Theseus was the Athenians' best-loved hero, whom they saw as the king who united the villages of Attica into a single city, Athens. His deeds recall those of Heracles, whom he was thought almost to rival.
The boulder of Troezen
Aegeus, king of Athens, had no children. On a journey to Troezen, in the Peloponnese, he lay with the princess Aethra; some say the child's father was Poseidon. Before leaving, Aegeus hid a sword and a pair of sandals under a huge boulder: when his son was strong enough to lift it, he should come to Athens with them. At sixteen Theseus lifted the stone.
Six deeds on the road to Athens
Rather than sail to Athens, Theseus took the land route along the Isthmus of Corinth, infested with bandits, and defeated them one by one, often punishing them with the same cruelty they inflicted on travellers:
- Periphetes, who killed passers-by with a bronze club.
- Sinis, the "pine-bender", who tied victims to two bent pines and then let them go.
- The Crommyonian sow, a savage wild pig.
- Sciron, who made travellers wash his feet and then kicked them into the sea, where a giant turtle ate them.
- Cercyon, who challenged passers-by to wrestle and killed them.
- Procrustes, who laid his guests on a bed and stretched or cut them to fit it exactly: hence the phrase Procrustean bed.
In Athens
In Athens Aegeus had married the sorceress Medea, who recognised Theseus and persuaded the king to poison him. At the banquet, when Theseus drew his sword to cut the meat, Aegeus recognised it and knocked the poisoned cup to the ground. Medea fled. Theseus then captured the bull of Marathon, the same one Heracles had brought from Crete.
The Minotaur
Every nine years, or every year in other versions, Athens had to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete to be fed to the Minotaur. Theseus volunteered. On Crete the princess Ariadne fell in love with him and gave him a ball of thread to find his way out of the labyrinth. Theseus killed the monster and fled with Ariadne, but abandoned her on the island of Naxos, where she was found by Dionysus.
The black sails
Aegeus had asked his son to hoist white sails if he came back alive, instead of the black sails of the ship of the condemned. Distraught, Theseus forgot. The king, seeing black sails from the headland, believed his son dead and threw himself into the sea, which has been called the Aegean ever since.
King of Athens
As king, Theseus united the villages of Attica, founded the Panathenaic festival and, by tradition, gave Athens its first laws. He joined the Calydonian boar hunt and the fight against the Amazons, marrying their queen. Later he married Phaedra, Ariadne's sister, who fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus, with tragic results. With his friend Pirithous he went down to the underworld to carry off Persephone and was held prisoner until Heracles freed him. He died in exile on the island of Skyros.
See also Daedalus and Icarus and myths and words.