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But each man's neighbor whispered in return, "His shoulders are broad; will you rise and put him out?" So they all sat still where they were. Then Theseus called to the servants, and said, "Go tell King AEgeus, your master, that Theseus of Troezene is here, and asks to be his guest awhile."
He was commanded not to approach any woman till he returned to Athens; but the answer was couched in mystic and allegorical terms, and the good king was rather puzzled than enlightened by the reply. He betook himself therefore to Troezene, a small town in Peloponnesus, founded by Pittheus, of the race of Pelops, a man eminent in that day for wisdom and sagacity.
Let it be for another year. The day may come when you will be a stronger man than lives in all Troezene. Then she took him by the hand, and went into the temple and prayed, and came down again with Theseus to her home. And when a full year was past she led Theseus up again to the temple, and bade him lift the stone; but he could not.
Theseus was very fond of hearing about King Aegeus, and often asked his good mother Aethra why he did not come and live with them at Troezene. "Ah, my dear son," answered Aethra, with a sigh, "a monarch has his people to take care of. The men and women over whom he rules are in the place of children to him; and he can seldom spare time to love his own children as other parents do.
The princess became with child; and, before his departure from Troezene, Aegeus deposited a sword and a pair of sandals in a cavity concealed by a huge stone , and left injunctions with Aethra that, should the fruit of their intercourse prove a male child, and able, when grown up, to remove the stone, she should send him privately to Athens with the sword and sandals in proof of his birth; for Aegeus had a brother named Pallas, who, having a large family of sons, naturally expected, from the failure of the direct line, to possess himself or his children of the Athenian throne; and the king feared, should the secret of his intercourse with Aethra be discovered before the expected child had arrived to sufficient strength to protect himself, that either by treason or assassination the sons of Pallas would despoil the rightful heir of his claim to the royal honours.
So he said to himself, 'The day shall surely come when I will lift that stone, though no man in Troezene can. And in order to grow strong he spent all his days in wrestling, and boxing, and hurling, and taming horses, and hunting the boar and the bull, and coursing goats and deer among the rocks; till upon all the mountains there was no hunter so swift as Theseus; and he killed Phaia the wild sow of Crommyon, which wasted all the land; till all the people said, 'Surely the Gods are with the lad.
So he said to himself, "The day shall surely come when I will lift that stone, though no man in Troezene can."
The men of Argos, again, and those who held the walls of Tiryns, with Hermione, and Asine upon the gulf; Troezene, Eionae, and the vineyard lands of Epidaurus; the Achaean youths, moreover, who came from Aegina and Mases; these were led by Diomed of the loud battle-cry, and Sthenelus son of famed Capaneus.
We will read that sweet story, children, by the fire some winter night. And now I will end my tale, and begin another and a more cheerful one, of a hero who became a worthy king, and won his people's love. Once upon a time there was a princess in Troezene, Aithra, the daughter of Pittheus the king.
Then he bade them put a seat for Theseus, and set before him the best of the feast; and Theseus sat and ate so much, that all the company wondered at him: but always he kept his club by his side. But Medeia the dark witch-woman had been watching him all the while. She saw how AEgeus turned red and pale, when the lad said that he came from Troezene.
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