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"And who are you, young man?" said the king. "I am Theseus," was the answer. "What? the Theseus who has rid the world of the mountain robbers, and of Cercyon the wrestler, and of Procrustes, the pitiless Stretcher?" "I am he," said Theseus; "and I come from old Troezen, on the other side of the Saronic Sea." The king started and turned very pale. "Troezen! Troezen!" he cried.
In Eleusis he killed Cercyon, the Arcadian, in a wrestling match. And so also Theseus proceeded with the same violence from which they had inflicted upon others, justly suffering after the same manner of their own injustice.
Theseus, by their account, did not slay Sciron in his first journey to Athens, but afterwards, when he took Eleusis, a city of the Megarians, having circumvented Diocles, the governor. Such are the contradictions in this story. In Eleusis he killed Cercyon, the Arcadian, in a wrestling match.
When Theseus entered the city and went walking up the street everybody wondered who the tall, fair youth could be. But the fame of his deeds had gone before him, and soon it was whispered that this was the hero who had slain the robbers in the mountains and had wrestled with Cercyon at Eleusis and had caught Procrustes in his own cunning trap.
For he is said to have carried off Anaxo, a Troezenian, and, having slain Sinnis and Cercyon, to have ravished their daughters; to have married Periboea, the mother of Ajax, and then Phereboea, and then Iope, the daughter of Iphicles.
Thirteen species of Brachelytra have been found; of carrion-beetles, a Necrophorus, a Silpha, quite of the figure of the subterranea, and a Catops. Of Pentamerides are still to be mentioned the Scydmaenus, Cryptophagus, Byrrhus, Cercyon, Psammodius, and Aphodius.
"But I will both come and go away," said Theseus; and with his club upon his shoulder, he strode onward into the sacred city. "Where is Cercyon, the wrestler?" he asked of the warden at the gate. "The king is dining in his marble palace," was the answer. "If you wish to save yourself, turn now and flee before he has heard of your coming." "Why should I flee?" asked Theseus.
"I am not afraid;" and he walked on through the narrow street to old Cercyon's palace. The king was sitting at his table, eating and drinking; and he grinned hideously as he thought of the many noble young men whose lives he had destroyed. Theseus went up boldly to the door, and cried out: "Cercyon, come out and wrestle with me!"
But grim old Cercyon neither moved nor spoke; and when the youth turned his body over and looked into his cruel face, he saw that the life had quite gone out of him. Then the people of Eleusis came to Theseus and wanted to make him their king.
"There is a king in Eleusis whose name is Cercyon, and he is a great wrestler. He makes every stranger who comes into the city wrestle with him; and such is the strength of his arms that when he has overcome a man he crushes the life out of his body. Many travelers come to Eleusis, but no one ever goes away."
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