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    Plutarch's Lives Volume One (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    Plutarch's Lives Volume One (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    Plutarch's Lives Volume One (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    Ebook1,308 pages21 hours

    Plutarch's Lives Volume One (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

    By Plutarch and Clayton Miles Lehmann

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    Plutarch defined for all ages the character of Greek and Roman moral identity. He studied what constitutes the best in a human being, and which, in turn, determines a person’s role in the world. Blending history and biography, Plutarch evokes the characters of great leaders in history. He systematically pairs a Greek with a Roman, comparing characters and lives with similar careers so as to serve his particular goal of moral instruction. In vivid prose, he describes the awesome spectacle of the actions of men of enormous desires and ambitions responding to impossible situations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateSep 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411429437
    Plutarch's Lives Volume One (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    Author

    Plutarch

    Plutarch was a Greek biographer and essayist, known primarily for his Lives and Moralia. He is classified as a Middle Platonist. Plutarch’s surviving works were written in Greek, but intended for both Greek and Roman readers.

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    Reviews for Plutarch's Lives Volume One (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

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    • 5/5
      Roughly 1800 years ago, a biographer and historian decided to compare the great men of Greece and Rome to one another to give his readers inspiration to follow their example or what to avoid. Parallel Lives by Plutarch chronicles the lives of the greatest men of the ancient world and the times they lived in.

      To show the influence of character—good or bad—of the great men of more remote past of Greece and the more recent past of Rome was Plutarch’s main aim in his biographies of these great men especially when he compared them to one another. Yet throughout his writing he shows the times these great men lived to the benefit of readers today that might know the overall history, but not the remarkably interesting details or events that general history readers might never know about. The usual important suspects like Alexander, Julius Caesar, and their like but it was those individuals that one never heard of today especially those Greeks between the end of the Peloponnesian War and its takeover by Rome save Alexander. This revised edition of the John Dryden translation contains both volumes in one book resulting in almost 1300 pages of text thanks to the fact that they added four lives that Plutarch wrote independent of his parallel pairs which included a Persian monarch, yet this printing is of poor quality as there are missing letters throughout which does slow reading down for a moment.

      Parallel Lives is a fascinating series of biographies of individuals that in the second century AD were the greatest men in history to those living at the time, a few of which have continued to our time. Plutarch’s prose brings these men to life as well as the times they live in and influenced which history readers would appreciate a lot.
    • 5/5
      Plutarch lived AD 46 TO AD 120: A Greek who became a Roman Citizen and was 1 of 2 Priests at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (origin of the Oracle).
      Over many years Plutarch wrote a series of 'Lives' of famous ancient men: Written in the First Century it is regarded as a majorly important semi-History and reference for people, events and conditions of the late pre- and earliest post-Christ world of Greeks and Romans.
      It explores famous people for their good and bad characteristics and behaviours viewed from an Ethical-Moral standpoint.
      It would be valued as a great work if only its secondary information on Alexander the Great (356-323) and Julius Caesar (100 to 44) had survived, but there is much more including a Roman King, brilliant orators, adventurers etc. The work is full of ideas, principles and arguments that can be found running through all Civilization over the last 2,000 years.
      Plutarch constructs his work using a unique juxtaposition of paired Greek and Roman lives.
      This is a very worthy translation by J & W Langhorne.
    • 4/5
      I believe that the "Great Books of the Western World" series uses the safely out of copyright Dryden Translation and so have used that cover. I read the 36 lives found in the Penguin paperback series, But that meant I hadn't got everyone, and thus I turned to the nice hardbound often to be found second hand. It fits the hand well, and you get the introductory and comparative essays that the author had originally included. I think the Everyman edition has a weak binding.
    • 5/5
      This is often known as the "Parallel Lives" because these biographical sketches come in pairs, one Greek, one Roman, followed by a comparison. This is a thick tome. My edition of Plutarch's Lives as translated by Dryden is nearly 800 pages. And yes, I read the whole thing and was never bored. Maybe this makes me perverse, given the number of reviewers I've heard describe them as dry. I thought it a wonderful and engaging introduction to the most illustrious personalities of Greco-Roman antiquity. I first read these when I was a college dropout for a time, and was reading through Good Reading's "100 Significant" books so my brain wouldn't turn to mush: I found it a favorite. Maybe it helped that by then I had made my way through Homer, Aesop, the four surviving Greek playwrights, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Vergil. Given that from the time I was a teen I was a fan of Mary Renault's and Robert Graves novels about ancient Greece and Rome, and familiarity with Shakespeare's plays (several of which were based on Plutarch) that means quite a few of the figures featured were already familiar to me: Theseus, Pericles, Alcibiades, Coriolanus, Cato, Crassus, Pompey, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Brutus. Maybe that helped. But there were also a lot of figures then unfamiliar to me such as Sulla and Lysander and the book never lost my interest.

      From what I gather it's not always reliable as history. Plutarch purportedly stretched things, both to find similarities in the two figures paired and to draw a tidy moral. And given Plutarch was a Greek and a Roman citizen trying to underline what they had in common, as you could expect, those outside that charmed circle, such as Cleopatra (for all she was of Greek descent) and the Carthaginians don't exactly get good press here. It probably is a good idea to seek out an edition that's thoroughly annotated--and try different translations if you don't find Dryden congenial. But I for one think this is numbered among the great books for good reason.
    • 5/5
      Ok so at least one of these reviews is blatantly false--the one that says there are no years given (especially birth and death years). Every figure's birth and death dates are listed in this particular edition, including "circas" for those who are legendary or whose birth dates aren't accurately known. And then the comment about only one figure's birth date being after 1 AD is just DUMB. I'm just not quite sure why this matters so much, as the study is of character and human nature, and it's especially unclear why human nature would be substantially different after the arbitrary cutoff of the year 1 AD. If you read all 1296 pages (which must be a different edition, since mine is only 876 pages of text plus an index) and could not figure this out, then you honestly should not be allowed to write a review. Of any book. Anywhere.

      Now the second half of this is that this was one of the works that Ben Franklin singled out as particularly valuable and it has been considered such by many of the great enlightened figures of history. It seems dubious that anyone would thus be so narrow-minded as to think their opinion that it is worthless matters one iota. Think I'll take Franklin's word over yours, pal.

    Book preview

    Plutarch's Lives Volume One (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) - Plutarch

    INTRODUCTION

    If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect.

    —Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

    PLUTARCH OF CHAERONEA WROTE COMPARATIVE LIVES OF NOBLE GREEKS and Romans such as Pericles and Fabius, Demosthenes and Cicero, and Alexander and Caesar. He chose his subjects not for the greatness and interest of their careers so much as for the sake of the moral qualities revealed by the collision of formidable characters and powerful events. Fortunate himself to live at the dawn of the era Gibbon considered the happiest in human history, Plutarch took full advantage of the learning of his and past ages as well as his experience in public life to discover that which constitutes the best in a human being, and which, in turn, determines a person’s role in the world. The subjects he chose as his examples live on memorably in his vivid narratives and strongly stated judgments. More than any other author from antiquity, Plutarch defined for all subsequent ages the character of Greek and Roman moral identity.

    Ironically, we can recover the life of this most famous of biographers almost only from incidental references in his voluminous writings. For example, because he mentions that he was a young man when Nero visited Greece in 67 CE, Plutarch must have been born in the 40s CE. He came from a wealthy leading family in the small city of Chaeronea in Central Greece, famous not only for its biographer but also as the battlefield where Alexander’s father, Philip, defeated the Greeks in 338 BCE and where the Roman general Sulla defeated the eastern monarch Mithridates VI in 86 BCE. Plutarch reports that relics of Sulla’s battle continued to surface in the fields for two hundred years afterward, which means he was still alive in the 110s CE. Inscriptional evidence from Delphi, where he served as one of the two priests for life at the beginning of the sanctuary’s second-century revival, suggests that he died before 125 CE. We meet several members of his family in his writings. His brother, father, grandfather (the witty, cultured Lamprias), and sons participate in some of the dialogs in the sprawling collection of essays called the Moralia, and he addressed the most touching of his essays, Consolation, to his wife, Timoxena, on the death of their daughter. Sympathetic to marriage, children, and women, Plutarch expected women to be literate and interested in philosophy. Proud of his origins even while he recognized their provinciality (see the opening of Demosthenes), he remained a lifelong resident of Chaeronea and held several municipal and regional offices. The people of Delphi and Chaeronea joined to honor Plutarch by setting up a statue of him in Delphi.

    Plutarch also studied in Athens and traveled widely through Greece and the empire, from Alexandria to Rome. He had many friends in high positions within the imperial government, including Quintus Sosius Senecio, twice consul and dedicatee of several of the Lives, and Lucius Mestrius Florus, who evidently arranged for Plutarch to receive Roman citizenship; in gratitude Plutarch assumed the Romanized name Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus. Plutarch’s interest in education has led many to believe he ran a school in Chaeronea, but there is little evidence for anything but widely ranging discussion at informal gatherings.

    Plutarch lived at the beginning of the period Gibbon considered the most felicitous in human history. But, ironically, he grew up during the reign of Nero and lived through the calamitous eighteen months of civil war following it—the two surviving of Plutarch’s Lives of the emperors from Augustus to Vitellius belong to this period. He also experienced the catastrophic year 79-80 when Vesuvius erupted, plague decimated the empire, fire swept Rome, and when he saw his friends suffer under the harsh rule of Domitian (81-96). While the Romans enjoyed unprecedented peace and stability in the following half century, they knew how easily bad days could return: as Gibbon observed, so much depended on the quality of the man who ruled the empire—and so the writers of the period weighed carefully the character of their rulers. Arnoldo Momigliano noted with appreciation the independence of the biographers of Plutarch’s age: neither Tacitus, Suetonius, nor Plutarch became servants of imperial propaganda; rather they kept the emperors human.

    Although he focused on individual lives and individuals’ characters in his writings, Plutarch offered some comments on the larger world; several of the essays, notably Precepts on Statecraft, treat the Roman context explicitly. The Roman Empire functioned not by coercing its subjects but by co-opting local elites, giving them responsibility for ensuring good order at the local level in return for keeping them in their positions of privilege. Plutarch believed that he lived in a world not only of security but also of considerable liberty—which meant that those naturally suited to rule by virtue of wealth and birth had the freedom to control their cities without external interference. Liberty emphatically did not mean democracy, a system Plutarch attacked repeatedly in his writings: in his view, a democracy represents a city where the wise speak but fools decide. Notably, Flamininus’ proclamation of Greek liberty at the end of the Second Macedonian War in 196 BCE constitutes the climax of his life, Sulla’s liberation of Athens from Mithridates offsets his sack of the city in 86 BCE, and Nero’s gesture in freeing the Greeks in 67 CE redeems the otherwise monstrous emperor. But Emperor Vespasian (69-79 CE) revoked Nero’s grant, and Plutarch spent all his adult life as a subject and then citizen of Rome.

    Plutarch had no illusions about any possibility of the Greeks recovering their ancient liberty. Instead, Plutarch insisted, the role of Greek leaders was to lead free men within the empire, ensure local order and cooperation among local elites and with the imperial authorities, and to strike a balance between the independence that might occasion intervention by the imperial authorities and excessive dependency that might annoy them. The glories of ancient Greece that fill the Greek Lives serve as background to the analysis of the characters of her heroes, not inspiration for revolutionary activity.

    If the Lives furnishes any advice for the contemporary statesman, it comes perhaps in Phocion, where Plutarch compares the duty of the statesman to the sun’s gentle declination, dispensing his light and influence, in his annual revolution, at several seasons in just proportions to the whole creation. The ruler, by turns, must favor the people, but also hold them in check. But if such a blessed mixture and temperament may be obtained, it seems to be of all concords and harmonies the most concordant and most harmonious. For thus we are taught even God governs the world, not by irresistible force, but persuasive argument and reason, controlling it into compliance with his eternal purposes.

    Plutarch goes on to insist that the Greek statesman should not look beyond Greek politics by pursing positions within the imperial administration. Romans had long developed friendships with Greeks, but only in the second century do we find the Greeks on the verge of the period when they, like other non-Italians, could attain positions of power in the Roman order and not limit themselves to the role of learned Greeks advising Romans. Plutarch himself became the acquaintance of many powerful Romans who attended his lectures and discussions, but except for the grant of citizenship and, possibly, consular honors, he did not appear to have taken advantage of those connections in any way beyond the pleasure of cultivated company. Plutarch’s own rather modest political career therefore constitutes a model for how the Greek statesman should work within the empire.

    One wonders why Plutarch paired Greeks and Romans in his Parallel Lives. D. A. Russell argued it was to demonstrate the parity and partnership of Greece and Rome, each with its contribution to make towards the development of political virtue, and to show how the humanity (philanthrōpia) that Greek moral education inculcated could modify Roman destructiveness. Others have seen in his project a reflection of the insecurity of the Greeks who wanted to equal the Romans on their terms—military and political greatness—rather than in the Greek sphere where the Romans acknowledged their inferiority: art and literature; thus Plutarch strove to prove the Greeks real men and the Romans civilized and not barbarian. C. P. Jones showed in Plutarch and Rome that this supposed diplomatic purpose never appears in the Lives. The very arrangement of the lives belies such a plan: it is haphazard, accidental, and dependent on chance just as much as life itself—the sort of arrangement that can serve a study of morality in human life, not an argument about culture. Plutarch did not need to build a bridge between Greeks and Romans; the bridge already existed, well integrating Greece into the Roman order. Plutarch, Jones said, was both Greek, in that he saw himself as a Greek by birth and language, Roman, in that his interests and sympathies are bound up with the empire. Robert Lamberton argued that Plutarch actually helped create the Athenocentric interpretation of Greek culture that influenced Hadrian’s program to elevate Athens to a position analogous to Rome’s: "Plutarch’s Parallel Lives constitute the principal document in the high empire’s reinvention of Classical Greece." Plutarch’s way of interpreting Greece and Rome proved so powerful that his became the standard way of understanding antiquity—as opposed to, say, the Virgilian model in which Rome prevails in law and government, Greece in arts and literature. The lives of the mythical heroes Theseus and Romulus, Lycurgus and Numa, for whom limited information enabled considerable flexibility on Plutarch’s part, above all show the biographer’s interest in elevating Greece into Rome’s sphere of action: these lives really compare Athens and Rome and Greek and Roman institutions, not individuals.

    Still, Plutarch’s own stated purpose did not involve the elucidation of themes of cultural difference or liberty; morality constituted his primary interest, and he used great lives to reveal great character. Perhaps we should see Plutarch’s biographical choices as the product not so much of a great Greco-Roman cultural project but rather as an exploration of character in those who most strongly demonstrated powerful moral qualities: the insatiable ambition of Marius, the pitiless inhumanity of Sulla, the sublime excessiveness of Alexander, the sheer power-hunger of Caesar, the futile idealism of the younger Cato, the charismatic immorality of Alcibiades, the uxorious helplessness of Antony, the impressive fairness of Aristides, the inhumane self-righteousness of Cato the Elder, the embarrassing self-importance of Cicero, the baffling bad luck of Sertorius. These biographical choices will be explored in the introduction to volume 2. Here we shall consider the lasting influence of Plutarch.

    The last generation of scholars has credited Plutarch with great originality and creativity as he pursued his intellectual and moral projects. Earlier scholars, however, considered his work important not in itself, but for the way it transmitted antiquity to later generations. And indeed, no one can deny the fact that already in his own lifetime Plutarch’s readers derived their understanding of their Greco-Roman past largely through his eyes. The Parallel Lives became an instant classic, widely quoted and excerpted in antiquity. The Byzantine scholar Planudes collected and edited all the Plutarchan manuscripts he could find about 1300. The Lives saw their first translations in the fourteenth (into Aragonese and Tuscan) and fifteenth (into Latin) centuries, often for political motives. Thus Bruni, interested in the Republican origins of Florence, translated the life of the last Republican, Cato the Younger; the Venetians, in contrast, interested in the maritime East, preferred the Athenian general Phocion. The sixteenth century saw many vernacular translations—even Queen Elizabeth translated one of the essays into English—but pride of place goes to Amyot’s French translation (Lives in 1559, Moralia in 1572), which itself served as the source for Thomas North’s translation of the Lives (1579, with new editions in 1595 and 1603) into the English version Shakespeare knew, as did most English-speaking readers until the version edited by Dryden appeared a century later.

    Thus the Plutarchan view of antiquity persisted through the end of the Roman Empire and was revived in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period when Shakespeare drew on his writings as his source for the Roman tragedies and Montesquieu proclaimed Plutarch my man. After the heroic age of Rousseau and Franklin, Plutarch went into decline on account of what seemed excessive moralizing and unthinking borrowing of earlier authors; nevertheless, he has continued to impart political wisdom to statesmen such as Harry Truman and Eugene McCarthy as well as memorable vignettes of Greek and Roman history to undergraduate students.

    John Dryden (1631-1700) himself contributed only an essay on the life of Plutarch to the great translation of the Parallel Lives that bears his name. Nevertheless, Dryden deserves credit for soliciting translations of the individual lives, editing them, and arranging for their publication by Jacob Tonson in five volumes from 1683 to 1686 (second edition in 1688, third in 1693). Arthur Sherbo has shown that in the last two decades of his life Dryden assembled a team of gentlemen, many of whom he knew from his days at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he first read Plutarch in the mid-1600s. They contributed original poetry as well as translations from the classics for a series of books (most of them proceeding from Tonson’s press) from 1680 to 1711. Dryden’s innovative thinking about the craft of translation appeared in the preface to the first of the series, Ovid’s Epistles (1680), where he distinguished among close translation (metaphrase), free translation strictly preserving the sense of the original (paraphrase), and a substantially new composition in the style of the original but using its sense only as a starting point for new ideas (imitation). In the preface to another of these collaborative works, Sylvae (1685), Dryden characterized his translations of the sentiments of an ancient author: if he were living, and an Englishman, they are such, as he wou’d probably have written. Dryden preferred Plutarch’s sentiment to his roughness of expression. . . . Yet, for manliness of eloquence, if it abounded not in our author, it was not wanting in him. He neither studied the sublime style, nor affected the flowery.

    A. H. Clough revised the Dryden translation in the nineteenth century, rendering the version most accessible today. In the twentieth century the Loeb edition, with its facing Greek text and modern English translation, also enjoys wide use, and exclusively so for the Moralia. Otherwise we have English translations only of individual lives removed from their parallel setting into collections meant for history classes treating various periods of Greece and Rome. Although useful in such courses, treating the lives individually destroys the effect Plutarch aimed at in his comparative, ethical approach. We shall turn to this aspect of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives in the introduction to volume 2.

    Clayton Miles Lehmann teaches history at the University of South Dakota. He has published widely on various topics in Greek and Roman history and archaeology.

    THESEUS

    AS GEOGRAPHERS, SOSIUS, CROWD INTO THE EDGES OF THEIR MAPS PARTS of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but the sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off: Beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther. Yet, after publishing an account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I thought I might, not without reason, ascend as high as to Romulus, being brought by my history so near to his time. Considering therefore with myself—

    Whom shall I set so great a man to face?

    Or whom oppose? Who’s equal to the place?

    (as Æschylus expresses it), I found none so fit as him that peopled the beautiful and far-famed city of Athens, to be set in opposition with the father of the invincible and renowned city of Rome. Let us hope that Fable may, in what shall follow, so submit to the purifying processes of Reason as to take the character of exact history. In any case, however, where it shall be found contumaciously slighting credibility and refusing to be reduced to anything like probable fact, we shall beg that we may meet with candid readers, and such as will receive with indulgence the stories of antiquity.

    Theseus seemed to me to resemble Romulus in many particulars. Both of them, born out of wedlock and of uncertain parentage, had the repute of being sprung from the gods.

    Both warriors; that by all the world’s allowed.

    Both of them united with strength of body an equal vigour of mind; and of the two most famous cities of the world, the one built Rome, and the other made Athens be inhabited. Both stand charged with the rape of women; neither of them could avoid domestic misfortunes nor jealousy at home; but towards the close of their lives are both of them said to have incurred great odium with their countrymen, if, that is, we may take the stories least like poetry as our guide to the truth.

    The lineage of Theseus, by his father’s side, ascends as high as to Erechtheus and the first inhabitants of Attica. By his mother’s side he was descended of Pelops. For Pelops was the most powerful of all the kings of Peloponnesus, not so much by the greatness of his riches as the multitude of his children, having married many daughters to chief men, and put many sons in places of command in the towns round about him. One of whom named Pittheus, grandfather to Theseus, was governor of the small city of the Trœzenians and had the repute of a man of the greatest knowledge and wisdom of his time; which then, it seems, consisted chiefly in grave maxims, such as the poet Hesiod got his great fame by, in his book of Works and Days. And, indeed, among these is one that they ascribe to Pittheus,

    Unto a friend suffice

    A stipulated price;

    which, also, Aristotle mentions. And Euripides, by calling Hippolytus scholar of the holy Pittheus, shows the opinion that the world had of him.

    Ægeus, being desirous of children, and consulting the oracle of Delphi, received the celebrated answer which forbade him the company of any woman before his return to Athens. But the oracle being so obscure as not to satisfy him that he was clearly forbid this, he went to Trœzen, and communicated to Pittheus the voice of the god, which was in this manner,

    Loose not the wineskin foot, thou chief of men,

    Until to Athens thou art come again.

    Pittheus, therefore, taking advantage from the obscurity of the oracle, prevailed upon him, it is uncertain whether by persuasion or deceit, to lie with his daughter Æthra. Ægeus afterwards, knowing her whom he had lain with to be Pittheus’ daughter, and suspecting her to be with child by him, left a sword and a pair of shoes, hiding them under a great stone that had a hollow in it exactly fitting them; and went away making her only privy to it, and commanding her, if she brought forth a son who, when he came to man’s estate, should be able to lift up the stone and take away what he had left there, she should send him way to him with those things with all secrecy, and with injunctions to him as much as possible to conceal his journey from everyone; for he greatly feared the Pallentidæ, who were continually mutinying against him, and despised him for his want of children, they themselves being fifty brothers, all sons of Pallas.

    When Æthra was delivered of a son, some say that he was immediately named Theseus, from the tokens which his father had put under the stone; others that he had received his name afterwards at Athens, when Ægeus acknowledged him for his son. He was brought up under his grandfather Pittheus, and had a tutor and attendant set over him named Connidas, to whom the Athenians even to this time, the day before the feast that is dedicated to Theseus, sacrifice a ram, giving this honour to his memory upon much juster grounds than to Silanio and Parrhasius for making pictures and statues of Theseus. There being then a custom for the Grecian youth, upon their first coming to man’s estate, to go to Delphi and offer first-fruits of their hair to the god, Theseus also went thither, and a place there to this day is yet named Thesea, as it is said, from him. He clipped only the fore part of his head, as Homer says the Abantes did. And this sort of tonsure was from him named Theseus. The Abantes first used it, not in imitation of the Arabians, as some imagine, nor of the Mysians, but because they were a warlike people, and used to close fighting, and above all other nations accustomed to engage hand to hand; as Archilochus testifies in these verses:

    Slings shall not whirl, nor many arrows fly,

    When on the plain the battle joins; but swords,

    Man against man, the deadly conflict try

    As is the practice of Eubœa’s lords

    Skilled with the spear.

    Therefore that they might not give their enemies a hold by their hair, they cut it in this manner. They write also that this was the reason why Alexander gave command to his captains that all the beards of the Macedonians should be shaved, as being the readiest hold for an enemy.

    Æthra for sometime concealed the true parentage of Theseus, and a report was given out by Pittheus that he was begotten by Neptune; for the Trœzenians pay Neptune the highest veneration. He is their tutelar god; to him they offer all their first-fruits, and in his honour stamp their money with a trident.

    Theseus displaying not only great strength of body, but equal bravery, and a quickness alike and force of understanding, his mother Æthra, conducting him to the stone, and informing him who was his true father, commanded him to take from thence the tokens that Ægeus had left, and sail to Athens. He without any difficulty set himself to the stone and lifted it up; but refused to take his journey by sea, though it was much the safer way, and though his mother and grandfather begged him to do so. For it was at that time very dangerous to go by land on the road to Athens, no part of it being free from robbers and murderers. That age produced a sort of men, in force of hand, and swiftness of foot, and strength of body, excelling the ordinary rate and wholly incapable of fatigue; making use, however, of these gifts of nature to no good or profitable purpose for mankind, but rejoicing and priding themselves in insolence, and taking the benefit of their superior strength in the exercise of inhumanity and cruelty, and in seizing, forcing, and committing all manner of outrages upon everything that fell into their hands; all respect for others, all justice, they thought, all equity and humanity, though naturally lauded by common people, either out of want of courage to commit injuries or fear to receive them, yet no way concerned those who were strong enough to win for themselves. Some of these, Hercules destroyed and cut off in his passage through these countries; but some escaping his notice while he was passing by, fled and hid themselves, or else were spared by him in contempt of their abject submission: and after that Hercules fell into misfortune, and, having slain Iphitus, retired to Lydia, and for a long time was there slave to Omphale, a punishment which he had imposed upon himself for the murder: then, indeed, Lydia enjoyed high peace and security, but in Greece and the countries about it the like villainies again revived and broke out, there being none to repress or chastise them. It was therefore a very hazardous journey to travel by land from Athens to Peloponnesus; and Pittheus, giving him an exact account of each of the robbers and villains, their strength, and the cruelty they used to all strangers, tried to persuade Theseus to go by sea. But he, it seems, had long since been secretly fired by the glory of Hercules, held him in the highest estimation, and was never more satisfied than in listening to any that gave an account of him; especially those that had seen him, or had been present at any action or saying of his. So that he was altogether in the same state of feeling as, in after ages, Themistocles was, when he said that he could not sleep for the trophy of Miltiades; entertaining such admiration for the virtue of Hercules, that in the night his dreams were all of that hero’s actions, and in the day a continual emulation stirred him up to perform the like. Besides, they were related, being born of cousins-german. For Æthra was daughter of Pittheus, and Alcmena of Lysidice; and Lysidice and Pittheus were brother and sister, children of Hippodamia and Pelops. He thought it therefore a dishonourable thing, and not to be endured, that Hercules should go out everywhere, and purge both land and sea from wicked men, and he himself should fly from the like adventures that actually came in his way; disgracing his reputed father by a mean flight by sea, and not showing his true one as good evidence of the greatness of his birth by noble and worthy actions, as by the token that he brought with him the shoes and the sword.

    With this mind and these thoughts, he set forward with a design to do injury to nobody, but to repel and revenge himself of all those that should offer any. And first of all, in a set combat, he slew Periphetes, in the neighbourhood of Epidaurus, who used a club for his arms, and from thence had the name of Corynetes, or the club-bearer; who seized upon him, and forbade him to go forward in his journey. Being pleased with the club, he took it, and made it his weapon, continuing to use it as Hercules did the lion’s skin, on whose shoulders that served to prove how huge a beast he had killed; and to the same end Theseus carried about him this club; overcome indeed by him, but now in his hands, invincible.

    Passing on further towards the Isthmus of Peloponnesus, he slew Sinnis, often surnamed the Bender of Pines, after the same manner in which he himself had destroyed many others before. And this he did without having either practised or ever learnt the art of bending these trees, to show that natural strength is above all art. This Sinnis had a daughter of remarkable beauty and stature, called Perigune, who, when her father was killed, fled, and was sought after everywhere by Theseus; and coming into a place overgrown with brushwood, shrubs, and asparagus-thorn, there, in a childlike innocent manner, prayed and begged them, as if they understood her, to give her shelter, with vows that if she escaped she would never cut them down nor burn them. But Theseus calling upon her, and giving her his promise that he would use her with respect, and offer her no injury, she came forth, and in due time bore him a son, named Melanippus; but afterwards was married to Deioneus, the son of Eurytus, the Œchalian, Theseus himself giving her to him. Ioxus, the son of this Melanippus, who was born to Theseus, accompanied Ornytus in the colony that he carried with him into Caria, whence it is a family usage amongst the people called Ioxids, both male and female, never to burn either shrubs or asparagus-thorn, but to respect and honour them.

    The Crommyonian sow, which they called Phæa, was a savage and formidable wild beast, by no means an enemy to be despised. Theseus killed her, going out of his way on purpose to meet and engage her, so that he might not seem to perform all his great exploits out of mere necessity; being also of opinion that it was the part of a brave man to chastise villainous and wicked men when attacked by them, but to seek out and overcome the more noble wild beasts. Others relate that Phæa was a woman, a robber full of cruelty and lust, that lived in Crommyon, and had the name of Sow given her from the foulness of her life and manners, and afterwards was killed by Theseus. He slew also Sciron, upon the borders of Megara, casting him down from the rocks, being, as most report, a notorious robber of all passengers, and, as others add, accustomed, out of insolence and wantonness, to stretch forth his feet to strangers commanding them to wash them, and then while they did it, with a kick to send them down the rock into the sea. The writers of Megara, however, in contradiction to the received report, and, as Simonides expresses it, fighting with all antiquity, contend that Sciron was neither a robber nor doer of violence, but a punisher of all such, and the relative and friend of good and just men; for Æacus, they say, was ever esteemed a man of the greatest sanctity of all the Greeks; and Cychreus, the Salaminian, was honoured at Athens with divine worship; and the virtues of Peleus and Telamon were not unknown to anyone. Now Sciron was son-in-law to Cychreus, father-in-law to Æacus, and grandfather to Peleus and Telamon, who were both of them sons of Endeis, the daughter of Sciron and Chariclo; it was not probable, therefore, that the best of men should make these alliances with one who was worst, giving and receiving mutually what was of greatest value and most dear to them. 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. And going on a little farther, in Erineus, he slew Damastes, otherwise called Procrustes, forcing his body to the size of his own bed, as he himself was used to do with all strangers; this he did in imitation of Hercules, who always returned upon his assailants the same sort of violence that they offered to him; sacrificed Busiris, killed Antæus in wrestling, and Cycnus in single combat, and Termerus by breaking his skull in pieces (whence, they say, comes the proverb of a Termerian mischief), for it seems Termerus killed passengers that he met by running with his head against them. And so also Theseus proceeded in the punishment of evil men, who underwent the same violence from him which they had inflicted upon others, justly suffering after the manner of their own injustice.

    As he went forward on his journey, and was come as far as the river Cephisus, some of the race of the Phytalidæ met him and saluted him, and upon his desire to use the purifications, then in custom, they performed them with all the usual ceremonies, and, having offered propitiatory sacrifices to the gods, invited him and entertained him at their house, a kindness which, in all his journey hitherto, he had not met.

    On the eighth day of Cronius, now called Hecatombæon, he arrived at Athens, where he found the public affairs full of all confusion, and divided into parties and factions, Ægeus also, and his whole private family, labouring under the same distemper; for Medea, having fled from Corinth, and promised Ægeus to make him, by her art, capable of having children, was living with him. She first was aware of Theseus, whom as yet Ægeus did not know, and he being in years, full of jealousies and suspicions, and fearing everything by reason of the faction that was then in the city, she easily persuaded him to kill him by poison at a banquet, to which he was to be invited as a stranger. He, coming to the entertainment, thought it not fit to discover himself at once, but willing to give his father the occasion of first finding him out, the meat being on the table, he drew his sword as if he designed to cut with it; Ægeus, at once recognising the token, threw down the cup of poison, and, questioning his son, embraced him, and having gathered together all his citizens, owned him publicly before them, who, on their part, received him gladly for the fame of his greatness and bravery; and it is said, that when the cup fell, the poison was spilt there where now is the enclosed space in the Delphinium; for in that place stood Ægeus’ house, and the figure of Mercury on the east side of the temple is called the Mercury of Ægeus’ gate.

    The sons of Pallas, who before were quiet upon expectation of recovering the kingdom after Ægeus’ death, who was without issue, as soon as Theseus appeared and was acknowledged the successor, highly resenting that Ægeus first, an adopted son only of Pandion, and not at all related to the family of Erechtheus, should be holding the kingdom, and that after him, Theseus, a visitor and stranger, should be destined to succeed to it, broke out into open war. And dividing themselves into two companies, one part of them marched openly from Sphettus, with their father, against the city, the other, hiding themselves in the village of Gargettus, lay in ambush, with a design to set upon the enemy on both sides. They had with them a crier of the township of Agnus, named Leos, who discovered to Theseus all the designs of the Pallantidæ. He immediately fell upon those that lay in ambuscade, and cut them all off; upon tidings of which Pallas and his company fled and were dispersed.

    From hence they say is derived the custom among the people of the township of Pallene to have no marriages or any alliance with the people of Agnus, nor to suffer the criers to pronounce in their proclamations the words used in all other parts of the country, Acouĕtĕ Leoi (Hear ye people), hating the very sound of Leo, because of the treason of Leos.

    Theseus, longing to be in action, and desirous also to make himself popular, left Athens to fight with the bull of Marathon, which did no small mischief to the inhabitants of Tetrapolis. And having overcome it, he brought it alive in triumph through the city, and afterwards sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo. The story of Hecale, also, of her receiving and entertaining Theseus in this expedition, seems to be not altogether void of truth; for the townships round about, meeting upon a certain day, used to offer a sacrifice which they called Hecalesia, to Jupiter Hecaleius, and to pay honour to Hecale, whom, by a diminutive name, they called Hecalene, because she, while entertaining Theseus, who was quite a youth, addressed him, as old people do, with similar endearing diminutives; and having made a vow to Jupiter for him as he was going to the fight, that, if he returned in safety, she would offer sacrifices in thanks of it, and dying before he came back, she had these honours given her by way of return for her hospitality, by the command of Theseus, as Philochorus tells us.

    Not long after arrived the third time from Crete the collectors of the tribute which the Athenians paid them upon the following occasion. Androgeus having been treacherously murdered in the confines of Attica, not only Minos, his father, put the Athenians to extreme distress by a perpetual war, but the gods also laid waste their country; both famine and pestilence lay heavy upon them, and even their rivers were dried up. Being told by the oracle that, if they appeased and reconciled Minos, the anger of the gods would cease and they should enjoy rest from the miseries they laboured under, they sent heralds, and with much supplication were at last reconciled, entering into an agreement to send to Crete every nine years a tribute of seven young men and as many virgins, as most writers agree in stating; and the most poetical story adds, that the Minotaur destroyed them, or that, wandering in the labyrinth, and finding no possible means of getting out, they miserably ended their lives there; and that this Minotaur was (as Euripides hath it)—

    A mingled form where two strange shapes combined,

    And different natures, bull and man, were joined.

    But Philochorus says that the Cretans will by no means allow the truth of this, but say that the labyrinth was only an ordinary prison, having no other bad quality but that it secured the prisoners from escaping, and that Minos, having instituted games in honour of Androgeus, gave, as a reward to the victors, these youths, who in the meantime were kept in the labyrinth; and that the first that overcame in those games was one of the greatest power and command among them, named Taurus, a man of no merciful or gentle disposition, who treated the Athenians that were made his prize in a proud and cruel manner. Also Aristotle himself, in the account that he gives of the form of government of the Bottiæans, is manifestly of opinion that the youths were not slain by Minos, but spent the remainder of their days in slavery in Crete; that the Cretans, in former times, to acquit themselves of an ancient vow which they had made, were used to send an offering of the first-fruits of their men to Delphi, and that some descendants of these Athenian slaves were mingled with them and sent amongst them, and, unable to get their living there, removed from thence, first into Italy, and settled about Japygia; from thence again, that they removed to Thrace, and were named Bottiæans; and that this is the reason why, in a certain sacrifice, the Bottiæan girls sing a hymn beginning Let us go to Athens. This may show us how dangerous it is to incur the hostility of a city that is mistress of eloquence and song. For Minos was always ill spoken of, and represented ever as a very wicked man, in the Athenian theatres; neither did Hesiod avail him by calling him the most royal Minos, nor Homer, who styles him Jupiter’s familiar friend; the tragedians got the better, and from the vantage ground of the stage showered down obloquy upon him, as a man of cruelty and violence; whereas, in fact, he appears to have been a king and a lawgiver, and Rhadamanthus, a judge under him, administering the statutes that he ordained.

    Now, when the time of the third tribute was come, and the fathers who had any young men for their sons were to proceed by lot to the choice of those that were to be sent, there arose fresh discontents and accusations against Ægeus among the people, who were full of grief and indignation that he who was the cause of all their miseries was the only person exempt from the punishment; adopting and settling his kingdom upon a bastard and foreign son, he took no thought, they said, of their destitution and loss, not of bastards, but lawful children. These things sensibly affected Theseus, who, thinking it but just not to disregard, but rather partake of, the sufferings of his fellow-citizens, offered himself for one without any lot. All else were struck with admiration for the nobleness and with love for the goodness of the act; and Ægeus, after prayers and entreaties, finding him inflexible and not to be persuaded, proceeded to the choosing of the rest by lot. Hellanicus, however, tells us that the Athenians did not send the young men and virgins by lot, but that Minos himself used to come and make his own choice, and pitched upon Theseus before all others; according to the conditions agreed upon between them, namely, that the Athenians should furnish them with a ship and that the young men that were to sail with him should carry no weapons of war; but that if the Minotaur was destroyed, the tribute should cease.

    On the two former occasions of the payment of the tribute, entertaining no hopes of safety or return, they sent out the ship with a black sail, as to unavoidable destruction; but now, Theseus encouraging his father, and speaking greatly of himself, as confident that he should kill the Minotaur, he gave the pilot another sail, which was white, commanding him, as he returned, if Theseus were safe, to make use of that; but if not, to sail with the black one, and to hang out that sign of his misfortune. Simonides says that the sail which Ægeus delivered to the pilot was not white, but—

    Scarlet, in the juicy bloom

    Of the living oak tree steeped,

    and that this was to be the sign of their escape. Phereclus, son of Amarsyas, according to Simonides, was pilot of the ship. But Philochorus says Theseus had sent him by Scirus, from Salamis, Nausithoüs to be his steersman, and Phæax his look-out-man in the prow, the Athenians having as yet not applied themselves to navigation; and that Scirus did this because one of the young men, Menesthes, was his daughter’s son; and this the chapels of Nausithoüs and Phæax, built by Theseus near the temple of Scirus, confirm. He adds, also, that the feast named Cybernesia was in honour of them. The lot being cast, and Theseus having received out of the Prytaneüm those upon whom it fell, he went to the Delphinium, and made an offering for them to Apollo of his suppliant’s badge, which was a bough of a consecrated olive tree, with white wool tied about it.

    Having thus performed his devotion, he went to sea, the sixth day of Munychion, on which day even to this time the Athenians send their virgins to the same temple to make supplication to the gods. It is farther reported that he was commanded by the oracle of Delphi to make Venus his guide, and to invoke her as the companion and conductress of his voyage and that, as he was sacrificing a she goat to her by the seaside, it was suddenly changed into a he, and for this cause that goddess had the name of Epitragia.

    When he arrived at Crete, as most of the ancient historians as well as poets tell us, having a clue of thread given him by Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, and being instructed by her how to use it so as to conduct him through the windings of the labyrinth, he escaped out of it and slew the Minotaur, and sailed back, taking along with him Ariadne and the young Athenian captives. Phercydes adds that he bored holes in the bottom of the Cretan ships to hinder their pursuit. Demon writes that Taurus, the chief captain of Minos, was slain by Theseus at the mouth of the port, in a naval combat as he was sailing out for Athens. But Philochorus gives us the story thus: That at the setting forth of the yearly games by King Minos, Taurus was expected to carry away the prize, as he had done before; and was much grudged the honour. His character and manners made his power hateful, and he was accused moreover of too near familiarity with Pasiphae, for which reason, when Theseus desired the combat, Minos readily complied. And as it was a custom in Crete that the women also should be admitted to the sight of these games, Ariadne, being present, was struck with admiration of the manly beauty of Theseus, and the vigour and address which he showed in the combat, overcoming all that encountered with him. Minos, too, being extremely pleased with him, especially because he had overthrown and disgraced Taurus, voluntarily gave up the young captives to Theseus, and remitted the tribute to the Athenians. Clidemus gives an account peculiar to himself, very ambitiously, and beginning a great way back: That it was a decree consented to by all Greece, that no vessel from any place, containing above five persons, should be permitted to sail, Jason only excepted, who was made captain of the great ship Argo, to sail about and scour the sea of pirates. But Dædalus having escaped from Crete, and flying by sea to Athens, Minos, contrary to this decree, pursued him with his ships of war, was forced by a storm upon Sicily, and there ended his life. After his decease, Deucalion, his son, desiring a quarrel with the Athenians, sent to them, demanding that they should deliver up Dædalus to him, threatening upon their refusal, to put to death all the young Athenians whom his father had received as hostages from the city. To this angry message Theseus returned a very gentle answer excusing himself that he could not deliver up Dædalus, who was nearly related to him, being his cousin-german, his mother being Merope, the daughter of Erechtheus. In the meanwhile he secretly prepared a navy, part of it at home near the village of the Thymœtadæ, a place of no resort, and far from any common roads, the other part by his grandfather Pittheus’ means at Trœzen, that so his design might be carried on with the greatest secrecy. As soon as ever his fleet was in readiness, he set sail, having with him Dædalus and other exiles from Crete for his guides; and none of the Cretans having any knowledge of his coming, but imagining when they saw his fleet that they were friends and vessels of their own, he soon made himself master of the port, and immediately making a descent, reached Gnossus before any notice of his coming, and, in a battle before the gates of the labyrinth, put Deucalion and all his guards to the sword. The government by this means falling to Ariadne, he made a league with her, and received the captives of her, and ratified a perpetual friendship between the Athenians and the Cretans, whom he engaged under an oath never again to commence any war with Athens.

    There are yet many other traditions about these things, and as many concerning Ariadne, all inconsistent with each other. Some relate that she hung herself, being deserted by Theseus. Others that she was carried away by his sailors to the isle of Naxos, and married to Œnarus, priest of Bacchus; and that Theseus left her because he fell in love with another—

    For Ægle’s love was burning in his breast;

    a verse which Hereas, the Megarian, says was formerly in the poet Hesiod’s works, but put out by Pisistratus, in like manner as he added in Homer’s Raising of the Dead, to gratify the Athenians, the line—

    Theseus, Pirithous, mighty son of gods.

    Others say Ariadne had sons also by Theseus, Œnopion and Staphylus; and among these is the poet Ion of Chios, who writes of his own native city—

    Which once Œnopion, son of Theseus built.

    But the more famous of the legendary stories everybody (as I may say) has in his mouth. In Pæon, however, the Amathusian, there is a story given, differing from the rest. For he writes that Theseus, being driven by a storm upon the isle of Cyprus, and having aboard with him Ariadne, big with child, and extremely discomposed with the rolling of the sea, set her on shore, and left her there alone, to return himself and help the ship, when, on a sudden, a violent wind carried him again out to sea. That the women of the island received Ariadne very kindly, and did all they could to console and alleviate her distress at being left behind. That they counterfeited kind letters, and delivered them to her, as sent from Theseus, and, when she fell in labour, were diligent in performing to her every needful service; but that she died before she could be delivered, and was honourably interred. That soon after Theseus returned, and was greatly afflicted for her loss, and at his departure left a sum of money among the people of the island, ordering them to do sacrifice to Ariadne; and caused two little images to be made and dedicated to her, one of silver and the other of brass. Moreover, that on the second day of Gorpiæus, which is sacred to Ariadne, they have this ceremony among their sacrifices, to have a youth lie down and with his voice and gesture represent the pains of a woman in travail; and that the Amathusians call the grove in which they show her tomb, the grove of Venus Ariadne.

    Differing yet from this account, some of the Naxians write that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Bacchus, in the isle of Naxos, and bore the children Staphylus and his brother; but that the other, of a later age, was carried off by Theseus, and; being afterwards deserted by him, retired to Naxos, with her nurse Corcyna, whose grave they yet show. That this Ariadne also died there, and was worshipped by the island, but in a different manner from the former; for her day is celebrated with general joy and revelling, but all the sacrifices performed to the latter are attended with mourning and gloom.

    Now Theseus, in his return from Crete, put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god of the island, dedicated to the temple the image of Venus which Ariadne had given him, and danced with the young Athenians a dance that, in memory of him, they say is still preserved among the inhabitants of Delos, consisting in certain measured turnings and returnings, imitative of the windings and twistings of the labyrinth. And this dance, as Dicæarchus writes, is called among the Delians the Crane. This he danced around the Ceratonian Altar, so called from its consisting of horns taken from the left side of the head. They say also that he instituted games in Delos, where he was the first that began the custom of giving a palm to the victors.

    When they were come near the coast of Attica, so great was the joy for the happy success of their voyage, that neither Theseus himself nor the pilot remembered to hang out the sail which should have been the token of their safety to Ægeus, who, in despair at the sight, threw himself headlong from a rock, and perished in the sea. But Theseus being arrived at the port of Phalerum, paid there the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at his setting out to sea, and sent a herald to the city to carry the news of his safe return. At his entrance, the herald found the people for the most part full of grief for the loss of their king; others, as may well be believed, as full of joy for the tidings that he brought, and eager to welcome him and crown him with garlands for his good news, which he indeed accepted of, but hung them upon his herald’s staff; and thus returning to the seaside before Theseus had finished his libation to the gods, he stayed apart for fear of disturbing the holy rites; but, as soon as the libation was ended, went up and related the king’s death, upon the hearing of which, with great lamentations and a confused tumult of grief, they ran with all haste to the city. And from hence, they say, it comes that at this day, in the feast of Oschophoria, the herald is not crowned, but his staff, and all who are present at the libation cry out eleleu, iou, iou, the first of which confused sounds is commonly used by men in haste, or at a triumph, the other is proper to people in consternation or disorder of mind.

    Theseus, after the funeral of his father, paid his vows to Apollo the seventh day of Pyanepsion; for on that day the youth that returned with him safe from Crete made their entry into the city. They say, also, that the custom of boiling pulse at this feast is derived from hence; because the young men that escaped put all that was left of their provision together, and, boiling it in one common pot, feasted themselves with it, and ate it all up together. Hence, also, they carry in procession an olive branch bound about with wool (such as they then made use of in their supplications), which they call Eiresione, crowned with all sorts of fruits, to signify that scarcity and barrenness was ceased, singing in their procession this song:

    Eiresione bring figs, and Eiresione bring loaves;

    Bring us honey in pints, and oil to rub on our bodies,

    And a strong flagon of wine, for all to go mellow to bed on.

    Although some hold opinion that this ceremony is retained in memory of the Heraclidæ, who were thus entertained and brought up by the Athenians. But most are of the opinion which we have given above.

    The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

    The feast called Oschophoria, or the feast of boughs, which to this day the Athenians celebrate, was then first instituted by Theseus. For he took not with him the full number of virgins which by lot were to be carried away, but selected two youths of his acquaintance, of fair and womanish faces, but of a manly and forward spirit, and having, by frequent baths, and avoiding the heat and scorching of the sun, with a constant use of all the ointments and washes and dresses that serve to the adorning of the head or smoothing the skin or improving the complexion, in a manner changed them from what they were before, and having taught them farther to counterfeit the very voice and carriage and gait of virgins so that there could not be the least difference perceived, he, undiscovered by any, put them into the number of the Athenian maids designed for Crete. At his return, he and these two youths led up a solemn procession, in the same habit that is now worn by those who carry the vine-branches. Those branches they carry in honour of Bacchus and Ariadne, for the sake of their story before related; or rather because they happened to return in autumn, the time of gathering the grapes. The women, whom they call Deipnopheræ, or supper-carriers, are taken into these ceremonies, and assist at the sacrifice, in remembrance and imitation of the mothers of the young men and virgins upon whom the lot fell, for thus they ran about bringing bread and meat to their children; and because the women then told their sons and daughters many tales and stories, to comfort and encourage them under the danger they were going upon, it has still continued a custom that at this feast old fables and tales should be told. For these particularities we are indebted to the history of Demon. There was then a place chosen out, and a temple erected in it to Theseus, and those families out of whom the tribute of the youth was gathered were appointed to pay tax to the temple for sacrifices to him. And the house of the Phytalidæ had the overseeing of these sacrifices, Theseus doing them that honour in recompense of their former hospitality.

    Now, after the death of his father Ægeus, forming in his mind a great and wonderful design, he gathered together all the inhabitants of Attica into one town, and made them one people of one city, whereas before they lived dispersed, and were not easy to assemble upon any affair for the common interest. Nay, differences and even wars often occurred between them, which he by his persuasions appeased, going from township to township, and from tribe to tribe. And those of a more private and mean condition readily embracing such good advice, to those of greater power he promised a commonwealth without monarchy, a democracy, or people’s government, in which he should only be continued as their commander in war and the protector of their laws, all things else being equally distributed among them—and by this means brought a part of them over to his proposal. The rest, fearing his power, which was already grown very formidable, and knowing his courage and resolution, chose rather to be persuaded than forced into a compliance. He then dissolved all the distinct state-houses, council halls, and magistracies, and built one common state-house and council hall on the site of the present upper town, and gave the name of Athens to the whole state, ordaining a common feast and sacrifice, which he called Panathenæa, or the sacrifice of all the united Athenians. He instituted also another sacrifice called Metœcia, or Feast of Migration, which is yet celebrated on the sixteenth day of Hecatombæon. Then, as he had promised, he laid down his regal power and proceeded to order a commonwealth, entering upon this great work not without advice from the gods. For having sent to consult the oracle of Delphi concerning the fortune of his new government and city, he received this answer:

    Son of the Pitthean maid,

    To your town the terms and fates,

    My father gives of many states.

    Be not anxious nor afraid;

    The bladder will not fail to swim

    On the waves that compass him.

    Which oracle, they say, one of the sibyls long after did in a manner repeat to the Athenians, in this verse:

    The bladder may be dipt, but not be drowned.

    Farther yet designing to enlarge his city, he invited all strangers to come and enjoy equal privileges with the natives, and it is said that the common form, Come hither, all ye people, was the words that Theseus proclaimed when he thus set up a commonwealth, in a manner, for all nations. Yet he did not suffer his state, by the promiscuous multitude that flowed in, to be turned into confusion and be left without any order or degree, but was the first that divided the Commonwealth into three distinct ranks, the noblemen, the husbandmen, and artificers. To the nobility he committed the care of religion, the choice of magistrates, the teaching and dispensing of the laws, and interpretation and direction in all sacred matters; the whole city being, as it were, reduced to an exact equality, the nobles

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