T HESEUS, THE K ING We left Theseus on board ship with his thirteen compatriots, staring up at Daedalus and Icarus in flight. What with his gnawing guilt at the abandonment of Ariadne and feelings of astonishment and dismay at the sight of Icarus falling to his death, Theseus’s mind was fully occupied as the ship sailed homeward towards Athens. So wrapped in thought were he and the sea-captain that even as the ship came within sight of Piraeus harbour something very important slipped both their minds. They entirely forgot their promise to pull down the black sails and hoist white ones to let Aegeus know that they were sailing back in triumph. The king had stood every day on the cliffs waiting for a sight of the ship. Now he saw on the horizon the familiar outline of an Athenian vessel. It was beyond question the ship of his son Theseus, but what colour were the sails? The ship was so far away. Against the white of the sky the sails looked black, but perhaps because they were in silhouette … no … that was too much to hope for. The closer the ship sailed, the clearer it was that its sails were as black as death. His brave, foolish, newly found son was dead. That prophecy from the oracle: Aegeus must not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until he has reached the heights of Athens, or he will die of grief. Aegeus finally understood what it had meant. He should have gone straight from Delphi to Athens all those years ago. Instead he had gone to Troezen where he had somehow found himself in bed with Aethra. He had loosened his bulging wineskin. He had fathered Theseus, who had given him a brief time of joy, but now – it was true, the oracles were always right – he found himself overcome by mortal grief. With a cry of despair Aegeus threw himself to his death in the sea below, the sea that ever since has been called, in his honour, the Aegean. It is hard to know for sure what kind of a king Theseus was. Later, the Athenians, who wrote most of the history that has come down to us, so revered their Founder King that, if we are to believe them, he was the inventor, not only, as we have discovered, of wrestling and bull-leaping, but of democracy, justice and all good government too, as well as being a paragon of intelligence, wit, insight and wisdom – qualities that the Athenians (much to the contempt of their neighbours) believed uniquely exemplified their character and culture. It is generally accepted that he merged the smaller regional and provincial units (known as demes) of Attica under the rule of the central Athenian polis or city state,fn20 a system that served as the model for Ancient Greek administrative government up to the historical period. What is certainly clear is that Theseus was very much a human being, with all the weaknesses, strengths and inconsistencies that the condition confers upon us. Much of what followed in his life after the Minotaur was a result of one of the great male friendships in Greek myth, that between Theseus and Pirithous.fn21 As with the later bromance of Achilles and Patroclus, there is a suggestion in some Greek sources that there may have been a sexual element in the relationship, but if there was it had no effect on the womanizing and philandering propensities of either man. Pirithous, King of the Lapiths, was a son of Dia and Zeus. Dia had been the wife of Ixion. It seems hypocritical that Zeus might bind Ixion to a wheel of fire for attempting to seduce Hera and then set about ravishing the man’s wife, but Zeus was never anything if not Zeus. In the form of a stallion he had his way with Dia who bore Pirithous, who in adulthood earned a reputation for being a fine warrior and, perhaps unsurprisingly, horseman.fn22 Hearing of the equally excellent reputation of Athens’ new king and wanting to test it, Pirithous raided Marathon, coming away with a herd of Theseus’s most prized cattle.fn23 Outraged, Theseus made his way to Larissa, the capital of the Lapith kingdom, and tracked Pirithous down, meaning if not to kill him, at least to teach him a very severe lesson. But the moment they met they decided that they liked each other and instead of fighting swore eternal friendship. The bond was soon tested, for Pirithous was not without challengers to his throne in Thessaly. The centaurs, half-man half-horse, felt that as descendants of Ixion they had a greater right to rule than Pirithous.fn24 They had been given Mount Pelion as a base, but they took this as an insult and demanded more. It all came to a head during the wedding of Pirithous and his bride, Hippodamiafn25. Out of diplomatic necessity Pirithous had made sure that the centaurs were invited, but as milk drinkers they were unused to the wine which flowed during the feast. Its effect caused them to start behaving abominably.fn26 One of them, EURYTION, tried to rape the bride Hippodamia herself while the rest of the centaurs pushed themselves on all the women and boys present. Pirithous and Theseus, an honoured guest at the wedding, fought back. A rather touching side story in this otherwise grim and frenzied fight (sometimes called the