a goddess. The early Greek poet Hesiod places her among the children of Nyx, or Night. In his Theogony, a poem on the birth of the gods, Eris comes after her sister Nemesis.

Eris then gives birth to a family of harms: Toil, Forgetfulness, Famine, Sorrows, Battles, Murders, Quarrels, Lying Words, Disputes, Lawlessness, Ruin and Oath. The list does not treat strife as a passing bad temper. It makes her the parent of the conditions in which ordinary duties to one another fail.

Oath comes last because a false oath brings punishment as well as conflict. Hesiod says Oath troubles the person who knowingly swears falsely. So Eris gives birth both to the lie that damages trust and to the force that turns back on the liar.

The guest left outside

The gods gather on Mount Pelion for the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Apollodorus, whose Library retells the Greek myths, describes the marriage. The goddess Thetis has been made to marry a mortal, Peleus, because her son is expected to be greater than his father. Peleus has seized her and held on through her changes of shape until she returns to her own form.

The gods celebrate the marriage on Pelion with a feast and song. The centaur Chiron gives an ash-wood spear. The god Poseidon gives immortal horses. These gifts will pass to Achilles, the son whose greatness made a marriage to a god too dangerous.

One divine power is missing from the feast. Eris has not been invited. The wedding was meant to settle a problem among the gods, and she enters it anyway.

The golden apple

The Epitome, a summary of the myths attributed to Apollodorus, tells what Eris does next. She answers being left out by throwing a golden apple among the guests. Its inscription gives it to the fairest. The goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite each claim the prize. The god Zeus refuses to choose between them. The god Hermes leads the three goddesses to Paris, a mortal prince, for judgment.

Eris does not choose the winner. Her power is to make a difference impossible to ignore, and then to let the rivals make it larger themselves. Hera offers kingship, Athena victory in war and Aphrodite the hand of Helen. Paris chooses Aphrodite. The quarrel at one wedding turns towards another marriage and then towards the city of Troy.

The golden apple is not equally old in every surviving layer of the story. An ancient epic poem called the Cypria already connected Eris with the wedding and the judgment. The apple appears clearly only in later accounts, and the Epitome keeps the familiar object. The older story of her stepping in and the later golden prize should not be treated as one securely dated version.

How Strife grows

The Iliad, the epic poem of Homer, gives Eris a size rather than a single object. As the Greek and Trojan armies close in, the god Ares drives one side and Athena the other. Fear, Terror and Eris move with them. Homer calls her the sister and companion of man-killing Ares.

At first Eris is small. Then her head reaches heaven while her feet stay on earth. She walks through the crowd and increases the groans of men. The image shows how conflict changes once it is shared. An offence that begins between a few people grows larger than any one of them and spreads suffering through a whole army.

What the apple changes

The apple story narrows this broad power to one deciding scene. Eris needs no army and carries no weapon. A short inscription makes three goddesses compare themselves. Their rivalry hands the judgment to a mortal prince who cannot choose without making enemies.

The results fall unevenly. The goddesses make offers, Paris decides and Helen is promised to him. The mortal bride then bears the cost. A dispute among the gods becomes a war fought by mortals. Homer imagines Eris walking among soldiers and adding to their pain. The wedding story places her at the point where rivalry among the gods first takes that human form.

Pelion keeps the beginning in view. On this mountain the gods honour a marriage meant to hold back a prophecy. Here Achilles receives his future weapons before he is born, and one guest who was left out turns a celebration into a contest. Eris leaves the feast, but the quarrel goes on. It travels to Ida, Sparta and Troy.