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Updated: May 13, 2025
Then Pirithous remained in undisturbed possession of his bride, and on the following morning Theseus departed, bidding farewell to his friend. The common fight had quickly welded the fresh tie of their brotherhood into an indestructible bond. Niobe, Queen of Thebes, was proud of many things.
The castle and the grotto resembled a besieged city; the cry of the women sounded far and wide. Quickly friends and relatives sprang from their places. "What delusion is this, Eurytion," cried Theseus, "to vex Pirithous while I still live, and by so doing arouse the anger of two heroes?" With these words he forced his way through the crowd and tore the stolen bride from the struggling robber.
The female in the arms of the Centaur is supposed to be Hippodamia; and the figure struggling from the grasp of another Centaur, that of King Pirithous fighting for his outraged bride. The next tablet is in a very dilapidated condition.
Pirithous extended his hand to Theseus and proposed that the latter act as arbitrator for the settlement of the dispute about the cattle: whatever satisfaction Theseus would demand Pirithous would willingly give. "The only satisfaction which I desire," answered Pirithous, "is that you instead of my enemy become my friend and comrade in arms."
But as soon as they had viewed one another, each so admired the gracefulness and beauty, and was seized with such a respect for the courage, of the other, that they forgot all thoughts of fighting; and Pirithous, first stretching out his hand to Theseus, bade him be judge in this case himself, and promised to submit willingly to any penalty he should impose.
The earth, heaped over her own monsters, grieves and laments her offspring, sent to murky Hades by a thunderbolt; nor does the active fire consume Aetna that is placed over it, nor does the vulture desert the liver of incontinent Tityus, being stationed there as an avenger of his baseness; and three hundred chains confine the amorous Pirithous.
This is the land of Shadows, of Sleep, and slumberous Night; no living body may the Stygian hull convey. Nor truly had I joy of taking Alcides on the lake for passenger, nor Theseus and Pirithoüs, born of gods though they were and unconquered in might.
Respecting the origin of the fable of Theseus descending into the world below to carry off Proserpine for his friend Pirithous, he adopts the historical explanation of Plutarch, that he was the prisoner of a Thracian king, whose wife he endeavoured to carry off for his friend. On this he grounds the report of the death of Theseus, which, at the opening of the play, was current.
Each of them aspired to espouse a daughter of Jupiter. Theseus fixed his choice on Helen, then but a child, afterwards so celebrated as the cause of the Trojan war, and with the aid of his friend he carried her off. Pirithous aspired to the wife of the monarch of Erebus; and Theseus, though aware of the danger, accompanied the ambitious lover in his descent to the under-world.
How many women then did Theseus wish to carry off for Pirithous? Pradon manages this much better: when Theseus is asked by a confidant if he really had been in the world below, he answers, how could any sensible man possibly believe so silly a tale! he merely availed himself of the credulity of the people, and gave out this report from political motives.
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