Instead, she used a sleeping potion to subvert the monster's vigilance. Together they made off with the Fleece and escaped to the Argo. Setting sail at once, they eluded pursuit. Thus Jason succeeded in his heroic challenge. And once returned to Greece, he abandoned Medea for another princess. For though Jason had sworn to love and honor Medea for the service she had done him, he proved as fickle in this regard as he'd been unfit for single-handed questing.
Bellerophon was a citizen of Corinth who was exiled owing to a murder which he had committed. In those days it was possible to be purified of the guilt of such a crime, and Bellerophon was in due course absolved by King Proetus of neighboring Tiryns. The king's wife, generally identified as Stheneboea, made a pass at the young hero, and when he repulsed her advances she told her husband that it was Bellerophon who made a pass at her.
King Proetus cloaked his indignation, not wishing to violate the sacred obligations of hospitality by doing harm to his guest. But he contrived his revenge by asking Bellerophon to deliver a letter on his behalf to King Iobates of Lycia, his father-in-law. This is somewhat surprising in that writing hadn't been invented yet, except perhaps a rudimentary form used for inventory-keeping on the island of Crete and certain parts of the mainland. No wonder Bellerophon couldn't make out the meaning of the message he was to deliver. Either that or the letter was sealed - although for that matter "letters" hadn't been invented yet either.
What the message said was: "Dear Iobates, please do me a favor and kill the person who hands you this." To do so proved impossible, however, as Iobates was bound by the same strictures of hospitality as King Proetus. So instead he feasted Bellerophon for a goodly number of days and nights, until at length he announced that he had a favor to ask of him. Assuming that this had something to do with a return letter to Proetus, Bellerophon may well have been giving thought to establishing the first postal service, when Iobates surprised him with the unexpected nature of his request. Would Bellerophon be so kind as to rid the kingdom of the Chimaera?
Not wishing to sugarcoat the challenge, the king went on to describe the Chimaera as a fire-breathing monster directly related to Heracles' nemesis the many-headed Hydra, and Cerberus, watchdog of Hades. The Chimaera had a lion's front, a goat's middle and a snake's tail (or, in some alternative versions of the myth, the heads of these three beasts with some admixture of body parts). In any case, it was truly ferocious.
Iobates was hoping to make good on his son-in-law's request to do away with Bellerophon, and he had hit upon the Chimaera as the ideal agent in expediting his young guest's demise. And while one might think that he would have made little of the Chimaera's dangers in order to instill a false sense of security, Iobates had sized up Bellerophon and deduced that he was a sucker for a challenge - the bigger the better. And in fact Bellerophon was pleased at the opportunity to elevate himself from mere postal-delivery person to authentic hero. He immediately began to plan his campaign of attack.
Word was that the Chimaera was virtually impregnable to any ground assault. Others had waded in on foot with spear or sword - to their eternal regret. There was even a rumor of a mounted Thessalian who had come up short in the encounter, his horse having been blasted out from under him by the Chimaera's fiery breath. With a keen sense of logistics, Bellerophon narrowed down his viable options to an attack either by air or sea. The latter course being out by virtue of the inland nature of the Chimaera's lair, he settled on the aerial option and immediately set out to procure himself a winged steed.
When Bellerophon was still a boy growing up in Corinth, he had yearned to ride the magic horse Pegasus, immortal offspring of the god Poseidon and the Gorgon Medusa. Pegasus was born when the hero Perseus cut off Medusa's head. Like everyone else, Bellerophon had been unable to so much as approach Pegasus. So he sought the advice of the seer Polyeidus.
Polyeidus suggested that Bellerophon spend the night in Athena's temple. In a dream, the goddess came to him and gave him a golden bridle. And in the morning Bellerophon found Pegasus drinking at the spring of Peirene and slipped the bridle over his head, rendering him tame and rideable. Thus once more, in manhood, Bellerophon sought out the Corinthian watering hole and his trusty mount, and as he did so he gave thought to the essential issue of armament.
Clearly not just any sword or spear would do in fighting the Chimaera. For starters, a lance would be indispensable - the sort of spear best suited to fighting on horseback. And even a proper lance was no guarantee of victory over so substantial a foe.
Again the gods came to Bellerophon's aid, suggesting that a lump of lead affixed to the end of the spear would have a decidedly deadly effect. Firstly, when thrust into the monster's maw, it would cause the Chimaera to gag. And secondly, when melted by the beast's fiery breath, it would trickle down into its innards and cause a fatal case of heartburn.
So Bellerophon trekked all the way from Lycia to Corinth, located the fountain of Peirene and found Pegasus sipping therefrom. Mounting up, the hero made a much speedier trip back to Lycia, swooped down on the Chimaera's lair and rammed home the secret weapon. And with a great, gasping groan of rage, the Chimaera gave up the ghost.
Iobates was still determined to do in his guest, so he now sent him to fight a fearsome neighboring tribe. When the hero won the fray with the help of Pegasus, Iobates forthwith dispatched him to fight the Amazons. And when these women warriors proved no match for the divinely aided Bellerophon, Iobates desperately laid a trap, sending his best soldiers to ambush the hero on his way home. They failed of course, so Iobates finally gave in to the inevitable, giving Bellerophon half his kingdom and his daughter's hand in marriage.
There's a story that Bellerophon got his revenge on Stheneboea by taking her for a ride on Pegasus and pushing her off. Be that as it may, the flying horse figured in the hero's own undoing. In later years, Bellerophon was so vain about what he had accomplished that he sought to join the Immortals in their heavenly abode. He was flying up to Mount Olympus when Zeus, angered at his presumption, sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus. The horse threw Bellerophon and he fell to the earth from a great height. For the rest of his days he roamed the land, lame and alone, for no mortal dared befriend him.
It was by lifting a boulder that Theseus, grandson of the king of Troezen, first proved himself a hero. Theseus was sixteen at the time. He had been raised by his grandfather and his mother, Princess Aethra. One day the princess called Theseus to her side. It was time, she said, that he learned of his father, who was the ruler of a mighty kingdom. This was news to Theseus, who had been under the impression that his father was one of the gods. "Before I divulge his identity," said the princess, "you must meet the challenge your father has set you." Years ago, the king had hefted a mighty stone. Underneath he had placed something for his son to find - if he could lift the weight.
Aethra guided Theseus to a forest clearing, in the midst of which was a boulder. Theseus proceeded to lift the stone easily, or so the myth is often told. But Theseus would have had trouble with a task involving brute strength. This may be deduced from the tradition that he invented "scientific" wrestling, the discipline by which even a lightweight can beat a stronger adversary by fancy footwork, trick holds and using the opponent's momentum to advantage. Theseus would have had little cause to invent such tactics if he'd been capable of beating his adversaries by sheer physical strength. So when it came to lifting boulders, he was at a disadvantage. Resourcefulness, another heroic trait, must have come to his aid. He would have looked about for some means to multiply his physical strength.
Beneath the stone Theseus found certain tokens left by his father. His name, Aethra now revealed, was King Aegeus of Athens. Prompted by a sense of heroic destiny, Theseus set out forthwith to meet this parent he had never known. He determined to journey to Athens by land, although his mother argued for the safer route by sea. And in fact the landward route proved to be infested by an unusual number of villains, thugs and thieves. Theseus quickly adopted the credo of doing unto these bad guys what they were in the habit of doing to others.
Setting out from Troezen, his birthplace, the first community of any size through which Theseus passed was Epidaurus. Here he was waylaid by the ruffian Periphetes. Periphetes was nicknamed Corynetes or "Club-Man", after his weapon of choice, a stout length of wood wrapped in bronze to magnify its impact upon the skulls of his victims. Theseus merely snatched this implement from Periphetes and did him in with it. Some say that this incident was manufactured to account for depictions of Theseus carrying a club like his cousin Heracles, one of a number of instances on Theseus's part of heroic imitation.
The next malefactor who received a dose of his own medicine was a fellow named Sinis, who used to ask passers-by to help him bend two pine trees to the ground. Why the wayfarers should have wanted to help in this activity is not disclosed. Presumably Sinis was persuasive. Once he had bent the trees, he tied his helper's wrists - one to each tree. Then he took a break. When the strain became too much, the victim had to let go, which caused the trees to snap upright and scatter portions of anatomy in all directions. Theseus turned the tables on Sinis by tying his wrists to a couple of bent pines, then letting nature and fatigue take their course.
Then, not far from Athens, Theseus encountered Sciron. This famous brigand operated along the tall cliffs which to this day are named after him. He had a special tub in which he made each passing stranger wash his feet. While they were engaged in this sanitary activity, Sciron kicked them over a cliff into the ocean below, where they were devoured by a man-eating turtle. Theseus turned the tables on Sciron, just as he had turned them on Pine-Bender.
The most interesting of Theseus's challenges came in the form of an evildoer called Procrustes, whose name means "he who stretches." This Procrustes kept a house by the side of the road where he offered hospitality to passing strangers. They were invited in for a pleasant meal and a night's rest in his very special bed. If the guest asked what was so special about it, Procrustes replied, "Why, it has the amazing property that its length exactly matches whomsoever lies upon it." What Procrustes didn't volunteer was the method by which this "one-size-fits-all" was achieved, namely as soon as the guest lay down Procrustes went to work upon him, stretching him on the rack if he was too short for the bed and chopping off his legs if he was too long. Theseus lived up to his do-unto-others credo, fatally adjusting Procrustes to fit his own bed.
When at last Theseus arrived in Athens to meet his father King Aegeus for the first time, the encounter was far from heartwarming. Theseus did not reveal his identity at first but was hailed as a hero by the Athenians, for he had rid the highway of its terrors. In honor of his exploits, he was invited to the palace for a banquet. Serving as hostess was his father's new wife, Medea. This was the same Medea who had helped Jason harvest a crop of armed warriors and steal the Golden Fleece out from under the nose of the dragon that guarded it. Jason had eventually abandoned Medea, and she had grown understandably bitter. Now she sized up Theseus and decided that he was a threat to her own son's prospects of ruling Athens after King Aegeus.
Years before, it was Medea's magic that had ensured the birth of Theseus to Princess Aethra of Troezen. Now Medea played on the king's insecurity. Surely the stranger at the banquet was too popular with the people. He might well seize the throne for himself. The king was persuaded to serve Theseus poisoned wine. And the hero, unawares, would have drunk it had he not paused first to carve his dinner. Or perhaps, more dramatically, Theseus drew his sword not to mince his boar's meat but to reveal his identity. In any case, Aegeus recognized the pattern on the sword's hilt. This was his own weapon, which he had left under a rock for his son to discover. Aegeus dashed the poisoned cup to the ground. Medea stormed out and made her escape in a chariot pulled by dragons.
Theseus was now the recognized heir to the kingdom of Athens. Thus he was on hand when King Minos of Crete arrived to collect his periodic tribute of young men and maidens to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Because his son had died while in the safekeeping of the Athenians, Minos exerted the power of the Cretan navy to enforce this onerous demand. The Minotaur was a monster, half-man, half-bull, that lived in the center of a maze called the Labyrinth. The beast had been born to Minos's wife Pasiphae as a punishment from the gods. Minos had been challenged to prove that he was of divine parentage, so he called on the sea god Poseidon to send him a sign. The god obliged, and a beautiful white bull emerged from the sea.
Minos liked the bull so much that he neglected to sacrifice it to the gods as he should have done. As a punishment, Poseidon caused the king's wife to fall in love with the bull. She had the master craftsman Daedalus build her a hollow cow in which to approach the beast. As a result, the Minotaur was born. The monster is generally depicted as having the head of a bull and the body of a man. But in the Middle Ages, artists portrayed a man's head and torso on a bull's body. Some say that Theseus expressed his solidarity with his fellow citizens of Athens by volunteering to be one of the victims. Others maintain that Minos noticed the handsome young prince and chose him to be sacrificed. In any case, Theseus became one of the fated fourteen who embarked with the Cretan fleet.
The sea upon which they sailed was the domain of Poseidon, who together with his brothers Zeus and Hades were the three most powerful gods of the Greek pantheon. They divided up creation, Zeus taking the sky, Hades the underworld and Poseidon the sea. But there were other deities of the watery depths, notably the "Old Man of the Sea", with his fifty daughters known as the Nereids. When Theseus was en route to Crete, he encountered one of these divinities. King Minos had made rude advances to one of the Athenian maidens and Theseus sprang to her defense, claiming this was his duty as a son of Poseidon. (Theseus, of course, was also the son of King Aegeus, but a true hero required an immortal father, so Theseus had both.)
Minos suggested that if Theseus's divine parentage were anything but a figment of his imagination, the gods of the sea would sponsor him. So Minos threw his signet ring overboard and challenged Theseus to dive in and find it. Not only did the hero retrieve the ring from the underwater palace into which it had fallen, but he was given a jewelled crown by one of the Nereids, either Thetis or Amphitrite. Not long after he arrived in Crete Theseus encountered another sponsor in the form of Princess Ariadne, daughter of King Minos. She fell in love with him at first sight. It was Ariadne who gave Theseus a clew which she had obtained from the master craftsman Daedalus. In some versions of the myth it was an ordinary clew, which is to say a simple ball of thread. It was to prove invaluable in the quest to survive the terrors of the Labyrinth.
The Labyrinth was a maze so cleverly and intricately contrived by its builder Daedalus that once thrown inside, a victim could never find the way out again. Sooner or later, he or she would round a corner and come face to face with the all-devouring Minotaur. This was the fate which awaited Theseus. It is clear from the myth that the Labyrinth was a maze from which none could escape because it was so diabolically meandering. Hence the Minotaur was not just its monster but its prisoner. But how exactly this worked as a practical matter with regard to the victims is less clear. Some versions of the myth have it that they were "enclosed" in the Labyrinth, as if it were a box.
But surely if the procedure were simply to push the victims in and then slam the door behind them, they would have cowered by the entrance rather than proceed into the terrors of the maze. Even if the guards threatened them with swords, it seems likely that some would have preferred the known death to being devoured alive by a monster. Nor could the guards have escorted the victims deep into the maze without getting lost themselves, or risking a run-in with the Minotaur. Maybe Daedalus built a roof over his invention, so that the victims could be dropped through a trap door into the very center. But perhaps on the whole it's better not to inquire too closely into the mechanics of the mythological.
When Theseus first entered the maze he tied off one end of the ball of thread which Ariadne had given him, and he played out the thread as he advanced deeper and deeper into the labyrinthine passages. Many artists have depicted Theseus killing the Minotaur with his sword or club, but it is hard to see how he could have concealed such bulky weapons in his clothing. More probable are the versions of the tale which have him coming upon the Minotaur as it slept and then, in properly heroic fashion, beating it to death with his bare fists. Or maybe he broke off one of the creature's horns and stabbed him to death with it. Then he followed the thread back to the entrance. Otherwise he would have died of starvation before making his escape.
