Killed the bull-man at the heart of the Cretan maze
He volunteered as one of the tribute victims sent from Athens to Minos
Myth · Greek
Theseus
Greek mythology — hero and king of Athens
Athens's national hero, raised in Troezen and sent to claim his father's throne after lifting the rock that hid a sword and a pair of sandals. He cleared the coast road of bandits, killed the bull-headed monster in the Cretan labyrinth, and was credited with uniting Attica into a single state. Plutarch paired his life with Romulus's, and the ship the Athenians preserved in his memory became philosophy's favourite puzzle about identity.
How to spot them
- ▸Lifted a boulder at Troezen to find his father's sword and sandals beneath it
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Procrustes', 'Ariadne's thread', 'black sails', 'synoecism of Attica'
- ▸Athens's founding hero, as Heracles was the Dorians'
- ▸A white sail he forgot to hoist, and a sea named after his father
Stories & episodes
Found his way back out of the labyrinth by following a thread
Given to him by Ariadne, daughter of Minos, on Daedalus's advice
His father threw himself into the sea on seeing the wrong sail come into view
Aegeus saw black sails and leapt; the Aegean carries his name
Six labours on the road from Troezen to Athens
Periphetes, Sinis the pine-bender, the Crommyonian sow, Sciron, Cercyon and Procrustes
Stretched or lopped a brigand to fit the brigand's own iron bed
Procrustes at Eleusis, killed by his own method
Abandoned on Naxos the princess who had saved his life
Ariadne was left sleeping and found by Dionysus, who married her
Went down to the underworld to carry off its queen and was stuck fast to a chair
With his friend Pirithous; Heracles prised him loose but left Pirithous behind
A ship kept in repair for centuries became a puzzle about identity
Plutarch reports the Athenians replacing each rotten plank in turn
Quick-fire facts
- •Son of Aegeus of Athens — or, in the other version, of Poseidon — by Aethra of Troezen
- •Plutarch's Life of Theseus pairs him with Romulus in the Parallel Lives
- •He was credited with the synoecism, the political unification of Attica under Athens
- •Procrustes' bed gives English the adjective 'procrustean'
- •He married Phaedra, whose passion for his son Hippolytus is dramatised by Euripides and Racine
- •He fought the centaurs at the wedding of Pirithous, a scene carved on the Parthenon metopes
- •He died on Scyros, thrown from a cliff by King Lycomedes; Cimon brought bones back to Athens in 475 BC
- •The Ship of Theseus remains the standard thought experiment for identity through change
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Plutarch — Life of Theseus (Parallel Lives) Source of the road labours, the Cretan expedition and the ship paradox
- Apollodorus — The Library (Bibliotheca) Epitome 1 covers the labyrinth and the later adventures