And wishing
immediately to resume the first place in the commonwealth, and
manage the state as before, he soon found himself involved in factions
and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their
hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally
corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they
expected to be flattered into their duty.
He had some thoughts to have
reduced them by force, but was overpowered by demagogues and factions.
And at last, despairing of any good success of his affairs in
Athens, he sent away his children privately to Euboea, commending them
to the care of Elephenor, the son of Chalcodon; and he himself
having solemnly cursed the people of Athens in the village of
Gargettus, in which there yet remains the place called Araterion, or
the place of cursing, sailed to Scyros, where he had lands left him by
his father, and friendship, as he thought, with those of the island.
Lycomedes was then king of Scyros.
Theseus, therefore, addressed
himself to him and desired to have his lands put into his
possession, as designing to settle and to dwell there, though others
say that he came to beg his assistance against the Athenians. But
Lycomedes, either jealous of the glory of so great a man, or to
gratify Menestheus, having led him up to the highest cliff of the
island, on pretence of showing him from thence the lands that be
desired, threw him headlong down from the rock, and killed him.
Others
say he fell down of himself by a slip of his foot, as he was walking
there, according to his custom, after supper. At that time there was
no notice taken, nor were any concerned for his death, but
Menestheus quietly possessed the kingdom of Athens. His sons were
brought up in a private condition, and accompanied Elephenor to the
Trojan war, but, after the decease of Menestheus in that expedition,
returned to Athens, and recovered the government.
But in succeeding
ages, besides several other circumstances that moved the Athenians
to honour Theseus as a demigod, in the battle which was fought at
Marathon against the Medes, many of the soldiers believed they saw
an apparition of Theseus in arms, rushing on at the head of them
against the barbarians. And after the Median war, Phaedo being
archon of Athens, the Athenians, consulting the oracle at Delphi, were
commanded to gather together the bones of Theseus, and, laying them in
some honourable place, keep them as sacred in the city.
But it was
very difficult to recover those relics, or so much as to find out
the place where they lay, on account of the inhospitable and savage
temper of the barbarous people that inhabited the island.
Nevertheless, afterwards, when Cimon took the island (as is related in
his life), and had a great ambition to find out the place where
Theseus was buried, he, by chance, spied an eagle upon a rising ground
pecking with her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons, when
on the sudden it came into his mind, as it were by some divine
inspiration, to dig there, and search for the bones of Theseus.
There were found in that place a coffin of a man of more than ordinary
size, and a brazen spear-head, and a sword lying by it, all which he
took aboard his galley and brought with him to Athens.
Upon which
the Athenians, greatly delighted, went out to meet and receive the
relics with splendid processions and sacrifices, as if it were Theseus
himself returning alive to the city. He lies interred in the middle of
the city, near the present gymnasium. His tomb is a sanctuary and
refuge for slaves, and all those of mean condition that fly from the
persecution of men in power, in memory that Theseus while he lived was
an assister and protector of the distressed, and never refused the
petitions of the afflicted that fled to him.
The chief and most solemn
sacrifice which they celebrate to him is kept on the eighth day of
Pyanepsion, on which he returned with the Athenian young men from
Crete. Besides which they sacrifice to him on the eighth day of
every month, either because he returned from Troezen the eighth day of
Hecatombaeon, as Diodorus the geographer writes, or else thinking that
number to be proper to him, because he was reputed to be born of
Neptune, because they sacrifice to Neptune on the eighth day of
every month. The number eight being the first cube of an even
number, and the double of the first square, seemed to be an emblem
of the steadfast and immovable power of this god, who from thence
has the names of Asphalius and Gaeiochus, that is, the establisher and
stayer of the earth.
As for Pirithous, he thought it useless to
complain; but begged to have Theseus released for his sake, and
obtained that favour from the king. Theseus, being thus set at
liberty, returned to Athens, where his friends were not yet wholly
suppressed, and dedicated to Hercules all the sacred places which
the city had set apart for himself, changing their names from Thesea
to Heraclea, four only excepted, as Philochorus writes.
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