Just as geographers, O Socius Senecio, crowd on to the outer edges of their maps the parts of the earth which elude
 their knowledge, with explanatory notes that What lies beyond is sandy desert
 without water and full of wild beasts, or blind marsh, or Scythian
 cold, or frozen sea, so in the writing of my Parallel Lives, now that I
 have traversed those periods of time which are accessible to probable reasoning and
 which afford basis for a history dealing with facts, I might well say of the earlier
 periods What lies beyond is full of marvels and unreality, a land of poets and
 fabulists, of doubt and obscurity.

But after publishing my account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I
 thought I might not unreasonably go back still farther to Romulus, now that my
 history had brought me near his times. And as I asked myself, 
 
 With such a warrior (as Aeschylus says) who will dare to
 fight? 
 
 
 
 
 Whom shall I set against him? Who is competent? 
 
 it seemed to me that I must make the founder of lovely and famous
 Athens the counterpart and parallel to the father of invincible and glorious
 Rome.

May I therefore succeed in purifying Fable, making her
 submit to reason and take on the semblance of History. But where she obstinately
 disdains to make herself credible, and refuses to admit any element of probability, I
 shall pray for kindly readers, and such as receive with indulgence the tales of
 antiquity.

It seemed to me, then, that many resemblances made Theseus a fit parallel to Romulus.
 For both were of uncertain and obscure parentage, and got the reputation of descent
 from gods; 
 Both were also warriors, as surely the whole world knoweth, 
 
 and
 with their strength, combined sagacity. Of the world’s two most illustrious cities,
 moreover, Rome and Athens, Romulus founded the one, and Theseus made a metropolis of
 the other, and each resorted to the rape of women.

Besides, neither escaped domestic misfortunes and the resentful anger of kindred, but
 even in their last days both are said to have come into collision with their own
 fellow-citizens, if there is any aid to the truth in what seems to have been told
 with the least poetic exaggeration.

The lineage of Theseus, on the father’s side, goes back to Erechtheus and the first
 children of the soil; on the mother’s side, to Pelops. For Pelops was the strongest
 of the kings in Peloponnesus quite as much on account of the number of his children
 as the amount of his wealth. He gave many daughters in marriage to men of highest
 rank, and scattered many sons among the cities as their rulers. One of these, named
 Pittheus, the grandfather of Theseus, founded the little city of Troezen, and had the
 highest repute as a man versed in the lore of his times and of the greatest wisdom.

Now the wisdom of that day had some such form
 and force as that for which Hesiod was famous, especially in the sententious maxims
 of his Works and Days. One of these maxims is ascribed to Pittheus, namely
 
 Payment pledged to a man who is dear must be ample and certain.
 
 
 At any rate, this is what Aristotle the philosopher says, and Euripides, when he has Hippolytus addressed as nursling of the pure and holy
 Pittheus, shows what the world thought of Pittheus.

Now Aegeus, king of Athens, desiring to have children, is said to have received from
 the Pythian priestess the celebrated oracle in which she bade him to have intercourse
 with no woman until he came to Athens. But Aegeus thought the words of the command
 somewhat obscure, and therefore turned aside to Troezen and communicated to Pittheus
 the words of the god, which ran as follows:— 
 Loose not the wine-skin’s jutting neck, great chief of the people, 
 Until thou shalt have come once more to the city of Athens.

This dark saying Pittheus apparently understood,
 and persuaded him, or beguiled him, to have intercourse with his daughter Aethra.
 Aegeus did so, and then learning that it was the daughter of Pittheus with whom he
 had consorted, and suspecting that she was with child by him, he left a sword and a
 pair of sandals hidden under a great rock, which had a hollow in it just large enough
 to receive these objects.

He told the princess
 alone about this, and bade her, if a son should be born to her from him, and if, when
 he came to man’s estate, he should be able to lift up the rock and take away what had
 been left under it, to send that son to him with the tokens, in all secrecy, and
 concealing his journey as much as possible from everybody; for he was mightily in
 fear of the sons of Pallas, who were plotting against him, and who despised him on account of
 his childlessness; and they were fifty in number, these sons of Pallas. Then he went
 away.

When Aethra gave birth to a son, he was at once named Theseus, as some say, because
 the tokens for his recognition had been placed in hiding; but others say that
 it was afterwards at Athens, when Aegeus acknowledged 
 him as his son. He was reared by
 Pittheus, as they say, and had an overseer and tutor named Connidas. To this man,
 even down to the present time, the Athenians sacrifice a ram on the day before the
 festival of Theseus, remembering him and honoring him with far greater justice than
 they honor Silanio and Parrhasius, who merely painted and moulded likenesses of
 Theseus.

Since it was still a custom at that time for youth who were coming of age to go
 to Delphi and sacrifice some of their hair to the god, Theseus went to Delphi
 for this purpose, and they say there is a place there which still to this day
 is called the Theseia from him. But he sheared only the fore part of his head,
 just as Homer said the Abantes did, and this kind of tonsure was called Theseis after
 him.

Now the Abantes were the first to cut their hair in this manner, not under
 instruction from the Arabians, as some suppose, nor yet in emulation of the Mysians,
 but because they were war-like men and close fighters, who had learned beyond all
 other men to force their way into close quarters with their enemies. Archilochus is
 witness to this in the following words:—

Not many bows indeed will be stretched tight, nor frequent slings 
 Be whirled, when Ares joins men in the moil of war 
 Upon the plain, but swords will do their mournful work; 
 For this is the warfare wherein those men are expert 
 Who lord it over Euboea and are famous with the spear.

Therefore, in order that they might not give their
 enemies a hold by their hair, they cut it off. And Alexander of Macedon doubtless
 understood this when, as they say, he ordered his generals to have the beards of
 their Macedonians shaved, since these afforded the readiest hold in battle.

During the rest of the time, then, Aethra kept his true birth concealed from Theseus,
 and a report was spread abroad by Pittheus that he was begotten by Poseidon. For
 Poseidon is highly honored by the people of Troezen, and he is the patron god of
 their city; to him they offer first fruits in sacrifice, and they have his trident as
 an emblem on their coinage.

But when, in his young
 manhood, Theseus displayed, along with his vigor of body, prowess also, and a firm
 spirit united with intelligence and sagacity, then Aethra brought him to the rock,
 told him the truth about his birth, and bade him take away his fathers tokens and go
 by sea to Athens.

Theseus put his shoulder to the
 rock and easily raised it up, but he refused to make his journey by sea, although
 safety lay in that course, and his grandfather and his mother begged him to take it.
 For it was difficult to make the journey to Athens by land, since no part of it was
 clear nor yet without peril from robbers and miscreants.

For verily that age produced men who, in work of hand and speed of foot and vigor of
 body, were extraordinary and indefatigable, but they applied their powers to nothing
 that was fitting or useful. Nay rather, they exulted in monstrous insolence, and
 reaped from their strength a harvest of cruelty and bitterness, mastering and forcing
 and destroying everything that came in their path. And as for reverence and
 righteousness, justice and humanity, they thought that most men praised these
 qualities for lack of courage to do wrong and for fear of being wronged, and
 considered them no concern of men who were strong enough to get the upper hand.

Some of these creatures Heracles cut off and
 destroyed as he went about, but some escaped his notice as he passed by, crouching
 down and shrinking back, and were overlooked in their abjectness. And when Heracles
 met with calamity and, after the slaying of Iphitus, removed into Lydia and for a
 long time did slave’s service there in the house of Omphale, then Lydia indeed
 obtained great peace and security; but in the regions of Hellas the old villainies
 burst forth and broke out anew, there being none to rebuke and none to restrain them.

The journey was therefore a perilous one for travellers by land from Peloponnesus to
 Athens, and Pittheus, by describing each of the miscreants at length, what sort of a
 monster he was, and what deeds he wrought upon strangers, tried to persuade Theseus
 to make his journey by sea. But he, as it would seem, had long since been secretly
 fired by the glorious valor of Heracles, and made the greatest account of that hero,
 and was a most eager listener to those who told what manner of man he was, and above
 all to those who had seen him and been present at some deed or speech of his.

And it is altogether plain that he then
 experienced what Themistocles many generations afterwards experienced, when he said
 that he could not sleep for the trophy of Miltiades. In like manner Theseus admired the valor of Heracles, until
 by night his dreams were of the hero’s achievements, and by day his ardor led him
 along and spurred him on in his purpose to achieve the like.

And besides, they were kinsmen, being sons of cousins-german. For Aethra was daughter
 of Pittheus, as Alcmene was of Lysidice, and Lysidice and Pittheus were brother and
 sister, children of Hippodameia and Pelops. Accordingly, he thought it a dreadful and
 unendurable thing that his famous cousin should go out against the wicked everywhere
 and purge land and sea of them, while he himself ran away from the struggles which
 lay in his path,

disgracing his reputed father by journeying like a fugitive over the sea, and
 bringing to his real father as proofs of his birth only sandals and a sword unstained
 with blood, instead of at once offering noble deeds and achievements as the manifest
 mark of his noble birth. In such a spirit and with such thoughts he set out,
 determined to do no man any wrong, but to punish those who offered him violence.

And so in the first place, in Epidauria, when Periphetes, who used a club as his
 weapon and on this account was called Club-bearer, laid hold of him and tried to stop
 his progress, he grappled with him and slew him. And being pleased with the club, he
 took it and made it his weapon and continued to use it, just as Heracles did with the
 lion’s skin. That hero wore the skin to prove how great a wild beast he had mastered,
 and so Theseus carried the club to show that although it had been vanquished by him,
 in his own hands it was invincible.

On the Isthmus, too, he slew Sinis the Pine-bender in the very manner in which many
 men had been destroyed by himself, and he did this without practice or even
 acquaintance with the monster’s device, but showing that valor is superior to all
 device and practice. Now Sinis had a very beautiful and stately daughter, named
 Perigune. This daughter took to flight when her father was killed, and Theseus went
 about in search of her. But she had gone off into a place which abounded greatly in
 shrubs and rushes and wild asparagus, and with exceeding innocence and childish
 simplicity was supplicating these plants, as if they understood her, and vowing that
 if they would hide and save her, she would never trample them down nor burn them.

When, however, Theseus called upon her and gave
 her a pledge that he would treat her honorably and do her no wrong, she came forth,
 and after consorting with Theseus, bore him Melanippus, and afterwards lived with
 Deioneus, son of Eurytus the Oechalian, to whom Theseus gave her. From Melanippus the
 son of Theseus, Ioxus was born, who took part with Ornytus in leading a colony into
 Caria whence it is ancestral usage with the Ioxids, men and women, not to burn either
 the asparagus-thorn or the rush, but to revere and honor them.

Now the Crommyonian sow, which they called Phaea, was no insignificant creature, but
 fierce and hard to master. This sow he went out of his way to encounter and slay,
 that he might not be thought to perform all his exploits under compulsion, and at the
 same time because he thought that while the brave man ought to attack villainous men
 only in self defence, he should seek occasion to risk his life in battle with the
 nobler beasts. However, some say that Phaea was a female robber, a woman of murderous
 and unbridled spirit, who dwelt in Crommyon, was called Sow because of her life and
 manners, and was afterwards slain by Theseus.

He also slew Sciron on the borders of Megara, by hurling him down the cliffs. Sciron
 robbed the passers by, according to the prevalent tradition; but as some say, he
 would insolently and wantonly thrust out his feet to strangers and bid them wash
 them, and then, while they were washing them, kick them off into the sea.

Megarian writers, however, taking issue with current
 report, and, as Simonides expresses it, waging war with antiquity, say that Sciron
 was neither a violent man nor a robber, but a chastiser of robbers, and a kinsman and
 friend of good and just men. For Aeacus, they say, is regarded as the most righteous
 of Hellenes, and Cychreus the Salaminian has divine honors at Athens, and the virtues
 of Peleus and Telamon are known to all men.

Well,
 then, Sciron was a son-in-law of Cychreus, father-in-law of Aeacus, and grandfather
 of Peleus and Telamon, who were the sons of Endeis, daughter of Sciron and Chariclo.
 It is not likely, then, they say, that the best of men made family alliances with the
 basest, receiving and giving the greatest and most valuable pledges. It was not, they
 say, when Theseus first journeyed to Athens, but afterwards, that he captured Eleusis
 from the Megarians, having circumvented Diocles its ruler, and slew Sciron. Such,
 then, are the contradictions in which these matters are involved.

In Eleusis, moreover, he out-wrestled Cercyon the Arcadian and killed him and going
 on a little farther, at Erineus, he killed Damastes, surnamed Procrustes, by
 compelling him to make his own body fit his bed, as he had been wont to do with those
 of strangers. And he did this in imitation of Heracles. For that hero punished those
 who offered him violence in the manner in which they had plotted to serve him, and
 therefore sacrificed Busiris, wrestled Antaeus to death, slew Cycnus in single
 combat, and killed Termerus by dashing in his skull.

It is from him, indeed, as they say, that the name Termerian mischief 
 comes, for Termerus, as it would seem, used to kill those who encountered him by
 dashing his head against theirs. Thus Theseus also went on his way chastising the
 wicked, who were visited with the same violence from him which they were visiting
 upon others, and suffered justice after the manner of their own injustice.

As he went forward on his journey and came to the river Cephisus, he was met by men
 of the race of the Phytalidae, who greeted him first, and when he asked to be
 purified from bloodshed, cleansed him with the customary rites, made propitiatory
 sacrifices, and feasted him at their house. This was the first kindness which he met
 with on his journey. 
 It was, then, on the eighth day of the month Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, that
 he is said to have arrived at Athens. And when he entered the city, he found public
 affairs full of confusion and dissension, and the private affairs of Aegeus and his
 household in a distressing condition.

For Medea,
 who had fled thither from Corinth, and promised by her sorceries to relieve Aegeus of
 his childlessness, was living with him. She learned about Theseus in advance, and
 since Aegeus was ignorant of him, and was well on in years and afraid of everything
 because of the faction in the city, she persuaded him to entertain Theseus as a
 stranger guest, and take him off by poison. Theseus, accordingly, on coming to the
 banquet, thought best not to tell in advance who he was, but wishing to give his
 father a clue to the discovery, when the meats were served, he drew his sword, as if
 minded to carve with this, and brought it to the notice of his father.

Aegeus speedily perceived it, dashed down the proffered cup
 of poison, and after questioning his son, embraced him, and formally recognized him
 before an assembly of the citizens, who received him gladly because of his manly
 valor. And it is said that as the cup fell, the poison was spilled where now is the
 enclosure in the Delphinium, for that is where the house of
 Aegeus stood, and the Hermes to the east of the sanctuary is called the Hermes at
 Aegeus’s gate.

Now the sons of Pallas had before this themselves hoped to gain possession of the
 kingdom when Aegeus died childless. But when Theseus was declared successor to the
 throne, exasperated that Aegeus should be king although he was only an adopted son of
 Pandion and in no way related to the family of Erechtheus, and again that Theseus
 should be prospective king although he was an immigrant and a stranger, they went to
 war.

And dividing themselves into two bands, one of
 these marched openly against the city from Sphettus with their father; the other hid
 themselves at Gargettus and lay in ambush there, intending to attack their enemies
 from two sides. But there was a herald with them, a man of Agnus, by name Leos. This
 man reported to Theseus the designs of the Pallantidae.

Theseus then fell suddenly upon the party lying in ambush, and
 slew them all. Thereupon the party with Pallas dispersed. This is the reason, they
 say, why the township of Pallene has no intermarriage with the township of Agnus, and
 why it will not even allow heralds to make their customary proclamation there of
 Akouete leo! ( Hear, ye people! ) For they hate the word on account of the
 treachery of the man Leos.

But Theseus, desiring to be at work, and at the same time courting the favour of the
 people, went out against the Marathonian bull, which was doing no small mischief to
 the inhabitants of the Tetrapolis. After he had mastered it, he made a display of driving
 it alive through the city, and then sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo.

Now the story of Hecale and her receiving and
 entertaining Theseus on this expedition seems not to be devoid of all truth. For the
 people of the townships round about used to assemble and sacrifice the Hecalesia to
 Zeus Hecalus, and they paid honors to Hecale, calling her by the diminutive name of
 Hecaline, because she too, when entertaining Theseus, in spite of the fact that he
 was quite a youth, caressed him as elderly people do, and called him affectionately
 by such diminutive names.

And since she vowed, when
 the hero was going to his battle with the bull, that she would sacrifice to Zeus if
 he came back safe, but died before his return, she obtained the above mentioned
 honors as a return for her hospitality at the command of Theseus, as Philochorus has
 written.

Not long afterwards there came from Crete for the third time the collectors of the
 tribute. Now as to this tribute, most writers agree that because Androgeos was
 thought to have been treacherously killed within the confines of Attica, not only did
 Minos harass the inhabitants of that country greatly in war, but Heaven also laid it waste, for barrenness and pestilence
 smote it sorely, and its rivers dried up; also that when their god assured them in
 his commands that if they appeased Minos and became reconciled to him, the wrath of
 Heaven would abate and there would be an end of their miseries, they sent heralds and
 made their supplication and entered into an agreement to send him every nine years a
 tribute of seven youths and as many maidens.

And
 the most dramatic version of the story declares that these young men and women, on
 being brought to Crete, were destroyed by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, or else
 wandered about at their own will and, being unable to find an exit, perished there;
 and that the Minotaur, as Euripides says, was 
 A mingled form and hybrid birth of monstrous shape, 
 and that 
 Two different natures, man and bull, were joined in him.

Philochorus, however, says that the Cretans do not admit this, but declare that the
 Labyrinth was a dungeon, with no other inconvenience than that its prisoners could
 not escape; and that Minos instituted funeral games in honor of Androgeos, and as
 prizes for the victors, gave these Athenian youth, who were in the meantime
 imprisoned in the Labyrinth and that the victor in the first games was the man who
 had the greatest power at that time under Minos, and was his general, Taurus by name,
 who was not reasonable and gentle in his disposition, but treated the Athenian youth
 with arrogance and cruelty.

And Aristotle himself
 also, in his Constitution of Bottiaea, 
 clearly does
 not think that these youths were put to death by Minos, but that they spent the rest
 of their lives as slaves in Crete. And he says that the Cretans once, in fulfillment
 of an ancient vow, sent an offering of their first-born to Delphi, and that some
 descendants of those Athenians were among the victims, and went forth with them; and
 that when they were unable to support themselves there, they first crossed over into
 Italy and dwelt in that country round about Iapygia, and from there journeyed again
 into Thrace and were called Bottiaeans; and that this was the reason why the maidens
 of Bottiaea, in performing a certain sacrifice, sing as an accompaniment To Athens
 let us go! 
 
 And verily it seems to be a grievous thing for a man to be at enmity with a city
 which has a language and a literature.

For Minos
 was always abused and reviled in the Attic theaters, and it did not avail him either
 that Hesiod called him most
 royal, or that Homer styled him a confidant of Zeus, but the tragic poets prevailed, and
 from platform and stage showered obloquy down upon him, as a man of cruelty and
 violence. And yet they say that Minos was a king and lawgiver, and that Rhadamanthus
 was a judge under him, and a guardian of the principles of justice defined by him.

Accordingly, when the time came for the third tribute, and it was necessary for the
 fathers who had youthful sons to present them for the lot, fresh accusations against
 Aegeus arose among the people, who were full of sorrow and vexation that he who was
 the cause of all their trouble alone had no share in the punishment, but devolved the
 kingdom upon a bastard and foreign son, and suffered them to be left destitute and
 bereft of legitimate children.

These things
 troubled Theseus, who, thinking it right not to disregard but to share in the fortune
 of his fellow-citizens, came forward and offered himself independently of the lot.
 The citizens admired his noble courage and were delighted with his public spirit, and
 Aegeus, when he saw that his son was not to be won over or turned from his purpose by
 prayers and entreaties, cast the lots for the rest of the youths.

Hellanicus, however, says that the city did not send its young men and maidens by
 lot, but that Minos himself used to come and pick them out, and that he now pitched
 upon Theseus first of all, following the terms agreed upon. And he says the agreement
 was that the Athenians should furnish the ship, and that the youths should embark and
 sail with him carrying no warlike weapon, and that if the Minotaur was killed the
 penalty should cease.

On the two former occasions, then, no hope of safety was entertained, and therefore
 they sent the ship with a black sail, convinced that their youth were going to
 certain destruction; but now Theseus encouraged his father and loudly boasted that he
 would master the Minotaur, so that he gave the pilot another sail, a white one,
 ordering him, if he returned with Theseus safe, to hoist the white sail, but
 otherwise to sail with the black one, and so indicate the affliction.

Simonides, however, says that the sail given by Aegeus was not white, but a scarlet
 sail dyed with the tender flower of luxuriant holm-oak, and that he made this
 a token of their safety. Moreover, the pilot of the ship was Phereclus, son of
 Amarsyas, as Simonides says;

but Philochorus says
 that Theseus got from Scirus of Salamis Nausithous for his pilot, and Phaeax for his
 look-out man, the Athenians at that time not yet being addicted to the sea, and that
 Scirus did him this favour because one of the chosen youths, Menesthes, was his
 daughter’s son. And there is evidence for this in the memorial chapels for Nausithous
 and Phaeax which Theseus built at Phalerum near the temple of Scirus, and they say
 that the festival of the Cybernesia, or Pilot’s Festival, is celebrated in their
 honor.

When the lot was cast, Theseus took those upon whom it fell from the prytaneium and
 went to the Delphinium, where he dedicated to Apollo in their behalf his suppliant’s
 badge. This was a bough from the sacred olive-tree, wreathed with white wool. Having
 made his vows and prayers, he went down to the sea on the sixth day of the month
 Munychion, on which day even now the Athenians still send their maidens to the
 Delphinium to propitiate the god.

And it is
 reported that the god at Delphi commanded him in an oracle to make Aphrodite his
 guide, and invite her to attend him on his journey, and that as he sacrificed the
 usual she-goat to her by the sea-shore, it became a he-goat ( tragos ) all at
 once, for which reason the goddess has the surname Epitragia.

When he reached Crete on his voyage, most historians and poets tell us that he got
 from Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, the famous thread, and that having
 been instructed by her how to make his way through the intricacies of the Labyrinth,
 he slew the Minotaur and sailed off with Ariadne and the youths. And Pherecydes says
 that Theseus also staved in the bottoms of the Cretan ships, thus depriving them of
 the power to pursue.

And Demon says also that
 Taurus, the general of Minos, was killed in a naval battle in the harbor as Theseus
 was sailing out. But as Philochorus tells the story, Minos was holding the funeral games, and Taurus was
 expected to conquer all his competitors in them, as he had done before, and was
 grudged his success. For his disposition made his power hateful, and he was accused
 of too great intimacy with Pasiphae. Therefore when Theseus asked the privilege of
 entering the lists, it was granted him by Minos.

And since it was the custom in Crete for women to view the games, Ariadne was
 present, and was smitten with the appearance of Theseus, as well as filled with
 admiration for his athletic prowess, when he conquered all his opponents. Minos also
 was delighted with him, especially because he conquered Taurus in wrestling and
 disgraced him, and therefore gave back the youths to Theseus, besides remitting its
 tribute to the city.

Cleidemus, however, gives a rather peculiar and ambitious account of these matters,
 beginning a great way back. There was, he says, a general Hellenic decree that no
 trireme should sail from any port with a larger crew than five men, and the only
 exception was Jason, the commander of the Argo, who sailed about scouring the sea of
 pirates. Now when Daedalus fled from Crete in a merchant-vessel to Athens, Minos,
 contrary to the decrees, pursued him with his ships of war, and was driven from his
 course by a tempest to Sicily, where he ended his life.

And when Deucalion, his son, who was on hostile
 terms with the Athenians, sent to them a demand that they deliver up Daedalus to him,
 and threatened, if they refused, to put to death the youth whom Minos had received
 from them as hostages, Theseus made him a gentle reply, declining to surrender
 Daedalus, who was his kinsman and cousin, being the son of Merope, the daughter of
 Erechtheus. But privately he set himself to building a fleet, part of it at home in
 the township of Thymoetadae, far from the public road, and part of it under the
 direction of Pittheus in Troezen, wishing his purpose to remain concealed.

When his ships were ready, he set sail, taking Daedalus and
 exiles from Crete as his guides, and since none of the Cretans knew of his design,
 but thought the approaching ships to be friendly, Theseus made himself master of the
 harbor, disembarked his men, and got to Gnossus before his enemies were aware of his
 approach. Then joining battle with them at the gate of the Labyrinth, he slew
 Deucalion and his body-guard.

And since Ariadne was
 now at the head of affairs, he made a truce with her, received back the youthful
 hostages, and established friendship between the Athenians and the Cretans, who took
 oath never to begin hostilities.

There are many other stories about these matters, and also about Ariadne, but they do
 not agree at all. Some say that she hung herself because she was abandoned by
 Theseus; others that she was conveyed to Naxos by sailors and there lived with
 Oenarus the priest of Dionysus, and that she was abandoned by Theseus because he
 loved another woman:— 
 Dreadful indeed was his passion for Aigle child of Panopeus.

This verse Peisistratus expunged from the poems of
 Hesiod, according to Hereas the Megarian, just as, on the other hand, he inserted
 into the Inferno of Homer the verse:— 
 Theseus, Peirithous, illustrious children of Heaven, 
 
 and all to gratify the Athenians. Moreover, some say that Ariadne actually
 had sons by Theseus, Oenopion and Staphylus, and among these is Ion of Chios, who
 says of his own native city:— 
 This, once, Theseus’s son founded, Oenopion. 
 
 
 
 Now the most auspicious of these legendary tales are in the mouths of all men, as I
 may say; but a very peculiar account of these matters is published by Paeon the
 Amathusian.

He says that Theseus, driven out of his
 course by a storm to Cyprus, and having with him Ariadne, who was big with child and
 in sore sickness and distress from the tossing of the sea, set her on shore alone,
 but that he himself, while trying to succour the ship, was borne out to sea again.
 The women of the island, accordingly, took Ariadne into their care, and tried to
 comfort her in the discouragement caused by her loneliness, brought her forged
 letters purporting to have been written to her by Theseus, ministered to her aid
 during the pangs of travail, and gave her burial when she died before her child was
 born.

Paeon says further that Theseus came back,
 and was greatly afflicted, and left a sum of money with the people of the island,
 enjoining them to sacrifice to Ariadne, and caused two little statuettes to be set up
 in her honor, one of silver, and one of bronze. He says also that at the sacrifice in
 her honor on the second day of the month Gorpiaeus, one of their young men lies down
 and imitates the cries and gestures of women in travail; and that they call the grove
 in which they show her tomb, the grove of Ariadne Aphrodite.

Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and
 two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysus in Naxos and bore him
 Staphylus and his brother, and the other, of a later time, having been carried off by
 Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named
 Corcyne, whose tomb they show; and that this Ariadne also died there, and has honors
 paid her unlike those of the former, for the festival of the first Ariadne is
 celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honor of the second
 are attended with sorrow and mourning.

On his voyage from Crete, Theseus put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god
 and dedicated in his temple the image of Aphrodite which he had received from
 Ariadne, he danced with his youths a dance which they say is still performed by the
 Delians, being an imitation of the circling passages in the Labyrinth, and consisting
 of certain rhythmic involutions and evolutions.

This kind of dance, as Dicaearchus tells us, is called by the Delians The Crane, and
 Theseus danced it round the altar called Keraton, which is constructed of horns (
 kerata ) taken entirely from the left side of the head. They say that he
 also instituted athletic contests in Delos, and that the custom was then begun by him
 of giving a palm to the victors.

It is said, moreover, that as they drew nigh the coast of Attica, Theseus himself
 forgot, and his pilot forgot, such was their joy and exultation, to hoist the sail
 which was to have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who therefore, in
 despair, threw himself down from the rock and was dashed in pieces. But Theseus,
 putting in to shore, sacrificed in person the sacrifices which he had vowed to the
 gods at Phalerum when he set sail, and then dispatched a herald to the city to
 announce his safe return.

The messenger found many
 of the people bewailing the death of their king, and others full of joy at his
 tidings, as was natural, and eager to welcome him and crown him with garlands for his
 good news. The garlands, then, he accepted, and twined them about his herald’s staff
 and on returning to the sea-shore, finding that Theseus had not yet made his
 libations to the gods, remained outside the sacred precincts, not wishing to disturb
 the sacrifice.

But when the libations were made, he
 announced the death of Aegeus. Thereupon, with tumultuous lamentation, they went up
 in haste to the city. Whence it is, they say, that to this day, at the festival of
 the Oschophoria, it is not
 the herald that is crowned, but his herald’s staff, and those who are present at the
 libations cry out: Eleleu! Iou! Iou! the first of which cries is the
 exclamation of eager haste and triumph, the second of consternation and confusion.

After burying his father, Theseus paid his vows to Apollo on the seventh day of the
 month Pyanepsion; for on that day they had come back to the city in safety. Now the
 custom of boiling all sorts of pulse on that day is said to have arisen from the fact
 that the youths who were brought safely back by Theseus put what was left of their
 provisions into one mess, boiled it in one common pot, feasted upon it, and ate it
 all up together.

At that feast they also carry the
 so-called eiresione, which is a bough of olive wreathed with wool, such as
 Theseus used at the time of his supplication, and laden with all sorts of
 fruit-offerings, to signify that scarcity was at an end, and as they go they sing:—
 
 Eiresione for us brings figs and bread of the richest, 
 brings us honey in pots and oil to rub off from the body, 
 Strong wine too in a beaker, that one may go to bed mellow. 
 Some writers, however, say that these rites are in memory of the
 Heracleidae, who were maintained in this
 manner by the Athenians; but most put the matter as I have done.

The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the
 thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius
 Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones
 in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the
 philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the
 same, others that it was not the same vessel.

It was Theseus who instituted also the Athenian festival of the Oschophoria. For it
 is said that he did not take away with him all the maidens on whom the lot fell at
 that time, but picked out two young men of his acquaintance who had fresh and girlish
 faces, but eager and manly spirits, and changed their outward appearance almost
 entirely by giving them warn baths and keeping them out of the sun, by arranging
 their hair, and by smoothing their skin and beautifying their complexions with
 unguents; he also taught them to imitate maidens as closely as possible in their
 speech, their dress, and their gait, and to leave no difference that could be
 observed, and then enrolled them among the maidens who were going to Crete, and was
 undiscovered by any.

And when he was come back, he
 himself and these two young men headed a procession, arrayed as those are now arrayed
 who carry the vine-branches. They carry these in honor of Dionysus and Ariadne, and
 because of their part in the story; or rather, because they came back home at the
 time of the vintage. And the women called Deipnophoroi, or supper-carriers, take part
 in the procession and share in the sacrifice, in imitation of the mothers of the
 young men and maidens on whom the lot fell, for these kept coming with bread and meat
 for their children. And tales are told at this festival, because these mothers, for
 the sake of comforting and encouraging their children, spun out tales for them. At
 any rate, these details are to be found in the history of Demon. Furthermore, a
 sacred precinct was also set apart for Theseus, and he ordered the members of the
 families which had furnished the tribute to the Minotaur to make contributions
 towards a sacrifice to himself. This sacrifice was superintended by the Phytalidae,
 and Theseus thus repaid them for their hospitality.

After the death of Aegeus, Theseus conceived a wonderful design, and settled all the
 residents of Attica in one city, thus making one people of one city out of those who
 up to that time had been scattered about and were not easily called together for the
 common interests of all, nay, they sometimes actually quarrelled and fought with each
 other.

He visited them, then, and tried to win them
 over to his project township by township and clan by clan. The common folk and the
 poor quickly answered to his summons; to the powerful he promised government without
 a king and a democracy, in which he should only be commander in war and guardian of
 the laws, while in all else everyone should be on an equal footing.

Some he readily persuaded to this course, and others, fearing his
 power, which was already great, and his boldness, chose to be persuaded rather than
 forced to agree to it. Accordingly, after doing away with the townhalls and
 council-chambers and magistracies in the several communities, and after building a
 common town-hall and council-chamber for all on the ground where the upper town of
 the present day stands, he named the city Athens, and instituted a Panathenaic
 festival.

He instituted also the Metoecia, or
 Festival of Settlement, on the sixteenth day of the month Hecatombaeon, and this is
 still celebrated. Then, laying aside the royal power, as he had agreed, he proceeded
 to arrange the government, and that too with the sanction of the gods. For an oracle
 came to him from Delphi, in answer to his enquiries about the city, as follows:—

Theseus, offspring of Aegeus, son of the daughter of Pittheus, 
 Many indeed the cities to which my father has given 
 Bounds and future fates within your citadel’s confines. 
 Therefore be not dismayed, but with firm and confident spirit 
 Counsel only; the bladder will traverse the sea and its surges. 
 And this oracle they say the Sibyl afterwards repeated to the city, when she
 cried:— 
 
 Bladder may be submerged; but its sinking will not be permitted.

Desiring still further to enlarge the city, he invited all men thither on equal
 terms, and the phrase Come hither all ye people, they say was a proclamation
 of Theseus when he established a people, as it were, of all sorts and conditions.
 However, he did not suffer his democracy to become disordered or confused from an
 indiscriminate multitude streaming into it, but was the first to separate the people
 into noblemen and husbandmen and handicraftsmen.

To
 the noblemen he committed the care of religious rites, the supply of magistrates, the
 teaching of the laws, and the interpretation of the will of Heaven, and for the rest
 of the citizens he established a balance of privilege, the noblemen being thought to
 excel in dignity, the husbandmen in usefulness, and the handicraftsmen in numbers.
 And that he was the first to show a leaning towards the multitude, as Aristotle says,
 and gave up his absolute rule, seems to be the testimony of Homer also, in the
 Catalogue of Ships, where he speaks of the Athenians alone as a people.

He also coined money, and stamped it with the effigy of an ox, either in remembrance
 of the Marathonian bull, or of Taurus, the general of Minos, or because he would
 invite the citizens to agriculture. From this coinage, they say, ten oxen and
 a hundred oxen came to be used as terms of valuation. Having attached the
 territory of Megara securely to Attica, he set up that famous pillar on the Isthmus,
 and carved upon it the inscription giving the territorial boundaries. It consisted of
 two trimeters, of which the one towards the east declared:— 
 Here is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia;
 and the one towards the west:— 
 
 Here is the Peloponnesus, not Ionia.

He also instituted the games here, in emulation of
 Heracles, being ambitious that as the Hellenes, by that hero’s appointment,
 celebrated Olympian games in honor of Zeus, so by his own appointment they should
 celebrate Isthmian games in honor of Poseidon. For the games already instituted there
 in honor of Melicertes were celebrated in the night, and had the form of a religious
 rite rather than of a spectacle and public assembly. But some say that the Isthmian
 games were instituted in memory of Sciron, and that Theseus thus made expiation for
 his murder, because of the relationship between them; for Sciron was a son of
 Canethus and Henioche, who was the daughter of Pittheus.

And others have it that Sinis, not Sciron, was their son, and
 that it was in his honor rather that the games were instituted by Theseus. However
 that may be, Theseus made a formal agreement with the Corinthians that they should
 furnish Athenian visitors to the Isthmian games with a place of honor as large as
 could be covered by the sail of the state galley which brought them thither, when it
 was stretched to its full extent. So Hellanicus and Andron of Halicarnassus tell us.

He also made a voyage into the Euxine Sea, as Philochorus and sundry others say, on a
 campaign with Heracles against the Amazons, and received Antiope as a reward of his
 valor; but the majority of writers, including Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Herodorus,
 say that Theseus made this voyage on his own account, after the time of Heracles, and
 took the Amazon captive; and this is the more probable story. For it is not recorded
 that any one else among those who shared his expedition took an Amazon captive.

And Bion says that even this Amazon he took and
 carried off by means of a stratagem. The Amazons, he says, were naturally friendly to
 men, and did not fly from Theseus when he touched upon their coasts, but actually
 sent him presents, and he invited the one who brought them to come on board his ship;
 she came on board, and he put out to sea. 
 And a certain Menecrates, who published a history of the Bithynian city of Nicaea,
 says that Theseus, with Antiope on board his ship, spent some time in those parts,

and that there chanced to be with him on this
 expedition three young men of Athens who were brothers, Euneos, Thoas, and Solois.
 This last, he says, fell in love with Antiope unbeknown to the rest, and revealed his
 secret to one of his intimate friends. That friend made overtures to Antiope, who
 positively repulsed the attempt upon her, but treated the matter with discretion and
 gentleness, and made no denunciation to Theseus.

Then Solois, in despair, threw himself into a river and drowned himself, and Theseus,
 when he learned the fate of the young man, and what had caused it, was grievously
 disturbed, and in his distress called to mind a certain oracle which he had once
 received at Delphi. For it had there been enjoined upon him by the Pythian priestess
 that when, in a strange land, he should be sorest vexed and full of sorrow, he should
 found a city there, and leave some of his followers to govern it.

For this cause he founded a city there, and called it, from the
 Pythian god, Pythopolis, and the adjacent river, Solois, in honor of the young man.
 And he left there the brothers of Solois, to be the city’s presidents and law-givers,
 and with them Hermus, one of the noblemen of Athens. From him also the Pythopolitans
 call a place in the city the House of Hermes, incorrectly changing the second syllable, and transferring the honor from a hero to a
 god.

Well, then, such were the grounds for the war of the Amazons, which seems to have
 been no trivial nor womanish enterprise for Theseus. For they would not have pitched
 their camp within the city, nor fought hand to hand battles in the neighborhood of
 the Pnyx and the Museum, had they not mastered the surrounding country and approached
 the city with impunity.

Whether, now, as Hellanicus
 writes, they came round by the Cimmerian Bosporus, which they crossed on the ice, may
 be doubted; but the fact that they encamped almost in the heart of the city is
 attested both by the names of the localities there and by the graves of those who
 fell in battle. 
 Now for a long time there was hesitation and delay on both sides in making the
 attack, but finally Theseus, after sacrificing to Fear, in obedience to an oracle,
 joined battle with the women.

This battle, then,
 was fought on the day of the month Boedromion on which, down to the present time, the
 Athenians celebrate the Boedromia. Cleidemus, who wishes to be minute, writes that
 the left wing of the Amazons extended to what is now called the Amazoneum, and that
 with their right they touched the Pnyx at Chrysa; that with this left wing the
 Athenians fought, engaging the Amazons from the Museum, and that the graves of those
 who fell are on either side of the street which leads to the gate by the chapel of
 Chalcodon, which is now called the Peiraic gate.

Here, he says. the Athenians were routed and driven back by the women as far as the
 shrine of the Eumenides, but those who attacked the invaders from the Palladium and
 Ardettus and the Lyceum, drove their right wing back as far as to their camp, and
 slew many of them. And after three months, he says, a treaty of peace was made
 through the agency of Hippolyta; for Hippolyta is the name which Cleidemus gives to
 the Amazon whom Theseus married, not Antiope. 
 But some say that the woman was slain with a javelin by Molpadia, while fighting at
 Theseus’s side, and that the pillar which stands by the sanctuary of Olympian Earth
 was set up in her memory.

And it is not astonishing
 that history, when dealing with events of such great antiquity, should wander in
 uncertainty, indeed, we are also told that the wounded Amazons were secretly sent
 away to Chalcis by Antiope, and were nursed there, and some were buried there, near
 what is now called the Amazoneum. But that the war ended in a solemn treaty is
 attested not only by the naming of the place adjoining the Theseum, which is called
 Horcomosium, but also by the sacrifice which, in ancient times, was
 offered to the Amazons before the festival of Theseus.

And the Megarians, too, show a place in their country where
 Amazons were buried, on the way from the market-place to the place called Rhus , where the Rhomboid stands. And it is said, likewise, that others of them died
 near Chaeroneia, and were buried on the banks of the little stream which, in ancient
 times, as it seems, was called Thermodon, but nowadays, Haemon; concerning which
 names I have written in my Life of Demosthenes. It appears also that not even Thessaly was traversed by the Amazons without
 opposition, for Amazonian graves are to this day shown in the vicinity of Scotussa
 and Cynoscephalae.

So much, then, is worthy of mention regarding the Amazons. For the Insurrection of
 the Amazons, written by the author of the Theseid, telling how, when Theseus
 married Phaedra, Antiope and the Amazons who fought to avenge her attacked him, and
 were slain by Heracles, has every appearance of fable and invention.

Theseus did, indeed, marry Phaedra, but this was after the death
 of Antiope, and he had a son by Antiope, Hippolytus, or, as Pindar says, 
 Demophoon. As for the calamities which befell Phaedra and the son of Theseus by
 Antiope, since there is no conflict here between historians and tragic poets, we must
 suppose that they happened as represented by the poets uniformly.

There are, however, other stories also about marriages of Theseus which were neither
 honorable in their beginnings nor fortunate in their endings, but these have not been
 dramatized. For instance, he is said to have carried off Anaxo, a maiden of Troezen,
 and after slaying Sinis and Cercyon to have ravished their daughters; also to have
 married Periboea, the mother of Aias, and Phereboea afterwards, and Iope, the
 daughter of Iphicles;

and because of his passion
 for Aegle, the daughter of Panopeus, as I have already said, he is accused of the desertion of Ariadne, which was not honorable nor even
 decent; and finally, his rape of Helen is said to have filled Attica with war, and to
 have brought about at last his banishment and death, of which things I shall speak a
 little later.

Of the many exploits performed in those days by the bravest men, Herodorus thinks
 that Theseus took part in none, except that he aided the Lapithae in their war with
 the Centaurs; but others say that he was not only with Jason at Colchis, but helped Meleager to slay the Calydonian boar, and that hence
 arose the proverb Not without Theseus ; that he himself, however, without
 asking for any ally, performed many glorious exploits, and that the phrase Lo!
 another Heracles became current with reference to him.

He also aided Adrastus in recovering for burial the bodies of
 those who had fallen before the walls of the Cadmeia, not by mastering
 the Thebans in battle, as Euripides has it in his tragedy, but by persuading them
 to a truce; for so most writers say, and Philochorus adds that this was the first
 truce ever made for recovering the bodies of those slain in battle,

although in the accounts of Heracles it is written that Heracles
 was the first to give back their dead to his enemies. And the graves of the greater
 part of those who fell before Thebes are shown at Eleutherae, and those of the
 commanders near Eleusis, and this last burial was a favour which Theseus showed to
 Adrastus. The account of Euripides in his Suppliants 
 is disproved by that
 of Aeschylus in his Eleusinians, 
 where Theseus
 is made to relate the matter as above.

The friendship of Peirithous and Theseus is said to have come about in the following
 manner. Theseus had a very great reputation for strength and bravery, and Peirithous
 was desirous of making test and proof of it. Accordingly, he drove Theseus’s cattle
 away from Marathon, and when he learned that their owner was pursuing him in arms, he
 did not fly, but turned back and met him.

When,
 however, each beheld the other with astonishment at his beauty and admiration of his
 daring, they refrained from battle, and Peirithous, stretching out his hand the
 first, bade Theseus himself be judge of his robbery, for he would willingly submit to
 any penalty which the other might assign. Then Theseus not only remitted his penalty,
 but invited him to be a friend and brother in arms; whereupon they ratified their
 friendship with oaths.

After this, when Peirithous was about to marry Deidameia, he asked Theseus to come to
 the wedding, and see the country, and become acquainted with the Iapithae. Now he had
 invited the Centaurs also to the wedding feast. And when these were flown with
 insolence and wine, and laid hands upon the women, the Lapithae took vengeance upon
 them. Some of them they slew upon the spot, the rest they afterwards overcame in war
 and expelled from the country, Theseus fighting with them at the banquet and in the
 war.

Herodorus, however, says that this was not how
 it happened, but that the war was already in progress when Theseus came to the aid of
 the Lapithae and that on his way thither he had his first sight of Heracles, having
 made it his business to seek him out at Trachis, where the hero was already resting
 from his wandering and labours; and he says the interview passed with mutual
 expressions of honor, friendliness, and generous praise.

Notwithstanding, one might better side with those historians who
 say that the heroes had frequent interviews with one another, and that it was at the
 instigation of Theseus that Heracles was initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis, and
 purified before his initiation, when he requested it on account of sundry rash acts.

Theseus was already fifty years old, according to Hellanicus, when he took part in
 the rape of Helen, who was not of marriageable age. Wherefore some writers, thinking
 to correct this heaviest accusation against him, say that he did not carry off Helen
 himself, but that when Idas and Lynceus had carried her off he received her in charge
 and watched over her and would not surrender her to the Dioscuri when
 they demanded her; or, if you will believe it, that her own father, Tyndareus,
 entrusted her to Theseus, for fear of Enarsphorus, the son of Hippocoon, who sought
 to take Helen by force while she was yet a child. But the most probable account, and
 that which has the most witnesses in its favour, is as follows.

Theseus and Peirithous went to Sparta in company, seized the girl as she was dancing
 in the temple of Artemis Orthia, and fled away with her. Their pursuers followed them
 no farther than Tegea, and so the two friends, when they had passed through
 Peloponnesus and were out of danger, made a compact with one another that the one on
 whom the lot fell should have Helen to wife, but should assist the other in getting
 another wife.

With this mutual understanding they
 cast lots, and Theseus won, and taking the maiden, who was not yet ripe for marriage,
 conveyed her to Aphidnae. Here he made his mother a companion of the girl, and
 committed both to Aphidnus, a friend of his, with strict orders to guard them in
 complete secrecy.

Then he himself, to return the
 service of Peirithous,journeyed with him to Epirus, in quest of the daughter of
 Aidoneus the king of the Molossians. This man called his wife Phersephone, his
 daughter Cora, and his dog Cerberus, with which beast he ordered that all suitors of
 his daughter should fight, promising her to him that should overcome it. However,
 when he learned that Peirithous and his friend were come not to woo, but to steal
 away his daughter, he seized them both. Peirithous he put out of the way at once by
 means of the dog, but Theseus he kept in close confinement.

Meanwhile Menestheus, the son of Peteos, grandson of Orneus, and great-grandson of
 Erechtheus, the first of men, as they say, to affect popularity and ingratiate
 himself with the multitude, stirred up and embittered the chief men in Athens. These
 had long been hostile to Theseus, and thought that he had robbed each one of the
 country nobles of his royal office, 
 and then shut them all up in a single city, where he treated them as subjects and
 slaves. The common people also he threw into commotion by his reproaches. They
 thought they had a vision of liberty, he said, but in reality they had been robbed of
 their native homes and religions in order that, in the place of many good kings of
 their own blood, they might look obediently to one master who was an immigrant and an
 alien.

While he was thus busying himself, the
 Tyndaridae came up against the city, and the war greatly furthered his
 seditious schemes; indeed, some writers say outright that he persuaded the invaders
 to come. 
 At first, then, they did no harm, but simply demanded back their sister. When,
 however, the people of the city replied that they neither had the girl nor knew where
 she had been left, they resorted to war.

But
 Academus, who had learned in some way or other of her concealment at Aphidnae, told
 them about it. For this reason he was honored during his life by the Tyndaridae, and
 often afterwards when the Lacedaemonians invaded Attica and laid waste all the
 country round about, they spared the Academy, for the sake of Academus.

But Dicaearchus says that Echedemus and Marathus of Arcadia were
 in the army of the Tyndaridae at that time, from the first of whom the present
 Academy was named Echedemia, and from the other, the township of Marathon, since in
 accordance with some oracle he voluntarily gave himself to be sacrificed in front of
 the line of battle. 
 To Aphidnae, then, they came, won a pitched battle, and stormed the town.

Here they say that among others Alycus, the son of Sciron,
 who was at that time in the army of the Dioscuri, was slain, and that from him a
 place in Megara where he was buried is called Alycus. But Hereas writes that Alycus
 was slain at Aphidnae by Theseus himself, and cites in proof these verses about
 Alycus:— 
 whom once in the plain of Aphidnae, 
 Where he was fighting, Theseus, ravisher of fair-haired Helen, 
 Slew. 
 However, it is not likely that Theseus himself was present when both his
 mother and Aphidnae were captured.

At any rate, Aphidnae was taken and the city of Athens was full of fear, but
 Menestheus persuaded its people to receive the Tyndaridae into the city and show them
 all manner of kindness, since they were waging war upon Theseus alone, who had
 committed the first act of violence, but were benefactors and saviours of the rest of
 mankind. And their behavior confirmed his assurances, for although they were masters
 of everything, they demanded only an initiation into the mysteries, since they were
 no less closely allied to the city than Heracles.

This privilege was accordingly granted them, after they had been adopted by Aphidnus,
 as Pylius had adopted Heracles. They also obtained honors like those paid to gods,
 and were addressed as Anakes, either on account of their stopping 
 hostilities, or because of their diligent care that no one should be injured,
 although there was such a large army within the city for the phrase anakos
 echein is used of such as care for , or guard anything , and
 perhaps it is for this reason that kings are called Anaktes. There are also
 those who say that the Tyndaridae were called Anakes because of the appearance
 of their twin stars in the heavens, since the Athenians use anekas and
 anekathen for ano and anothen, signifying above or
 on high .

They say that Aethra, the mother of Theseus, who was taken captive at Aphidnae, was
 carried away to Lacedaemon, and from thence to Troy with Helen, and that Homer bears
 witness to his when he mentions as followers of Helen:— 
 Aethra of Pittheus born, and Clymene large-eyed and lovely. 
 
 But some reject this verse of Homer’s, as well as the legend of Munychus, who
 was born in secret to Laodice from Demophoon, and whom Aethra helped to rear in
 Ilium.

But a very peculiar and wholly divergent
 story about Aethra is given by Ister in the thirteenth book of his Attic
 History. Some write, he says, that Alexander (Paris) was overcome in battle by
 Achilles and Patroclus in Thessaly, along the banks of the Spercheius, but that
 Hector took and plundered the city of Troezen, and carried away Aethra, who had been
 left there. This, however, is very doubtful.

Now while Heracles was the guest of Aidoneus the Molossian, the king incidentally
 spoke of the adventure of Theseus and Peirithous, telling what they had come there to
 do, and what they had suffered when they were found out. Heracles was greatly
 distressed by the inglorious death of the one, and by the impending death of the
 other. As for Peirithous, he thought it useless to complain, but he begged for the
 release of Theseus, and demanded that this favour be granted him.

Aidoneus yielded to his prayers, Theseus was set free, and
 returned to Athens, where his friends were not yet altogether overwhelmed. All the
 sacred precincts which the city had previously set apart for himself, he now
 dedicated to Heracles, and called them Heracleia instead of Theseia, four only
 excepted, as Philochorus writes. But when he desired to rule again as before, and to
 direct the state, he became involved in factions and disturbances; he found that
 those who hated him when he went away, had now added to their hatred contempt, and he
 saw that a large part of the people were corrupted, and wished to be cajoled into
 service instead of doing silently what they were told to do.

Attempting, then, to force his wishes upon them, he was
 overpowered by demagogues and factions, and finally, despairing of his cause, he sent
 his children away privately into Euboea, to Elephenor, the son of Chalcodon, while he
 himself, after invoking curses upon the Athenians at Gargettus, where there is to
 this day the place called Araterion, sailed away to
 the island of Scyros, where the people were friendly to him, as he thought, and where
 he had ancestral estates. Now Lycomedes was at that time king of Scyros.

To him therefore Theseus applied with the request that his
 lands should be restored to him, since he was going to dwell there, though some say
 that he asked his aid against the Athenians. But Lycomedes, either because he feared
 a man of such fame, or as a favour to Menestheus, led him up to the high places of
 the land, on pretence of showing him from thence his lands, threw him down the
 cliffs, and killed him. Some, however, say that he slipped and fell down of himself
 while walking there after supper, as was his custom.

At the time no one made any account of his death, but Menestheus reigned as king
 at Athens, while the sons of Theseus, as men of private station, accompanied
 Elephenor on the expedition to Ilium; but after Menestheus died there, they came hack
 by themselves and recovered their kingdom. In after times, however, the Athenians
 were moved to honor Theseus as a demigod, especially by the fact that many of those
 who fought at Marathon against the Medes thought they saw an apparition of Theseus in
 arms rushing on in front of them against the Barbarians.

And after the Median wars, in the Archonship of Phaedo, when the Athenians were
 consulting the oracle at Delphi, they were told by the Pythian priestess to take up
 the bones of Theseus, give them honorable burial at Athens, and guard them there. But
 it was difficult to find the grave and take up the bones, because of the inhospitable
 and savage nature of the Dolopians, who then inhabited the island. However, Cimon
 took the island, as I have related in his Life, and being ambitious to discover the grave of Theseus, saw an eagle in a place
 where there was the semblance of a mound, pecking, as they say, and tearing up the
 ground with his talons. By some divine ordering he comprehended the meaning of this
 and dug there,

and there was found a coffin of a
 man of extraordinary size, a bronze spear lying by its side, and a sword. When these
 relics were brought home on his trireme by Cimon, the Athenians were delighted, and
 received them with splendid processions and sacrifices, as though Theseus himself
 were returning to his city. And now he lies buried in the heart of the city, near the
 present gymnasium, and his tomb is a
 sanctuary and place of refuge for runaway slaves and all men of low estate who are
 afraid of men in power, since Theseus was a champion and helper of such during his
 life, and graciously received the supplications of the poor and needy.

The chief sacrifice which the Athenians make in his honor
 comes on the eighth day of the month Pyanepsion, the day on which he came back from
 Crete with the youths. But they honor him also on the eighth day of the other months,
 either because he came to Athens in the first place, from Troezen, on the eighth day
 of the month Hecatombaeon, as Diodorus the Topographer states, or because they
 consider this number more appropriate for him than any other since he was said to be
 a son of Poseidon.

For they pay honors to Poseidon on the eighth day
 of every month. The number eight, as the first cube of an even number and the double
 of the first square, fitly represents the steadfast and immovable power of this god,
 to whom we give the epithets of Securer and Earth-stayer.