Theseus- Greek HeroHero"King of Athens"

The Hidden Prince

Theseus was raised in Troezen by his mother Aethra, ignorant of his father's identity. Before the boy was born, King Aegeus of Athens had hidden a sword and a pair of sandals beneath a heavy rock and told Aethra to send the child when he could lift it. Apollodorus records that Poseidon visited Aethra the same night as Aegeus, so Theseus was the son of both a mortal king and the god of the sea.

When Theseus came of age, he rolled the stone aside with ease and claimed the sword and sandals beneath it. His mother urged him to sail to Athens. The sea route was safe. Theseus chose the overland road instead. It was infested with killers. He wanted it that way.

The Road to Athens

The road from Troezen to Athens ran through bandit country. Theseus killed six bandits and monsters between Troezen and the city gates.

At the Isthmus he fought Sinis the pine-bender, who tied victims between two bent trees and released them. The pines tore the victims apart. Theseus killed Sinis the same way. At Eleusis he killed Procrustes, who laid travelers on an iron bed: those too tall were cut short, those too short were stretched to fit. Theseus put Procrustes on his own bed. From one of his earlier kills he took a bronze club, and it became his weapon for life. By the time he reached Athens, the roads were safe.

Recognition at Athens

Aegeus had married the sorceress Medea, who had fled to Athens after her vengeance in Corinth. Medea recognized the young stranger as a threat to her own son's inheritance and convinced Aegeus to poison him at a feast. At the banquet, Aegeus saw his own sword at Theseus's side and knocked the cup away. Medea fled on her dragon-drawn chariot and vanished east.

Theseus proved his claim by hunting down the Marathonian Bull, the same beast Heracles had brought from Crete and released into Attica. He dragged it alive through the streets of Athens and sacrificed it to Apollo.

The Labyrinth and the Minotaur

Athens owed a terrible tribute to King Minos of Crete: every nine years, seven young men and seven young women were sent to be devoured by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. Minos had imposed the payment after his son Androgeus died in Attica. Theseus volunteered as one of the fourteen. He sailed with the other youths in a ship bearing black sails and promised his father he would raise white sails on the return if he survived.

On Crete, Ariadne, daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus. She brought him a ball of thread and instructions from Daedalus, the Labyrinth's architect: tie the thread at the entrance, unwind it through the maze, follow it back. The Labyrinth was designed so that no one who entered had ever found the way out.

Theseus entered and found the Minotaur in its depths, the half-man, half-bull born from Pasiphae's union with a divine bull that Minos had refused to sacrifice to Poseidon. Apollodorus says Theseus killed the creature with his bare fists. He followed the thread back, led the Athenian youths out, and escaped Crete with Ariadne.

Ariadne and the Black Sail

Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos. In Catullus 64, she wakes alone on the shore and delivers a lament as the ship disappears over the horizon. Dionysus found her there, fell in love, and made her his immortal bride. Her wedding crown became the constellation Corona Borealis.

Theseus had promised his father to raise white sails if he survived. He forgot. Aegeus, watching from the cliffs at Cape Sounion, saw black sails on the horizon and believed his son was dead. He threw himself into the sea. It bore his name ever after: the Aegean.

King and Unifier

Before Theseus, Attica was a patchwork of independent villages, each with its own council and its own laws. Theseus went community by community. Some he won with argument. Others required pressure. He promised the nobles a share of power and the common people a voice. Town by town, the villages yielded, and Athens became a state.

He bound the new citizens together with common festivals and minted coins stamped with a bull. Thucydides credits the synoecism to Theseus, and the Athenians commemorated it annually with the festival of the Synoikia.

The Reckoning

Theseus abducted the Amazon queen Hippolyta and brought her to Athens. The Amazons invaded Attica to recover her. Hippolyta bore Theseus a son, Hippolytus, before she died.

He descended to the underworld with Pirithous, who planned to take Persephone as his bride. Hades received them and offered seats. The chairs were traps: they bound the men fast, and neither could stand. They sat for years until Heracles came for his twelfth labor and tore Theseus free. Part of his flesh stayed stuck to the stone. Pirithous was never rescued.

Theseus married Phaedra, Ariadne's younger sister. Phaedra fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus, a chaste youth devoted to Artemis who rejected her. Humiliated, she accused him of assault in a letter and hanged herself. Theseus believed the accusation and called on Poseidon to destroy the boy. A bull rose from the sea and stampeded Hippolytus's horses. They dragged him to his death. Euripides dramatized the catastrophe in his Hippolytus.

The Bones

Theseus lost his hold on Athens. His years in the underworld had weakened his authority, and a rival named Menestheus turned the people against him. Theseus went into exile on Skyros. King Lycomedes pushed him off a cliff.

In 476 BCE, after the Persian Wars, the Athenian general Cimon invaded Skyros and claimed to have found Theseus's enormous bones alongside a bronze spear and sword. He brought the relics back to Athens with ceremony, and a shrine was built to house them. The Athenians had already reported seeing Theseus's ghost at the Battle of Marathon, towering over the Persian lines in bronze armor.