Theseus

So much, then, is worthy of mention regarding the Amazons. For the Insurrection of the Amazons, written by the author of the Theseid, telling how, when Theseus married Phaedra, Antiope and the Amazons who fought to avenge her attacked him, and were slain by Heracles, has every appearance of fable and invention.

Theseus did, indeed, marry Phaedra, but this was after the death of Antiope, and he had a son by Antiope, Hippolytus, or, as Pindar says,[*](In a passage not extant.) Demophoon. As for the calamities which befell Phaedra and the son of Theseus by Antiope, since there is no conflict here between historians and tragic poets, we must suppose that they happened as represented by the poets uniformly.

There are, however, other stories also about marriages of Theseus which were neither honorable in their beginnings nor fortunate in their endings, but these have not been dramatized. For instance, he is said to have carried off Anaxo, a maiden of Troezen, and after slaying Sinis and Cercyon to have ravished their daughters; also to have married Periboea, the mother of Aias, and Phereboea afterwards, and Iope, the daughter of Iphicles;

and because of his passion for Aegle, the daughter of Panopeus, as I have already said,[*](Plut. Thes. 20.1) he is accused of the desertion of Ariadne, which was not honorable nor even decent; and finally, his rape of Helen is said to have filled Attica with war, and to have brought about at last his banishment and death, of which things I shall speak a little later.

Of the many exploits performed in those days by the bravest men, Herodorus thinks that Theseus took part in none, except that he aided the Lapithae in their war with the Centaurs; but others say that he was not only with Jason at Colchis,[*](In quest of the golden fleece.) but helped Meleager to slay the Calydonian boar, and that hence arose the proverb Not without Theseus; that he himself, however, without asking for any ally, performed many glorious exploits, and that the phrase Lo! another Heracles became current with reference to him.

He also aided Adrastus in recovering for burial the bodies of those who had fallen before the walls of the Cadmeia,[*](The citadel of Thebes.) not by mastering the Thebans in battle, as Euripides has it in his tragedy,[*](Eur. Supp. 653 ff.) but by persuading them to a truce; for so most writers say, and Philochorus adds that this was the first truce ever made for recovering the bodies of those slain in battle,