Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [115]
Enter Theseus, one of the legendary men of the Heroic Age and the greatest hero of Athens. The son of King Aegeus of Athens, Theseus had been raised away from his home, unaware of his royal blood. But his father, the king, had once buried a sword and a pair of sandals beneath a rock. He told the mother of Theseus that when her son was strong enough to move the rock, he could claim his inheritance—an ancient inspiration for King Arthur’s later “sword in the stone.” At sixteen, Theseus found rock, sandals, and sword, and went to Athens to reclaim his place as heir.
When Theseus reaches Athens, his father does not recognize him. But the sorceress Medea, now married to the king, knows exactly who he is. She tries to have Theseus done in, but he survives all of her tricks.
Theseus’s most dangerous adventure now lies ahead of him. Ever since some Athenians had killed the son of Minos, the city of Athens has been compelled to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete each year to be eaten by the Minotaur. To end this tragic deal, the heroic Theseus announces that he will go as one of the youths to be sacrificed, and kill the Minotaur. The Athenian victims always sail for Crete aboard a black-sailed ship. Before departing Athens, Theseus promises his father that if all goes well, he will return in a ship flying white sails.
In Crete, Theseus encounters Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, who immediately falls in love with the young hero and decides to help him kill the Minotaur. Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of thread she has received from Daedalus and tells the young man to trail it behind him as he descends into the Minotaur’s lair. In one of the most memorable moments in myth, Theseus kills the Minotaur and retraces his steps through the maze’s twisting passages by following the string. With the Minotaur dead, Theseus sails back for Athens. (There are different versions of Ariadne’s fate. In the happy account, she marries the god Dionysus. But another says she died of a broken heart.)
What should be a triumphal moment for Theseus turns painfully tragic. First, in Crete, when Minos learns that the inventor Daedalus helped Ariadne in the plot to kill the Minotaur, he throws the inventor and his son Icarus into prison. While imprisoned, Daedalus constructs two sets of wings made from feathers held together by wax. According to Ovid, Daedalus tells his son where to fly—halfway between sun and water. But Icarus is daring and wants to fly higher. When he flies too close to the sun, the wax melts, and he plunges into the sea. According to Barry Powell, the story of Icarus is a mythical illustration of the Greek maxim “Nothing too much,” one of the proverbs inscribed over the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Powell comments in Classical Mythology: “Doubtless because overdoing things was a common weakness of the Greeks, their sages were fond of preaching the virtue of the ‘Golden Mean.’”
The second tragedy involves the heroic Theseus, who has forgotten his assurance to raise white sails if he should come back alive. In his hurry to return home, Theseus forgets to take down the black sails, and when Aegeus sees the returning ship, he jumps into the sea, thinking Theseus is dead. (The Aegean Sea is named for the dead king of Athens.)
With his father dead, Theseus became the king of Athens, and his rule is marked as the legendary beginnings of Athenian democracy. Theseus supposedly abolished the monarchy, minted the first coins, and created a unified state. Aristotle later viewed the story of Theseus and the Minotaur as an allegory for the victory of democracy over tyranny, and the story of Theseus became a national myth, Athenian propaganda. Historically speaking, the myths of Theseus are just that—myths. But as classicist Barry Powell puts it, “History and myth are a perennial tangle; humans are mythmaking animals, retelling ancient stories to fulfill present needs.”
In actual history, Athenian democracy had its beginnings