LP0007 - Parallel Lives - Plutarch's Life of Theseus -

Legendary Passages episode #0007 - Parallel Lives - Plutarch's Life of Theseus -

The next six passages concern the early adventures of Theseus, before he becomes King of Athens.

This passage begins Plutarch's Parallel Lives, a text that compares biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. He begins at the very beginning with Romulous, who founded Rome itself. The only comparable Greek had to be Theseus, who, while he did not found the city of Athens, made it rich and influential, even to this very day.

Plutarch begins with the lineage of Theseus, starting with King Pelops, father and grandfather of many heroes, including Heracles. Pittheus, son of Pelops, was the shrewd king of Troezen, south of Athens on the far side of the Saronic Gulf. When Aegeus, King of Athens, received an oracle about his childlessness, he consulted Pittheus for its meaning. Pittheus's daughter Aethra seduced Aegeus, and conceived Theseus.

Aegeus hid his sword and sandals beneath a boulder and told Aethra if she bore a son, to send him forth to him once he could retrieve them. Eventually, Theseus hears the story and lifts the boulder, but does not sail to Athens. That would be too easy.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html

Parallel Lives,
a Legendary Passage,
from Plutarch's Life of Theseus,
translated by Bernadotte Perrin.

I - VII

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.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html