Transcript Theseus

Theseus
and the Legends of
Athens
Early Kings of Attica
The first king of Athens was Cecrops, who was sprung from the
earth and half-serpent.
Many other foundation stories (e.g. Thebes) begin with a foreign
founder, but Athenians always emphasized that they were
autochthonous, sprung from their native earth.
Early Kings of Attica
Erichthonius was another earthborn king. Hephaestus tried to rape
Athena, and when she repulsed him,
his semen fall on the ground and
fathered Erichthonius.
The Erechtheum on Athens’
Acropolis is dedicated to another
early king, Erechtheus.
Procne & Philomela
Procne, daughter of
Erichthonius, was given to
Tereus in marriage. But
when her sister Philomela
came to visit her, Tereus
raped her, imprisoned her,
and cut out her tongue.
Philomela wove the story
into a tapestry and sent it to
her sister. Procne and
Philomela orchestrated a
terrible revenge: they served
up Procne and Tereus’ son
Itys to Tereus for dinner.
As Tereus pursued the women,
they were all turned into birds:
Procne the nightingale,
Philomela the swallow, and
Tereus the hoopoe.
Theseus
References to Poseidon abound in Athenian
myth: Poseidon and Athena competing for the
city, plus references to Poseidon in the myths of
Erechtheus and Aegeus (as in Aegean Sea).
Posidon was also known as Theseus’ father. But
Theseus was also the son of Aegeus. Hmmm.
Aegeus, king of Athens, wondered why he was
childless and asked at Delphi. They told him that
if he wanted children, he should not open the
wineskin’s neck until he reached home.
The not-very-metaphorically inclined Aegeus swore off the drink,
but in Troezen his clever host understood the oracle and arranged
for his daughter Aethra to sleep with him. Aegeus left sandals, and a
sword as tokens for his future son.
Theseus
When Theseus was a young
man, strong enough to lift the
stone under which the tokens
were hidden, Aethra told him of
his heritage. Theseus decided to
go to Athens.
He took the coastal road, which
put him in conflict with all of
the local bandits. He proved his
strength and heroism.
These stories metaphorically
represent synoikism, the
political uniting of the areas
around Athens into Athenian
domination.
Theseus
First he killed the bandit Corynetes
(Club-Man) and took his club. So
he, like Heracles, has this emblem.
Then he killed the bandit Sinis,
Pine-Bender, who tore his victims
limb from limb with pine trees, by
doing the same to him.
Then he killed the sow of
Crommyon .
Theseus’ adventures are more
oriented toward bandits but
this is a definite parallel with
Heracles (the Erymanthian
Boar).
Theseus’ Journey
He killed Sciron , who pushed
people into the sea where a giant
turtle ate them. Sciron was
originally a hero – villainized in the
Athenian re-write of mythology to
reflect its new dominance of Attica.
He then killed Cercyon (also
originally a local hero), who
forced passersby to wrestle
him to the death.
Theseus’ Journey
Finally he killed Procrustes,
who forced passersby to lie in
his bed – stretching them if
they were too short, lopping
off extremities if they were
too tall.
When Theseus arrived at Athens,
his father’s new wife, Medea, a
dangerous witch, recognized him
as a rival to her own son. She
determined to poison him
(apparently with Aegeus’
knowledge). But Theseus showed
his sword, Aegeus recognized it
(and him), and prevented him
from drinking the poison. Medea
flew away in her dragon chariot.
Aegeus recognized Theseus as his
heir.
Before phase 2, we have to look at
Crete . . .
Minos and the Bull
Minos, king of Crete, had
prayed to Poseidon to send him
a bull for sacrifice, but when the
god did, Minos didn’t sacrifice
the bull. Angered by this
faithlessness, Poseidon caused
Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, to fall in
love with the bull.
She persuaded Minos’s masterbuilder, Daedalus, to build her a
mechanical cow that she could
get inside to seduce & mate with
the bull. He complied.
The Minotaur
From this union was born the
Minotaur (bull of Minos), a halfhuman, half-bull monster.
(Heracles later brought the bull
from Crete to Eurystheus, then
released it.)
Minos was so horrified at the
Minotaur that he had Daedalus
build him a vast maze to hide the
beast. the maze was called the
labyrinth.
The Labyrinth
Labrys means “double-ax,” and
labyrinth means “house of the doubleax.” The labrys was a sacred symbol on
Crete; many have been found as
dedications in sanctuaries.
The idea of the “labyrinth”
as a maze may have
resulted from Greek
impressions of the
complex palaces of Crete,
with many underground
rooms, very different from
Greek architecture.
Daedalus & Icarus
Daedalus was tired of working for Minos and wanted to leave, but
Minos wouldn’t let him. So Daedalus made wings of wax and feathers
for himself and his son, Icarus, so they could fly away. Although he
warned Icarus to steer a middle course, the boy flew too near the sun,
melted the wax on his feathers, and fell to his death.
The Bull of Marathon
Theseus’ next heroic deed after he came to Athens was to capture the
Bull (formerly from Crete) which was ravaging the nearby plain of
Marathon. He sacrificed it to Poseidon (as Minos should have).
Theseus & Crete
Due to a past crime by the
Athenians, Minos had the right to
levy a tribute of seven young men
and seven young women from
Athens every year. He used them
to feed the Minotaur.
Theseus volunteered to be one of
this number. When he arrived in
Crete, he volunteered to be first to
meet the Minotaur.
Ariadne, Minos’s daughter, fell in
love with the hero. She brought
him the tools he would need: a
sword to kill the monster, and a
ball of twine to find his way back.
The Labyrinth
Theseus killed the
Minotaur, thus
liberating the
Athenians from the
deadly tribute.
Theseus left with the
Athenians – and
Ariadne.
Ariadne
Ariadne was probably originally a
divine figure. Hesiod describes her as
“the wife of Dionysus.” Theseus
abandoned her on the island of
Naxos, perhaps for leaving him for
Dionysiac rituals.
Theseus in Athens
Theseus had arranged with his
father that if he was able to
escape death, he would
change the sail color of the
ship he was sailing home in.
But he forgot. When Aegeus
saw the ship come in, he took
it for news that Theseus was
dead, and threw himself in
the Aegean sea (which bears
his name). Theseus was now
king of Athens.
His adventures continue,
sometimes taking parallel
form to adventures of
Heracles; and sometimes involving
Heracles himself.
He went on an expedition against
the Amazons on the Black Sea,
either with Herakles or with his
friend Pirithous.
The Amazons
•Theseus killed Antiope when
she attacked the wedding party
when he married Phaedra
•The Amazons attacked
Athens to get Antiope back,
and she was killed by Theseus
in that battle
•She was accidentally killed by
an Amazon, Molpadia
Theseus either captured the
Queen, Antiope -- or she fell in
love with him and betrayed her
city to run off with him. The
different versions continue:
Amazons in Athens:
Almost all stories of Amazons
set them far away, at the
borders of civilization.
This Athenian story is one of
the very few that show the
Amazons attacking a Greek
country, rather than
experiencing raids or
conquests by Greeks, or
fighting in far off locales such
as Troy.
Antiope was the mother of Hippolytus,
who was devoted to Artemis and rejected
The Amazons reached the
sex and love (appropriate son for an
Areopagus (hill of Ares on the
Amazon)!
Acropolis) and Theseus either
Hippolytus was cursed by Theseus
defeated them or made a
through Aphrodite’s manipulations –
treaty with them.
when Phaedra falsely accused him of rape.
The Amazons
•Theseus’ exploits were often
used in a symbolic way in
Athenian political discourse (as
in synoikism)
“[The Amazons] were considered
men for their high courage,
rather than women for their sex;
for they seemed to outdo men in
their spirit more than to be at a
disadvantage in their form. . .
•Metaphorically, the defeat of
Amazons showed Athenian
superiority over (feminized,
foreign-ized) enemies of the
current day. Defeat of Amazons
is often used for such purposes
in Greek culture.
[But after they tried to conquer
Athens,] having met with valiant
men, they came to possess spirits
suitable to their own nature . .
.and by their disasters rather than
their bodies they were deemed to
be women.
And so those women, by their
unjust greed for others’ land,
justly lost their own.”
Perithoos
Amazons symbolize one
sort of challenge to
masculine, civilized
authority – nature, as
represented by figures like
Centaurs, is another.
Theseus and Pirithous (king
of the Lapiths) feature in
the most famous
centauromachy in Greek
myth: the battle of Lapiths
and Centaurs, which broke
out at Perithous’ wedding.
The Centaurs got drunk and
started trying to rape the
Lapith women; but the
humans won.
Underworld Raid
Theseus and Pirithous agreed to
support one another in two
hubristic wife-capturing missions:
Theseus abducted Helen from
Sparta (when she was only a
child) and brought her back to
Athens.
Then he and Pirithous went to
Hades to abduct Persephone for
Pirithous. While they were gone
the Dioscuri recaptured Helen
and brought her home.
Pirithous and Theseus were
caught in magic chairs in Hades.
Heracles rescued Theseus, but
Pirithous never returned.
Theseus finally married
Phaedra, the sister of Ariadne.
We have already seen her tragic
infatuation with Hippolytus
and how that turned out.
Benevolent Theseus
Despite the hubris of his raid on
Helen and Hades, and despite his
poor parenting skills (i.e. cursing
Hippolytus & causing his death),
Theseus appears as a model of
virtue in Athenian myth:
•his exploits were often against
bandits & other human predators
•he freed Athens from the tribute
to Crete
•Athenian sources show him as a
helpful mediator in other cities’
disputes (notably the Theban
saga).
Like most local heroes, though
unlike Heracles, he was much less
important in the rest of the Greek
world than in his home country.
finis