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Theseus
“... Thésée, par son père, remontait à Érechthée et aux premiers autochthones. Du côté de sa mère, il était Pélopide. Pélops avait été le plus puissant des rois du Péloponnèse, moins encore par ses richesses que par le nombre de ses enfants. Il maria plusieurs de ses filles aux hommes les plus considérables du pays, et il dissémina la plupart de ses fils dans les gouvernements des villes. Pitthéus, l’un d’eux, aïeul maternel de Thésée, fonda la petite ville de Trézène. Il acquit le renom d’homme sensé et sage entre tous. La sagesse alors en estime consistait, je crois, en sentences morales du genre de celles qui ont fait la célébrité du poëme d’Hésiode sur les travaux et les jours. C’est là que se trouve la maxime suivante, qu’on dit être de Pitthéus : Paye à leur valeur les services de ton ami...”
50 pages, Paperback
First published February 10, 2013
About the author
Plutarch
4,351 books962 followersPlutarch (later named, upon becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus; AD 46–AD 120) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel 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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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 17, 2018
Plutarch tries to rationalise a man who can’t be rationalised:
The lawgiver of Athens, the hero-king who nationalised
A rambling collection of towns, after slaying the Minotaur,
Crommyonian sow, Procrustes and a whole herd of centaurs!
The lawgiver of Athens, the hero-king who nationalised
A rambling collection of towns, after slaying the Minotaur,
Crommyonian sow, Procrustes and a whole herd of centaurs!
August 20, 2019
Having resolved to read Plutarch’s Parallel Lives in its entirety, I decided to begin at the beginning, with the “biography” of Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur and founder of the Athenian state. Unfortunately, this may have been a mistake.
Plutarch—a Boeotian Greek of the first century A.D., a city magistrate and priest of the oracle of Delphi—presents his “parallel lives” as comparative examples from Greek and Roman History. The first pair, appropriately is Theseus and Romulus, the legendary first rulers of their people.
The biography problem with these two great mean is that they are too legendary, their historical reality—if indeed there be history here—muddied by competing local traditions and mired in conjecture. Plutarch does his best to catalog the variants, and to speculate further upon what is already a clump of conjecture, but the result is neither narrative nor even historiography but rather a cluster of interpretations of distinct events ordered by a spurious chronology.
Still, though, there’s diverting stuff here, though far from reliable. Here, for example, is Plutarch explaining away the marvelous story of the Athenian youths offered as sacrifice to the Cretan Minotaur (half man, half bull) in the Labyrinth of King Minos:
. . . 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 . . . gave, as a reward to the victors, these youths, who in the mean time 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.
January 4, 2018
Behind the Legend
4 January 2017
Well, I've now sat down and started making my way through the lives of Plutarch. I have read the first volume previously, but didn't really want to review it for two reasons – I wanted to read it again, and the second volume as well; I wanted to write comments on each of the lives individually. The reason for this is technically they are all separate works and were only published at a later date. Further, the volumes are so chunky that it is probably best to slowly make my way through the two volumes as opposed to diving into them all at once. Oh, and I will also mention that the edition that I am reading is the Dryden edition, which as far as I'm concerned in superior to any of the versions that came later (or before for that matter), and much better than the Penguin editions that only offer selections of the lives, and don't include the comparisons.
So, without further ado, let us talk about Theseus, the king who establish Athens as a power.
The first thing we think about when we hear of Theseus is that he was the guy that killed the minotaur, but Plutarch puts paid to that whole myth and actually deals with Theseus the man as opposed to Theseus the myth. In fact, as I read this I noticed that he referred to quite a few sources in constructing this biography, and would even comment on the numerous contradictions. This isn't all that surprising considering that Theseus lived before the dark age descended upon Greece, so all that we really have is myth and stories that were passed down by word of mouth. In fact there is a lot more to Theseus in Greek legend than the slaying of the minotaur. The story of Hippolytus is probably story that is referred to more often, though that has a lot to do with it being a tragedy.
The thing with Minos is the suggestion is that it was a story that was created by the King himself, and in reality the tribute in the form of teenagers that were being sent by Athens were basically enslaved, and even sold on at a later date. In a way the minotaur myth was created simply to add to Minos' perceived power, and to also to prevent any form of rebellion (and the initial tribute was established as a punishment for the murder of his son). Mind you, I suspect that there may have been a labyrinth, and the minotaur, which in Greek translates to 'the bull of Minos', did exist, but there wasn't any bull man, just a really nasty bull. Ironically, Plutarch also tells us a story of how Theseus killed a bull that was terrorising another city on the Greek mainland.
The story though is about Theseus the king, and the person himself. Mind you, Plutarch does suggest that when we are looking at this time, we are looking at a time that exists at the fringes of human knowledge. His comment at the beginning is that this is as far back as he is willing to go, because beyond Theseus there is only speculation. Plutarch also wrote a 'life of Heracles', though unfortunately that biography has been lost to us. Note also that Theseus lived prior to the Trojan war, so if Plutarch is satisfied that Theseus was a real person, then no doubt he believed in the authenticity of the Trojan war.
While this is only the first I have read, and also a rather short one as well, it is interesting to note Theseus' death. Honestly, he wasn't a man of outstanding character, and in fact is painted as being a bit of a womaniser. Plutarch doesn't seem to be all that impressed with this, though there is some debate as to the fate of Ariadne (one story was that she was heavily pregnant and couldn't handle the sea voyage so was left on an island to give birth, but didn't survive childbirth). Anyway, it seems that he died a rather ignoble death – he was murdered as an exile. Not surprising as he was a pretty popular person who ruled Athens with a light hand, which meant that he got caught up in the internal politics, and then found himself at the mercy of a particularly jealous king. However, like all legends, his legacy lived on, and his bones were eventually brought back where he was given a burial fit for a hero, and a king.
4 January 2017
Well, I've now sat down and started making my way through the lives of Plutarch. I have read the first volume previously, but didn't really want to review it for two reasons – I wanted to read it again, and the second volume as well; I wanted to write comments on each of the lives individually. The reason for this is technically they are all separate works and were only published at a later date. Further, the volumes are so chunky that it is probably best to slowly make my way through the two volumes as opposed to diving into them all at once. Oh, and I will also mention that the edition that I am reading is the Dryden edition, which as far as I'm concerned in superior to any of the versions that came later (or before for that matter), and much better than the Penguin editions that only offer selections of the lives, and don't include the comparisons.
So, without further ado, let us talk about Theseus, the king who establish Athens as a power.
The first thing we think about when we hear of Theseus is that he was the guy that killed the minotaur, but Plutarch puts paid to that whole myth and actually deals with Theseus the man as opposed to Theseus the myth. In fact, as I read this I noticed that he referred to quite a few sources in constructing this biography, and would even comment on the numerous contradictions. This isn't all that surprising considering that Theseus lived before the dark age descended upon Greece, so all that we really have is myth and stories that were passed down by word of mouth. In fact there is a lot more to Theseus in Greek legend than the slaying of the minotaur. The story of Hippolytus is probably story that is referred to more often, though that has a lot to do with it being a tragedy.
The thing with Minos is the suggestion is that it was a story that was created by the King himself, and in reality the tribute in the form of teenagers that were being sent by Athens were basically enslaved, and even sold on at a later date. In a way the minotaur myth was created simply to add to Minos' perceived power, and to also to prevent any form of rebellion (and the initial tribute was established as a punishment for the murder of his son). Mind you, I suspect that there may have been a labyrinth, and the minotaur, which in Greek translates to 'the bull of Minos', did exist, but there wasn't any bull man, just a really nasty bull. Ironically, Plutarch also tells us a story of how Theseus killed a bull that was terrorising another city on the Greek mainland.
The story though is about Theseus the king, and the person himself. Mind you, Plutarch does suggest that when we are looking at this time, we are looking at a time that exists at the fringes of human knowledge. His comment at the beginning is that this is as far back as he is willing to go, because beyond Theseus there is only speculation. Plutarch also wrote a 'life of Heracles', though unfortunately that biography has been lost to us. Note also that Theseus lived prior to the Trojan war, so if Plutarch is satisfied that Theseus was a real person, then no doubt he believed in the authenticity of the Trojan war.
While this is only the first I have read, and also a rather short one as well, it is interesting to note Theseus' death. Honestly, he wasn't a man of outstanding character, and in fact is painted as being a bit of a womaniser. Plutarch doesn't seem to be all that impressed with this, though there is some debate as to the fate of Ariadne (one story was that she was heavily pregnant and couldn't handle the sea voyage so was left on an island to give birth, but didn't survive childbirth). Anyway, it seems that he died a rather ignoble death – he was murdered as an exile. Not surprising as he was a pretty popular person who ruled Athens with a light hand, which meant that he got caught up in the internal politics, and then found himself at the mercy of a particularly jealous king. However, like all legends, his legacy lived on, and his bones were eventually brought back where he was given a burial fit for a hero, and a king.
June 23, 2022
The Life of Theseus by Plutarch
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
I read this for the Online Great Books.
I found this to be difficult reading. Plutarch's interest was in writing biographies that would teach moral virtues to their readers. Theseus certainly ranks as chief among those who can model such virtues, mostly because he was a legendary figure, rather than an actual person.
That said, however, one of the most interesting things about the Life of Theseus is that Plutarch treats Theseus as an entirely mortal man. There is no sense in the text that Plutarch thought he was writing about a legend.
All of the legendary details are here. Theseus defeats various brigands who rob and kill in a variety of improbable ways. He frees Athens from Minos. In Plutarch's version, there is no minotaur and a realistic explanation is given for the labyrinth. Daedulus dies near Sicily, but it has nothing to do with flying.
Plutarch packs on the details. I wondered what sources Plutarch was able to use.
I probably should have come up with a few moral lessons, but, unfortunately, that seemed to elude me in the details.
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
I read this for the Online Great Books.
I found this to be difficult reading. Plutarch's interest was in writing biographies that would teach moral virtues to their readers. Theseus certainly ranks as chief among those who can model such virtues, mostly because he was a legendary figure, rather than an actual person.
That said, however, one of the most interesting things about the Life of Theseus is that Plutarch treats Theseus as an entirely mortal man. There is no sense in the text that Plutarch thought he was writing about a legend.
All of the legendary details are here. Theseus defeats various brigands who rob and kill in a variety of improbable ways. He frees Athens from Minos. In Plutarch's version, there is no minotaur and a realistic explanation is given for the labyrinth. Daedulus dies near Sicily, but it has nothing to do with flying.
Plutarch packs on the details. I wondered what sources Plutarch was able to use.
I probably should have come up with a few moral lessons, but, unfortunately, that seemed to elude me in the details.
Read
August 3, 2019Plutarch goes far back here to a time in which history blends with myth. He likens his effort to record the life of Theseus, to that of a geographer, trying to map a country beyond the boundary of the known world, but Theseus was too important a figure to neglect, especially when he was trying to compare someone in his epic series of biographies to Romulus. Theseus was a king and a hero in the early history of Athens, a deeply flawed individual nonetheless, but a very capable one, well intentioned often enough, who significantly affected the early history not only of Athens, but of Greece in general.
This was an age when men were stronger as recorded by Homer as well. However many apparently were using their powers to commit crimes, “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...taking the benefit of their superior strength in the exercise of inhumanity and cruelty...upon every thing that fell into their hands”
To match them thankfully there were heroes. “Some of these [villains], 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.”
Theseus decided to help clean up the bandit infested countryside, and he builds up his reputation by killing a rogues gallery of memorable characters such as Sinnis: the Bender of Pines, Sciron who would command travelers passing by to wash his feet and kick them down a cliff, Termerus who killed travelers by butting heads with them, and Procrustes who would lay travelers in a bed and make them fit its length whether by stretching them out or cutting off their feet, forever lending his name to similes for egalitarian schemes.
Theseus' next task was to deal with the Minotaur, and the burden of having to send Athenian youths as sacrifices to Crete. Plutarch offers the traditional story, but in a typical fashion, is skeptical of it and tries to offer an explanation for what it could mean. In the former, Androgeus, the son of King Minos is murdered in the vicinity of Athens, and Minos wages war by which he manages to levy a tribute of sacrifice. Every nine years, seven young Athenian men and seven virgins are offered sent to Minos to perish in the Labyrinth where the monster lives.
Plutarch does not doubt the historicity of the Androgeus incident, but perhaps the labyrinth was simply a prison, and the youths were given as slaves to the victors of the Cretan games that the king instituted in memory of his son. The champion of the games was a man called...Taurus. In this version Theseus defeats Taurus as well. In fact Minos had a reputation as one of the wisest kings of the heroic age, and his judge Rhadamanthus as one of the wisest judges, so in that sense the more mild version of the story fits. Even back then there were conflicting versions of the story and Plutarch seems to express frustration at the situation where there could even have been two Minos'.
In the traditional story, Theseus sets out to kill the Minotaur and succeeds with the help of Ariadne and her thread. He had promised his father that on his return the sail would be white if he succeeded and black if he had been killed. The sail is the wrong color on the return, and Aegeus, the father of Theseus falls into the sea out of grief, by which the Aegean is then named after him.
The ship used in the expedition was preserved and set apart as an exhibit or a monument. It was maintained and rebuilt, and gained philosophical fame, as the material in it had been so thoroughly replaced that thinkers began to question whether it was still the same ship.
In the realm of politics “he laid down his regal power and proceeded to order a commonwealth...he invited all strangers to come and enjoy equal privileges with the natives”, but also divided the population “into three distinct ranks, the noblemen, the husbandmen, and artificers.”
Theseus' domestic life is a record of shame. As the whole world knows he married Ariadne, left her pregnant and abandoned her on the island of Naxos. “There are also other traditions of the marriages of Theseus, neither honorable in their occasions nor fortunate in their events, which yet were never represented in the Greek plays. In some sort of proto-Trojan War, Theseus even kidnaps Helen, causing her brothers Castor and Pollux to wage war on Athens a war which they win, and then they actually endear themselves to the Athenian population. Theseus is exiled and imprisoned only to be rescued by Hercules.
He returns to an Athens that is not as familiar to him “the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty” Theseus even finds himself confronted by “demagogues and factions”, inevitable in a democracy, and of course it was Theseus who helped develop democracy in Athens, so I'm not sure what he expected. Nonetheless he sends away his children from Athens in disgust, and curses the people of Athens, a tragic fate for one of the city's greatest heroes.
On the island of Scyros, Theseus either dies of an accident or is assassinated in favor of Menesthenus the then current leader of Athens.
Despite dying in exile, in enmity with the people of Athens, his reputation recovered over time. His tomb was found amidst a portent, and the people of Athens returned his bones to the city. “His tomb is a sanctuary and refuge for slaves, and all those of mean condition that fly from the persecution of men in power, in memory that Theseus while he lived was an assisted and protector of the distressed”
This was an age when men were stronger as recorded by Homer as well. However many apparently were using their powers to commit crimes, “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...taking the benefit of their superior strength in the exercise of inhumanity and cruelty...upon every thing that fell into their hands”
To match them thankfully there were heroes. “Some of these [villains], 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.”
Theseus decided to help clean up the bandit infested countryside, and he builds up his reputation by killing a rogues gallery of memorable characters such as Sinnis: the Bender of Pines, Sciron who would command travelers passing by to wash his feet and kick them down a cliff, Termerus who killed travelers by butting heads with them, and Procrustes who would lay travelers in a bed and make them fit its length whether by stretching them out or cutting off their feet, forever lending his name to similes for egalitarian schemes.
Theseus' next task was to deal with the Minotaur, and the burden of having to send Athenian youths as sacrifices to Crete. Plutarch offers the traditional story, but in a typical fashion, is skeptical of it and tries to offer an explanation for what it could mean. In the former, Androgeus, the son of King Minos is murdered in the vicinity of Athens, and Minos wages war by which he manages to levy a tribute of sacrifice. Every nine years, seven young Athenian men and seven virgins are offered sent to Minos to perish in the Labyrinth where the monster lives.
Plutarch does not doubt the historicity of the Androgeus incident, but perhaps the labyrinth was simply a prison, and the youths were given as slaves to the victors of the Cretan games that the king instituted in memory of his son. The champion of the games was a man called...Taurus. In this version Theseus defeats Taurus as well. In fact Minos had a reputation as one of the wisest kings of the heroic age, and his judge Rhadamanthus as one of the wisest judges, so in that sense the more mild version of the story fits. Even back then there were conflicting versions of the story and Plutarch seems to express frustration at the situation where there could even have been two Minos'.
In the traditional story, Theseus sets out to kill the Minotaur and succeeds with the help of Ariadne and her thread. He had promised his father that on his return the sail would be white if he succeeded and black if he had been killed. The sail is the wrong color on the return, and Aegeus, the father of Theseus falls into the sea out of grief, by which the Aegean is then named after him.
The ship used in the expedition was preserved and set apart as an exhibit or a monument. It was maintained and rebuilt, and gained philosophical fame, as the material in it had been so thoroughly replaced that thinkers began to question whether it was still the same ship.
In the realm of politics “he laid down his regal power and proceeded to order a commonwealth...he invited all strangers to come and enjoy equal privileges with the natives”, but also divided the population “into three distinct ranks, the noblemen, the husbandmen, and artificers.”
Theseus' domestic life is a record of shame. As the whole world knows he married Ariadne, left her pregnant and abandoned her on the island of Naxos. “There are also other traditions of the marriages of Theseus, neither honorable in their occasions nor fortunate in their events, which yet were never represented in the Greek plays. In some sort of proto-Trojan War, Theseus even kidnaps Helen, causing her brothers Castor and Pollux to wage war on Athens a war which they win, and then they actually endear themselves to the Athenian population. Theseus is exiled and imprisoned only to be rescued by Hercules.
He returns to an Athens that is not as familiar to him “the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty” Theseus even finds himself confronted by “demagogues and factions”, inevitable in a democracy, and of course it was Theseus who helped develop democracy in Athens, so I'm not sure what he expected. Nonetheless he sends away his children from Athens in disgust, and curses the people of Athens, a tragic fate for one of the city's greatest heroes.
On the island of Scyros, Theseus either dies of an accident or is assassinated in favor of Menesthenus the then current leader of Athens.
Despite dying in exile, in enmity with the people of Athens, his reputation recovered over time. His tomb was found amidst a portent, and the people of Athens returned his bones to the city. “His tomb is a sanctuary and refuge for slaves, and all those of mean condition that fly from the persecution of men in power, in memory that Theseus while he lived was an assisted and protector of the distressed”
March 10, 2016
EPIC! :)
February 5, 2022
This book was fine, but read very much like a biography (Kind of the point lol). Plutarch made sure the include tons of conflicting viewpoints which made the story style of the book feel more like a research paper.
March 7, 2024
this was unbelievably boring
May 16, 2024
A must read for classicists, this is a goldmine of minutia. I had not realized that Theseus was such a hero for democracy or that he was the first to give a palm as a prize.
November 21, 2021
Founder of democratic Athens.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews