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The Athenians were proud in their belief that their early kings were not, as were those of other Greek states, foreigners who had come to their shores, but true sons of Attica, born of its soil. The first king, Cecrops, who had been witness to Athena's victory in her contest with Poseidon for the city, was born, half man, half serpent, from the earth.

Another earthborn king was E rec’theus, whose form was wholly that of a serpent. At his birth Athena took him under her protection, and gave him in a basket into the care of the three daughters of Cecrops, enjoining them, under pain of her displeasure, not to seek to know what the basket contained. Curiosity was too strong for them, and when they saw the serpent lying in the basket, they were driven mad and leaped to death off the rock of the Acropolis. Athena then brought Erectheus up in her own temple and made him king of Athens. It was he that set up the sacred wooden image of the goddess in her temple and instituted the Panathenaic Festival in her honor. At his death he was buried in the temple precinct and was afterwards worshiped with Athena in the Erectheum.

O ri thy’ia, one of the daughters of Erectheus, was wooed by Bo’reas, the northeast wind, but rejected his advances. One day he came upon her as she was carrying sacrifices for Athena on the Acropolis and bore her off to his wild northern kingdom of Thrace. Boreas still conscious of his kinship to the Athenians, served the Greeks well at the time of the battle of Thermopylae, when the Persian fleet was threatening the whole coast. The Delphic oracle ordered the Athenians to call upon their son-in-law for help, whereupon they prayed to Boreas, who answered by shattering the Persian ships at Artemisium.

Another daughter of Erectheus was Procris, cephaius and who was married to a young hunter named Ceph’a lus. Aurora, goddess of the dawn, loved Cephaius and stole him away, leaving Procris inconsolable. In her loneliness she took to hunting with Artemis, from whom she received a dog that never grew tired and a javelin that never missed its mark. As Aurora could not make Cephaius forget his love for his wife, she finally sent him back, and he joyfully returned to his life as a hunter, receiving from his wife the wonderful dog and javelin. Unfortunately Procris, being of a jealous disposition and suspecting her husband of a love affair with Aura, the morning breeze, one day concealed herself in the bushes to spy on them. Cephalus, hearing a rustling in the underbrush, thought it some wild beast, hurled his unerring javelin, and killed his wife.

Fig. 78. Cephalus and the Dawn-Goddess.

Procne and Phil o me’la were the daughters of another early king of Athens. The Thracian king Tereus had married Procne, but afterwards he fell in love with the sister, Philomela, and persuaded her to marry him by telling her that Procne was dead. To conceal this deed from his wife he cut out Philomela’s tongue and imprisoned her in a hut in the woods. But she wove her story into the web of a robe and contrived to send it to her sister. At an opportunity offered by the celebration of the festival of Dionysus, Procne visited the lonely hut and brought Philomela in disguise to her palace. The two sisters then wreaked on the faithless Tereus a horrible vengeance, for Procne killed her son It’y lus and served him up to his father at a feast. When Tereus pursued the murderesses and was about to kill them, the gods transformed the three into birds, Tereus into a tufted hoo-poe, Procne into a swallow, and Philomela into the nightingale who still pours out her mournful notes, grieving over the slaying of the boy Itylus.

As Heracles was the great hero of the Peloponnesus, who freed all the country around from danger, so Theseus was the hero of Attica, who . cleared the roads of giants and robbers and gave liberty and unity to the city of Athens. There was a question about his birth; some said that his father was Poseidon, and alleged as a proof of this that once when King Minos, to try the hero's divine birth, threw a ring into the sea, Theseus, diving in after it, returned with the ring and a golden crown given him by Amphitrite. It was more generally supposed, however, that his father was Ægeus, the king of Athens, and his mother Æthra, daughter of the king of Troezen. Before his son was born, Ægeus left Æthra at Troezen, after placing his sword and sandals under a great rock with the instructions that the boy, so soon as he was strong enough to lift the stone and get them from under it, should be sent to Athens.

Theseus grew up clever and courageous, and tall and strong as well, so that at sixteen he easily lifted the stone and joyfully set out for Athens. His mother and grandfather urged him to go by sea, for it was a short and comparatively safe voyage, but, wishing to emulate Heracles, he preferred the perilous journey by land. On his way he met with six great adventures. First he came upon the giant Per i pha’tes, a son of Hephæstus, who brained all travelers with his iron club. Theseus overcame him and took his club. Next he met Sinis, who compelled every passer-by to help him bend down a tall pine tree and then, fastening the unfortunate by the head to the top of the tree, let it go suddenly. This fate Theseus inflicted on the giant himself. He killed a great sow that ravaged the country; some say this sow was really a woman whose foul manners earned her this name. His fourth adventure was with Sciron, a giant who kept watch on a narrow pass where the cliff falls abruptly into the sea. This giant forced all travelers to wash his feet, and when they knelt down to do so he gave them a kick that sent them into the waters below, where an enormous turtle swallowed them. Theseus gave the turtle a final feast on the giant himself. The next giant he met he overthrew in a wrestling match. Last of all he overcame Pro crus’tes, who pressed upon strangers the hospitality of his iron bed; but if they were too long, he cut them off, and if they were too short, he stretched them out to fit the bed.

When he had reached Athens and had purified himself in the river of all this slaughter, he entered the city. His long hair and his foreign appearance exciting the laughter of some builders, he took a cart that contained huge building blocks and tossed it lightly over the roof of a house. At the palace, although he did not disclose his identity, his father's new wife, the sorceress Mede’a (see p. 279), recognized him and plotted his death. She persuaded Ægeus to invite him to a feast and offer him a cup of poisoned wine. As they feasted, however, Theseus drew his sword to cut a piece of meat, and his father, instantly recognizing the weapon, dashed the poisoned cup to the floor and sprang to embrace his son. In a rage of disappointed hate, Medea called her dragon-drawn chariot and flew away, Ægeus now proclaimed Theseus as his heir.

But the hero, thirsting for glory and adventure, first went to Marathon, where he captured the bull that Heracles had brought from Crete, and then, when the time came around for seven young men and seven maidens to be sent as a tribute from Athens to King Minos of Crete (see p. 233), he offered himself as one of their number, hoping to win their return. The tribute had come about in this way. King Minos' son had been killed by the Athenians, and Minos had besieged the city. The Athenians might have stood out against him and his army, but the gods sent a famine and pestilence upon them, and the oracle declared that the divine displeasure would not be appeased until they should accept whatever terms Minos offered. He demanded that every year seven boys and seven girls should be sent to Crete to be given to the Minotaur. When the ship bearing Theseus and the thirteen other victims started out, it was equipped with a black sail, but Theseus promised his father that should he succeed in his adventure and kill the Minotaur, on the return voyage he would change the black sail for a white one. On their arrival in Crete King Minos' daughter A ri ad’ne fell in love with the hero at first sight and secretly gave him a ball of string to enable him to thread the mazes of the Labyrinth, and a sword to kill the Minotaur. Having succeeded by this means in his difficult adventure, Theseus set sail for home, carrying with him on his ship his benefactress Ariadne. On the island of Naxos, however, he deserted his bride while she slept,— some say because he loved some one else and wanted to get rid of her, others, because he was warned to leave her there to become the wife of Dionysus. Perhaps it was in requital of his faithlessness to Ariadne that the gods made him forget his promise to raise a white sail if he returned successful. For Ægeus, having watched long from a high rock for the returning ship, thinking, when he saw the black sail, that his son was dead, threw himself from the rock and was killed.

Fig. 79. Theseus killing the Minotaur.

Theseus was recognized as king, and immediately set about instituting reforms. He gave up his absolute royal power, and after uniting in one state all the divisions of Attica, he made of it a free self-governing commonwealth. After this he started out again on a career of adventure. Like Heracles he went to the Amazons' country and from there carried off their queer. An ti’o pe. To recover her the Amazons besieged Athens, though Antiope herself had fallen so in love with Theseus that she fought by his side against her own people. The Amazons were driven off, but the queen was killed.

Fig. 80. Theseus and the rescued Athenians.

Pi rith’o us, king of the Lapiths, having heard The batue of the fame of Theseus and, wishing to make trial of him, drove off some of his cattle. Theseus pursued him, but when they had come near to one another, each was so filled with admiration of the other's noble bearing and courage that by mutual consent they gave up all thought of fighting and swore an oath of friendship. Soon after this Pirithoüs celebrated his wedding and invited Theseus to attend. The Centaurs, who were also guests, becoming inflamed with wine, attempted to steal the bride. In the battle that followed Theseus fought bravely by the side of his friend Pirithoüs and the Centaurs were driven off.

Fig. 81. Centaur and Lapith.

The two friends were now fired by the ambition each to have a divine wife; Theseus, therefore, carried off Helen, the beautiful daughter of Zeus and Leda. As she was not yet of marriageable age, he left her under the care of his mother, and before he returned to claim her, her two brothers. Castor and Polydeuces, rescued her and took her back to Sparta. Pirithoüs' attempt was yet more daring, for he induced Theseus to help him carry off Pluto's wife, Persephone. Not even Theseus was strong enough for this adventure, and the two heroes were caught and chained in the lower world. Theseus' adventures might have ended here had not the mighty Heracles, in his quest for Cerberus, found and freed him. On his return to Athens he found that his people had turned against him and accepted another as king. He therefore retired to the island of Scyros, and there met his death by being thrown from a cliff.

The Athenians said that at the battle of Marathon a glorious hero, whom they recognized as Theseus, appeared amongst them in full armor and led them on to victory, and after the war the oracle commanded that Theseus' bones should be brought from Scyros and given honorable burial at Athens. The Athenian leader Cimon carried out this command, and having brought the hero's remains home amid great rejoicings, interred them in the middle of the city and erected a temple in his honor. The wonderfully preserved temple in Athens called the Theseum is, unfortunately, probably misnamed, and the true shrine of Theseus has disappeared.