Theseus

So the brothers of Helen went at once to the country of Theseus and sacked the city and recovered their sister.

and besides that Aethra, the mother of Theseus, should set sail with her, being a captive?

For they did not go at once against Theseus, a Greek man and the best of the rest, and besides himself ruler of many and a companion of Heracles and Peirithous, and having the Thessalians and Boeotians as allies;

And so among Euripides the words spoken by Theseus are praised;

and Theseus:

Or did Theseus too seize the horns of the Marathonian bull in anger?

Look, there comes our lord, Theseus son of Aegeus, at the sound of your voice, to do that for which he was summoned.

Never, then, would I turn aside from a stranger, such as you are now, or refuse to help in his deliverance.

And in all compassion I ask you, ill-fated Oedipus, with what petition to the city and to me have you taken your place here, you and the poor maiden at your side.

I stayed awhile attempting to bring back Theseus from Hades, father.

He set out for Athens, glad to have escaped from the lower world.

Amphitryon:

Now, when Theseus left the land of Cecrops, flying the pollution of the blood of Pallas’ sons, and with his wife sailed to this shore, content to suffer exile for a year, then began the wretched wife to pine away in silence, moaning’neath love’s cruel scourge, and none of her servants knows what ails her.

’Tis not against the old, Theseus, that fate, to strike thee, aims this blow;

I know but this, for I am myself but now arrived at the house to mourn thy sorrows, O Theseus.

So I will take Adrastus as a text for what I have to say and go to their assembly, and when I have won them to these views, I will return hither, after collecting a picked band of young Athenians;

for it is the herald’s duty to tell the message he is bidden and hie him back in haste.

where he is, there are in the first place no laws common to all, but one man is tyrant, in whose keeping and in his alone the law resides, and in that case equality is at an end.

I would give much not to have spoken about the virtue and the achievements of Theseus on a former occasion, for it would have been more appropriate to discuss this topic in my discourse about our city.

Therefore I shall pass over this topic, since I have already exhausted it for my present purpose, and shall mention only a single course of action which, as it happens, has neither been discussed by anyone before nor been achieved by any other man but Theseus, and which is a signal proof of his virtue and wisdom.

I have now touched upon the nobility of Theseus so far as I could on the present occasion, having formerly with some pains detailed his whole career.

Now the facts about our original acquisition both of the district and of the place called Ennea Hodoi, and the story of the sons of Theseus, one of whom, Acamas, is said to have received this district as the dowry of his wife—all this was fitting to the occasion then, and was given with the utmost exactness, but now I suppose I must be brief;

Aristotle records that Theseus, having gone to Scyros on a reconnaissance—reasonably, because of his kinship with Aegeus—died, thrust down from the rocks, Lycomedes who was reigning there having taken fright .

Wishing still further to increase the city, Theseus invited all on equal terms, and the proclamation "Come hither, all you peoples" is said to have been Theseus's, when he was establishing a kind of commonwealth of all.

And since the sequence nowhere appeared, I had to run back again and search out the order, retracing my steps and following along the furrow, as they say Theseus followed the thread of Ariadne.

How great a thing this is the feigned fables of the ancients declare, in which, though they are so many and so various and fetched from the remotest antiquity, scarcely three pairs of friends are found, so that, setting out from Theseus, you come at last to Orestes.

because in those others there had generally been single men, each of whom had established his own commonwealth by his laws and institutions—as Minos among the Cretans, Lycurgus among the Lacedaemonians, and among the Athenians, whose constitution had very often been changed, now Theseus, now Draco, now Solon, now Cleisthenes, now many others;

Theseus, who was the son of Neptune;

And Theseus, being a rival of Heracles, is older than the Trojan matters by one generation.

and to the expedition of the Amazons against Athens and the rape of Helen by Theseus, nine years.

Neither were the Aegeidae ignorant that Theseus, the son of Aegeus, for the first time established equality in the State.

But when Theseus settled the people in one city and established the democracy, and the city became populous, the people none the less continued to elect the king as before, choosing him from among those most distinguished by valor;

So while I live, and after death,—come when it will,—loudly will I sing thy praise, good friend, and will extol thee as I stand at Theseus’ side, and cheer his heart, as I tell how thou didst give kind welcome and protection to the sons of Heracles, and how nobly thou dost preserve thy father’s fame through the length of Hellas, and hast not fallen from the high estate, to which thy father brought …

for I assert, in days gone by, I was with Theseus on the ship, as their father’s squire, when they went to fetch that girdle fraught with death;

from him sprung Aethra, and from her Theseus thy sire was born.

next in order, Theseus’ son was stationed at the head of sixty ships from Attica, having the goddess

And there was the strife of the Lapith spearmen gathered round the prince Caeneus and Dryas and Peirithous, with Hopleus, Exadius, Phalereus, and Prolochus, Mopsus the son of Ampyce of Titaresia, a scion of Ares, and Theseus, the son of Aegeus, like the deathless gods.

Never again can I behold such men as Peirithoos and Dryas shepherd of his people, or as Kaineus, Exadios, godlike Polyphemus, and Theseus son of Aegeus, peer of the immortals.

"Then I saw Phaedra, and Procris, and fair Ariadne daughter of the magician Minos, whom Theseus was carrying off from Crete to Athens, but he did not enjoy her, for before he could do so Artemis killed her in the island of Dia on account of what Bacchus had said against her.

And I should have seen still other of them that are gone before, whom I would fain have seen - Theseus and Peirithoos glorious children of the gods, but so many thousands of ghosts came round me and uttered such appalling cries, that I was panic stricken lest Persephone should send up from the house of Hades the head of that awful monster Gorgon.

” King Theseus himself in Euripides speaks in very different terms of the Athenian Republic;

In the first place Theseus, reputedly the son of Aegeus, but in reality the progeny of Poseidon, seeing Helen not as yet in the full bloom of her beauty, but already surpassing other maidens, was so captivated by her loveliness that he, accustomed as he was to subdue others, and although the possessor of a fatherland most great and a kingdom most secure, thought life was not worth living amid the …

After the descent of Theseus to Hades, when Helen returned to Lacedaemon, and was now of marriageable age, all the kings and potentates of that time formed of her the same opinion;

So grateful was Theseus to Peirithos, his partner in the abduction, that when Peirithos wished to woo Persephon, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and summoned him to the descent into Hades to obtain her, when Theseus found that he could not by his warnings dissuade his friend, although the danger was manifest he nevertheless accompanied him, for he was of opinion that he owed this debt of gratitu …

This it is easy to learn from the labors of Heracles and the exploits of Theseus, whose excellence of character has impressed upon their exploits so clear a stamp of glory that not even endless time can cast oblivion upon their achievements.