[Theseus
had brains, and that must qualify him for this section as a “pre-Socratic”
quasi-philosopher…] An interesting, albeit indirect, testimony to this effect
is provided by none other than Machiavelli, who selects him for some choice
company here:
“But to come to those who, by their own ability and not through
fortune, have risen to be princes, I say that Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus,
and such like, are the most excellent examples. And although one may not discuss
Moses, he having been a mere executor of the will of God, yet he should be
admired if only for that favor which made him worthy to speak with God.
But in considering Cyrus
and others, who have acquired or founded kingdoms, all will be found admirable;
and if their particular deeds and conduct shall be considered, they will not be
found inferior to those of Moses, although he had so great a preceptor. And in
examining their actions and lives one cannot see that they owed anything to
fortune beyond opportunity, which brought them the material to mould into the
form that seemed best to them. Without that opportunity, their powers of mind
would have been extinguished,--- and without those powers the opportunity would
have come in vain.
It was necessary that Romulus should not remain in Alba, and that
he should be abandoned at his birth, in order that he should become King of Rome and founder of the fatherland.
It was necessary that Cyrus should find the Persians discontented
with the government of the Medes, and the Medes soft and effeminate through
their long peace. Theseus could not have shown his ability, had he not found
the Athenians dispersed. These opportunities, therefore, made those men
fortunate, and their high ability enabled them to recognize the opportunity whereby
their country was ennobled and made famous.” (Machiavelli: The Prince: Chapter VI.)
Thus
having established our hero’s bona fides by now, I hope that the reader does
not expect me to start entertaining him or her with the mythological aspects of
Theseus’s life, which can be found in a thousand proper sources. It is
worthwhile to note, though, that at a fairly advanced age, Theseus King of
Athens was deposed and exiled from his city. His folly, superseding his former
wisdom, is frequently cited as the cause of his downfall, but that folly may
well have been the invention of his ambitious successors, who may have taken
advantage of the old man’s diminishing powers to perform a coup d’état, using
his infirmity, dressed up by them as folly, to justify their hostile takeover.
The good news is that after many years of contemptuous neglect, Theseus was
posthumously restored to his heroic glory, and a cult of him as the greatest
hero of Athens was then firmly established in ancient Greek history. Here is
Plutarch again, to wind up this entry:
“But in succeeding ages, besides several other circumstances which
moved the Athenians to honor Theseus as a demigod, in the battle which was
fought at Marathon against the Medes, many of the soldiers believed that they
saw an apparition of Theseus in arms, rushing on at the head of them against
the barbarians. And after the Median war, Phaedo being archon of Athens, the
Athenians, consulting the oracle at Delphi, were commanded to gather together
the bones of Theseus, and, laying them in some honorable place, keep them as
sacred in the city. But it proved quite difficult to recover those relics, or
so much as to find out the place where they lay, on account of the inhospitable
and savage temper of the barbarous people that inhabited the island. Nevertheless,
afterwards, when Cimon took the island (as is related in his life), and had a
great ambition to find out the place where Theseus was buried, he, by chance,
spied an eagle, upon a rising ground, pecking with her beak and tearing up the
earth with her talons, when all of a sudden it came into his mind, as it were
by some divine inspiration, to dig there, and search for the bones of Theseus.
There were found, in that place, a coffin of a man of more than ordinary size,
and a brazen spear-head, and a sword lying by it, all of which he took aboard
his galley and brought with him to Athens. Upon which the Athenians, greatly
delighted, went out to meet and to receive the relics with splendid processions
and sacrifices, as if it were Theseus himself returning alive to the city. He
lies interred in the middle of the city, near the present gymnasium. His tomb
is a sanctuary and a refuge for slaves, and for all those of mean condition
that fly from the persecution of men in power, in memory that Theseus, while he
lived, was an assister and protector of the distressed, and never refused the
petitions of the afflicted that fled to him…”
That
was a perfect ending to the story of Theseus, a hero of myth and a
“pre-Socratic” of history.
(My
entry The First Spartan is to follow
next.)
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