During his journey, Theseus encountered a series of local brigands who preyed upon travelers. One of them, Periphetes, beat passersby with a bronze club. When Theseus came upon him, he seized the club and killed Periphetes. He kept the club as a token of his first heroic deed. The young hero next encountered Sinis, the Pine Bender. Sinis’s method of killing travelers was to tie his victims to two pine trees that he had bent and secured to the ground. Then he would release the trees, tearing the person in two. Theseus overpowered Sinis and used his method against him. Near the city of Megara, Theseus came across a robber, Sciron, who stopped travelers and made them wash his feet, whereupon he kicked them over a cliff into the sea, where a giant turtle would devour the body. When Theseus bent down to Sciron’s feet, he grabbed the villain and hurled him over the cliff into the waters below Theseus next came to the city of Eleusis. There he encountered Procrustes, who forced anyone he captured to lie in a special bed, which he then stretched or chopped his victim to fit. Theseus took Procrustes and fastened him to the torturous bed, then killed him in the same way that his victims had died. (Today philosophers use the phrase Procrustean bed to describe an argument that is forced to suit a favorite theory)
When Theseus reached Athens, people had already received news of his deeds and he was hailed as a hero. Once there he went immediately to king Aegeus’s palace. The king did not recognize him, but the sorceress Medea, who had fled to Athens from Corinth and was married to the king, suspected the young man’s identity and became jealous. She devised a plan to cause Theseus’s death: she declared that in order to prove his heroism, he should kill a wild bull that was ravaging the Plain of Marathon. Theseus captured the bull and sacrificed it to Apollo, god
The Origins of the Minotaur
Oseidon sent to King Minos a beautiful white bull as proof of his right to rule Crete, and in return for the god's support, the king was supposed to sacrifice the bull to the sea god. Minos could not bear to kill such a beautiful animal and offered another bull to Poseidon. As punishment the god afflicted Poseidon's wife, Pasiphae, with a passion for the white bull. With the aid of the palace engineer Daedalus, the queen mated with the bull and later gave birth to Asterios, otherwise known as the Minotaur—a beast that was part man and part bull. Minos ordered Daedalus to create a maze at the palace at Knossos in which to hide the monster. The Minotaur fed on human flesh from seven boys and seven girls whom Minos claimed as a tribute from the Athenians each year, or every nine years. He blamed the Athenians for the death of his son, Androgeos. Although the Cretan Minotaur is a mythological figure, archaeologists have confirmed that Cretans used bulls in ceremonies, and that labyrinthian parts of the palace did exist.
Left: In this 19th-century watercolor painting, king Minos’s daughter Ariadne holds a ball of thread. Theseus used the thread to return from the Labyrinth, shown in the background.
Of divination. Upon his return to the palace, Medea, who had also raised suspicion about Theseus in Aegeus’s mind, persuaded the king to offer Theseus a cup of poisoned wine. As the hero was lifting the drink to his lips, however, King Aegeus recognized Theseus’s sword and sandals as his own, and he dashed the cup to the ground. Aegeus welcomed Thesesus as his son and as heir to the throne. Medea fled before she could be brought to justice.
World History
