Legendary Passages #0117,

Plutarch's Life of Theseus,

Section [XXVI.],

Antiope & Pirithous.

Previously, Theseus was crowned king of Athens after returning from the labyrinth without Ariadne. In this passage he loved and lost the amazon princess known as Antiope; and befriended Pirithous, whom he would follow into the depths of Hades itself.

Antiope & Pirithous,

a Legendary Passage from,

Bernadotte Perrin translating,

Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,

Life of Theseus,

Sections [XXVI.] - [XXX.]

http://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html

He also made a voyage into the Euxine Sea, as Philochorus and sundry others say, on a campaign with Heracles against the Amazons, and received Antiope as a reward of his valor; but the majority of writers, including Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Herodorus, say that Theseus made this voyage on his own account, after the time of Heracles, and took the Amazon captive; and this is the more probable story. For it is not recorded that any one else among those who shared his expedition took an Amazon captive.  And Bion says that even this Amazon he took and carried off by means of a stratagem. The Amazons, he says, were naturally friendly to men, and did not fly from Theseus when he touched upon their coasts, but actually sent him presents, and he invited the one who brought them to come on board his ship; she came on board, and he put out to sea.

And a certain Menecrates, who published a history of the Bithynian city of Nicaea, says that Theseus, with Antiope on board his ship, spent some time in those parts, and that there chanced to be with him on this expedition three young men of Athens who were brothers, Euneos, Thoas, and Solois. This last, he says, fell in love with Antiope unbeknown to the rest, and revealed his secret to one of his intimate friends. That friend made overtures to Antiope, who positively repulsed the attempt upon her, but treated the matter with discretion and gentleness, and made no denunciation to Theseus.

Then Solois, in despair, threw himself into a river and drowned himself, and Theseus, when he learned the fate of the young man, and what had caused it, was grievously disturbed, and in his distress called to mind a certain oracle which he had once received at Delphi. For it had there been enjoined upon him by the Pythian priestess that when, in a strange land, he should be sorest vexed and full of sorrow, he should found a city there, and leave some of his followers to govern it.  For this cause he founded a city there, and called it, from the Pythian god, Pythopolis, and the adjacent river, Solois, in honor of the young man. And he left there the brothers of Solois, to be the city's presidents and law-givers, and with them Hermus, one of the noblemen of Athens. From him also the Pythopolitans call a place in the city the House of Hermes, incorrectly changing the second syllable, and transferring the honor from a hero to a god.

Well, then, such were the grounds for the war of the Amazons, which seems to have been no trivial nor womanish enterprise for Theseus. For they would not have pitched their camp within the city, nor fought hand to hand battles in the neighborhood of the Pnyx and the Museum, had they not mastered the surrounding country and approached the city with impunity.  Whether, now, as Hellanicus writes, they came round by the Cimmerian Bosporus, which they crossed on the ice, may be doubted; but the fact that they encamped almost in the heart of the city is attested both by the names of the localities there and by the graves of those who fell in battle.

Now for a long time there was hesitation and delay on both sides in making the attack, but finally Theseus, after sacrificing to Fear, in obedience to an oracle, joined battle with the women.  This battle, then, was fought on the day of the month Boedromion on which, down to the present time, the Athenians celebrate the Boedromia.

Cleidemus, who wishes to be minute, writes that the left wing of the Amazons extended to what is now called the Amazoneum, and that with their right they touched the Pnyx at Chrysa; that with this left wing the Athenians fought, engaging the Amazons from the Museum, and that the graves of those who fell are on either side of the street which leads to the gate by the chapel of Chalcodon, which is now called the Peiraic gate.  Here, he says, the Athenians were routed and driven back by the women as far as the shrine of the Eumenides, but those who attacked the invaders from the Palladium and Ardettus and the Lyceum, drove their right wing back as far as to their camp, and slew many of them. And after three months, he says, a treaty of peace was made through the agency of Hippolyta; for Hippolyta is the name which Cleidemus gives to the Amazon whom Theseus married, not Antiope.

But some say that the woman was slain with a javelin by Molpadia, while fighting at Theseus's side, and that the pillar which stands by the sanctuary of Olympian Earth was set up in her memory.  And it is not astonishing that history, when dealing with events of such great antiquity, should wander in uncertainty, indeed, we are also told that the wounded Amazons were secretly sent away to Chalcis by Antiope, and were nursed there, and some were buried there, near what is now called the Amazoneum. But that the war ended in a solemn treaty is attested not only by the naming of the place adjoining the Theseum, which is called Horcomosium, but also by the sacrifice which, in ancient times, was offered to the Amazons before the festival of Theseus.

And the Megarians, too, show a place in their country where Amazons were buried, on the way from the market-place to the place called Rhus, where the Rhomboid stands. And it is said, likewise, that others of them died near Chaeroneia, and were buried on the banks of the little stream which, in ancient times, as it seems, was called Thermodon, but nowadays, Haemon; concerning which names I have written in my Life of Demosthenes. It appears also that not even Thessaly was traversed by the Amazons without opposition, for Amazonian graves are to this day shown in the vicinity of Scotussa and Cynoscephalae.

So much, then, is worthy of mention regarding the Amazons. For the Insurrection of the Amazons, written by the author of the Theseid, telling how, when Theseus married Phaedra, Antiope and the Amazons who fought to avenge her attacked him, and were slain by Heracles, has every appearance of fable and invention.  Theseus did, indeed, marry Phaedra, but this was after the death of Antiope, and he had a son by Antiope, Hippolytus, or, as Pindar says, Demophoon.

As for the calamities which befell Phaedra and the son of Theseus by Antiope, since there is no conflict here between historians and tragic poets, we must suppose that they happened as represented by the poets uniformly.

There are, however, other stories also about marriages of Theseus which were neither honorable in their beginnings nor fortunate in their endings, but these have not been dramatized. For instance, he is said to have carried off Anaxo, a maiden of Troezen, and after slaying Sinis and Cercyon to have ravished their daughters; also to have married Periboea, the mother of Aias, and Phereboea afterwards, and Iope, the daughter of Iphicles; and because of his passion for Aegle, the daughter of Panopeus, as I have already said, he is accused of the desertion of Ariadne, which was not honorable nor even decent; and finally, his rape of Helen is said to have filled Attica with war, and to have brought about at last his banishment and death, of which things I shall speak a little later.

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

He also aided Adrastus in recovering for burial the bodies of those who had fallen before the walls of the Cadmeia, not by mastering the Thebans in battle, as Euripides has it in his tragedy, but by persuading them to a truce; for so most writers say, and Philochorus adds that this was the first truce ever made for recovering the bodies of those slain in battle, although in the accounts of Heracles it is written that Heracles was the first to give back their dead to his enemies. And the graves of the greater part of those who fell before Thebes are shown at Eleutherae, and those of the commanders near Eleusis, and this last burial was a favour which Theseus showed to Adrastus. The account of Euripides in his Suppliants is disproved by that of Aeschylus in his Eleusinians, where Theseus is made to relate the matter as above.

The friendship of Peirithous and Theseus is said to have come about in the following manner. Theseus had a very great reputation for strength and bravery, and Peirithous was desirous of making test and proof of it. Accordingly, he drove Theseus's cattle away from Marathon, and when he learned that their owner was pursuing him in arms, he did not fly, but turned back and met him.  When, however, each beheld the other with astonishment at his beauty and admiration of his daring, they refrained from battle, and Peirithous, stretching out his hand the first, bade Theseus himself be judge of his robbery, for he would willingly submit to any penalty which the other might assign. Then Theseus not only remitted his penalty, but invited him to be a friend and brother in arms; whereupon they ratified their friendship with oaths.

After this, when Peirithous was about to marry Deidameia, he asked Theseus to come to the wedding, and see the country, and become acquainted with the Iapithae. Now he had invited the Centaurs also to the wedding feast. And when these were flown with insolence and wine, and laid hands upon the women, the Lapithae took vengeance upon them. Some of them they slew upon the spot, the rest they afterwards overcame in war and expelled from the country, Theseus fighting with them at the banquet and in the war.

Herodorus, however, says that this was not how it happened, but that the war was already in progress when Theseus came to the aid of the Lapithae and that on his way thither he had his first sight of Heracles, having made it his business to seek him out at Trachis, where the hero was already resting from his wandering and labours; and he says the interview passed with mutual expressions of honor, friendliness, and generous praise.  Notwithstanding, one might better side with those historians who say that the heroes had frequent interviews with one another, and that it was at the instigation of Theseus that Heracles was initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis, and purified before his initiation, when he requested it on account of sundry rash acts.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html

This passage continues with Helen & Phersephone, but our episode has tales of Centaurs & Hippolytus.