Theseus had hardly been travelling more than an hour before he found his path blocked by a lumbering, shuffling one-eyed giant wielding an enormous club. Theseus knew exactly who this must be: PERIPHETES, a.k.a. CORYNETES, the ‘club man’.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ wheezed the Cyclops. ‘A nice soft head for Crusher, my club. He’s made of bronze, you know. My father is a smith. The smith of smiths my father is.’
‘Yes, we all know you claim to be a son of Hephaestus,’ said Theseus, affecting boredom. ‘People have fallen for your story because you are ugly and lame. But I cannot believe that an Olympian god would ever have so stupid a child.’
‘Oh, stupid am I?’
‘Incredibly so. Claiming that your club is bronze. Who sold it to you? Anyone can see that it’s oak.’
‘I made him myself!’ hooted Periphetes in outrage. ‘He is not oak! Would an oaken club be so heavy?’
‘You say it’s heavy, but I can see you swinging it from one hand to the other as easily as if it were made of feathers.’
‘That’s because I’m strong, cretin! You try. I bet you can’t even hold it.’
‘Oh my, yes, it is heavy,’ said Theseus, taking it. His hand dropped down almost to the ground, as if unable to take the weight. ‘And I can feel the cold hardness of the bronze.’
‘See!’
‘Nice … balance … to it!’ said Theseus suddenly lifting it high and sweeping it round. On the word ‘balance’ it met Periphetes’ thigh-bone with a satisfying crunch. The giant fell with a howl of pain.
‘I … think … I … like … this … club!’ said Theseus, crashing it down on Periphetes’ skull with six splintering blows.
In the rocks to the side of the road Theseus found the robber’s hideout. A hoard of gold, silver and stolen valuables had been laid neatly and carefully on the ground in a perfect semicircle around a towering shrine of crushed skulls. Theseus unearthed a leather bag and filled it with the treasure. He felt he had to keep the club too. Heracles always carried a club, so should he.
Further north, the road swung east along the Isthmus of Corinth. As Theseus walked, enjoying the sun on his face and the sea glittering to his right, he encountered plenty of friendly travellers. To those in need he gave coins and precious objects from his satchel.
Perhaps the talk of terrifying brigands on this road is exaggerated, he thought to himself. And just as he had decided that this must be the case, he came to a rise in the ground where he saw a man standing between two trees.
‘What’s in that bag, boy?’
‘That is my affair,’ said Theseus.
‘Oh! Oh, it’s “your affair”, is it? Well, well. I have a special way of dealing with snotty little runts of the litter like you. See these two trees?’
Theseus knew at once this must be SINIS PITYOCAMPTES, Sinis the Pine Bender. Stories of this strange and terrible man were told all around the Peloponnese. He would tie travellers between two pine trees that, with his great strength, he could bend down. After tormenting his victims for a while, Sinis would release his hold on the trees which would would straighten up, pulling the poor travellers apart. A cruel, horrible death. A cruel horrible man.
‘I’ll put down my club,’ said Theseus. ‘I’ll put down my sword and I’ll put down my satchel. Because I want to kneel before your greatness.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I’ve been travelling four days on this road and I hear nothing but tales of the marvellous Sinis Pityocamptes.’
‘Yes, well, that’s fine, but don’t go weird on me.’
‘Oh gods, I am not worthy to meet so fine a man, so pure a hero.’ Theseus prostrated himself on the grass.
‘Look, just come here, will you!’
‘I cannot move, I am awestruck. Sinis the Great. Sinis the Marvellous. Sinis the Magnificent. Bender of Pines. Mender of Men.’
‘You’re soft in the head, you are,’ said Sinis, advancing. ‘Come on, get up.’
But somehow, in the ensuing confusion Theseus and Sinis managed to swap positions. Now Sinis was spread-eagled out on the ground, with Theseus above him, pinning him down.
‘Come, great Sinis. It is not fair that you have given so much pleasure to so many, but received none yourself.’
‘Let me go!’
‘No, my lord,’ said Theseus, dragging Sinis by his wrist through the grass, like a child pulling a toy cart. ‘You have done such kindness to so many strangers without any thought for yourself. Now, if I attach your arm to this tree and pull it down like so …’
Sinis sobbed, blubbed and begged as Theseus set to work.
‘Your modesty does you nothing but credit, Sinis,’ he said, reaching for a second pine, ‘but surely it is only right the world should have not one of you, but two.’
‘I beg you, I beg you. There is treasure buried beneath those bushes. Take it, take it all.’
Theseus now held both pine trees firmly in his grip. ‘You squeal and gibber like a pig, and I note that you wet yourself like a frightened child,’ he said, suddenly very stern. ‘But what mercy did you ever show your terrified victims?’
‘I’m sorry, truly sorry.’
Theseus thought for a while. ‘Hm. I can see that you truly are. I’ll just go and see if you are telling the truth about your treasure and if you are I’ll spare you.’
‘Yes, yes! But don’t let go, don’t …’
‘Let’s see, your treasure if over here, you say?’
Theseus stepped back, releasing his hold. The pines whipped apart, tearing Sinis in two as they shot upright, releasing a shower of needles from their shivering branches.
‘Oops. Clumsy me,’ said Theseus.
Theseus only left the place after he had unearthed the treasure and chopped down both the trees with his sword. He lit a fire of pinewood and sent the sweet-smelling smoke in gratitude up to the gods.
Theseus resumed his journey along the Isthmus road as it hugged the coast. Before long he was approaching the village of Crommyon, midway between Corinth and the city of Megara. He was already nearer Athens than Troezen. Increasingly travellers hurrying south, or farmers labouring nervously in the fields, paused briefly to warn Theseus of a fearsome creature ravaging the land, which they called the CROMMYONIAN SOW.
From the stories he was told, Theseus wasn’t sure whether the Crommyonian Sow was a real snorting, squealing, snuffling, living pig, or a malicious and murderous old woman going by the name of PHAEA. Some swore they had seen a grey hag transform herself into a pig. Others maintained that Phaea was simply the pig’s keeper.
Theseus never saw any grey old hag, but he did encounter a large and aggressive wild pig. The great bronze club was more than a match for it and it was not long before the gods were treated to something even more delicious than fragrant pine smoke – the aroma of freshly roast bacon.fn1
Further along the coast road, between Megara and Eleusis, there lurked a notorious outlaw called SCIRON or Sceiron. He had been there so long that the cliffs over the bay at that point were known as the Scironian Rocks. Far below them, in the blue waters of the Saronic Gulf, a giant turtle swam about in impatient circles. Sciron and the turtle had an interesting and disturbing relationship. Sciron’s modus operandi was to force travellers to wash his feet, right on the cliff’s edge. The unwitting victims would have their backs to the sea and, when they knelt down to start washing, he would give a great kick and they would tumble down into the waters below, where the greedy turtle was waiting for them, jaws open.
‘No, no, no, no, no!’ said Theseus, after Sciron had leapt out from behind a tree and, at swordpoint, told him to wash his feet. ‘They’re disgusting. I’m not touching those.’
‘Would you rather be run through with a sword?’ said Sciron.
‘Well, no,’ conceded Theseus. ‘But where’s the bowl of hot water? Where are the scented oils? Where’s the goatskin flannel? If I’m going to clean your feet, I may as well do it properly.’
With a sigh of impatience, Sciron – his sword pointing at Theseus all the time – showed him where he kept all the implements and artefacts necessary for the perfect footbath. Theseus insisted on boiling water in a copper bowl that he found.
‘After all,’ he said cheerfully, ‘if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.’
‘Now go over yonder,’ growled Sciron, when Theseus at last pronounced that he was satisfied. ‘I’ll sit on this stool, you squat down there.’
‘It’s very close to the edge,’ said Theseus doubtfully.
‘I like to look out to sea when I’m having my feet washed. No more talking, let’s just get on, shall we?’
Theseus carried the bowl of steaming water carefully towards the spot. He could feel Sciron’s swordpoint in the small of his back, urging him on.
‘Right, so … here?’
‘Closer to the edge.’
‘Here?’
‘Closer still.’
‘Goodness, that’s steep – whoah!’
Theseus tripped and stumbled forward. Free of the swordpoint against his skin, he turned in an instant and hurled the scalding contents of the bowl into Sciron’s face. The outlaw gave one short scream from the pain and shock, then – after a sudden shove from Theseus – he gave a second longer scream as he tottered wildly on the cliff edge before tumbling down into the blue, blue sea.
Theseus looked down and saw the creamy wake of a giant turtle closing in on the thrashing form.
At the temple of Demeter and Korefn2 at Eleusis, Theseus paused to offer sacrifices and prayers of thanks for his survival thus far. When he set out again on his journey, the coastline began to curl sharply south. For the worthy and indigent there were still plenty of gifts in his satchel, but his mind was now more occupied with how his father would react when they met than with the threat of brigands and outlaws.
Theseus was just thinking of finding a place to bivouac and sleep for the night when two tall thin men appeared on either side, seemingly out of nowhere, with their knives pointed at his throat. A third figure then stepped out in front of him. Theseus had never seen someone so big. He would have dwarfed even Periphetes, the first of his adversaries on this journey. Theseus knew perfectly ordinary people who were shorter than this man was broad.
‘Who gave you permission to enter my kingdom?’ the giant roared.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I am Cercyon, king of this realm. You enter without permission.’
‘Well, how very wrong of me. Please accept my apologies.’
‘I offer strangers a fight without weapons. If you win, this kingdom is yours.’
‘And if I lose?’
‘Then you die.’
Theseus looked round. ‘Not much of a kingdom, is it? I mean, compared with Corinth, say.’
‘Do you accept the challenge?’
‘Oh yes, I accept.’
‘Then remove your sword and your clothes.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘This is a fight without weapons. Only arms and fists, and legs and feet. Pure fighting.’
Theseus looked at the giant, who had cast off his cloak and other articles of clothing and now stood naked before him. Maybe this was all some elaborate courting ritual. Being embraced by such a huge musclebound man in an act of love was as horrible a prospect as being embraced by him in an act of combat. The tall thin guards with their knives at his throat were not going to go away, and with no other options open to him, Theseus laid down his sword and club with a sigh and stepped out of his tunic.
‘I can crush bones in one hug,’ said Cercyon.
‘Really?’ said Theseus. ‘Your mother must be very proud of you. Tell me …’ he added, leaping nimbly to one side as Cercyon came forward in a rush, ‘if I win, will your men really submit to me?’
‘If you win,’ chuckled Cercyon, beckoning Theseus forward, ‘they will serve you to the end of their days and you will be their king. Come to me, come to me!’
Theseus ducked between Cercyon’s legs and felt the giant’s balls brushing the top of his head. ‘Revolting,’ he said to himself. ‘But they do present a good target.’
‘Will you keep still!’ exclaimed Cercyon, infuriated by Theseus’s starts and sideways jumps. ‘You don’t fight like a man, you dance like a girl.’
Slowly Cercyon began to tire. He was too strong for Theseus to allow himself to engage, for it would only take one great bear-hug and his ribs would crack. But the giant’s lunges and swipes were slowing. Every time he made a move, Theseus found a way to turn his strength against him, tiring him further. The next time he ducked between Cercyon’s legs, he leapt onto the giant’s scrotum and hung there, twisting it round and round.
Cercyon howled in agony. ‘Stop it! You can’t do that, it’s cheating!’
With one last vicious tug, Theseus dropped to the ground.
‘I’ll get you, I’ll get you!’ thundered Cercyon.
He’s lost his temper, Theseus thought to himself. I’ve got him now.
Cercyon stamped and lurched forwards, blind to anything but revenge. Theseus nipped at his ankles, snapped at his balls, jumped on his toes, laughed and teased and raced around him until Cercyon was more like an enraged bull than any kind of artful fighter.
At last Theseus lured him to a row of jagged rocks and tripped him. Cercyon fell face down on the sharp rocks and Theseus jumped up and down on him like a child bouncing on a bed. The giant’s blood spurted up in a fountain and fell in crimson drops as Cercyon shuddered and gave up his last breath.fn3
Theseus turned to see the two thin guards kneeling on the ground in front of him.
‘Sire!’
‘Majesty!’
‘Oh, stop it,’ said Theseus, panting from his exertions. ‘Go away. You’re free. Quick, go! Before I do to you what I did to your king.’
As he watched them scampering down the hillside, Theseus donned his tunic and gathered up his possessions.fn4
Theseus’s last adversary appeared before him in a valley of Mount Korydallos. Unlike the others, he did not leap out from behind a rock or a tree. He did not bar Theseus’s way and he did not threaten him with swords, clubs or knives. Instead he stood in the doorway of a pleasantly appointed stone house and welcomed him with a smile and an offer of hospitality.
‘Hello, stranger! You look as though you have travelled a few leagues.’
‘That I have,’ said Theseus.
‘You will surely be in need of refreshment and a bed for the night.’
‘I was thinking of making straight for Athens this evening.’
‘Oh, it’s a good twelve miles. You’ll never make it before nightfall. And there are thieves and murderers waiting out there, I can assure you. Believe me, much better to stay here and make the final leg of your journey when you’re fresh. We offer cheap, clean lodging at an affordable price.’
‘Sold,’ said Theseus, thrusting out his hand. ‘Theseus of Troezen.’
‘PROCRUSTES of Erineus. Make yourself welcome under our roof.’
There was something in the smiling and the bowing that Theseus did not quite like, but he said nothing and entered the small house. A middle-aged woman was busy wiping down the wooden table with mint leaves. She welcomed him with a bobbing curtsy and a beaming smile.
‘A guest, my dear,’ said Procrustes, ducking his head to avoid the lintel as he entered, for he was a tall man.
Procrustes’ wife bobbed again. She smiled quite as much as her husband and Theseus found the nature of the smile quite as off-putting.
‘Do you have water somewhere that I might wash myself?’ he asked.
‘Wash yourself? Why would you do that?’ Procrustes asked, amazed.
‘Never you mind, Procrustes. If the young gentleman wants to wash, then let him. Strangers have strange ways and there’s an end to it. There’s a pond out the back where the ducks swim,’ she added to Theseus. ‘Might that serve your needs?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Theseus and he made his way out.
He saw the pond but did not make for it: instead he doubled round to the window at the back under which he crouched, listening.
‘Oh, he’s perfect, my dear,’ the wife was saying. ‘Did you see that bulging satchel he’s carrying? There’ll be silver and gold in there enough.’
‘He’s neither tall nor short,’ Procrustes put in thoughtfully. ‘When I take him to be fitted to the bed, should he be stretched out, do you think?’
‘Oh, I love it when you manacle them and stretch them out, Procrustes. The screams, the screams!’
‘Ah, but there’s fun to be had when they’re too tall for the bed, too. Chopping off their feet … They scream plenty then too.’
‘Stretch him, Procrustes, rack him! It lasts longer.’
‘I believe you’re right, my dear. I’ll go to the room now and make the bed long. What’s he doing, anyway? Who ever heard of a man washing himself? He’s not making a sound, neither.’
Theseus quickly picked up a stone and threw it into the pond. It landed with a splash and a chorus of angry quacking.
‘He’s frightening the ducks, at any rate.’
‘Maybe he’s from Sparta,’ suggested his wife. ‘You hear strange things of Spartans.’
‘He said he was from Troezen.’
‘They’re strange too.’
‘We’ll hear stranger things of him soon enough,’ said Procrustes as he left the room.
Theseus came back by way of the pond and was suitably dripping when he came back into the house.
‘You’ll have a cup of wine by the fire,’ said the woman. ‘That water must be making you chilly.’
‘How kind.’
‘All right and tight for you,’ said Procrustes, coming back in, with a wink. ‘Just been making sure your room is comfortable.’
‘That’s so thoughtful of you,’ said Theseus. ‘They say the gods reward hospitality.’
‘Well, it’s the least we can do,’ said Procrustes. ‘It’s a rough road from Eleusis to Athens. You can meet some nasty customers on the way.’
‘I’ve certainly encountered plenty of interesting and unusual people on my journey.’
‘No one who wanted to harm you?’ said the woman with motherly concern.
‘I found most of them to be as polite and friendly as you are,’ said Theseus, with a broad smile.
‘Enough chat, my dear,’ said Procrustes. ‘This gentleman will be wanting to see his room. Make sure the bed fits, that kind of thing.’
‘A bed?’ said Theseus. ‘Goodness me, I’ve become used to sleeping out in the open. What luxury a bed will be.’
‘Come along then and I’ll show you.’
It was a pleasant room into which Procrustes ushered his guest. He had gone to the trouble of setting a vase of flowers on the table. The frame of the bed itself seemed to be of bronze. Theseus saw that there were rings built in all around the sides that seemed to be decorative, but could easily serve as manacles or cuffs.
‘How charming,’ said Theseus, surveying the room. ‘Irises. My favourites.’
‘Now, if you’ll just lie out on the bed, I’ll see if it fits.’
‘No, no,’ said Theseus. Quick as a flash he executed one of his wrestling moves, which deposited Procrustes face down on the bed. While he was still stunned, Theseus grasped his hands and quickly fixed them to the restraints, then he did the same to Procrustes’ ankles. Procrustes swore loudly, but Theseus shushed him.
‘What a remarkable bed this is,’ he said walking round it slowly. ‘There’s a handle here, I wonder what it does?’
He picked up the crank and fitted it to the mechanism at the end of the bed. When he turned the handle, the bed shortened in length.
‘Language, Procrustes, please! I see you have an axe here. Perhaps that is to fit your guests properly to the bed? I wonder if it works.’
Theseus lopped off Procrustes’ protruding feet at the ankles. The screams were terrible, so Theseus silenced them by chopping off his head too. The body quivered and jerked for a few seconds, blood spouting from each end.
As he was detaching Procrustes and rolling him off the bed, he heard the wife coming down the passageway.
‘Oh, you haven’t started without me, have you, my love? I heard the screams, but I had bread in the oven and I –’
She stopped and stared at the sight that met her: Theseus standing cheerfully, axe in hand, her husband dead on the floor and blood everywhere.
‘No, you’re not too late,’ said Theseus. ‘Why don’t you lie down and let me fit you to the bed? No, no, don’t struggle. It’s much easier if you lie still and let me attach you to these clever manacles … like so. Dear me, you are far too short for this bed, you know. Far too short. Let me make you a better fit.’
The woman spat and screamed curses but Theseus took no notice as he turned the handle.
‘You see, now I can stretch you. They say that is very good for the muscles.’
He cranked until he could hear the woman’s shoulders creak as her arms were slowly pulled from the shoulder sockets.
‘Still not quite a fit …’
Now her hips began to click and snap.
‘You were right about the screams,’ said Theseus. ‘Just as well you have no neighbours.’
She died in terrible agony, but Theseus thought of the agony of the many travellers who had had the misfortune to accept hospitality from the couple. He found plenty of stolen jewellery and, behind the duckpond, a macabre midden of bones. More than two hundred had screamed their last in this evil place.
Theseus threw lit rushes into the windows of the house and crossed the road to lie down in the field opposite and watch it burn down – Procrustes, wife, bed and all. As the embers died, he curled up and thought to himself how the best beds were to be found in nature, in the hedgerows and under the wise all-seeing stars. In the morning he should stop off at the River Cephissus and cleanse himself. That, he felt, was important.
The figure that strode through the morning market in the Athenian agora attracted attention right away.fn5 He was tall, he was handsome, yet despite his youth he was fierce of demeanour and confident in his bearing. The lithe tread and broad shoulders spoke of a warrior or athlete. Such figures were not rare in Athens, but neither were they an everyday sight.
It was the club he carried that started the rumours flying. Theseus stopped off at a stall to buy a melon; a small boy saw the club and, intrigued, touched it.
‘Is that … is that … bronze?’ he asked.
Theseus nodded gravely. ‘That is what the man I took it from claimed and I have every reason to believe him.’
The stallholder leaned forward. ‘I heard that Periphetes the bandit was killed. He carried a club like this, they say.’
‘Periphetes Corynetes!’ went the cry.
‘Is this the man we’ve heard tell of?’
‘The one who tore Sinis apart with his own pine trees?’
‘The lone traveller who outfought Cercyon …’
‘… and slew the Crommyonian Sow …’
‘… and lopped off the legs of Procrustes the Stretcher …’
‘… and fed Sciron the cliff-killer to the tortoise …’
Theseus found himself being lifted bodily and carried to the palace by a cheering crowd. Here was the nameless hero of the Isthmian Road, the Saviour of the Saronic Coast! His name is Theseus and he is a Prince of Troezen. Hurrah for Troezen! Hurrah for Theseus!
Theseus had deliberately set out to make a name for himself and he had succeeded. That is why he chose the footpath of greatest danger over the sea-lane of greater safety. But he was not entirely vain, and he had enough sense to understand that fame and hero-worship cut two ways. They may embolden and excite the populace, but they aggravate and alarm the powerful. He had no wish to alienate his father before they had even met. With smiles and friendly back-slapping, he managed to extricate himself from the cheering crowd.
‘Thank you, friends,’ he said, safely back at street level. ‘Thank you, but I am just a man like any other, and it is as a humble citizen that I beg an audience with your king.’
Such modesty of course served only to increase the adoration of the Athenian citizenry. They understood and respected such humility and allowed him to enter the palace alone and unencumbered by an entourage of admirers.
King Aegeus received Theseus in the throne room. Seated beside him was his third wife, Medea. Everyone had heard of Medea and the part she played in ensuring the success of the quest for the Golden Fleece. Stories abounded of her powers as an enchantress and of her implacable will. Her passion as a lover, wife and mother had driven her, they said, to do the most unspeakable things. Child murder, blood murder – there was nothing of which she was not capable, but looking at her you saw only beauty and simple sweetness. Theseus bowed before both.
‘So this is the young man of whom we have heard tell, eh? A Prince of Troezen no less, grandson of my old friend Pittheus. Rid us of our infestation of bandits, did he?’ Aegeus did not, of course, recognise his son. If there was something in the russet of Theseus’s hair that matched his own sparse and greying thatch, it did not cause much comment. The Grecian mainland, Macedonia in particular, was filled with men and women of varying degrees of sandy, ginger, copper and red hair.
Theseus bowed again.
‘That’s a lot of killing, young man,’ said Medea, with a smile and flash of her green eyes. ‘I hope you have done something to purge your soul of so much blood?’
‘Yes, majesty,’ said Theseus. ‘I saw the PHYTALIDES who have a temple beside the River Cephissus and begged for atonement. They purified me.’fn6
‘That was very clever of you – very proper of you,’ Medea emended her words, but Theseus caught the spark of enmity. Aegeus too, he had to confess to himself, seemed far from pleased to see him.
‘Yes, well, I’m sure we’re very grateful,’ said the king. ‘Please make yourself at home here in the palace. I’m sure we can find something for you to do in the … er … the army, or somewhere … there are many ways a good man may be of service to us.’
Aegeus’s throne was, in truth, far from secure. Being childless (as he and the world thought) his brother PALLAS’s fifty sons – yes, fiftyfn7 – all expected a share in the throne when he was gone. Their aggressive impatience at his refusal to abdicate or die caused Aegeus many sleepless nights. Medea and Aegeus had a son, Medus, whom she hoped would rule Athens after Aegeus’s death.
Medea looked at the young man now standing before her with such false modesty and fake charm. She was not fooled for an instant. She looked again more closely and her heart leapt in her breast. She saw the hair, but more than that she noticed a look, a cast of features that she knew from Aegeus. Rumours had abounded of his visit – when was it? Yes, seventeen or eighteen years ago – to the Delphic oracle and thence to Troezen and his friend Pittheus, who had a daughter, Aethra. Yes, this bold youth was the bastard of that union, Medea was certain of it. The searching gaze he was giving Aegeus only confirmed her conviction. Well, she would put an end to this threat. Nothing would come between her and the plans she had for Medus to inherit the throne.
‘Actually, I can think of something he might do for us, if he – excuse me, Theseus was it? What an unusual name – if Theseus might consider …’ She leaned across and whispered into Aegeus’s ear. He nodded brightly.
‘Yes, yes. The queen, as always, is wise. You seek adventure, young man? You would like to help Athens?’
Theseus nodded eagerly.
‘The villagers over near Marathon have been complaining about some terrifying bull that is rampaging around the plain. Terrible – from Crete originally, they tell me. It’s making trade and civil congress in the region all but impossible. If what they say about you and that sow in Crommyon is true … you don’t think …?’
‘Say no more, sire,’ said Theseus. With his most respectful bow he left on his mission.
‘What a good idea, Medea, m’dear,’ said Aegeus. ‘I didn’t like the cut of that young man. And such popularity is dangerous. Did you hear how the crowd cheered him?’
‘A dangerous youth, for certain.’
‘Well, we’ve seen the last of him. That bull breathes fire from its nostrils. It’s untameable. I should know.’
‘I am not so sure,’ said Medea. ‘I shall make a fire and look into the flames. There’s something about that boy …’
The news that Aegeus had sent Theseus to kill the bull at Marathon sent shockwaves throughout Attica. For the king had sent a young man on the very same mission before, with disastrous consequences. He had received Prince ANDROGEUS, a son of King Minos of Crete, as a guest, and foolishly sent him on the same errand, to rid Athens of a terrible bull that was devastating the countryside. The bull had promptly killed Androgeus, and as a punishment for such an egregious sin against the laws of hospitality, Minos had invaded Attica and threatened to raze the city to the ground unless … Well, we will come to that soon enough. For the moment, everyone wondered how Aegeus could be making the identical same disastrous mistake, for it was the identical same disastrous bull.
We first encountered this prodigiously significant beast when it was known as the Cretan Bull, the very one Heracles had been ordered to capture for his Seventh Labour.fn8 After he let it go, you will recall, it fled from Mycenae and eventually ended up in Marathon, where it had been terrorising the inhabitants ever since.
Theseus went to Marathon and once more demonstrated the difference between his brand of heroism and that of Heracles who, if you remember, had planted himself on the ground and let the bull come at him, seizing it by the horns and using his sheer physical strength to subdue it. Theseus approached the problem in his own way. He watched the bull for some time. He saw no flames jetting from its nostrils, but he did see enormous strength and a terrible primal savagery in its furious snorting, bellowing and pawing of the ground. The ravaged countryside, gored livestock and flattened buildings all told him of the animal’s formidable power and instinct to kill.
‘But he’s really no more frightening than Cercyon, whom I wrestled to the ground and dashed on the rocks,’ he said to himself.
Sure enough, employing that same subtle art of turning the strength of an adversary against him, Theseus wore the bull out. Theseus was too lithe, nimble and quick for it. Each time the bull came at him, Theseus jumped into the air and the baffled animal found itself charging through vacant space beneath him.fn9
‘You don’t breathe fire,’ said Theseus, leaping over him for the tenth time, ‘but your breath is hot.’
At last the great beast was too tired to resist any further. Theseus harnessed him and ploughed the Plain of Marathon.fn10 The ploughing demonstrated his mastery of the beast and proved to the delighted inhabitants that they could now grow crops and farm their land in safety.
Theseus returned in triumph to Athens with the bull, which he sacrificed to Apollo in the agora.
Aegeus’s plan could not have backfired more spectacularly. Far from ridding himself of this threat to his peace and security, he had propelled Theseus to even greater heights of popularity and acclaim. All Athens thrilled at the procession through the streets as Theseus led the great bull, once so ferocious, but now as placid and docile as a castrated ox, and made the noble and modest sacrifice to Apollo. The people had never seen such a hero. Aegeus was bound to throw a feast in his honour and it was while he was moodily dressing for this that Medea entered his chamber.
‘This young man bodes nothing but ill for us, my husband.’
‘I am aware of it.’
‘See here …’ Medea showed him a small crystal phial. ‘In there is a quantity of wolf’s bane …’
‘The queen of poisons, they call it, do they not?’
‘It has many names,’ said Medea coldly. ‘Blue rocket, devil’s helmet, leopard’s fire, aconite.fn11 It is enough to know that it kills. I drop the contents into the popinjay prince’s cup and lo! we are rid of the problem. It will seem as though he has had a fit, a storm in the mind, and we shall put it about so. Hades was greedy for so great a soul to come to the Underworld, we will say, and he sent Thanatos, Lord of Death, to bring Theseus to his eternal rest in paradise.’
‘You’re a clever little thing,’ said Aegeus, chucking her under the chin.
‘Don’t ever do that again.’
‘No, Medea, m’dear.’
He did not see Medea slip the poison into Theseus’s cup at table, but a sign from her showed that she had managed to do so. She did not go quite so far as to tap the side of her nose and wink, but the slow and meaningful nod she gave Aegeus assured him that all was ready.
‘So now, my people,’ said Aegeus rising with a cup in his hand. ‘I offer a toast to our guest, this prince of Troezen, this slayer of bandits and tamer of bulls, our new friend and protector. Let us drink to the health of Lord Theseus, for so I now name him.’
Enthusiastic murmurs of assent ran round the hall as the guests drank to Theseus, who sat modestly nodding his thanks.
‘And now our guest must reply,’ said Medea.
‘Oh, now, well …’ Theseus rose to his feet, grasping a goblet in nervous hands. ‘I am not much of a fellow for talking. I know the art of speech-making is prized here in Athens and I hope some day to learn. For the most part I let my sword do the talking …’ he opened his cloak slightly and put a hand to the hilt of his sword. A murmur of sympathetic and admiring laughter ran round the hall. ‘But I drink to –’
‘No!’
To the astonishment of all present King Aegeus suddenly leaned forward and violently struck the cup from Theseus’s hands.
‘That sword,’ he said, pointing to Theseus’s side. ‘I buried that very sword in the ground for my son to find.’
‘And these rotten old sandals,’ said Theseus with a laugh, pulling one of them from his foot. ‘How I cursed them when I was on the road.’
Father and son fell into each others’ arms. It was a moment before Aegeus called Medea to mind.
‘And as for you, sorceress, witch and –’
But she had gone. She left Athens never to return. Some swore that they saw her flying across the sky in a chariot drawn by dragons, her son Medus by her side.fn12
Aegeus’s next act was to announce that he would one day soon abdicate his throne in favour of Theseus, news received with much joy by the people of Athens. Aegeus was not unpopular, but it was widely accepted that he had been a weak ruler. Fifty strong and angry men contested Theseus’s right to rule, however – the Pallantidae, the fifty sons of Aegeus’s dead brother Pallas. They declared outright war on their unwanted cousin. It is axiomatic in the world of Greek mythology that a hero never knows rest and it was with a good grace and healthy vigour that Theseus prosecuted his war against the fifty.
In two groups, each led by twenty-five of the brothers, the enemy planned a surprise pincer attack on Athens. But Theseus had spies in their camp. Informed of their plans by a herald named LEUS, he ambushed each army in turn, massacring every single one of the Pallantidae.
Theseus felt he now had time to enjoy the peace and prosperity that had at last come to Athens. Yet he noticed that far from looking happy, the citizenry was going about the town with sullen, downcast looks. He was still popular, he knew that. But he could not account for what he saw in the people’s eyes. He went to Aegeus.
‘I don’t understand it, father. The Pallantidae are no longer a threat. That witch Medea no longer exerts her malign influence over you and the city … trade is booming. Yet there’s a look in everyone’s eyes. A look of fear, of … the only word I can think of is … dread.’
Aegeus nodded. ‘Yes. Dread is the right word.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s the tributes, you see. The time has come round again for the tributes.’
‘Tributes?’
‘Has no one told you? Well, you’ve been a little occupied since you got here, haven’t you? I suppose what with those fifty nephews of mine … and the Marathonian Bull, of course. Well, it concerns that damned bull, as a matter of fact … Oh dear.’
‘What about it, father? It’s been dead this year or more.’
‘We have to go back quite a few years. King Minos sent his son to stay with me. To take part in some games and learn a little Athenian town polish, you know. Manners and style. The Cretans are … well, you know what Cretans are like.’
Theseus did not know what Cretans were like, but he knew that the rest of Greece held them equally in awe, fear and contempt.
‘So he came to us. Androgeus, his name was. Stupid boy, I thought him, not very interesting, and so boastful about his attributes as a fighter and athlete. I should never have encouraged him. It was wrong of me …’
‘What happened?’
‘He died, while a guest. His father Minos … er … didn’t take it well. He sailed a fleet here which overwhelmed our navy. Troops poured out from their damned ships and before long he had us where he wanted us.’
‘But he didn’t occupy Athens?’
‘Said it wasn’t worth it. “No Cretan would want to live in such a place,” he said. Cheek. He threatened to burn the whole city to the ground unless …’
‘Unless?’
‘Well, this is where we come to it. Every year we must send seven maidens and seven youths in a ship to Crete to feed their … their …’ Aegeus dried up at this point and gestured helplessly.
‘Feed their what? Their army? Their sexual appetites? Their curiosity? What?’
‘I suppose I shall have to tell you a story within a story now. What do you know of Daedalus?’
‘Never heard of it …’
‘Daedalus is not an it, he’s a him.’
‘Never heard of him, then.’
‘Really? Have you heard of ASTERION and Pasiphae, or the Bull from the Sea?’
‘Father, you talk in riddles.’
Aegeus sighed. ‘I had better call for wine. You should know these stories.’
Crete is, in many respects (said Aegeus to Theseus, once wine had been brought and they had settled themselves back on couches), a blessed spot. The fruit and vegetables they grow there are bigger, juicier and tastier than from any other lands. The fish they catch on their coastline is the best in the Mediterranean. They are a proud people, a fierce people. For many years King Minos, in his palace at Knossos, has ruled them sternly but fairly. They have prospered under him. But there is a dark secret at the heart of Knossos.
For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvellous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy, or control the levels of watercourses. There is nothing this cunning man cannot contrive in his workshop. There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, boxes that play music and devices that can awaken him in the morning. Even if only half the stories of what Daedalus can achieve are true then you can be certain that no more cunning and clever an inventor, architect and craftsman has ever walked this earth.
They say he is descended from CECROPS, the first King of Attica and ancestor of all Athenians, Cecrops who judged in favour of Athena when she and Poseidon vied for control of the new town he was building. That is why we call the city Athens and bask in the wisdom and warmth of the great goddess’s protection. I only mention this because although he works for Minos, our enemy, I think of Daedalus as Athenian, as one of us. After all, I would hate to think of a Cretan being so clever. As a matter of fact, Daedalus was expelled from Athens. He had a nephew named PERDIX who served as his apprentice and was, they say, even more ingenious and gifted than his brilliant uncle. Before he even reached the age of twenty, Perdix had invented the saw (inspired, they say, by the serrations on the backbone of a fish), compasses for architectural planning and geometry, and the potter’s wheel too. Who knows what he would have gone on to devise had his jealous uncle not thrown him off the Acropolis, where he fell to his death. The goddess Athena turned him into a partridge. If you’ve ever wondered why partridgesfn13 always skim low and never soar into the air and even build their nests on the ground, it is because they recall their terrifying plummet from the heights of Athens.
Yes, yes, you are right, Theseus, this is all a little far from the point, but I must tell this story in my own way. Minos has a wife, Pasiphae – she and Daedalus are very close. Some even suggest that they … Well, let us say Minos is a difficult husband and no one would blame Pasiphae for looking elsewhere. She is a proud woman, daughter of the sun god Helios, no less, and imbued with great powers. She is the sister of Circe and Aeëtes and an aunt, therefore, of Medea. There’s a story that she became so annoyed by Minos’s unfaithfulness to her that she secretly added a potion to his wine which caused him, in the act of love-making, to ejaculate only snakes and scorpions, which was most painful for all concerned. But what she did next took everyone by surprise.
One day Poseidon sent a white bull from the sea. Oh no, I am still not quite in the right order of things.
You know the story of Europa?fn14 Who does not. How Zeus in the form of a bullfn15 carried the girl off from Tyre right under the eyes of Cadmus and her other brothers. They went to Greece to get her back, and in the course of his adventures Cadmus founded Thebes, of course, and his brothers all established dynasties too, Phoenicia, Cilicia and so on, but they never found their sister, who had landed with Zeus on Crete. Well, Europa bore the god a son, Minos, who ruled the island and became, after his death, one of the Judges of the Underworld. His son ASTERION ruled Crete and his son, MINOS II, the current Minos, took over. But Minos had brothers who objected to his claim. Minos, though, insisted that the gods always intended him to be king, and to prove it he offered up a prayer to Poseidon.
‘Send a bull from the sea, my lord Poseidon,’ he cried, ‘so that my brothers may know Crete is mine. I will sacrifice the bull in your name and venerate you always.’
Sure enough, the most beautiful white bull emerged from the waves. So beautiful, in fact, that there were two disastrous outcomes. Firstly, Minos decided it was far too handsome an animal to kill, so he sacrificed a lesser beast from his own herd, which very much enraged Poseidon. And secondly, the bull’s astonishing beauty attracted Pasiphae. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. She wanted it. She wanted it on her, around her and in her – I’m sorry, Theseus, it’s true. I’m telling the story as it is known. There are those who say it was the angry Poseidon who crazed her with this lust – part of his punishment of Minos for failing to sacrifice the bull, but however it came about, Pasiphae became frenzied in her desire for the animal.
The bull was, of course, a bull and so had no sense of how to respond to a woman’s advances. In the froth and frenzy of her erotic passion the lovestruck Pasiphae went to her friend, and perhaps ex-lover, Daedalus and asked if he could help her have her way with the bull. Without so much as a second thought Daedalus, excited perhaps by the intellectual challenge, set about manufacturing an artificial heifer. He made it from wood and brass, but he stretched a real cow’s hide over the frame. Pasiphae fitted herself inside, the correct part of her presented to the correct opening. The whole contraption was wheeled to the meadow where the bull was grazing. I know, my boy, it is gross, but I am telling you the story as the world knows it.
Astonishingly, the depraved plan worked. Pasiphae screamed in a delirium of joy as the bull entered her. Never had she known such carnal ecstasy. Yes, laugh, mock and snort with derision as much as you like, but this is what happened, Theseus.
Still not satisfied that Minos had suffered enough for his disrespect, Poseidon now sent the bull mad. Its untameable terrorizing of the island caused Eurystheus to choose it as the seventh task he set for Heracles, who came to Crete, subdued it and took it to Mycenae. This was of course the bull that escaped from Mycenae, crossed into mainland Greece and tore up the plain of Marathon until you, my splendid boy, tamed it and brought it to Athens, finally, to be sacrificed. Quite a bull, wasn’t it?
But its story and the curse of it is not over, for what happened on Crete next was even more dreadful. In due course Pasiphae, the bull’s seed inside her, gave birth. What emerged was – as might be expected and thoroughly deserved – a monstrous aberration, half human and half bull. Minos was disgusted but neither he nor Pasiphae had the heart or stomach to kill the abomination. Instead, Minos commissioned Daedalus to construct a building in which this creature – which they named Asterion after Minos’s father, but which the world called the MINOTAUR – could be safely housed and from which it could never escape.
The building Daedalus designed, which he named the Labyrinth, was an annex to his great Palace of Knossos, but so elaborate and complex was its maze-like design of passageways, blank walls, false doors, dead ends and apparently identical corridors, galleries and alcoves that a person could be lost in its interior for a lifetime. Any can enter, but none can ever find their way out. Indeed, the cunning of the labyrinth is that its design leads inevitably to the central chamber that lies in its very heart. It is a stone room where Asterion the Minotaur lives out his wretched, monstrous life. High above is a grating, which lets in some sunlight, and allows food to be thrown down to him. As he grew from infant-calf to man-bull (I should say that his lower half is human and his upper half is bull, complete with a full set of horns) it became clear that his favourite food was flesh. Human flesh for preference. A certain number of thieves, bandits and murderers are likely to be sentenced to death on Crete in the normal course of events and their carcasses go some way to satisfying the Minotaur, but every year he has a special treat. And this, Theseus, is where your father comes into the story – to his everlasting shame and dishonour.
Minos and Pasiphae’s elder son Androgeus came to stay with me as a guest, as I told you, here at this palace in Athens. It happened to be around the time the bull that was the Minotaur’s father had escaped from Mycenae and was now terrorizing Marathon. Androgeus was a tediously vain and boastful youth, endlessly going on about how superior to Athenians Cretan men were at running and wrestling and so on. One evening I snapped, and said ‘Well, if you’re so damned brave and athletic why don’t you prove it by ridding Marathon of that damned bull?’
He was brave enough, or foolish enough, to go and of course he was killed. The bull gored him, ripped out his insides then tossed him a full stadion’s length across the plain, so they say. Minos was told, wrongly I assure you, that I sent Androgeus deliberately to his death because I was annoyed at how easily he beat our home-grown Athenian athletes in the games, but that is nonsense. It was the boy’s boasting that provoked me.
Well, in his grief and rage Minos raised a fleet and laid siege to Athens. We were totally unprepared. An oracle told us we would die of famine and plague unless we yielded and agreed to his peace terms.
And this is where we have got to. Minos’s terms.
He would generously forgo burning Athens to the ground if we agreed every year to send seven girls and seven youths by ship to Crete for them to be … there’s no nice way of saying this … for them to be fed to the Minotaur. In return for this tribute, Athens retains its independence and freedom from attack.
Yes, I agree, it is a disgrace and certainly, you are right, it shames us all – but what else can we do?
‘I’ll tell you what we can do,’ said Theseus rising angrily from his couch. ‘We can act less like frightened goats and more like true Athenians!’fn16
‘That’s all very well for you to say, you weren’t there when Minos’s fleet stood in Piraeus harbour …’
But Theseus was not interested in the past, only the future. It is one of the distinguishing features of heroes that makes them appealing and unappealing at one and the same time.
‘How are these fourteen sacrificial lambs chosen?’
‘I am proud to say,’ said Aegeus, summoning up what dignity and regal authority he could, ‘that like the true Athenians they are, they volunteer. Hundreds offer themselves willingly every year. We draw lots to choose the final seven for each group.’
‘One of the seven youths will be me,’ said Theseus. ‘And we shall select the other thirteen not by lots, but by holding games. I want only the most fit, fleet, cunning and clever to accompany me to Crete and end this nonsense …’
‘But Theseus, my boy – consider!’ wailed Aegeus. ‘The conditions lay down that the fourteen must arrive on Crete unarmed. What hope can you have when you will be under guard from the moment you make landfall? What will it matter how fast, strong or smart you are? Why throw your life away? The system has worked for the past five years. It is not … ideal, and I readily admit that it reflects little credit on us, but defeat is defeat and …’
Not another word would Theseus hear. He left the room and set to work right away on devising the games and tests that would select the cream of Athenian youth for the journey to Crete.
Aegeus sighed. He loved his son dearly but he was beginning to wonder if, all those years ago, he had been wrong to let Pittheus persuade him to loosen his bulging wineskin … maybe this is what the oracle had meant about it all ending with grief.
On a fine spring morning on the sixth day of the month of Mounichion,fn17 Aegeus sat nervously on his throne, which had been carried in a litter to the harbour wall at Piraeus. A small ship, enough for a crew of five and fourteen passengers, was being provisioned. The king, under a flapping canopy, busied himself issuing commands for the loading of some extra cargo.
‘There’s no harm in offering Minos gifts,’ he told Theseus. ‘He may have softened his heart. If he knows that my own son … my own son …’
Theseus put a hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Cheer up. The gods favour boldness. We will all be back before you know it.’ He turned and jumped up onto the gunwales of the ship to address those gathered on the quayside to see them off. The families of the thirteen young people hand-picked by Theseus from all those who offered themselves were at the front, easily identifiable by their pale, drawn faces and the black mourning cloaks they wore.
‘People of Athens!’ cried Theseus. ‘Be of good cheer. We young people go with glad hearts and will return to gladden yours.’
The thirteen behind him, all dressed like Theseus in sacrificial white and garlanded with flowers, raised their arms in salute and cheered. The anxious and stricken families on the quay did their best to cheer back.
‘Hoist sails and ho for Crete!’
As black sailcloth was unfurled from the yards, Aegeus came bustling up to his son. ‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘I have given the captain instructions. I will be standing on the top of the Acropolis every day to watch for your return. If the ship returns empty, if disaster has struck and you have failed …’
‘… never happen …’
‘… then he is to fly the black sails, but if the gods have been pleased to spare you and the ship returns in triumph …’
‘… which is a certainty …’
‘… he is to hoist white sails. So that I will know. You understand?’
The earnestness of the king’s demeanour amused Theseus. ‘Don’t you worry yourself, father. It will be white sails all the way home. Now, grab an olive branch to wave and try to look happy. We are ready to sail.’
‘May the gods bless you and watch over you always, Theseus my son.’
Prayers to Poseidon were offered up, petals and grains of corn were tossed into the waters and the ship sailed.
Aegeus had been right to suppose that the moment the party from Athens made landfall in Crete they would be taken prisoner. On the way over, Theseus had tried to imagine ways in which they could overpower any guards set over them and make a fight of it, but no stratagem suggested itself to. Their ship had been met in open water and steered into harbour by an aggressive Minoan fleet before they had even sighted the island.
A small knot of jeering Cretans accompanied them from the docks at Heraklion to the palace dungeon where they were to spend the night. A group of children ran alongside hurling stones and insults as they approached the great gates of Knossos.fn18
‘He will grind your bones!’
‘You’ll wet yourselves! You always do!’
‘He loves the taste of Athenians …’
‘He’ll fuck you first, then eat you!’
One of the young men started to whimper.
‘Sh!’ said Theseus. ‘They want to see you afraid. Don’t give them that satisfaction. Let’s sing …’
In a voice more admirable for its strength than its musicality Theseus began to sing. It was the old anthem of Attica, the song that told the story of Cecrops and the founding kings of Athens. How Pallas Athena gave the people olive trees and contested with Poseidon over who should be the city’s guardian.
Slowly and with gathering confidence the other thirteen joined in. The jeering children were unsure how to cope with this and fell away disappointed. A guard snarled at them to be quiet, but they only sang louder and more lustily. The gates opened and their voices echoed off the ramparts.
Into the palace they trooped, tramping their feet in time to their singing. They were stopped at the head of a stairway that led down to the dungeons, but still they sang. The stairhead was protected by a locked iron gate. As the lead guard took out a large key and fitted it to the lock, a door opened in the gallery above and Theseus glanced up. A girl appeared in the doorway, perhaps drawn by the unexpected sound of singing. She looked down and straight into his eyes. Instantly Theseus felt a surge of heat shoot through his whole body. The girl quickly closed the door.
Theseus found he could no longer sing. In a daze he let himself be led along with the others, the ship’s crew included, to a large round cell under the palace. By the light of torches in brackets set around the wall, he saw a long table covered in dishes of the most colourful and appealing food. Some of the Athenians cried out in surprised delight as they fell on the feast, but Theseus felt no such pleasure. Naturally the Minotaur would prefer to gorge on well-fed flesh.
The captain of the guard banged his spear on the ground. ‘Stop. Girls on the left, boys on the right. His majesty will inspect you.’
The door to the cell opened and the royal party came in. King Minos entered clutching the hand of a young girl whose eyes were cast down. When she looked up, Theseus saw that it was the same girl he had seen in the doorway. Their eyes met again.
‘I shall examine the young men, Ariadne,’ Minos was saying to her. ‘Why don’t you and your mother inspect the maidens?’
Queen Pasiphae stepped out from the shadows and took her daughter’s arm. So this was the woman who mated with a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. She seemed ordinary and disappointingly domestic to Theseus’s eyes, which were only for her beautiful daughter. Ariadne! What a perfectly delightful name.
Theseus lined up with the other six youths. The maidens were ranged opposite so Theseus could only see Ariadne’s back as she walked with her mother down the line, appraising the Athenian girls.
‘Well, they look like virgins,’ he heard Pasiphae saying in a sceptical voice, ‘but how can one tell?’ Ariadne said nothing. Theseus would have loved to know what her voice sounded like.
Meanwhile Minos stalked down the line looking the young men up and down with a critical eye. When he arrived at Theseus he prodded him with his ivory sceptre. Theseus restrained an enraged desire to throw a punch right at his arrogant, smirking face.
‘Red hair, eh?’ Minos said. ‘Well-muscled too. Asterion will like that. Very good. Now this is how it works,’ he raised his voice and turned to address both groups. ‘Over the next two weeks you will be given all the food and drink you require. Starting tomorrow a youth will be selected and taken into the labyrinth. The next day it will be a girl. A youth the day after, and so on until the two weeks are over and the last of you has been taken. The ship’s crew will then be released to sail back to Athens under safe passage with the news that the tribute is paid and your kingdom safe for another year. Understood?’
Silence. Theseus looked towards Ariadne who seemed to be examining the stone flags of the cell floor.
‘No snivelling, no sobbing, I admire that,’ said Minos. ‘Keep your heads high and meet your fate proudly and doubtless you will be rewarded in the afterlife. That is all. Come, Pasiphae, Ariadne.’
At the last minute Ariadne glanced up towards Theseus and again his eyes locked with hers for the briefest instant. The briefest instant that contained an entire lifetime of joy, love and explosive bliss.
The door clanged shut and the young people turned expectant faces on Theseus. They were thrilled to see that he was smiling.
‘You have a plan?’ they enquired of him.
Theseus was jerked from his trance. ‘Plan? Well now … plan …’
He looked about him. Something would occur to him, surely? After the feelings that had swept over him when he looked into the eyes of Ariadne it was impossible to believe that his life and the lives of his companions were going to end. Surely Eros had been at work with his bow? Surely the tumult in his heart was in her heart too? It couldn’t be for nothing. It had to mean something.
‘You all sleep. By morning I shall have my plan.’
‘But what will it be?’
‘Sleep. Just sleep. All will be clear.’
The plenteous good food and strong wine had tired them out and it was not long before Theseus was the only one left awake and standing.
Silence descended and Theseus found himself sliding to the floor and nodding off too, but HYPNOS never fully took his mind and he was quickly jerked awake by a sound. Someone was coming along the passageway. He stood upright and stepped over to the door.
Two murmuring voices grew louder. He could distinguish an older man, who seemed distressed or anguished in some way and the lower murmur of a female voice.
The handle of the cell door turned and through the grille he saw to his unnameable joy the face of Ariadne. She opened the door and came in, followed by an old man who nervously closed the door behind him. Theseus approached her.
‘Why are you here?’
She looked steadily into his eyes. ‘You have to ask?’
It seemed natural to take her face in his hands and cover her in kisses.
The kisses were returned.
‘What is your name?’ she asked.
‘Theseus.’
‘Theseus?’ Her eyes rounded in wonder. ‘Son of Aegeus?’
‘The same.’
‘Of course …’ she fell into his arms.
The old man tapped her impatiently on the shoulder. ‘Ariadne!’ he whispered. ‘The guards may come at any moment.’
She broke off. ‘You’re right of course, we must hurry. Come with me, Theseus. We’ll leave the island together.’
Theseus stopped. ‘I do not leave without my companions,’ he said.
‘But …’
‘I have come not to be spirited away, but to kill the Minotaur and free my people of the burden that has been placed upon them.’
She gazed deep into his eyes again. ‘Yes,’ she said at length. ‘We wondered if you might say that.’ She indicated the old man by her side. ‘This is Daedalus. He built the labyrinth where the creature lives.’
The old man nodded at Theseus. ‘Once inside its endless maze of corridors you will never find your way out,’ he said.
‘Is there not a key?’ said Theseus. ‘I have heard that if you take the first right and second left, or some such set sequence, then you can always solve a maze.’
‘This has no such cheap solution,’ said Daedalus testily. ‘There is one way – Ariadne, tell him.’
‘The corridors that lead from here through the labyrinth are dark,’ she said. ‘They take you inevitably to the centre. But to escape you will need this ball of thread. From the point where the guard leaves you, attach the end to the doorway and unroll it as you go further in. That way you will always be able to follow it out.’
‘Suppose I am the last chosen for the Minotaur,’ said Theseus. ‘I cannot let thirteen good young Athenians die. I must be chosen first.’
‘Don’t you worry about that. I shall bribe the captain of the guard and you will be chosen tomorrow morning, I promise. I can give you no weapon though. You must tackle Asterion on your own.’
‘I fought his father without weapons and won,’ said Theseus, thinking back to the Marathonian Bull.
‘When you kill him, kill him quickly and mercifully. He is a monstrous mistake, but he is my brother. My half-brother at least.’
Theseus smiled into her eyes. ‘I love you, Ariadne.’
‘I love you, Theseus.’
‘When I have killed him, I shall return and release my companions. You will sail with me back to Athens and we shall rule together as king and queen. Now leave, both of you, before we are discovered.’
‘One last kiss,’ said Ariadne.
‘One last mmmnn …’ said Theseus.
Fully awake though he remained, the next few hours passed like a fevered dream for Theseus. He had met the woman with whom he was destined to share his life. The gods were good.
He had no way of calculating the passage of the hours. The sea-captain was the first of the Athenians to wake. He came over to Theseus and they looked down at the sleeping young people. They lay on the floor, arms encircling one another – the very flower of Athenian youth.
‘They say the monster kills quick,’ said the captain. ‘In with the horns and up with its head, slicing through to the lung and heart. There are worse deaths.’
‘It is the Minotaur who dies today.’
‘My lord?’
‘Let us suppose I am chosen first, but that I return here the way I came. Are you ready to prepare the others for a fight?’
‘We have no weapons.’
‘I’ll see what I can do about that.’
‘It is good of you to plant the seed of hope but – great Zeus, what was that?’ The captain broke off and stared about him, a look of terror on his face.
A sound like none that they had ever heard came to their ears from deep within the palace. It had begun as a deep, mournful bellow and was swelling now into a great roar of rage.
Theseus put a hand on the sea-captain’s shoulder. ‘Our friend the Minotaur has woken up and is calling for his breakfast.’
As he spoke the door opened and four soldiers marched in followed by an overweight and self-satisfied-looking captain of the guard.
‘Up! Get up, the pack of you!’ he barked, strutting round and kicking the prisoners awake. ‘Let’s see … who shall we pick, eh?’ The young Athenians shrank back and tried to look invisible. ‘You!’ The captain stabbed his forefinger at Theseus. ‘Yes, you. Follow me.’
The other Athenians covered their natural feelings of relief at being spared by offering far from convincing cries of shocked distress.
‘No, no! Not Prince Theseus!’
One even dared to call out ‘Take me! Take me instead!’
Theseus quietened them. ‘Brave friends,’ he said. ‘I go willingly and gladly to meet my fate. Fear not, we shall meet again and laugh at the memory.’
The captain of the guard pushed him towards the door. Theseus pressed the ball of thread into his armpit and trusted that the unnatural way his arm hung could be put down to fear.
As they marched away down a dark corridor, the captain gave him a long sideways look. ‘What you do to upset the Princess Ariadne, then? She begged me to make sure the tall one with copper hair be taken to the labyrinth first. What you say to her?’’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘Must have said something.’
‘Perhaps it’s the way I looked at her.’
‘Well you’re going to pay the price, sure enough.’
They approached a giant bronze gate into which was set a smaller door which the captain opened.
‘In you go, mate. If you can find your way back to this door, why then … but no one ever has and no one ever will.’ He gave Theseus a push through. ‘Give the bull man my regards.’
The door closed behind him and Theseus was in darkness. It was not total darkness; far above at roof level were gratings that let in enough moonlight to pick out the damp edges and corners of the passageway in which he found himself.
He stood for a while, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to these new conditions. A lick of light showed him the small door he had come through. He tried its handle. It was unlocked!
‘Oh no you don’t, mate,’ came the sneering voice of the captain of the guard. ‘I’m staying here till I know you’ve gone.’ Theseus felt the door being pushed closed against him. Never mind, there was a stud on his side around which he could wind the end of his thread.
He turned now and walked away from the door, playing out the thread behind him as he went.
It was like no other experience he had known. At first he felt the floor rising, then he turned a corner and it sloped downwards. He started in shock as he made out the shape of a man creeping stealthily towards him. He laughed when he d that it was his own reflection in a panel of polished bronze. This happened four more times as he went on. Corners and blind recesses baffled him. He was sure at one point that he had come full circle and yet he could tell from the smell and the continuing downward slope that this could not be so.
He became aware of distant sounds that grew in volume the further he pressed on: snuffling and stamping, baying, grunting and growling. There was a forlorn quality to the way the growls and grunts were being pushed out that reminded Theseus of something. He was on the verge of placing it when he stepped on something that crunched under his feet. He stooped to pick up a human rib bone, and then another and another.
‘Asterion, O Asterion!’ he called. ‘I’m coming for you …’
He leaned against a wall and looked down a long corridor from which came more light than he had seen for the past half hour. A high roof, open to the sky, poured moonlight down into what he believed must be the heart of the labyrinth. He had made so many turns; he had ascended and descended more than he could recall and had almost collided with dozens of mirrors and dead ends. Seemingly he had doubled back and redoubled his course multiple times, looping round and up and along the same passageways, but – if the clue he was leaving, the thread, was to be believed – this was an illusion. The genius of the design seemed to lie as much in the appearance of complexity as in its reality. The labyrinth induced panic and eroded self-belief.
As Theseus approached the central room, a smell of rotting flesh, shit and urine met his nostrils. He laid the almost depleted ball of thread down and left it on the ground, coughing at the putrid stench. The stone floor was level here and he could be confident that his lifeline would not roll away.
He was delighted to find himself completely unafraid, yet puzzled to feel his heart beating thunderously in his chest nonetheless. Could he be frightened and not aware of it? A shuffling, growling and stamping came from up ahead. So much bright silver light poured down from the open roof high above that Theseus had to open and close his eyes wide to see properly.
He was in the Minotaur’s lair. He was treading on bones, clods of manure and damp straw which Theseus guessed had been dropped in from the roof above. Silence but for the thudding of his own heart and the alternate crunching and slushing of his footsteps. But now a new noise, a scraping of horn against stone. Something in the corner was moving. A form arose in the corner and emerged from the shadows. Red eyes burned as they looked towards the mortal man who had dared approach.
‘Hello there …’ said Theseus. He had meant his words to be loud and clear, but they came out as a whisper.
The great head was raised and the Minotaur let loose a mighty bellow. The roar echoed off the stone and down the four corridors that ran from this central chamber. Theseus stepped in from the head of his corridor.
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘you can’t threaten me with that. Any bull in a field can roar.’
Theseus’s eyes were able to pick out more and more detail. The Minotaur was standing upright now on its two human legs. The head was huge, the horns sharply pointed. The neck widened onto human shoulders, the chest below was matted with fur-like hair or hair-like fur that patched the whole body. A great pizzle swung between the legs, almost reaching the two hoofs that banged and scraped on the stone flags. The creature stopped roaring and looked sideways at Theseus. A long string of drool fell from its chops.
‘You’re a sight, aren’t you?’ said Theseus. ‘Does no one ever wash this place down?’
They both raised their heads at the same time to look at the square of light above.
Theseus laughed at the comical synchronization. ‘I really believe you understood me.’
The Minotaur growled, snorted and grunted.
Theseus realised with a stab of astonishment what it was that had struck him earlier as so strange about the creature’s voice. It mimicked the rhythms of human speech. He was unaccountably certain that the Minotaur was trying to speak, but that the bovine vocal cords with which he had been born were incapable of fashioning the right sounds.
‘You’re trying to speak, aren’t you?’
The hoarse cry that came from the bull’s head was surely an affirmation.
‘You poor thing. Asterion, that is your name? Asterion, listen to me. I know the way out of this maze. Why don’t you come with me? We will sail for Athens. I will make sure you have a field to yourself.’
Something like a howl emerged and the animal’s great dewlaps shook.
‘No? What then?’
The Minotaur stood tall and screamed.
‘Shush now. Try to help me understand,’ said Theseus, quite unfazed. ‘Surely anything is better than a fight? There can only be one outcome. I will kill you. I wouldn’t want that. Now that I’ve met you I find that I like you.’
Now the Minotaur strained to make a new noise. It summoned all its breath and focussed it into a whine that sounded in Theseus’s ears like ‘Hill he! Hill he!’
Then he understood. ‘Kill me? You’re saying kill me?’
The Minotaur dropped his great head in a form of assent.
‘Kill you? Don’t ask me that.’
The Minotaur reared up. ‘Hill he! hill he!’
Theseus rose to his full height too. ‘Let it be a duel at least,’ he said. ‘You kill me … kill me!’ So saying he aimed a kick at a heap of dung. Thick pieces flew up into the Minotaur’s face. ‘Come on, then!’
The creature gave a roar of outrage as flecks of his own faeces stung his eyes. He stamped his hoofs, shook his head and lunged at Theseus.
Theseus stepped left and then right, goading the Minotaur to come at him. It shook its head one way and the other in confusion.
‘Yah! Yah! Come on now,’ shouted Theseus, backing towards a wall.
It made up its mind, lowered its horns and charged. Theseus leapt aside at the last moment and the Minotaur crashed headfirst into the stone wall. The left-hand horn snapped with a great crack and hung down loose. Theseus rolled forward in a somersault, wrenched the horn free and before the dazed creature had time to know what was happening, he thrust the sharp point deep into the folds of its throat and pulled viciously across, severing the windpipe.
The eruption of blood covered Theseus from head to foot. The creature stamped about in a jerking dance as more and more blood jetted out from its neck in a fountain. Its hoofs slipped on the blood-wet stones and it fell, shuddering to the ground.
Theseus knelt beside it and talked gently into its ear. ‘I send you to your eternal rest with all speed and respect, Asterion. The world will know that you died a brave and noble death.’
The act of slashing the creature’s neck must have loosed the tight vocal cords that moments earlier had denied it the power of speech. Now, despite the blood bubbling from the open gash in its throat, it managed to speak. Theseus heard as clearly as from an orator on the Acropolis the words ‘Thank you’ before the creature’s ghost departed its monstrous body.
‘Farewell, bull man,’ breathed Theseus. ‘Farewell, Asterion, son of Pasiphae, son of the Bull from the Sea, the Cretan Bull, the Marathonian Bull. Farewell brother of the beautiful Ariadne. Farewell, farewell.’
Theseus followed the thread out of the labyrinth. When he emerged through the door inset in the great gate he saw opposite him the captain of the guard asleep in a chair. He crept up to break the man’s neck and take his keys, but found that he had been dead for some time and that the great iron ring at his belt had already been stripped of its keys. Making his way towards the dungeon where his fellow Athenians were imprisoned, he found Ariadne standing outside. Her eyes were shining as she waved keys in front of Theseus’s face.
‘I knew you’d make it,’ she said.
Theseus embraced her. She could not but recoil.
‘You’re covered in blood!’
‘I’ll wash it off when we’re clear of here.’
‘Was it horrible?’
‘I gave him a quick death. Did you dispatch the captain of the guard?’
‘The pig had it coming,’ said Ariadne. ‘The things he tried to do to me when I was little. Now, let’s free your friends.’
The pair of them, along with the shipmates and the joyful thirteen Athenians stole silently out of the palace by a side gate and made their way to the harbour, where they holed the bottoms of the Cretan ships at anchor before boarding their own vessel and setting sail.
The day was taking over morning as they slipped into the open sea. The six youths and seven girls, Theseus and the crew added oar power to the sails and soon the landmass of Crete was out of sight. Although they had scuttled the Cretan fleet in Heraklion harbour there was still the risk of a patrolling warship, so they did not stop until they reached the island of Naxos where they dropped anchor and waded ashore to spend the night.
Theseus, now cleaned of the caked blood of the Minotaur at last lay with Ariadne. They made love three times in the moonlight before falling asleep in each other’s arms.
A most terrible dream came to Theseus while he slept. It began as a shouting in his ears.
‘Leave! Leave the island now. Go! Take your Athenians, but leave Ariadne, who is promised to me. Leave or you all die. You all die.’
Theseus tried to resist but the outline of a figure formed out of the mists of the dreams and came towards him. A young man with vine leaves in his hair approached. He was at once both beautiful and terrible to look upon.
‘Three choices. Stay here with Ariadne and you die. Take Ariadne with you and you and all your companions die. Leave with your people and you live. My ships are coming. Nothing can stop them. Go, go, go!’
Theseus knew the young man to be the god Dionysus. He sat up, sweating and breathless. Ariadne lay peacefully asleep beside him.
Leaving her he went down to the beach to think. The sea-captain had also been unable to sleep and joined him. They paced up and down the sand in silence for a while.
‘I had a dream,’ said Theseus at last. ‘Just a dream, but it worries me.’
Theseus stared. ‘Don’t tell me you had it too?’
They silently woke the others.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ the sea-captain said to Theseus time and again. ‘We have to leave her.’
When they were far out to sea Theseus looked back and thought he could see the desolate figure of Ariadne standing on the shore in the moonlight. Approaching the island from the other side they could already see the fleet of Dionysus. Theseus mourned the loss of the girl he had fallen in love with, but he knew that the safety of the young people in his charge overrode everything. He had to sacrifice his own happiness. He had to sacrifice her.
That, at least, is the Athenian explanation of the abandonment of Ariadne on Naxos. Other versions maintain that Theseus left her on the island because he had no more use for her. She had served her purpose and could be dispensed with. In some Cretan tellings, Dionysus duly arrived in force on Naxos, married Ariadne (raising her wedding diadem to the heavens as the constellation Corona Borealis), had at least twelve children by her and rewarded her after her death by rescuing her from Hades, along with his own mother Semele, and they all lived happily ever after on Olympus.
It is hard for us to like a Theseus who could coldheartedly abandon the girl who had been so instrumental in saving him and his companions, and doubtless that is why the Athenian version of the story lays emphasis on the hard choice that faced him and even goes so far as to suggest that Ariadne was already in some way engaged to Dionysus when she first met Theseus, thus throwing all the blame on her. The Athenians didn’t like to hear anything that showed their favourite hero in a bad light.
On their way back to Athens, a gloomy and contemplative Theseus was shaken on the shoulders by the sea-captain. ‘Look up, sir, look up!’
Theseus saw that the entire ship’s complement was staring up at the sun.
‘What is it?’ he said, squinting up in the direction of their gaze. ‘What am I supposed the be looking at?’
And then he saw it. Two of them, flying in the sky above. An older and a younger man. They had wide white wings. The younger man swooped up and then down. Even from their distance it was clear that he was enjoying himself.
Minos was awakened and told the terrible news. They had looked down through the high grating and seen the Minotaur slain in his chamber. The captain of his guard was dead too. The Athenians were gone and the great Minoan fleet was crippled. What is more Princess Ariadne could not be found. Perhaps she had been taken prisoner, perhaps …
Minos knew who to blame. If the Minotaur was dead and his killer had escaped it could only mean that Daedalus had somehow betrayed the secret of the labyrinth. Minos ordered that the inventor and his son Icarus should be imprisoned in his tower room at the top of the palace, a twenty-four-hour guard posted outside. There they could await a sentence of death.
Icarus stood at the windows of their prison and looked out at the sea.
‘I suppose if we jump out far enough we might miss the rocks and land in the water?’ he said.
Daedalus did not reply. He was busy. The tower in which they had been imprisoned was filled with roosting birds, their shit and their feathers.
‘What are you doing, dad?’
‘Pass me those candle stumps.’
‘Making something?’
‘Sh! Don’t bother me.’
He always shushed him like that when he was working on something important. Icarus laid himself full length on the floor and went to sleep.
He had no idea how much time had passed when his father shook him awake excitedly. ‘Up, Icarus, up! Put these on.’
‘What are they?’
‘Wings, boy, wings!’
Icarus rose groggily to his feet and allowed Daedalus to fit leather straps around him. He looked round to see what was happening and why his back and shoulders tickled.
‘Stand back and give yourself space and try to spread them.’
‘You’ve really done it this time, dad.’
Daedalus was fitting his own set. ‘Stop giggling and give me a hand here.’
Slowly he instructed Icarus in their use.
‘But dad, are you saying we have to jump out the window and trust them to keep us in the air?’
‘I have spent a lifetime studying birds. The air is not empty space to them, it is as solid as the earth is to us, or water to a fish. It holds them up and it will hold us up. Have faith.’
He adjusted the leather straps on his son’s wings so that they sat square and straight and took him by the shoulders. ‘Now listen to me, Icarus. We are flying over the sea to Athens, where I am sure Theseus will welcome us. But take care as you go. Fly too low and the waves will soak your wings and drag you under. Fly too close to the sun and the heat of its rays will melt the candle wax that is holding the feathers together, you understand?’
‘Sure,’ said Icarus bouncing up and down with excitement. ‘Not too low, not too high.’
‘Now, shall I go first?’
‘Don’t worry, dad,’ cried Icarus rushing to the window, ‘I’ve got this. Whoooooooo!’
He jumped and heard his father’s voice calling behind him.
‘Spread your wings! Spread them! Present them to the air.’
He did as he was told and immediately felt the rush of the air press against the wings and hold him up. He was flying! His wings held in the wind and he knew that they would keep him there. His father was right, the air was a solid thing. He accustomed himself to using his arms to steer this way and that. The smallest movement from him was all that was needed to control his flight. Below him crawled the wrinkled sea, hugging the shoreline of Crete, the only home he had ever known. His father appeared in front of him, his own wings spread out.
‘The pillars of warm air rising from the cliffs below are holding us up for the moment,’ he shouted. ‘Once we’re over open sea we can beat and glide, beat and glide.’
‘Like the gulls?’
‘Just like the gulls. Follow me, Athens is this way. And remember …’
‘I know – not too high, not too low,’ laughed Icarus.
‘And don’t forget it.’
‘Whoah!’ Icarus cried out in sudden surprise as a seagull flew right in his path. He gathered himself together and dived after his father.
From far below Theseus looked up and saw Icarus swooping and soaring, plunging and looping.
Icarus was some way from Daedalus now, out of earshot, when he spotted the beak-prowed Athenian ship far below. Haha! he thought to himself, I’ll give them the shock of their lives. But first some height.
Up and up he flew, gaining height for his planned dive-bombing. He was so high now he could hardly see Theseus’s ship below, so high that … so high that it was hot. He cried out in alarm as feathers began to fall from his wings. The wax was melting! He rolled over to point his head down and dive down as far from the sun as possible, but it was too late. The feathers were falling like snow all about him and he started to plummet. The air, now cold and hard, banged against him. He heard his father cry out. There was nothing he could do. The sea was rushing up towards him. Perhaps if he narrowed his shoulders he might be able to plunge below the surface and come up safe.
Daedalus looked down in impotent despair. He knew that from such a height the sea would be like a bed of granite. He watched the body break on the waves and knew that his son’s bones would be smashed to pieces and the life gone from him.
‘Oh Icarus, Icarus, my beloved boy. Why couldn’t you listen? Why did you have to fly so close to the sun?’
Tragic laments like this, with changes of name, have been heard from generations of fathers ever since. It is the destiny of children of spirit to soar too close to the sun and fall, no matter how many times they are warned of the danger. Some will make it, but many do not.fn19
Daedalus dived down and rescued the broken body of his son, which he buried on a nearby island, called to this day Icaria. They say that a partridge witnessed the burial and flapped its wings, mewing with triumph. Perdix enjoyed the tragic justice of Daedalus’s son falling to his death, just as he had been pushed by Daedalus to his. The grieving father wandered the Mediterranean, finding employment at last in the court of King COCALUS of Camicus, in southern Sicily.
The rage of Minos on finding that his birds had, quite literally, flown, was ungovernable. His daughter lost, his reputation as a mighty and unconquerable king severely dented, humiliated by the escape of Daedalus, he vowed that he would have his revenge. Accordingly, he scoured the Greek world for the inventor, taking with him a spiral seashell. At each kingdom, island or province he visited, Minos announced that he would reward with gold anyone who could successfully pass a thread through the shell’s complex helical chambers. He believed that Daedalus was the only man alive clever enough to hit upon a way of doing it.
After years of searching, at last Minos arrived in Camicus. King Cocalus accepted Minos’s challenge and took the shell to Daedalus, who quickly solved the problem by tying one end of the thread to an ant, which he coaxed through the shell with drops of honey. King Cocalus triumphantly presented Minos with the threaded seashell and demanded the reward.
Minos drew himself up to his full height. ‘Only Daedalus the artificer, Daedalus the inventor, Daedalus the traitor can have done this,’ he declared. ‘Give him up to me or I will leave this instant for Crete and return with a fleet to crush you and conquer your kingdom.’ Minos may have been bested by Theseus, but he was still the ruler of a great naval power.
‘Let me go to my council chamber and consult,’ said King Cocalus.
By this he meant, ‘let me ask my daughters.’ He knew that his girls adored Daedalus, who had entertained them when they were growing up by teaching them all kinds of clever tricks. He gathered the girls together and told them about the threat.
‘Tell Minos,’ said the eldest daughter, ‘that you will offer Daedalus up in chains tomorrow. But tonight, let him bathe, eat, drink, listen to music and be royally feasted as befits so great a king.’
Cocalus, as he always did, obeyed his daughters and relayed the message.
Minos bowed at the honour done to him.
It so happened that the restless and ever inventive Daedalus had designed and installed a heating system for the palace, consisting of a network of pipes which carried hot water from a central boiler, the first of its kind in the world.
Minos got into his bath that evening, but he never got out. Down in the hypocaust, the sisters heated the water until it boiled. It burst from the pipes in the bathroom and scalded Minos to an agonising death.
We left Theseus on board ship with his thirteen compatriots, staring up at Daedalus and Icarus in flight. What with his gnawing guilt at the abandonment of Ariadne and feelings of astonishment and dismay at the sight of Icarus falling to his death, Theseus’s mind was fully occupied as the ship sailed homeward towards Athens.
So wrapped in thought were he and the sea-captain that even as the ship came within sight of Piraeus harbour something very important slipped both their minds. They entirely forgot their promise to pull down the black sails and hoist white ones to let Aegeus know that they were sailing back in triumph.
The king had stood every day on the cliffs waiting for a sight of the ship. Now he saw on the horizon the familiar outline of an Athenian vessel. It was beyond question the ship of his son Theseus, but what colour were the sails? The ship was so far away. Against the white of the sky the sails looked black, but perhaps because they were in silhouette … no … that was too much to hope for. The closer the ship sailed, the clearer it was that its sails were as black as death. His brave, foolish, newly found son was dead.
That prophecy from the oracle:
Aegeus must not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until he has reached the heights of Athens, or he will die of grief.
Aegeus finally understood what it had meant. He should have gone straight from Delphi to Athens all those years ago. Instead he had gone to Troezen where he had somehow found himself in bed with Aethra. He had loosened his bulging wineskin. He had fathered Theseus, who had given him a brief time of joy, but now – it was true, the oracles were always right – he found himself overcome by mortal grief.
With a cry of despair Aegeus threw himself to his death in the sea below, the sea that ever since has been called, in his honour, the Aegean.
It is hard to know for sure what kind of a king Theseus was. Later, the Athenians, who wrote most of the history that has come down to us, so revered their Founder King that, if we are to believe them, he was the inventor, not only, as we have discovered, of wrestling and bull-leaping, but of democracy, justice and all good government too, as well as being a paragon of intelligence, wit, insight and wisdom – qualities that the Athenians (much to the contempt of their neighbours) believed uniquely exemplified their character and culture. It is generally accepted that he merged the smaller regional and provincial units (known as demes) of Attica under the rule of the central Athenian polis or city state,fn20 a system that served as the model for Ancient Greek administrative government up to the historical period.
What is certainly clear is that Theseus was very much a human being, with all the weaknesses, strengths and inconsistencies that the condition confers upon us. Much of what followed in his life after the Minotaur was a result of one of the great male friendships in Greek myth, that between Theseus and Pirithous.fn21 As with the later bromance of Achilles and Patroclus, there is a suggestion in some Greek sources that there may have been a sexual element in the relationship, but if there was it had no effect on the womanizing and philandering propensities of either man.
Pirithous, King of the Lapiths, was a son of Dia and Zeus. Dia had been the wife of Ixion. It seems hypocritical that Zeus might bind Ixion to a wheel of fire for attempting to seduce Hera and then set about ravishing the man’s wife, but Zeus was never anything if not Zeus. In the form of a stallion he had his way with Dia who bore Pirithous, who in adulthood earned a reputation for being a fine warrior and, perhaps unsurprisingly, horseman.fn22
Hearing of the equally excellent reputation of Athens’ new king and wanting to test it, Pirithous raided Marathon, coming away with a herd of Theseus’s most prized cattle.fn23 Outraged, Theseus made his way to Larissa, the capital of the Lapith kingdom, and tracked Pirithous down, meaning if not to kill him, at least to teach him a very severe lesson. But the moment they met they decided that they liked each other and instead of fighting swore eternal friendship.
The bond was soon tested, for Pirithous was not without challengers to his throne in Thessaly. The centaurs, half-man half-horse, felt that as descendants of Ixion they had a greater right to rule than Pirithous.fn24 They had been given Mount Pelion as a base, but they took this as an insult and demanded more. It all came to a head during the wedding of Pirithous and his bride, Hippodamiafn25. Out of diplomatic necessity Pirithous had made sure that the centaurs were invited, but as milk drinkers they were unused to the wine which flowed during the feast. Its effect caused them to start behaving abominably.fn26 One of them, EURYTION, tried to rape the bride Hippodamia herself while the rest of the centaurs pushed themselves on all the women and boys present. Pirithous and Theseus, an honoured guest at the wedding, fought back.
A rather touching side story in this otherwise grim and frenzied fight (sometimes called the Centauromachy or ‘Battle of the Centaurs’fn27) involves the sad end of a Lapith called Caeneus. He had been born a woman, Caenis. She was spotted one day by Poseidon who liked what he saw and took it. Entirely delighted by the experience, the grateful god offered Caenis any wish. She had taken no pleasure at all in the violation and asked that she might be turned into a man and thus avoid any indignity of that kind in the future. Poseidon, perhaps abashed, not only granted this wish but also bestowed invulnerable skin upon her – now him. Caeneus was present at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia and fought the centaurs alongside Pirithous and Theseus. One of the centaurs, Latreus, mocked him for having once been a woman. Caeneus struck Latreus but was himself, due to his invulnerability, unharmed by a furious volley of counterstrikes. The other centaurs, discovering that their arrows and spears were bouncing off Caeneus’s impenetrable hide, resorted to heaping stones over him and hammering him into the ground with pine trees until he died by suffocation in the earth.
Despite the loss of Caeneus, Pirithous and his Lapiths finally prevailed. The surviving centaurs galloped away, defeated and dejected. Among the surviving centaurs who galloped away, defeated and dejected, was Nessus, who was fated to be Heracles’ bane. fn28
Peace having now descended on Thessaly, Pirithous was able to help his friend Theseus acquire a wife. They chose the Amazon warrior ANTIOPE, sister of Hippolyta, whose war belt had been fatally wrested from her by Heracles during his Labours.fn29 Although Antiope was forcibly abducted it is generally believed that after Theseus installed her as his queen and wife in Athens she grew to love him. She bore him a son, Hippolytus, whom they named in honour of her sister, the great Amazonian queen.
The Amazons had other ideas. Marriage to a man was a betrayal of everything these proud, misandrous warrior women stood for.fn30 They combined forces in a sustained attack on Athens known as the Attic War. The Amazons were defeated at the final battle on the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares.fn31 During that fight Antiope was badly wounded. A fellow Amazon called MOLPADIA, although fighting on the opposite side, put her out of her agony with a swift arrow through the neck. Theseus, seeing this, killed Molpadia. Her tomb, like so many mythic sites, was visited by the traveller Pausanias, whose observations often form a pleasing bridge between myth, legend and something close to history.
The Attic war, like Heracles’ ravaging of Hippolyta and her band during the Ninth Labour, is part of the wider Amazonomachy, yet another -machy, yet another taming of the wild in which the Greeks characterised themselves as ridding the world of the more barbarous, monstrous and uncivilised elements that threatened, like encroaching swarms, their sense of harmony and the potential graces of ordered civilisation.fn32
This ‘war with the Amazons’, together with the CENTAUROMACHY (the battle between the Lapiths and centaurs at Pirithous’s wedding), the TITANOMACHY (the war of the Olympian gods against their Titan forebears)fn33 and the GIGANTOMACHY (the war of the gods against the giants, in which Heracles fought so valiantly),fn34 formed some of the favourite subjects of Greek painting and sculpture.fn35 Collectively their themes are best understood in symbolic terms, as representations of the way the Greeks characterised themselves as the champions of order and civilization against the chaotic hordes of barbarism and the monstrous. Which also makes them narrative playings-out of the struggle to tame the savage instincts, the dark and dangerous elements of human nature.
The Amazons defeated, a kind of midlife crisis overtook Pirithous and Theseus. They decided to choose new brides for themselves. Their choices were wild and calamitous.
His new friend helped Theseus abduct the young Helen of Sparta,fn36 while for himself Pirithous decided it would be amusing to have Persephone, Queen of the Underworld for a wife. When he proposed the insane idea of descending into the realm of the dead and snatching Persephone from under the very nose of her husband Hades, Theseus the hero, Theseus the wise, Theseus the clever, Theseus the great king and counsellor nodded his head vigorously.
‘Why not? Sounds like fun.’
The pair went to the spot that Orpheus had chosen for his descent, Tainaron on the southern tip of the Peloponnese, also called Cape Matapan, and boldly made their way down through the caves, passageways and galleries into the kingdom of the dead. Whether Pirithous imagined that his rough soldierly charm would win Persephone over or whether they planned to take her by force of arms is not known. The expedition was predictably disastrous. An unamused Hades cast them into stone chairs, their naked buttocks stuck to the seats, their legs bound by living snakes. There they would have stayed until the crack of doom had not Heracles, as we have seen, happened past them on his way to parley with Hades for the loan of Cerberus.fn37 In order to release Theseus, Heracles had to jerk him quite violently from his seat. Theseus was pulled free but his buttocks were left behind. It was as if they had been superglued to the stone of the chair. Athenian representations of the older, post-Hades Theseus, portray him as apygous, essentially arseless.fn38
Theseus returned to the upper world to discover that Helen had been rescued by her brothers, the twins Castor and Polydeuces, also known as the Dioscuri.fn39
Chastened, he chose a new bride for himself. His eye fell on PHAEDRA, the younger sister of Ariadne. Perhaps she reminded Theseus of his first love, perhaps he felt an alliance with her might repair the old wrong of leaving Ariadne on Naxos, perhaps it was nothing more than a political move. The motives of Theseus seem always the hardest to read of any of the heroes.
Minos, the old enemy of Athens was dead, of course, boiled alive in Sicily. His son DEUCALION had inherited the throne and – presumably because he knew that Athens was now stronger than Crete and also saw the value of an alliance – approved and even helped arrange the marriage, all thoughts of Theseus’s abandonment of his sister Ariadne and slaughtering of his half-brother the Minotaur put aside.
Phaedra and Theseus had two sons together, ACAMAS and DEMOPHON, who would grow up to feature in a touching and honourable cameo in the Trojan War.
Meanwhile, what of Hippolytus, Theseus’s son by Antiope? He had been sent to Theseus’s old home of Troezen. He grew into a handsome, athletic young man, whose greatest passion was hunting. His devotion to Artemis, the goddess of the chase and the chaste, was equalled by his contempt for Aphrodite and the distractions of love. No man or woman interested him. Aphrodite, of course, did not take kindly to being ignored and the revenge she prepared for this insolent young man’s neglect of her altars and practices was terrible indeed.
When his father Theseus and step-mother Phaedra visited Troezen, Hippolytus welcomed them dutifully. Theseus and Hippolytus hit it off at once. Greek myth is full of fathers who kill sons and sons who kill fathers so the mutual bond of affection and admiration that blossomed between these two seems especially remarkable. During the visit they spent all day and every day in each other’s company. Hippolytus barely noticed Phaedra. She, however, noticed him. She slowly became obsessed and one night visited him and declared her love.fn40 With a touch more horror and visible disgust than was wise or tactful, Hippolytus rejected her advances. As with Stheneboea and Bellerophon and Potiphar’s wife and Joseph, the scorned and humiliated Phaedra cried rape to Theseus who cursed his son and called on his father Poseidon to punish him. As Hippolytus was driving his chariot along the shore one morning the god sent one of his great bulls from the sea which maddened the horses. The boy was trampled to death. Phaedra, on hearing this, took her own life.
The goddess Artemis appeared to Theseus and explained that his son had been innocent all along and that the tragedy had been the result of spurned love and Aphrodite’s resentment.
Exiled from his kingdoms of Athens and Troezen for his role, however unwitting, in the deaths of his son and wife, wretched, bitter, desolated and drained of all passion and purpose, Theseus came to a bathetic and pathetic end. A guest of King Lycomedes of Skyros, Theseus was pushed by his host over a cliff to his death. The cause of the argument between them is lost to us.
Cimon, a historical king of Athens many many years later, invaded Skyros and brought Theseus’s body back to the city that he done so much to make great. Lycomedes achieved greater fame for the part he was to play in the upbringing of Achilles.
A fine statue of a naked Theseus stands proudly today in Athens’ central place of assembly, the city’s hub, Syntagma Square. Even today he is a focus of Athenian identity and pride. The ship he brought back from his adventures in the Labyrinth of Crete remained moored in the harbour at Piraeus, a visitor attraction right up to the days of historical ancient Athens, the time of Socrates and Aristotle. Its continuous presence there for such a long time caused the Ship of Theseus to become a subject of intriguing philosophical speculation. Over hundreds of years, its rigging, its planks, its hull, deck, keel, prow, stern and all its timbers had been replaced so that not one atom of the original remained. Could one call it the same ship? Am I the same person I was fifty years ago? Every molecule and cell of my body has been replaced many times over.fn41
It is appropriate that Theseus should be linked in this way with the Athens of logic, philosophy and open enquiry for he was the hero who more than any other embodied the qualities Athenians most prized. Like Heracles, Perseus and Bellerophon before him, he helped cleanse the world of dangerous monsters, but the way he did so employed wit, intelligence and fresh ways of thinking. He was fallible and flawed, as the all the heroes were, but he stood for something great in us all. Long may he stand in Syntagma Square and long may he stand high in our regard.