The concept of responsibility is prevalent in many classic works. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for example, deals heavily with the question “who is to blame for this catastrophe?”. The classic Greek myth recounting the tale of Paris, Helen, and the Trojan War is similar to Tolstoy’s work in that it is easy to claim that every party involved has a hand in causing the event that unfolds. However, in the case of the Trojan War, tracing the timeline back to the beginning can reveal the true culprits: Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, the sea god, and her bridegroom Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons.

The wedding of Thetis and Peleus might have been a joyous occasion, had they both not been so foolish. In sending invitations, the couple decided that Eris, the goddess of discord, believing her to be spiteful and vindictive. This decision was not only dangerous, but wholly incorrect; every member of the Greek pantheon has been known to act vengefully, often for minimal offenses- such is the case of Hera cursing Echo to never speak words of her own, because Hera had grown weary of Echo’s chatty nature. If mildly irritating a goddess is enough to warrant divine punishment, Peleus and his bride, Thetis, should have known that worse still would be to exclude one from important ceremonious occasions, such as their wedding. Afraid of Eris’s “spiteful” nature, Peleus and Thetis elected to invite the entirety of the pantheon, save the Goddess of Discord. It was because of this that Eris carried a golden apple down from Olympus, carved “for the fairest” into the face, and rolled it into the wedding banquet. The goddesses who found it, Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena, were quick to declare that it must have been meant for them. True to the nature of gods, the wedding guests decided it would be up to a mortal hero, Paris, to decide. Paris selected Aphrodite, who in turn rewarded him by giving him the heart of Helen, Queen of Sparta. Helen was stolen away to Troy, and so the war betwixt Troy and Sparta began.

It is clear from the paragraph above that the blame might be assigned to Eris, due to her apple of discord, or to the other gods, for refusing to handle their own affairs. One might even claim that the fault rests on the shoulders of Paris, who could have found another solution (perhaps a solomonic approach might have appeased all three of the goddesses). However, none of these events would have ever come to pass at all, were it not for Thetis and Peleus’s initial decision to slight Eris in the first place.

Although it may seem as though there are many to blame for the Trojan War, the events leading up to it were actually a series of dominos; the first one tipped when Peleus and his bride decided to exclude Eris from their celebrations. In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, the issue of who is to blame is never quite resolved, and leaves the reader wondering about their own impact on the world. Similarly, the tale of Thetis, Peleus, and the golden apple serves as a warning to the reader: be wary and thoughtful in what you do- every action is accompanied by consequence.