Table Of ContentTHESEUS AND ATHENS
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THESEUS
AND
ATHENS
Henry J. Walker
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1995
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 1995 by Henry J. Walker
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademarjk iof Oxford University Press i
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
stored in a retrieval systems, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,,or otherwise
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicalion Data
Walker, Henry J.
Theseus and Athens / Henry J. Walker,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-508908-1
1. Greek literature—Greece—Athens—History and criticism.
2. Theseus (Greek mythology) in literature. 3. Kings and rulers in
literature. 4. Athens (Greece)—Civilization. 5. Heroes in
literature. I. Title.
PA3015.R5T48 1994
880.9'351—dc20 93-44486
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
D. M. Patris
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Preface
I would like to tell, or rather warn, the reader what the scope of this work
is. It is nothing like an analysis of the myth of Theseus as a whole. It con-
centrates instead on his image as an ideal ruler of Athens, and as a model
for Athenian citizens to follow. I have always been surprised at the power-
ful grip that the idea of monarchy had on the citizens of Athens and has
continued to hold on those of many other democracies since. There are no
doubt strong psychological reasons for this rooted in the individual psyche,
but I am more interested in the phenomenon as it affected the Athenians as
a whole, so I tend to adopt more political explanations for it.
My work falls into two main parts. The first includes chapters 1 and 2,
and examines the image of Theseus up until the the fifth century. I try to
show why the Greeks were so interested in their former kings, and how
Theseus developed in the imagination of the Athenians from a minor local
ruler to a great democratic king of the entire country of Athens. The period
with which I am dealing in this part is one of comparative obscurity in the
history of Athens, and I shall have to rely considerably on the works of
previous scholars in the field rather than on the evidence of the Greeks
themselves, for they have left us very little indeed.
The second part is the core of my book. It focuses on the image of
Theseus as Athenian citizen and king in several major works of classical
literature from the fifth century—the poems of Bacchylides and the plays
of Sophocles and Euripides. Each of the four chapters in this section ex-
amines the major contradictions in the fifth-century image of Theseus,
which is what these writers were implicitly doing in their own creative
works. Thus, each chapter asks a question about the way in which the Athe-
nians visualized their early history, a past which was surrounded by an aura
of mythical splendor. How could the Athenians accept a young warrior from
viii Preface
a primitive age as a role model for Athenian adolescents? How could they
admire a Bronze Age warlord as a great ruler of their country? How could
they imagine such a king to be the founder of Athenian democracy? And
how could a hero-king represent the higher ideals of their republic? The
imagination of the Athenians, wrapped up in the magical world of Greek
myth, seems to have thrived on contradictions such as these.
The brief final chapter looks at what happened to Theseus at the end of
the fifth century when the world of the city-states and their mythical heroes
started to collapse. It shows how the historians of Athens wished to pre-
serve the traditions of their country for future generations, and how they
tried to create an official version of the story of Theseus, who had now
become a historical figure rather than a mythical hero.
I would like to thank Frederick Ahl, Kevin Clinton, Gordon Kirkwood,
and Phillip Mitsis of Cornell University and Nicole Loraux of the Ecole
des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales for guiding the research that led to
this book. And I would like to thank my editor, Angela Blackburn, and my
anonymous readers for transforming that research into this book. I would
also like to thank my Dean, Martha Crunkleton, my Chair, Lorrie
O'Higgins, and my colleagues at Bates College for their friendship and
support. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Nikky Singh, for inspiring
me and encouraging me to complete this work.
Lewiston, Maine H. J. W.
September 1993
Contents
1. Myth and Ritual: Hero Worship in Greece and the Origins
of the Theseus Myth, 3
Kings and Republics, 3
Greek Heroes, 4
The Origins of the Myth of Theseus, 9
The Myth of Theseus, 15
The Cult of Theseus, 20
2. Benevolent Dictators and the Paradox of a Democratic King, 35
Theseus and the Peisistratids, 35
Hero Worship and Tyranny, 47
Theseus and Cleisthenes' Democracy, 50
Cimon and Theseus, 55
Athenian Myth and Ionian Science, 61
Theseus in Periclean Athens, 64
3. The Trozenian Outsider, 83
Bacchylides 17: The Man from the Sea, 84
Bacchylides 18: Ephebe and Foreigner, 94
4. The Hero-King, 113
Euripides' Hippolytus: Exorcising the Ghost of Monarchy, 113
Euripides' Madness of Heracles: An Old-fashioned Hero, 127
5. The Democratic Ruler, 143
The Royal Democracy, 143
The Democratic Monarch of Euripides' Suppliant Women, 146
Description:Theseus is celebrated as the greatest of Athenian heroes. This work explores what he meant to the Athenians at the height of their city-state in the fifth century B.C. Assembling material that has been scattered in scholarly works, Henry Walker examines the evidence for the development of the myth a
