LP0045 - Antiope and Pirithous - The Amazon/Athenian War, from Plutarch's Life of Theseus

Legendary Passages #0045 - Antiope and Pirithous - The Amazon/Athenian War, from Plutarch's Life of Theseus. Last time Heracles retrieved the girdle of the Amazon Queen and Theseus made off with their princess. The Amazons waged war to retrieve Princess Antiope, marching all the way to Athens. The war ends in a treaty, but Antiope dies after giving Theseus a son named Hippolytus. Plutarch then recounts the terrible love life of Theseus, including his abduction of a young Helen of Troy. Then we come to Pirithous, who stole his cattle but was so brave and daring that they became the best of friends. Pirithous invited centaurs to his own wedding, but that party exploded into a war known as the Centauromachy. After both become widowed, they decide to next marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus stole Helen, while Pirithous desired Persephone, the wife of Hades. Next time, Heracles retrieves his last two objectives, Cerberus and Apples. http://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html Antiope and Pirithous, a Legendary Passage, from Plutarch's Life of Theseus, translated by Bernadotte Perrin. XXVI. - XXXI. 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 doub