Hesiod, Theogony -- 8th c. BCE
Bacchylides, Dithyrambs # 17 &
18 -- 5th c. BCE
Euripides, Hippolytus, Ion, Suppliant
Women and Medea -- 5th c. BCE
Catullus, Poem # 64 -- 1st c.
BCE
Ovid, Metamorphoses and Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love")--
1st c. BCE & CE
Statius, Thebaid -- 1st c. CE
Plutarch, "Life
of Theseus" and "Life of Cimon" from Parallel Lives -- 1st-2nd c. CE
The most important thing to note from this section at the beginning of ch. 21 is that the Athenians claimed they were autochthonous, in other words, there from the beginning of time. That Athenians didn't come from elsewhere, but always lived in Attica. This is almost certainly untrue. The Greek culture as we know it was largely due to the invasions of the Indo-Europeans. Coming as they did from the North and East, Attica would have been one of the first places they encountered. Still, it may say something about the Athenian mindset that they claim they came from no place else, but are one with Attica.
Also note that Athena is early associated with the city, too. The contest between Poseidon (some of the early kings of Athens have a connection to the sea god, and Athens was a sea power) and Athena was supposed to have taken place within Cecrops' time.
The type of bittersweet love story that really appeals to Ovid. The death of Procris was unnecessary, a foolish accident based on a series of misunderstandings. There may be a lesson there about getting one's facts straight before acting, but it's an easier line to preach than to practice, I imagine. Also, in a society where women were so dependent on men for their livelihood, it must have been very difficult to avoid jealousy, for it would have been mixed with fear.
What a strange and gruesome story -- again something that would appeal to Ovid. Shakespeare made use of this story in his tragedy, Titus Andronicus. But Shakespeare one-ups Ovid in a much grimmer tale. A recent film version of this play, simply called Titus came out at the beginning of the year. It is probably now available on video. But to think that the story was an etiological story about the nightengale and swallow; pretty sick story for two charming birds. It's interesting that Ovid (or his sources) mixed up Philomela and Procne.
Theseus might be seen as the Athenian Hercules, and he is sometimes paired with that great hero (as in the Battle against the Amazons). Now keep in mind that Athens, though the source of much of the Greek literature we have, and seen by the Romans and later societies as the epitome of Greek culture, had little importance during the "heroic" period, and consequently figures little in authors like Homer and Hesiod. Theseus' position gets a boost from the desire of the Athenians to have their own heroic tradition. By the time of the Trojan War, Theseus is already ousted (this may have to do more with Homer's not knowing Theseus; the omission, though, had to be explained).
Like Hercules, he has a series of tasks he performs, though only the Minotaur expedition might be seen as a task. The other tasks are deeds Theseus happens upon, on his way from Troezen to Athens. His various foes, though, sound like mobsters, don't they? (Periphetes, a.k.a. Corynetes [the "Club"]; Procrustes [the "Stretcher"]; Sinis, a.k.a. Pityocamptes ["Pine Bender"]). Though not assigned these various foes, Theseus still comes away a defender of the weak and generally improves the life of his fellow Athenians.
Theseus has a rather strange recogniton scene with his father. You see, he grew up away from Athens, but when Theseus was a young man, he was given his father's sword, which happened to be hidden under a rock. When he made it to Athens, his step-mother, Medea, a witch from the city of Colchis, tried to poison him, but when Theseus used the sword as part of his place setting -- dad recognized it and recognized Theseus as his son.
Mary Renault in her book, The King Must Die, suggests that the Athenian youths were sent to Crete because Crete was a major power and Athens was a satellite. In Crete, these Athenian youths had the position of servants, but were not killed by the Minotaur. The bull was an important symbol for the Cretans (rather like it is for Spaniards today) and the Athenians brought home stories about this wealthy city and its tremendous, but confusing, palace, and about how the Cretans held athletic contests in which the bull figured. From this beginning, perhaps, came the story of the Minotaur, which lived in the Labyrinth. At any rate, Theseus is then turned into a monster slayer, a hero like Hercules.
Ariadne, who is King Minos' daughter, and who aids Theseus, may actually have been some sort of fertility goddess to begin with. By the time she appears in the story, though, she has been "demoted" to a mortal daughter of the King. The evidence supporting her divine persona would include the fact that she becomes Dionysus' lover, and her "abandonment" by Theseus is a necessary result of stories being merged. As it stands, though, Theseus seems rather a jerk, getting help from Ariadne, and then abandoning her on a beach somewhere. The worshippers of Dionsysus, though, used that story to suggest the saviorlike qualities of Dionysus, who rescued Ariadne and brought her into a world of bliss ("I once was lost, but now am found..."). Richard Strauss wrote an opera on this story called Ariadne auf Naxos.
And what's with the forgetting about the sails? It seems almost done so that Theseus could become the king, but the idea that anyone could forget something basic like that is ridiculous. You can almost see Theseus on deck thinking, "There's something I'm supposed to remember." Then he hears his father scream and throw himself into sea -- "oh, yeah, that was it -- I was supposed to change the sails." Very strange.
Theseus is linked with the Thessalian king, Pirithoüs. When Pirithoüs got married, and a battle broke out between the Lapiths (Pirithoüs' people) and the wild Centaurs, Theseus was there. That battle was featured on the West Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and in the metopes on the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis in Athens. And earlier, the two friends both schemed to kidnap Helen and Persephone to be their brides. In trying to get Persephone, they had to invade the Underworld. (I once had a friend who referred to this expedition as the "panty raid" of the Underworld -- like a "panty raid," it was an ill-conceived and rather puerile action). Of course, they were caught and would have to spend some time as prisoners there. Only the actions of Theseus' friend, Hercules, saved the Athenian king.
Despite his recklessness, and his wayward ways with the ladies, Theseus is also generally cast in Greek literature (most of it from Athens) as the ideal king. Athens in these myths is almost like a democracy ruled by a benevolent ruler who upholds the rights of his people. Such a king did not exist in the Bronze Age -- this is entirely a later construction. Still, just as Hercules represents control and wise choices for the Stoics, Theseus serves as the model up to which all Athenians wished their leaders rose.
The story of Daedalus and Icarus is connected to that of the Minotaur. Daedalus was an Athenian, the greatest craftsman of his age, and he created the Labyrinth to keep the Minotaur trapped. Minos did not want this craftsman to leave his service so he kept him a prisoner. Daedalus hit upon the idea of making wings and flying back to Athens. He made two pairs, one for himself, the other for his son, Icarus. Being made of wax and feathers, Daedalus realized that the wings would not stand up to the heat of the sun for long, and he warned his son against flying too high where the wax would certainly melt. The giddy exhilaration of flight was too much for the boy, and he flew as high as he could, with the result that he died by crashing into the sea. The picture below, entitled Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Breughel (1553) suggests that Icarus' fall, in the greater scheme of things might lightly go unnoticed. You can barely see Icarus' legs in the lower right portion of the picture. How different is Henri Matisse's Icarus, done for his series Jazz -- there it is the boy's plucky courage and daring to go to heights unseen before that Matisse admires, the boy's burning heart.
For class Powerpoint presentation on this chapter, click here.