choose. The goddesses went to him and each begged him to choose her. Hera offered Paris, if he chose her, the chance at infinite wisdom; Athena offered to let him defeat the Achaeans if they went to war; and finally, Aphrodite offered Paris the love of the most beautiful woman in Greece, Helen. Paris chose Aphrodite, she received the apple and he got Helen, the wife of an Achaean chieftain, Menelaus. The war started as an expedition to recover the stolen Helen.This could all be looked at allegorically, and the decision could be made that in all actuality Paris, of his own free will, fell in love with Helen and stole her away to Troy. But, does anyone really want such a simple explanation to say what started a war that killed so many people and ended a part of civilization? According to today's archeological findings know one knows from true detail exactly what caused the downfall of Troy. As of now the modern world even knows the location of King Priam's city, but they do not necessarily know what caused it to be destroyed.There is of course the possibility of taking the writings of Dictys of Crete into account. As the known story of Dictys goes, he was a person alive during the Trojan war. He accompanied the leaders Idomeneus and Meriones with the armies against Troy, these leaders, supposedly, asked Dictys to keep a record of their campaign. After Dictys returned from the war he was old and requested on his death bed to have his books buried with him. Long after his death shepards were walking past a tomb that had been broken open by an earthquake; the shepards noticed a locked tin box and took it, expecting treasure. When they opened the box, the shepards found linden tablets with Phoenician writing on them. The tablets were then passed between various hands until they reached Nero who had them translated to Greek. The story that the tablets held only briefly speaks of the beginning or the start of the war. Technically Dictys was no...
