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Updated: May 3, 2025
A servant ran and told AEgeus, where he sat in his chamber within, by Medeia the dark witch-woman, watching her eye and hand. And when AEgeus heard of Troezene, he turned pale and red again, and rose from his seat trembling, while Medeia watched him like a snake. "What is Troezene to you?" she asked. But he said hastily, "Do you not know who this Theseus is?
Such, for instance, are the labours in which he destroys the terrible Nemean lion and Lernean hydra, carries off the girdle of Ares from Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, and seizes the golden apples of the Hesperides, guarded by a hundred-headed dragon. Theseus was a son of AEgeus, king of Athens, and of AEthra, daughter of Pittheus, king of Troezen.
But he assured his father that he did not intend to be eaten up, unresistingly, like a sheep, and that, if the Minotaur devoured him, it should not be without a battle for his dinner. And finally, since he could not help it, King Aegeus consented to let him go.
For even prodigies that were obvious and plain would not deter them; not the defacing of the Hermue, all maimed in one night except one, called the Hermes of Andocides, erected by the tribe of Aegeus, placed directly before the house then occupied by Andocides; nor what was perpetrated on the altar of the twelve gods, upon which a certain man leaped suddenly up, and then turning round, mutilated himself with a stone.
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.
Not even Pasiphae, her mother, ever contemplated for her such splendour. In her great love, Ariadne risked her whole future by eloping with Theseus. For her the daughter of a far mightier king than Aegeus, and, on the distaff side, the granddaughter of Apollo even marriage with Theseus would have been a me'salliance.
And some say that Dionusos drove away Theseus, and took Ariadne from him by force: but however that may be, in his haste or in his grief, Theseus forgot to put up the white sail. Now AEgeus his father sat and watched on Sunium day after day, and strained his old eyes across the sea to see the ship afar.
Theseus displaying not only great strength of body, but equal bravery, and a quickness alike and force of understanding, his mother Aethra, conducting him to the stone, and informing him who was his true father, commanded him to take from thence the tokens that Aegeus had left, and to sail to Athens.
Then the Pallantids saw him, and called to him, half-drunk with wine, 'Holla, tall stranger at the door, what is your will to-day? 'I come hither to ask for hospitality. 'Then take it, and welcome. You look like a hero and a bold warrior; and we like such to drink with us. 'I ask no hospitality of you; I ask it of AEgeus the king, the master of this house.
Month after month passed by, and still AEgeus lingered with his bride and trusted his elders to see to the affairs of Athens. Then one morning, when the gardens of Troezen were full of roses and the heather was green on the hills, a babe was born to AEthra a boy with a fair face and strong arms and eyes as sharp and as bright as the mountain eagle's.
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