Heroes
Theseus
THEE-see-us
The Athenian who killed the Minotaur, and whose forgetfulness killed his father.
Theseus was raised in Troezen without knowing his father. Aegeus, king of Athens, had left a sword and a pair of sandals under an enormous rock and said that when the boy could lift it, he could come. Poseidon has a claim on him too — several sources give him two fathers, mortal and divine, which is a common way of saying a hero is more than he looks.
He lifted the rock and chose to walk to Athens overland, which was the dangerous way, and cleared the road of bandits as he went. He killed each of them by their own method: Procrustes, who stretched or cut travellers to fit his bed, was fitted to it himself. That habit — turning a villain's device back on him — is his signature long before Crete.
In Athens he volunteered for the tribute to the Minotaur. Ariadne gave him the thread; he killed the creature and came out. Then the story turns on him. He abandoned Ariadne on Naxos while she slept, and sailing home forgot to change his ship's black sails for white as agreed. Aegeus, watching from the cliff, saw black, and threw himself into the sea that now carries his name.
His later reign is the making of Athens in legend — he is credited with uniting Attica into one city — but the myths never let the victory be clean. He won the maze and lost his father on the same voyage.
Gods involved
Theseus: common questions
Was Theseus a son of Poseidon or of Aegeus?
The sources give him both. He is raised as Aegeus's son and claims Poseidon as a divine father — a doubled parentage the myths use to mark a hero as exceptional rather than to settle biology.
How did Theseus's father die?
Theseus agreed to hoist white sails if he survived Crete and forgot. Aegeus saw the black sails from the cliff, believed his son dead, and threw himself into the sea — the Aegean.
Which god is your parent?
Twelve questions and the campfire decides.