LP0042 - High King of Athens - Theseus' return from the Labyrinth, from Plutarch's Lives

Legendary Passages #0042 - High King of Athens -
Theseus' return from the Labyrinth, from Plutarch's Lives.

Last time Theseus abandoned Ariadne on Naxos. This time Theseus makes the long voyage home, loses his father, and becomes High King of Athens.

When the ship of Theseus neared the tip of Attica, called Sounion, King Aegeus spotted it. But since Theseus had forgotten to change the sails, his father thought him eaten by the Minotaur, and jumped to his death. The city was elated at the victory of Theseus, but his coronation was bittersweet.

Several festivals and traditions were started to commemorate the victory against Crete. The Ship of Theseus was preserved for centuries by replacing old wood with new, and philosophers debate whether it was the same ship or not.

Theseus consolidated the citizens of Attica and moved everyone into Athens proper. He also welcomed immigration and instituted democratic reforms. Coins were stamped with a bull, representing the Marathon Bull, the Minotaur, or Taurus, general of Minos.

This is the last episode for now focusing specifically on Theseus. Eventually he joins the Argonauts, gets left behind with Hercules, and falls in love with an Amazon princess...

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High King of Athens,
a Legendary Passage,
from Plutarch's Life of Theseus,
translated by Bernadotte Perrin.

XXI. - XXV.

On his voyage from Crete, Theseus put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god and dedicated in his temple the image of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, he danced with his youths a dance which they say is still performed by the Delians, being an imitation of the circling passages in the Labyrinth, and consisting of certain rhythmic involutions and evolutions.

This kind of dance, as Dicaearchus tells us, is called by the Delians The Crane, and Theseus danced it round the altar called Keraton, which is constructed of horns (kerata) taken entirely from the left side of the head. They say that he also instituted athletic contests in Delos, and that the custom was then begun by him of giving a palm to the victors.

It is said, moreover, that as they drew nigh the coast of Attica, Theseus himself forgot, and his pilot forgot, such was their joy and exultation, to hoist the sail which was to have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who therefore, in despair, threw himself down from the rock and was dashed in pieces. But Theseus, putting in to shore, sacrificed in person the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at Phalerum when he set sail, and then dispatched a herald to the city to announce his safe return.

The messenger found many of the people bewailing the death of their king, and others full of joy at his tidings, as was natural, and eager to welcome him and crown him with garlands for his good news. The garlands, then, he accepted, and twined them about his herald's staff and on returning to the sea-shore, finding that Theseus had not yet made his libations to the gods, remained outside the sacred precincts, not wishing to disturb the sacrifice.

But when the libations were made, he announced the death of Aegeus. Thereupon, with tumultuous lamentation, they went up in haste to the city. Whence it is, they say, that to this day, at the festival of the Oschophoria, it is not the herald that is crowned, but his herald's staff, and those who are present at the libations cry out: “Eleleu! Iou! Iou!” the first of which cries is the exclamation of eager haste and triumph, the second of consternation and confusion.

After burying his father, Theseus paid his vows to Apollo on the seventh day of the month Pyanepsion; for on that day they had come back to the city in safety. Now the custom of boiling all sorts of pulse on that day is said to have arisen from the fact that the youths who were brought safely back by Theseus put what was left of their provisions into one mess, boiled it in one common pot, feasted upon it, and ate it all up together.

At that feast they also carry the so-called eiresione, which is a bough of olive wreathed with wool, such as Theseus used at the time of his supplication, and laden with all sorts of fruit-offerings, to signify that scarcity was at an end, and as they go they sing: --

    Eiresione for us brings figs
    and bread of the richest,
    brings us honey in pots
    and oil to rub off from the body,
    strong wine too in a beaker,
    that one may go to bed mellow.

Some writers, however, say that these rites are in memory of the Heracleidae, who were maintained in this manner by the Athenians; but most put the matter as I have done.

The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.

It was Theseus who instituted also the Athenian festival of the Oschophoria. For it is said that he did not take away with him all the maidens on whom the lot fell at that time, but picked out two young men of his acquaintance who had fresh and girlish faces, but eager and manly spirits, and changed their outward appearance almost entirely by giving them warn baths and keeping them out of the sun, by arranging their hair, and by smoothing their skin and beautifying their complexions with unguents; he also taught them to imitate maidens as closely as possible in their speech, their dress, and their gait, and to leave no difference that could be observed, and then enrolled them among the maidens who were going to Crete, and was undiscovered by any.

And when he was come back, he himself and these two young men headed a procession, arrayed as those are now arrayed who carry the vine-branches. They carry these in honor of Dionysus and Ariadne, and because of their part in the story; or rather, because they came back home at the time of the vintage.

And the women called Deipnophoroi, or supper-carriers, take part in the procession and share in the sacrifice, in imitation of the mothers of the young men and maidens on whom the lot fell, for these kept coming with bread and meat for their children. And tales are told at this festival, because these mothers, for the sake of comforting and encouraging their children, spun out tales for them. At any rate, these details are to be found in the history of Demon. Furthermore, a sacred precinct was also set apart for Theseus, and he ordered the members of the families which had furnished the tribute to the Minotaur to make contributions towards a sacrifice to himself. This sacrifice was superintended by the Phytalidae, and Theseus thus repaid them for their hospitality.

After the death of Aegeus, Theseus conceived a wonderful design, and settled all the residents of Attica in one city, thus making one people of one city out of those who up to that time had been scattered about and were not easily called together for the common interests of all, nay, they sometimes actually quarrelled and fought with each other.

He visited them, then, and tried to win them over to his project township by township and clan by clan. The common folk and the poor quickly answered to his summons; to the powerful he promised government without a king and a democracy, in which he should only be commander in war and guardian of the laws, while in all else everyone should be on an equal footing.

Some he readily persuaded to this course, and others, fearing his power, which was already great, and his boldness, chose to be persuaded rather than forced to agree to it. Accordingly, after doing away with the townhalls and council-chambers and magistracies in the several communities, and after building a common town-hall and council-chamber for all on the ground where the upper town of the present day stands, he named the city Athens, and instituted a Panathenaic festival.

He instituted also the Metoecia, or Festival of Settlement, on the sixteenth day of the month Hecatombaeon, and this is still celebrated. Then, laying aside the royal power, as he had agreed, he proceeded to arrange the government, and that too with the sanction of the gods. For an oracle came to him from Delphi, in answer to his enquiries about the city, as follows: --
 
    Theseus, offspring of Aegeus,
    son of the daughter of Pittheus,
    Many indeed the cities
    to which my father has given
    Bounds and future fates
    within your citadel's confines.
    Therefore be not dismayed,
    but with firm and confident spirit
    Counsel only; the bladder
    will traverse the sea and its surges.

And this oracle they say the Sibyl afterwards repeated to the city, when she cried: --

    Bladder may be submerged;
    but its sinking will not be permitted.

Desiring still further to enlarge the city, he invited all men thither on equal terms, and the phrase "Come hither all ye people,” they say was a proclamation of Theseus when he established a people, as it were, of all sorts and conditions. However, he did not suffer his democracy to become disordered or confused from an indiscriminate multitude streaming into it, but was the first to separate the people into noblemen and husbandmen and handicraftsmen. To the noblemen he committed the care of religious rites, the supply of magistrates, the teaching of the laws, and the interpretation of the will of Heaven, and for the rest of the citizens he established a balance of privilege, the noblemen being thought to excel in dignity, the husbandmen in usefulness, and the handicraftsmen in numbers. And that he was the first to show a leaning towards the multitude, as Aristotle says, and gave up his absolute rule, seems to be the testimony of Homer also, in the Catalogue of Ships, where he speaks of the Athenians alone as a "people.”
 
He also coined money, and stamped it with the effigy of an ox, either in remembrance of the Marathonian bull, or of Taurus, the general of Minos, or because he would invite the citizens to agriculture. From this coinage, they say, “ten oxen” and “a hundred oxen” came to be used as terms of valuation.

Having attached the territory of Megara securely to Attica, he set up that famous pillar on the Isthmus, and carved upon it the inscription giving the territorial boundaries. It consisted of two trimeters, of which the one towards the east declared: --
 
    “Here is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia;”
 
and the one towards the west: --

    Here is the Peloponnesus, not Ionia.

He also instituted the games here, in emulation of Heracles, being ambitious that as the Hellenes, by that hero's appointment, celebrated Olympian games in honor of Zeus, so by his own appointment they should celebrate Isthmian games in honor of Poseidon. For the games already instituted there in honor of Melicertes were celebrated in the night, and had the form of a religious rite rather than of a spectacle and public assembly. But some say that the Isthmian games were instituted in memory of Sciron, and that Theseus thus made expiation for his murder, because of the relationship between them; for Sciron was a son of Canethus and Henioche, who was the daughter of Pittheus. And others have it that Sinis, not Sciron, was their son, and that it was in his honor rather that the games were instituted by Theseus. However that may be, Theseus made a formal agreement with the Corinthians that they should furnish Athenian visitors to the Isthmian games with a place of honor as large as could be covered by the sail of the state galley which brought them thither, when it was stretched to its full extent. So Hellanicus and Andron of Halicarnassus tell us.

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