When Aethra was delivered of a son, some say that he was immediately
named Theseus, from the tokens which his father had put under the
stone; others that he had received his name afterwards at Athens, when
Aegeus acknowledged him for his son. He was brought up under his
grandfather Pittheus, and had a tutor and attendant set over him named
Connidas, to whom the Athenians even to this time, the day before
the feast that is dedicated to Theseus, sacrifice a ram, giving this
honour to his memory upon much juster grounds than to Silanio and
Parrhasius for making, pictures and statues of Theseus.
There being
then a custom for the Grecian youth, upon their first coming to
man's estate, to go to Delphi and offer first-fruits of their hair
to the god. Theseus also went thither, and a place there to this day
is yet named Thesea, as it is said, from him. He clipped only the fore
part of his head, as Homer says the Abantes did. And this sort of
tonsure was from him named Theseus. The Abantes first used it, not
in imitation of the Arabians, as some imagine, nor of the Mysians, but
because they were a warlike people, and used to close fighting, and
above all other nations accustomed to engage hand to hand; as
Archilochus testifies in these verses:
"
Therefore that they might not give their enemies a hold by their
hair, they cut it in this manner. They write also that this was the
reason why Alexander gave command to his captains that all the
beards of the Macedonians should be shaved, as being the readiest hold
for an enemy.
Aethra for some time concealed the true parentage of Theseus, and
a report was given out by Pittheus that he was begotten by Neptune;
for the Troezenians pay Neptune the highest veneration. He is their
tutelar god; to him they offer all their first-fruits, and in his
honour stamp their money with a trident.
Theseus displaying not only great strength of body, but equal
bravery, and a quickness alike and force of understanding, his
mother Aethra conducting him to the stone, and informing him who was
his true father, commanded him to take from thence the tokens that
Aegeus had left, and sail to Athens.
He without any difficulty set
himself to the stone and lifted it up; but refused to take his journey
by sea, though it was much the safer way, and though his mother and
grandfather begged him to do so. For it was at that time very
dangerous to go by land on the road to Athens, no part of it being
free from robbers and murderers. That age produced a sort of men, in
force of hand, and swiftness of foot, and strength of body,
excelling the ordinary rate and wholly incapable of fatigue; making
use, however, of these gifts of nature to no good or profitable
purpose for mankind, but rejoicing and priding themselves in
insolence, and taking the benefit of their superior strength in the
exercise of inhumanity and cruelty, and in seizing, forcing, and
committing all manner of outrages upon everything that fell into their
hands; all respect for others, all justice, they thought, all equity
and humanity, though naturally lauded by common people, either out
of want of courage to commit injuries or fear to receive them, yet
no way concerned those who were strong enough to win for themselves.
Some of these, Hercules destroyed and cut off in his passage through
these countries; but some escaping his notice while he was passing by,
fled and hid themselves, or else were spared by him in contempt of
their abject submission: and after that Hercules fell into misfortune,
and, having slain Iphitus (Hercules murdered his best friend in
a fitful rage) , retired to Lydia, and for a long time was
there slave to Omphale (Amazon Queen)
, a punishment which he had imposed upon himself
for the murder: then, indeed, Lydia enjoyed high peace and security,
but in Greece and the countries about it the like villainies again
revived and broke out, there being none to repress or chastise them.
It was therefore a very hazardous journey to travel by land from
Athens to Peloponnesus; and Pittheus giving him an exact account of
each of the robbers and villains, their strength, and the cruelty they
used to all strangers, tried to persuade Theseus to go by sea. But he,
it seems, had long since been secretly fired by the glory of Hercules,
held him in the highest estimation, and was never more satisfied
than in listening to any that gave an account of him; especially those
that had seen him or had been present at any action or saying of
his. So that he was altogether in the same state of feeling as, in
after ages, Themistocles was, when he said that he could not sleep for
the trophy of Miltiades; entertaining such admiration for the virtue
of Hercules, that in the night his dreams were all of that hero's
actions, and in the day a continual emulation stirred him up to
perform the like.
Besides, they were related, being born of
cousins-german. For Aethra was daughter of Pittheus, and Alcmena of
Lysidice; and Lysidice and Pittheus were brother and sister,
children of Hippodamia and Pelops. He thought it therefore a
dishonourable thing, and not to be endured, that Hercules should go
out everywhere, and purge both land and sea from wicked men, and he
himself should fly from the like adventures that actually came in
his way; disgracing his reputed father by a mean flight by sea, and
not showing his true one as good evidence of the greatness of his
birth by noble and worthy actions, as by the token that he brought
with him the shoes and the sword.
With this mind and these thoughts, he set forward with a design to
do injury to nobody, but to repel and revenge himself of all those
that should offer any. And first of all, in a set combat, he slew
Periphetes, in the neighbourhood of Epidaurus, who used a club for his
arms, and from thence had the name of Corynetes, or the club-bearer;
who seized upon him, and forbade him to go forward in his journey.
Being pleased with the club, he took it, and made it his weapon,
continuing to use it as Hercules did the lion's skin, on whose
shoulders that served to prove how huge a beast he had killed; and
to the same end Theseus carried about him this club; overcome indeed
by him, but now in his hands, invincible.
Passing on further towards the Isthmus of Peloponnesus, he slew
Sinnis, often surnamed the Bender of Pines, after the same manner in
which he himself had destroyed many others before. And this he did
without having either practised or ever learnt the art of bending
these trees, to show that natural strength is above all art. This
Sinnis had a daughter of remarkable beauty and stature, called
Perigune, who, when her father was killed, fled, and was sought
after everywhere by Theseus; and coming into a place overgrown with
brushwood, shrubs, and asparagus-thorn, there, in a childlike innocent
manner, prayed and begged them, as if they understood her, to give her
shelter, with vows that if she escaped she would never cut them down
nor burn them.
But Theseus calling upon her, and giving her his
promise that he would use her with respect, and offer her no injury,
she came forth, and in due time bore him a son, named Melanippus;
but afterwards was married to Deioneus, the son of Eurytus, the
Oechalian, Theseus himself giving her to him. Ioxus, the son of this
Melanippus, who was born to Theseus, accompanied Ornytus in the colony
that he carried with him into Caria, whence it is a family usage
amongst the people called Ioxids, both male and female, never to
burn either shrubs or asparagus-thorn, but to respect and honour them.
The Crommyonian sow, which they called Phaea, was a savage and
formidable wild beast, by no means an enemy to be despised. Theseus
killed her, going out of his way on purpose to meet and engage her, so
that he might not seem to perform all his great exploits out of mere
necessity; being also of opinion that it was the part of a brave man
to chastise villainous and wicked men when attacked by them, but to
seek out and overcome the more noble wild beasts.
Others relate that
Phaea was a woman, a robber full of cruelty and lust, that lived in
Crommyon, and had the name of Sow given her from the foulness of her
life and manners, and afterwards was killed by Theseus. He slew also
Sciron, upon the borders of Megara, casting him down from the rocks,
being, as most report, a notorious robber of all passengers, and, as
others add, accustomed, out of insolence and wantonness, to stretch
forth his feet to strangers commanding them to wash them, and then
while they did it, with a kick to send them down the rock into the
sea.
The writers of Megara, however, in contradiction to the
received report, and, as Simonides expresses it, "fighting with all
antiquity," contend that Sciron was neither a robber nor doer of
violence, but a punisher of all such, and the relative and friend of
good and just men; for Aeacus, they say, was ever esteemed a man of
the greatest sanctity of all the Greeks; and Cychreus, the Salaminian,
was honoured at Athens with divine worship; and the virtues of
Peleus and Telamon were not unknown to any one.
Now Sciron was
son-in-law to Cychreus, father-in-law to Aeacus, and grandfather to
Peleus and Telamon, who were both of them sons of Endeis, the daughter
of Sciron and Chariclo; it was not probable, therefore, that the
best of men should make these alliances with one who was worst, giving
and receiving mutually what was of greatest value and most dear to
them. Theseus, by their account, did not slay Sciron in his first
journey to Athens, but afterwards, when he took Eleusis, a city of the
Megarians, having circumvented Diocles, the governor.
Such are the
contradictions in this story. In Eleusis he killed Cercyon, the
Arcadian, in a wrestling match. And going on a little farther, in
Erineus, he slew Damastes, otherwise called Procrustes, forcing his
body to the size of his own bed, as he himself was used to do with all
strangers; this he did in imitation of Hercules, who always returned
upon his assailants the same sort of violence that they offered to
him; sacrificed Busiris, killed Antaeus in wrestling, and Cycnus in
single combat, and Termerus by breaking his skull in pieces (whence,
they say, comes the proverb of "a Termerian mischief"), for it seems
Termerus killed passengers that he met by running with his head
against them. And so also Theseus proceeded in the punishment of
evil men, who underwent the same violence from him which they had
inflicted upon others, justly suffering after the manner of their
own injustice.
"Slings shall not whirl, nor many arrows fly,
When on the plain the battle joins; but swords,
Man against man, the deadly conflict try
As is the practice of Euboea's lords
Skilled with the spear.