The Theseus Cycle

Overview

The Theseus Cycle is the story of two royal houses, and it starts in Crete, not Athens. Apollodorus's Library gives the fullest connected account, and this page follows it. Minos won the Cretan throne by asking Poseidon for a bull from the sea and promising to sacrifice it. He kept the bull instead. Poseidon made the animal savage and made Minos's wife Pasiphae desire it, and she bore the Minotaur. Minos shut the creature in the Labyrinth that Daedalus built. Heracles later caught the bull for Eurystheus and let it go, a labor told in The Heracles Cycle. It wandered as far as Marathon in Attica.

Athens entered the feud through a death. Aegeus, still childless, had lain with Aethra at Troezen and left a sword and sandals under a rock for their son. At the Panathenaic games in Athens, Minos's son Androgeus beat every competitor. Apollodorus says Aegeus then sent him against the bull of Marathon, which killed him. Minos made war on Athens until famine and plague forced the city to accept his terms: seven youths and seven maidens as food for the Minotaur. Apollodorus says the tribute sailed every year, while Plutarch and Ovid say every ninth year. When the third tribute fell due, Theseus sailed with it. How he killed the monster and escaped the maze is told in Theseus and the Minotaur.

The cycle does not end in the Labyrinth. Minos's daughter Ariadne helped Theseus and sailed away with him, and the sources cannot agree whether she died or became a god's wife. On the way home Theseus forgot to raise the white sail his father had asked for. Aegeus saw the black sail from the Acropolis and threw himself down, and Theseus became king. Years later he married Ariadne's sister Phaedra. She fell in love with his son Hippolytus and accused him falsely. Theseus cursed his son through Poseidon, and a bull sent up from the surf panicked his horses. In Apollodorus, a bull from Poseidon opens the cycle and a bull from the sea closes it.

In This Topic (8)

1. 1
   

   Minos Character

   Minos is the legendary king of Crete, born to Zeus and Europa, whose broken vow to Poseidon produced the Minotaur and whose war on Athens produced the tribute Theseus ended.

   The Cretan side of the feud. His broken vow to Poseidon produced the Minotaur, and his war over Androgeus produced the tribute. Homer's Odyssey also shows him in Hades with a golden scepter, settling the disputes of the dead.

2. 2
   

   Minotaur Character

   The Minotaur is the half-man, half-bull monster imprisoned in the Labyrinth of Crete.

3. 3
   

   Aegeus Character

   Aegeus is the king of Athens who fathered Theseus at Troezen, sheltered Medea, and killed himself when his son's ship came home under a black sail.

4. 4
   

   Theseus Character

   Theseus is the legendary Athenian hero who slew the Minotaur in the Labyrinth of Crete.

5. 5
   

   Ariadne Character

   Ariadne is the Cretan princess who gave Theseus the thread out of the Labyrinth. The ancient sources disagree on whether she then died or became the immortal wife of Dionysus.

6. 6
   

   Phaedra Character

   Phaedra is the Cretan princess and wife of Theseus whose love for her stepson Hippolytus ends in a false accusation and two deaths.

   The aftermath. A daughter of Minos married to the son of Aegeus, she brings the Cretan house back into Athens, and her false charge against Hippolytus ends Theseus's line through his first son.

7. 7
   

   Hippolytus Character

   Hippolytus is the son of Theseus and an Amazon, a chaste hunter devoted to Artemis who died dragged by his own horses after his father cursed him on a false charge.

   The last victim of the feud. Theseus's son by an Amazon, he dies when Poseidon answers his father's curse with a bull from the sea, the same god whose bull began the cycle in Crete.

8. 8

   Daedalus and the Labyrinth Story

   Daedalus's years on Crete run from exile to a manhunt. Banished from Athens for killing his nephew, he built the wooden cow, then the Labyrinth for the Minotaur. He gave Ariadne the thread, and Minos jailed him for it. After his flight, Minos chased him to Sicily with a spiral shell and died at the court of Cocalus.

   The maze's maker and its weak point: in Apollodorus's Epitome, Daedalus suggests the thread that lets Theseus out, and Minos's hunt for him ends the Cretan story in Sicily.

Where Accounts Differ

• Ariadne's end: death on Dia or immortal marriage
• Dia or Naxos
• how often Athens sent the tribute
• how Androgeus died
• which bull Heracles caught
• how the feud with Crete ended

• Ariadne's end is the central disagreement of the cycle. Homer's Odyssey (11.321-325) has Artemis kill her on Dia on the word of Dionysus. Hesiod's Theogony (947-949) makes her the wife of Dionysus, deathless and unageing. Apollodorus's Epitome (1.9) has Dionysus carry her from Naxos to Lemnos. Plutarch (Theseus 20) adds suicide by hanging, death in childbirth on Cyprus after Paeon of Amathus, and a Naxian tradition of two Ariadnes, the later of whom died on Naxos.
• Frazer's note to Apollodorus (Epitome 1.9) says later writers such as Diodorus identified Homer's Dia with Naxos, while a modern commentator placed it at a small island off the north coast of Crete. Whether Homer's Ariadne died on Naxos depends on that identification.
• How often the tribute sailed differs by source. Apollodorus's Library (3.15.8) says the Athenians sent seven youths and seven maidens every year. Plutarch (Theseus 15) says every nine years, as most writers agree, and Ovid's Metamorphoses (8.152-182) speaks of victims sent every ninth year.
• Androgeus's death is told several ways. Apollodorus (Library 3.15.7) has Aegeus send him against the bull of Marathon, or has jealous rivals ambush him on the road to Thebes. Pausanias (1.27.10) names the Cretan bull loose in Attica as the killer. Plutarch (Theseus 15) says only that he was treacherously murdered in Attica.
• The bull Heracles caught is identified two ways. Apollodorus (Library 2.5.7) reports Acusilaus's view that it was the bull that carried Europa, and the view of others that it was the bull Poseidon sent to Minos, the father of the Minotaur.
• How the feud with Crete ended differs. Apollodorus's Epitome (1.17) has Theseus receive Phaedra in marriage from Deucalion, son of Minos. Plutarch (Theseus 19) reports Clidemus, for whom Theseus sailed on Cnossus, killed Deucalion and made a treaty with Ariadne as ruler of Crete.
• Plutarch is cited from the Dryden-Clough translation held in the site's source library, with chapter numbers following the member pages, which were checked against Bernadotte Perrin's Loeb translation.

Related Topics

• Topic The Heracles Cycle
• Topic Monsters and Creatures of Greek Myth
• Topic The Underworld and Death

Related Terms

• Term The Labyrinth
• Term Labrys
• Term Oracle
• Term The Underworld

Sources