Theseus

The son of either Poseidon or Aegeus and Aethra, Theseus was widely considered the greatest Athenian hero, the king who united Attica under the city of Athens. Raised by his mother in Troezen, he learned his father’s identity as a young man and set out for Athens, overcoming a series of brigands on the way. In Athens he escaped Medea’s plot against him, captured the Marathonian Bull, and volunteered to go to Crete, where he killed the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Later, after an attempt with his friend Pirithous to win Persephone from the Underworld, he lost his hold on Athens and was killed on the island of Scyros by its king Lycomedes (Plutarch, Theseus 35).

Theseus in Troezen: Foreshadowings of a Hero

On the night Theseus was conceived, his mother Aethra, daughter of King Pittheus of Troezen, lay with Aegeus, king of Athens, and, in the same night, with Poseidon (Apollodorus, Library 3.15.7). Whoever his father had been, Theseus’ exceptional parentage was evident even in his early years. At Troezen the story was put about, by Pittheus, that the boy was begotten by Poseidon, who was highly honored there and the patron god of the city (Plutarch, Theseus 6.1). When Theseus had grown into a young man, Aethra sent him to Athens.

The Story of Theseus’ Birth

Aegeus was childless and feared the fifty sons of Pallas, his brother, who despised him for it (Plutarch, Theseus 3.5). He went to the oracle at Delphi to ask whether he would ever have children, and the Pythia answered: “The bulging mouth of the wineskin, O best of men, loose not until thou hast reached the height of Athens” (Apollodorus, Library 3.15.6). Aegeus did not understand and, on his way home, stopped at Troezen to ask Pittheus, who understood the oracle, made Aegeus drunk, and caused him to lie with his daughter Aethra. In the same night Poseidon also lay with her (Library 3.15.7). Aethra bore a son, who was named Theseus; Plutarch reports that some said the name came from the tokens (thémata) left in hiding for his recognition, others that it was given later in Athens, when Aegeus acknowledged him (Plutarch, Theseus 4.1).

Heracles’ Lion Skin

The Troezenians told that when Heracles visited Pittheus and laid aside his lion skin to eat dinner, the Troezenian children who came in to see him fled in terror, taking the skin for a living lion. Only Theseus, then a boy of seven, did not run: he snatched an axe from the servants and attacked it, thinking it was a real animal (Pausanias 1.27.7). Heracles and Theseus were cousins, since Aethra was a daughter of Pittheus and Alcmene a daughter of Lysidice, who was Pittheus’ sister (Plutarch, Theseus 7.1).

The Sword and the Sandals

Before Aegeus left Troezen, he hid a sword and a pair of sandals under a great rock and told Aethra that, if she bore a son, she should rear him without telling whose son he was, and that when the boy could roll away the rock and take up the tokens, she was to send him to Athens with them (Apollodorus, Library 3.15.7). When Theseus was grown, Aethra led him to the rock and told him the truth about his birth. He put his shoulder to it and lifted it easily, took the tokens and set out (Plutarch, Theseus 6.2–3; Apollodorus, Library 3.16.1). Pausanias, who saw the rock at Troezen, says that Theseus was sixteen when he moved it (1.27.8).

On the Road to Athens

Aethra and Pittheus begged Theseus to travel by sea, since the land route was not clear of robbers and wrongdoers. Theseus refused. According to Plutarch he thought it shameful that his cousin Heracles should purge land and sea of the wicked while he ran away from the struggles that lay in his path, and brought his father only a sword and sandals as proof of birth (Plutarch, Theseus 6.3, 7.1–2). He set out determined to wrong no one but to punish those who offered violence, and by the time he reached Athens he had cleared the road (Apollodorus, Library 3.16.1; Epitome 1.1–4).

Periphetes, the Club-Bearer

At Epidaurus Theseus met Periphetes, son of Hephaestus, who killed passers-by with an iron club; Theseus took the club from him and slew him, and continued to carry it (Apollodorus, Library 3.16.1). Plutarch adds that Theseus carried the club as Heracles carried the lion skin: to show that a weapon which had been vanquished by him was invincible in his own hands (Plutarch, Theseus 8.1).

Sinis, the Pine-Bender

On the Isthmus of Corinth Theseus killed Sinis the Pine-bender, who tied travelers to bent-down pine trees and let them spring back, tearing the victims apart. Theseus killed him in the very manner in which Sinis had destroyed many men (Plutarch, Theseus 8.2). Plutarch also tells that Sinis’ daughter Perigune fled and hid among rushes and wild asparagus; Theseus found her, promised to treat her honorably, and she bore him a son, Melanippus (Theseus 8.2–3).

Phaea, the Crommyonian Sow

At Crommyon Theseus killed the sow called Phaea, which some said was the offspring of Echidna and Typhon (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.1). Plutarch says it was fierce and hard to master, and that Theseus sought it out of his own accord; he adds that some held Phaea to have been a female robber nicknamed “Sow” for her life and manners (Plutarch, Theseus 9.1).

Sciron, the Feet-Washer

Sciron held the cliffs of the Megarian territory called after him the Scironian rocks. He compelled passers-by to wash his feet and, as they did so, kicked them into the sea, where a huge turtle devoured them. Theseus seized him by the feet and threw him into the sea (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.2–3).

Cercyon, the Wrestler

At Eleusis Theseus killed Cercyon, son of Branchus and the nymph Argiope, who forced passers-by to wrestle and killed them in the match. Theseus lifted him up and dashed him to the ground (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.3; Pausanias 1.39.3, who shows the spot, called the wrestling-school of Cercyon).

Procrustes, the Stretcher

Procrustes, called Damastes or Polypemon by some, lived beside the road and offered hospitality to travelers. He had two beds, one small and one big. He laid the short men on the big bed and hammered them to make them fit; the tall men he laid on the little bed and sawed off the parts that projected. Having killed him, Theseus came to Athens, the road now cleared (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.4). Plutarch records that Theseus reached the city on the eighth day of the month Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, after being purified of bloodshed at the river Cephisus by the Phytalidae (Plutarch, Theseus 12.1).

Theseus in Athens: An Unwelcomed Guest

In Athens Theseus found the city full of confusion and the household of Aegeus in a troubled state. Medea, who had fled to Athens from Corinth and was living with Aegeus, learned about Theseus in advance (Plutarch, Theseus 12.1–2).

Aegeus and Medea

Aegeus, now old and afraid of everything because of the faction in the city, did not know the stranger was his son. Medea did not want the throne to pass to him, so she persuaded Aegeus to beware of him as a traitor (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.5). According to Apollodorus, Aegeus then sent Theseus against the Marathonian Bull, hoping it would destroy him. According to Plutarch, in contrast, Theseus went out against the bull on his own account, wanting to be at work and to win the favor of the people (Plutarch, Theseus 14.1).

The Marathonian Bull

The Marathonian Bull was the same animal that Heracles brought from Crete as his seventh labor. In one version it was the bull that carried Europa for Zeus; in another it was the bull that Poseidon sent up from the sea to Minos (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.7). It ravaged the district around Marathon, where it killed Androgeus, the son of Minos, according to one account (Library 3.15.7; Pausanias 1.27.10). Theseus mastered it, drove it alive through the city, and sacrificed it to Apollo Delphinios (Plutarch, Theseus 14.1).

The Cup of Poison: Theseus Recognized

Medea still had a plan. At a banquet she gave Aegeus a cup of poison to offer to Theseus. Theseus, not wishing to say who he was, drew his sword as if to carve the meat so that his father might see it. Aegeus recognized the sword, dashed down the cup, questioned his son and embraced him, and acknowledged him before an assembly of the citizens (Plutarch, Theseus 12.2–3; Apollodorus, Epitome 1.6). Medea was driven out of Athens. The fifty sons of Pallas, Aegeus’ brother, who had hoped for the throne, rose in revolt against the newly declared heir and were defeated (Plutarch, Theseus 13.1); Apollodorus places their revolt and death after Theseus had succeeded to the throne (Epitome 1.11).

Theseus in Crete

Soon after Theseus’ arrival the time came for the third tribute to Minos, king of Crete. Because Androgeus was thought to have been treacherously killed in Attica, Minos had made war on the Athenians, and Heaven had afflicted the country with famine and plague; the Athenians agreed to send him every nine years seven young men and seven young women (Plutarch, Theseus 15.1). In the usual tradition these were given to the Minotaur, the offspring of Pasiphae’s passion for a bull, shut up in the Labyrinth built by Daedalus (Apollodorus, Library 3.1.3–4).

Ariadne and the Minotaur

When the lots were being drawn, the people grumbled that Aegeus, the cause of their misfortune, alone had no share in the loss; Theseus offered himself independently of the lot (Plutarch, Theseus 17.1–2; Apollodorus, Epitome 1.7). Aegeus gave the pilot a black sail and charged his son that, if he returned alive, they should hoist a white one (Epitome 1.7; Plutarch, Theseus 17.4). In Crete, Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and offered to help him if he would carry her away to Athens and make her his wife. Theseus swore that he would, and she asked Daedalus to reveal the way out of the Labyrinth. On his advice she gave Theseus a thread; he fastened it at the door and, unwinding it behind him, entered (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.8–9). He found the Minotaur and killed it, and then followed the thread out (Plutarch, Theseus 19.1). Plutarch preserves a different, more rationalistic account in which Theseus won a wrestling contest against Minos’ general Taurus and Minos gave the youths back (Theseus 16.1, 19.2–3).

Theseus and Ariadne

Theseus sailed away with Ariadne and the young people, but he did not keep her. In the version told by Apollodorus, Dionysus fell in love with Ariadne at Naxos and carried her off (Epitome 1.9). Homer, the earliest source, says only that Theseus meant to bring her from Crete to Athens, “but he had no joy of her, for ere that Artemis slew her in sea-girt Dia because of the witness of Dionysus” (Odyssey 11.321–325). Plutarch lists further accounts, one of them that Theseus abandoned her because of his passion for Aegle, daughter of Panopeus (Theseus 20.1). The sources thus speak of a promise of marriage and of Ariadne being left behind, not of a completed wedding on Crete.

Theseus, the King of Athens

A Broken Promise

As the ship approached Attica, Theseus himself forgot, and so did his pilot, to hoist the white sail, such was their joy; Apollodorus says that in his grief over Ariadne Theseus forgot. Aegeus, watching from the Acropolis and seeing the black sail, supposed his son dead and threw himself down to his death (Plutarch, Theseus 22.1; Apollodorus, Epitome 1.10). Hyginus says that he threw himself into the sea, which was called the Aegean after him (Fabulae 43).

Unification of Attica

After the death of Aegeus, Theseus settled all the residents of Attica in one city, making one people of those who had been scattered in separate townships. He persuaded the poor readily, and the powerful by promising them a government without a king, in which he would be only commander in war and guardian of the laws. He abolished the local town halls and councils, built a common council-chamber, named the city Athens and instituted the Panathenaic festival and the Metoecia, the Festival of Settlement (Plutarch, Theseus 24.1–4). Plutarch also says that Theseus founded the Isthmian games in honor of Poseidon, in emulation of Heracles, who had founded the Olympic games; but he reports a variant that the games were instituted in memory of Sciron, or of Sinis, to atone for killing a relative (Theseus 25.4–5). Heracles, in the usual tradition, is credited with the Olympic Games, not the Isthmian.

Phaedra and Hippolytus

Theseus took part in an expedition against the Amazons, in which he carried off Antiope, whom Simonides calls Hippolyte; in Plutarch he made the voyage on his own account, after the time of Heracles, and brought back the Amazon as captive (Plutarch, Theseus 26.1; Apollodorus, Epitome 1.16). She bore him Hippolytus. The Amazons then attacked Athens, and were defeated; Plutarch says they pitched camp near the Pnyx and the Museum hill (Theseus 27.1). Theseus later married Phaedra, daughter of Minos, and she bore Acamas and Demophon (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.17–18).

Phaedra then fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus. When he refused her, she falsely accused him to Theseus, who prayed to Poseidon that Hippolytus might die. As Hippolytus drove his chariot beside the sea, a bull rose from the waves, the horses bolted, and he was dragged to his death. When the truth came out, Phaedra hanged herself (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.18–19). In Euripides’ surviving Hippolytus Phaedra hangs herself at Troezen, leaving a letter that accuses Hippolytus, and a bull from the sea wrecks his chariot (Hippolytus 764–802, 856–880, 1198–1248).

Theseus and Pirithous

Theseus befriended Pirithous, king of the Lapiths. Plutarch tells that Pirithous, wishing to test Theseus, drove off his cattle from Marathon and then stood to face him when he pursued; each admired the other and they swore friendship (Plutarch, Theseus 30.1). At Pirithous’ wedding to Hippodamia the Centaurs, who were kinsmen of the bride, drank wine to excess and tried to carry off the bride; Pirithous and Theseus fought them and Theseus killed many (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.21). Homer already knew both men as among the mightiest men of the past (Iliad 1.262–265).

The two agreed to marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus, with Pirithous’ help, carried off Helen from Sparta when she was a child, and Pirithous then went down to Hades to win Persephone (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.23; Plutarch, Theseus 31.2–3). While they were away the Dioscuri took Athens, or Aphidnae where Helen had been left, carried Helen back to Sparta and took Aethra into captivity (Epitome 1.23; Plutarch, Theseus 32–34). In the Underworld, Hades pretended to offer them hospitality and bade them sit on the Chair of Forgetfulness, where they grew fast. Heracles brought Theseus up and sent him to Athens, but Pirithous stayed bound (Epitome 1.24). Plutarch gives the rescue by Heracles, who begged Theseus’ release from the Molossian king Aidoneus (Theseus 35.1–2); Pausanias adds that the more plausible account puts the whole adventure in Thesprotia (1.17.4).

The Death of Theseus

Back in Athens, Theseus found that Menestheus, who had turned the nobles and the people against him, held power. Unable to regain control, Theseus cursed the Athenians, sent his sons to Euboea and sailed to Scyros, where he had family estates. Lycomedes, the king, either because he feared so famous a man or as a favor to Menestheus, led him up to a high place and threw him down the cliffs. Some say he simply slipped and fell (Plutarch, Theseus 35.2–4; Apollodorus, Epitome 1.24).

The Aftermath

At first no one made any account of his death; Menestheus reigned, while Theseus’ sons accompanied Elephenor to Troy and afterwards recovered their kingdom (Plutarch, Theseus 35.5). The Athenians came to honor Theseus as a demigod because many of those who fought the Persians at Marathon thought they saw an apparition of Theseus in arms rushing ahead of them against the barbarians (Plutarch, Theseus 35.5). After the Persian Wars the Delphic oracle told the Athenians to take up the bones of Theseus and bury them in Athens. Cimon captured Scyros, found a coffin of extraordinary size with a bronze spear and a sword beside it, and brought it home on his trireme. Theseus was buried in the heart of Athens, and his tomb became a refuge for runaway slaves and the poor (Plutarch, Theseus 36.1–2).

Theseus Sources

Mentioned in both the “Iliad” (1.262–265) and the “Odyssey” (11.321–325, 11.631), Theseus is an important character in Euripides’ play “Hippolytus” (764–802, 856–880, 1198–1248). The main narratives are Plutarch’s “Life of Theseus” (the first of the Parallel Lives, chapters 3–36), Apollodorus’ “Library” (2.5.7, 3.1.3–4, 3.15.6–3.16.1) and the “Epitome” (1.1–24), and Pausanias’ “Description of Greece” (1.17.4, 1.27.7–10, 1.39.3). Ovid tells of his conflict with Medea and the Minotaur in the seventh and eighth books of the “Metamorphoses” (7.404–424, 8.155–182); Hyginus gives the death of Aegeus and the naming of the Aegean (“Fabulae” 43).

See Also: Theseus Adventures, Minotaur, Aegeus, Aethra, Cretan Bull, Ariadne, Phaedra, Pirithous, Calydonian Boar