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The Story of Theseus. Theseus is a great Athenian hero. He was the son of the Athenian King, Aegeus. Theseus spent most of his youthful days, in his mother’s home in southern Greece.
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Theseus is a great Athenian hero. • He was the son of the Athenian King, Aegeus. Theseus spent most of his youthful days, in his mother’s home in southern Greece. • Before Theseus was born, his father, placed in a hollow a sword and a pair of shoes and covered them with a great stone. Then he returned to Athens. • Aegeus did this with the knowledge of his wife and told her that if the baby was a boy, and grew strong enough to remove the stone, she should send him to Athens to claim him as his Father.
The Child was a boy and grew up strong far beyond others. • When his mother decided the time was right, she took him to the stone and lifted it with no trouble at all. • Following this, she told Theseus he must go see his father in athens and that they have a boat prepared for him.
Theseus refused to go by water because the trip would have been too safe and easy. • His idea was to become a great hero as quickly as possible, and easy and safe was not the way to do that. • The great hero, Hercules, inspired Theseus to be a great hero. This was quite natural because they were cousins. • Theseus decided to go Athens by land. The journey was very long and hazardous. • When he reached Athens he was an acknowledged hero and was invited to a banquet by the king, who was unaware that Theseus was his son.
In fact, the king was afraid of Theseus’s popularity, thinking that he might win the people over to make him king. • The king invited him to the banquet with the idea of giving him a poisoned drink. • At the banquet, Theseus decided that he needed to let the king know that he was his son and drew his sword. • The king instantly recognized the sword and threw the poisoned cup to the ground. Then Aegeus then proclaimed to the kingdom that Theseus was his son and the heir. • As soon as Theseus was welcomed into Athens with open arms, he knew how to make himself admired by the Athenians.
Years before Theseus’s arrival in Athens, a terrible misfortune had happened to the city. • Minos, the powerful ruler of crete, had lost his only son Androgeus, while the young man was visiting Aegeus. • Aegeus had done what no host should do, he had sent his guest on an expedition to kill a dangerous bull. Instead, the bull killed Androgeus. • Minos was furious, invaded Athens and declared that that he would raise it to the ground unless every nine years, the people of Athens send him a tribute of seven maidens and seven children. The fate of these fourteen people was a horrible one.
Minos would send them to the island Crete to be devoured by the Minotaur. • The Minotaur was a monster, half bull, half human. • When the Minotaur was born, Minos refused to kill him. Instead, he had Daedalus, a great architect and inventor, construct a place of confinement for him from which escape was impossible. • Daedalus built the Labyrinth. • Once inside, one would wander endlessly without ever finding an exit.
Once Theseus arrived Athens, the time had come for the next tribute and offered to be one of the victims that would be sacrificed to the Minotaur.
The people of Athens loved Theseus for his courage and nobility, but that had no idea what Theseus intended to do. • He intended to kill the Minotaur. • He told his father his plan, and promised him that if he succeeded, he would have the black sail which his ship always sailed with, changed to a white sail to let Aegeus know long before it came to land that his son was safe. • When the victims arrived in Crete, they were paraded throughout the city before they made their way to the Labyrinth.
Minos’s daughter Ariadne was among the spectators at the parade and she fell in love with Theseus at first sight. • She sent for Daedalus and told him he must show her a way to get out of the Labyrinth. Following the information Daedalus gave her, she went to Theseus and told him that she would tell him how to escape the Labyrinth only if he promised to to take her back to Athens and marry her.
Theseus accepted her offer. • Ariadne gave him the clue that she received from Daedalus, which was a ball of thread which he was to fasten at one end to the inside of the door and unwind it as he went on. This allowed Theseus to retrace his steps. • As Theseus walked through the Labyrinth, he came upon the Minotaur, losing his weapons when the Minotaur fell upon him, he had no other weapons other than his two fists. • He battered the Minotaur to death.
When Theseus defeated the Minotaur, he picked up the ball of thread and made his way out of the Labyrinth with the others following. • When Theseus arrived back to Crete, he left for Athens and took Ariadne with him. • There are two stories telling what happens next… • One story says that on their way to Athens, they stopped on the island of Naxos, where Theseus deserts Ariadne. She was asleep and he sailed away without her. • The other story says she was extremely seasick, and he set ashore for her to recover and while he returned to his ship to do some work, a violent wind carried the ship out to sea and kept him out.
After the violent wind calmed down, he returned only to find out that Ariadne had died and Theseus blamed himself. • When Theseus drew near Athens, he forgot one thing, to change the sail from black to white. Either the joy from his success or his grief for Ariadne caused him to forget. • As his father saw the ship from a distance and saw the black sail. • By him seeing the black sail, he assumed his son was dead and a serious grief took over.
King Aegeus threw himself down from a rocky height into the sea and was killed. Leaving Theseus to be the king. • Theseus was unlike any other king, he did not want to rule over the people, he wanted a people’s government where all would be equal. • He resigned his royal power and organized a commonwealth. In result, Athens became earth’s most happiest and prosperous cities. The only place where people governed themselves.
In the later years of his life, Theseus married Ariadne’s sister, Phaedra. They had a son, Hippolytus. • When Theseus’s child was still young, he sent him away to be brought up in the southern city Theseus spent his own youth. • The boy grew to splendid manhood, a great athlete and hunter. • One day Theseus and Phaedra decided to visit. • Theseus and his son had a strong bond, but Hippolytus refused to recognize Phaedra, as he did with all women. It was not the case with her, she fell madly in love with him, which she felt much shame for. • She resolved to die and let no one know why. She had killed herself.
It is said that Hippolytus refused her love, that he could never betray his father. • When Theseus heard the news that Phaedra was dead, he confronted Hippolytus asking him if he had anything to do with his wife’s death. Hippolytus tells him the truth but Theseus refuses to accept it. • Theseus banishes Hippolytus from the land. • While Hippolytus was along the sea-road, a monster came up from the water and shattered his chariot, fatally wounding him.
Theseus himself, also had a very wretched death. • Theseus was at the court of a good friend, King Lycomedes, where a few years later Achilles was to hide disguised as a girl. • Some say Theseus went to King Lycomedes because Athens had banished him. • At all events, the King, his friend and his host, had killed him. And we are not told why he murdered him. • Despite the Athenians banishing him, very soon after his death, they honored him as no mortal. They built a great tomb for him and decided that it should be forever a sanctuary for slaves and for all poor people. For he had been a protector of the defenseless.
