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                                        -17-
       
       
       "You will find that the State is the kind of
       organization which, though it does big things
       badly, does small things badly, too."              [Illustration:  the
                           -- John Kenneth Galbraith      Golden Apple]
       
       
       THE MYTH OF THE APPLE OF DISCORD
       
       It seems that Zeus was preparing a wedding banquet for Peleus and 
       Thetis and did not want to invite Eris because of Her reputation as a 
       trouble-maker.*
       
           This made Eris angry, and so She fashioned a apple of pure gold** 
       and inscribed upon it KALLISTI, "to the prettiest one," and on the day 
       of the fete She rolled it into the banquet hall and then left to be 
       alone and joyously partake of a hot dog.
       
           Now, three of the invited goddesses,*** Athena, Hera, and 
       Aphrodite, each immediately claimed it to belong to herself because of 
       the inscription.  And they started fighting, and they started throwing 
       punch all over the place and everything.
       
           Finally Zeus calmed things down and declared that an arbitrator 
       must be selected, which was a reasonable suggestion, and all agreed.  
       He sent them to a shepherd of Troy, whose name was Paris because his 
       mother had had a lot of gaul and had married a Frenchman; but each of 
       the sneaky goddesses tried to outwit the others by going early and 
       offering a bribe to Paris.
       
           Athena offered him Heroic War Victories, Hera offered him Great 
       Wealth, and Aphrodite offered him The Most Beautiful Woman on Earth.  
       Being a healthy young Trojan lad, Paris promptly accepted Aphrodite's 
       bribe and she got the apple and he got screwed.
       
           As she had promised, she maneuvered earthly happenings so that 
       Paris could have Helen (_the_ Helen) then living with her husband 
       Menelaus, King of Sparta.  Anyway, everyone knows that the Trojan War 
       followed