We are so used to the procession form that it requires a certain effort of the imagination to conceive of the myth embodied otherwise. But, if we shake ourselves loose of preconceived notions, surely the natural lucid way of depicting the myth would be something after this fashion: Paris in the centre, facing the successful Aphrodite, to whom he speaks or hands the apple or a crown; behind him, to indicate neglect, the two defeated goddesses; Hermes anywhere, to indicate the mandate of the gods. Such a form does indeed appear later, when the vase-painter thought for himself and shook himself free of the dominant tradition. The procession form, as we have it, _was not made for the myth_, it was merely adapted and taken over, and instantly the suggestion occurs, ‘Did not the myth itself in some sense rise out of the already existing art form, an art form in which Paris had no place, in which the golden apple was not?’ That form was the ancient type of _Hermes leading the three Korai or Charites_. In the design in fig. 80, the centre figure Athene is differentiated by her tall helmet and her aegis. Athene is the first of the goddesses to be differentiated—and why? She was not victorious, but the vase-painter is an Athenian, and he is concerned for the glory of ἡ Ἀθηναία Κόρη, the Maiden of Athens. [Illustration: FIG. 81.] In the design in fig. 81, from a black-figured amphora in the Berlin Museum[768], the three goddesses are all alike: the first holds a flower, the two last fruits, all fitting emblems of the Charites. Hermes, their leader, carries a huge irrelevant sheep—irrelevant for the herald of the gods on his way to Ida, significant for the leader of the Charites, the god of the increase of flocks and herds. Does the picture represent a ‘Judgment,’ or Hermes and the Charites? Who knows? The doubt is here, as often, more instructive than certainty.