11/8/21, 2:03 AM Theseus - World History Encyclopedia

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Theseus
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by Mark Cartwright
published on 02 May 2016

Theseus is a legendary hero from Greek mythology

who was considered an early king of Athens
Athens.. Famously
killing villains, Amazons, and centaurs, his most
celebrated adventure was his slaying of the fearsome
Minotaur of the Cretan king Minos. In the Classical
period, Theseus came to represent the perfect
Athenian - the just man-of-action determined to serve
his city as best he could and staunch defender of
democracy. The hero appears in several Greek tragedy
plays and his battle with the Minotaur was a favourite
of Greek vase painters. He is the subject, too, of one of
Plutarch's Lives biographies.

Early Adventures of Theseus –

the Labours The Labours of Theseus
British Museum (Copyright)
In legend, Theseus' father was considered either the
son of the god Poseidon or King Aegeus of Athens. His
mother was Aethra, daughter of Pittheus, the king of Troezen, whom Aegeus seduced. Theseus spent
his childhood at Troezen in the northeast of the Peloponnese as Aegeus had warned Aethra not to tell
her son who his real father was until he came of age, perhaps explaining why Theseus was considered
the son of Poseidon in his youth. When a young adult, the hero gathered up gifts of sandals and a
sword from his father which had been buried under a heavy rock for when he was old enough to lift
it. With these tokens Theseus set off for Athens to claim, as Aegeus' only son, his inheritance, the
kingdom of Athens. Before he could reach the city, though, he first had to battle various villains and
monsters.

The first villain to be dispatched was Periphetes, who smashed the heads of anyone he came across
with a huge iron club. Theseus killed him without ceremony and took his club as a handy weapon for
his future adventures. A similar baddy was Sinis (also Sines) who hung around the Corinth
countryside and bent pine trees so that they might strike and kill people who passed through the
Isthmus. Our hero killed the troublesome Sinis using, of course, a bent pine tree. According to
Plutarch, Theseus had a son, Melanippus, by Sinis' daughter Perigune.

Next came Skiron who blocked the narrow sea passage through the rocks of Megara. He took delight
in forcing people to wash his feet and when they bent down to do so he would kick them over the cliff
and into the sea. Whether the unfortunate travellers survived the fall or not was irrelevant as, in any

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11/8/21, 2:03 AM Theseus - World History Encyclopedia

case, they were then eaten by a giant turtle that haunted those parts. All this frightful behavior was

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put to an end by Theseus who kicked Skiron into the sea to be eaten by his own accomplice or, in
another version, to be turned into a rock.

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Damastes) who waylaid travellers and forced them HERO OF ATHENS WHO
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were too tall this
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he BATTLED THE MINOTAUR,
would chop off the excess, if they were too short he AMAZONS, CENTAURS, &
would stretch them using weights or hammer their
limbs to increase their length. Theseus swiftly dealt VILLAINS.
with him too by putting him on his own device.

Finished with littering the Greek countryside with dead villains, Theseus then had to kill a bad-
tempered sow called Phaia which was causing trouble, again, in the Corinth area. He finally did arrive
at Athens, where he was not helped by his jealous step-mother Medea. She and Theseus' cousins, the
Pallantidae, tried several times to do away with our hero but their ambushes and poisonings came to
nothing. Medea then sent Theseus off on the dangerous errand of dealing with the bull of Marathon
which was terrorizing the countryside. The hero captured the animal and sacrificed it to Apollo. In
yet more adventures, Theseus even found time to help Meleager in the Calydonian Boar hunt and to
accompany Jason and his Argonauts on their quest to find the Golden Fleece, but his greatest trial was
yet to come.

Theseus & the Minotaur

Theseus' most famous adventure was his slaying of the Minotaur of King Minos on Crete. Every year
(or every nine, according to Plutarch) Athens was compelled to send seven young men and seven
young women to feed this fearsome creature with a man's body and the head of a bull, which dwelt in
the mysterious labyrinth at Knossos, built by the famed architect Daedalus. The terrible tribute was,
in some sources, compensation for the death of Minos' son Androgeous, killed by jealous competitors
after he won at the Athenian Games (in other versions he was killed by the bull of Marathon). The
unique Minotaur came from the union of Minos' wife Pasiphae and a bull after the queen was made
to fall in love with the animal by Zeus as revenge for Minos' refusal to sacrifice it in the god's honour.

Labyrinth of Knossos
Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)

Theseus, seeking to put a stop to this barbarity, enrolled himself as one of the seven youths and sailed
to Crete. On the way, our hero, with the help of Amphitrite, Poseidon's wife, retrieved a ring which
had been thrown into the sea by Minos. On arrival Theseus fearlessly entered the lair of the Minotaur
from which no one had ever come out alive. There, with the help of Ariadne, daughter of Minos, the
hero marked his way through the winding passages of the labyrinth using a ball of string. Striking
down the beast with his sword, he easily followed the string back to the labyrinth's entrance and freed
Athens from her terrible obligation to Minos.

Sailing back to Athens, Theseus rather ungallantly abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos,
perhaps on the advice of Athena, but she soon found solace in the arms of the god of wine Dionysos,
whom she married. In another version she is killed by Artemis, acting on instructions from Dionysos,
who had once been betrothed to the princess and was miffed to have lost her to Theseus. The hero
then stopped at Delos, offered a sacrifice to Apollo, and performed what would become a famous
dance, the geranos or Crane dance, which mimics the movements inside the labyrinth.

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Minotaur

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Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)

Theseus then sailed on home but was hit by tragedy when he forgot, as he had promised to his father
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the cliff into the sea below. Thereafter, the sea carried his name, the Aegean. Theseus thus inherited
the throne and he settled down to government, unifying the many small settlements of the area into
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unit (synoecism), andthis Message a peaceful and prosperous period for Athens.
establishing

Battling Amazons, Centaurs & Hades

This was not the end of Theseus' adventures as he was involved in several other myths too. He fought
the Amazons alongside Hercules when they invaded Attica to regain the girdle of their queen
Hippolyta, aka Antiope, which Hercules had stolen as one of his labours. In some accounts, Hippolyta
was Theseus' first wife and together they had a son, Hippolytos. Next up, Theseus fought the centaurs,
the half-man, half-horse creatures, which had disrupted the wedding of Theseus' good friend
Pirithous (Peirithoos) of the Lapiths.

Theseus then tried to abduct Persephone from Hades in the underworld so that Peirithous might
marry her. Hades was not to give up his bride so easily (especially after the trouble taken to get her
down there in the first place) and he tricked the pair into sitting on thrones which entrapped them.
Theseus was only rescued by the exploits of Hercules, who had come to capture Cerberos in his final
labour, but Peirithous was, alas, left to his fate.

Centaur & Lapith Metope, Parthenon

Dschwen (CC BY-SA)

Theseus' second wife was Phaidra, sister of Ariadne, with whom he had two sons, Akamas and
Demophon. Unfortunately for family harmony, Phaidra then fell in love with her step-son
Hippolytos. Her advances were not reciprocated, though, and scorned, she furiously told Theseus
that his son had tried to rape her. Outraged, Theseus called upon Poseidon to punish Hippolytos, and
the god of the sea responded by sending a bull from the depths of the ocean. This creature so
frightened the horses of Hippolytos' chariot that they tipped the youth into the sea where he
drowned. Phaidra, hit by pangs of guilt, then hanged herself to complete a typical cycle of Greek
tragedy.

In another abduction, but this time more successful, Theseus captured Helen when she was a child
and gave her to his mother to look after until she reached womanhood. The girl was rescued by her
brothers, though, the Dioscuri. The latter invaded Attica for the purpose and Theseus was forced to
flee to the Aegean island of Skyros. According to legend, the hero was killed there by King
Lycomdedes, who pushed him off a cliff. His bones were eventually recovered by the Athenian
statesman and admiral Cimon c. 475 BCE, who brought them back to Athens and placed them in a
temple, the Theseion. Theseus was subsequently honoured by the Theseia festival held each year in
the city and was forever associated with the 8th day of each month, the traditional day the hero had
first arrived in Athens as a youth.

Significance of the Myths

The myths involving Theseus became prominent in the 6th century BCE, at a time when the city of
Athens was entering a period of dominance in wider Greece. Theseus may have been a convenient
alternative to that other great Greek hero Hercules, and he gave the city a prestigious heritage which
differed from other cities. Theseus was also promoted by the Athenian statesman Cleisthenes, who

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was arch-rival to the Peisistratids who regarded Hercules as the symbol of Athens' strength. The long

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list of villains that Theseus deals with is also very similar in nature to the older story of Hercules'
twelve labours. In his fight against the Amazons and centaurs, Theseus was likely a metaphor for
Athens' resistance against foreign attack.
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were also bull-worshippers as attested by archaeological finds such as bull horn architectural
decorations, bull rhytons, and frescoes, and other artwork depicting a sport of bull-leaping. In
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was extremely large for its time and was composed of multiple small
adjoining rooms, many with columns and open ceilings acting as light-wells. It would not be at all
surprising that Athenian visitors might consider this architectural wonder a labyrinth. In another
possible link, the very word labyrinth may be connected to the labrys, a double axe symbol of
important religious significance to the Minoans.

Theseus & the Minotaur

Mark Cartwright (CC BY-NC-SA)

Theseus in Art & Literature

Theseus appears, in particular fighting the Minotaur, in Greek art from the last decade of the 6th
century BCE. Scenes from the hero's battles on his first journey to Athens were present in relief
sculpture on the Hephaesteion of Athens and the Athenian treasury at Delphi - both buildings date to
c. 500 BCE - and the temple of Poseidon at Sounion and the heroon at Trysa in Lycia.

The hero's battles with the bull of Marathon and the Minotaur were particularly popular with black-
figure vase painters, the finest example being the Francois Vase, which shows many scenes from the
Theseus story. Special mention should be given to a magnificent Attic red-figure Kylix, now in the
British Museum, which depicts all of the hero's labours. Theseus is distinguished from similar
painted scenes of Hercules fighting a bull and centaurs as the former is usually depicted without a
beard.

Theseus appears in the tragedies of both Euripides (Hippolytus and Suppliant Women – where he
criticizes tyranny and defends democracy) and Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus). Finally, the labyrinth
appeared on Cretan coins, and the motif was also a popular device in Roman art, especially floor
mosaics.

Did you like this definition?

Bagnall, R. et al. The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012

Carabatea, M. Greek Mythology. Adam Editions, 1997.
Carpenter, T.H. Art and Myth in Ancient Greece. Thames & Hudson, 1991.
Hope Moncrieff, A.R. Classical Mythology. Senate: an imprint of Studio Editions, 1994.
Hornblower, S. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Kinzl, H. A Companion to the Classical Greek World. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Plutarch. The Rise and Fall of Athens. Penguin Classics, 1960.

About the Author

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Mark Cartwright
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Mark is a history writer based in Italy. His special interests include pottery, architecture, world
mythology and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share in common. He holds an MA in
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APA Style
Cartwright, M. (2016, May 02). Theseus.
World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from
https://www.worldhistory.org/Theseus/

Chicago Style
Cartwright, Mark. "Theseus."
World History Encyclopedia. Last modified May 02, 2016.
https://www.worldhistory.org/Theseus/.

MLA Style
Cartwright, Mark. "Theseus."
World History Encyclopedia. World History Encyclopedia, 02 May 2016. Web. 07
Nov 2021.

Written by Mark Cartwright, published on 02 May 2016 under the following license: Creative Commons
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