THESEUS

I LrcBlroe.nv KING oF ArurNs

I Hpno wHo KILLED rlrs MtNoreuR
[theseus
rnas born lo a princess o[
I Tro"r.n and the king ofAthens.
who had passed lhrough on a
journey
to Delphi. The king, named Aegeus,
buried a sword and a pair of sandals
under a heavy rock. Then he told the
princess that if she had a son strong
enough to lift the heavy rock, she
should send him with the tokens to
Athens.
At age slrteen, Theseus was exceed-
ingly strong, very clever, and most
ambitious. He lifted the rock, recov-
ered the tokens, and set off at once for
Athens. Aegeus was happy to see his
son, but he was also very troubled.
Every nine yars Aegeus was forced
to send seven young women and seven
young men to Minos, the powerful
king of the island nation of Crete.
Minos wanted the young people as
Theseus is one
of the most
important heroes
in arutiquity.
food for the Minotaur,
his horrible haH-man, half-bull
monster. Any day now, the black-sailed ship
from Crete would pick up the unlucky fourteen.
'
At once Theseus volunteered to go, much to the
admiration of his fellow Athenians. But Theseus had a
/ plan: he intended to kill the Minotaur. He confided this to his
'
father, and said that ifhe succeeded he would replace the black
i sail from the Cretan ship with h white sail so his father could see
\
,r that his son was alive, TL"r",r. went off to Crete, and every day his
anxious father scanned the seas for a white sail.
i
When Theseus arrived in Crete, Minos' daughter Ariadne fell
]
deeply in love with the bold young man. And she pitied him. She
I
knew that even if he killed the Minotaur there would be no hope:
I
the Minotaur lived in a complex maze, called the Labyrinth,
which no living man had ever left.
Still, Ariadne was determined to help her newfound
love, and she went to clever Daedalus, who had built
lhe maze. He told her to give Theseus a large ball
of thread. Theseus then tied one end of
the thread to the entrance and wound
his way through the maze, until at last
he came to the dreaded Minotaur. But
Theseus was lucky: the Minotaur was
Theseus prepares to slay the Minotaut
fast asleep. Theseus immediately
leapt on the sleeping monster and
beat ii to death. Together with his
companions, Theseus followed the
thread out the maze.
But tragedy followed triumph.
Theseus deserted Ariadne, who
begged to go with him. He neglected
to raise a white sail on the ship, so
that his father, seeing a black sail on
the horizon, threw himself into the
sea. And after many years as its king,
Theseus was banished from Athens.
But when Theseus died, and forever
after, he was honored as Athens' savior.
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bratte, cleuer
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Iphigeneia
rfr. e Athenian lting Aegeus
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Aethra of Tioezen