Description of Greece

​ancient ones. And nothing of them has melted away, but they are darker and weaker to bear a blow; for the flame reached these as well, when the Athenians had embarked on the ships and the King took the city empty of those of military age. There is also a hunt of a boar, concerning which I know nothing for certain whether it is the Calydonian one, and Cycnus fighting with Heracles; they say that this Cycnus killed, among others, Lycus the Thracian when prizes for a single combat were proposed for them, but he died by the hand of Heracles near the river Peneus.

​Of the stories in Troezen which they tell concerning Theseus, there is one that Heracles, having come to Troezen to visit Pittheus, laid down the skin of the lion at dinner, and there entered to him other children of the Troezenians and Theseus, who was about seven years of age; they say that the rest of the children, when they saw the skin, fled and went away, but Theseus, stepping forward not too much with fear, snatched an axe from the servants and immediately went against it in haste, thinking the skin to be a lion.

​This is the first of the stories concerning him among the Troezenians; and the one after this is that Aegeus placed sandals and a sword under a rock to be tokens of recognition for his child, and he himself sailed away to Athens, but Theseus, when he had reached his sixteenth year, pushed away the rock and went off carrying the deposit of Aegeus. A representation of this story has been made on the Acropolis, all likewise of bronze except for the rock.

​They also dedicated another deed of Theseus, and the story concerning it is as follows. A bull was ravaging for the Cretans both the rest of their land and that along the river Tethris. For of old, indeed, wild beasts were more fearsome to men, such as the lion in Nemea and the Parnassian one, and dragons in many parts of Greece, and boars around Calydon and Erymanthus and at Crommyon in Corinthia, so that it was even said that some were sent up by the earth, others were sacred to the gods, and others were let loose for the punishment of men. And the Cretans say that Poseidon sent this bull to their land, because Minos, though ruling the Greek sea, held Poseidon in greater honor than any other god.

​Now they say that this bull was brought to the Peloponnese from Crete, and that this also became one of the twelve so-called labors for Heracles; and when it was let loose into the plain of the Argives, it fled through the Corinthian isthmus, and fled into the Attic land and to the deme of Marathon in Attica, and killed, among others whom it encountered, Androgeos the son of Minos. And Minos, having sailed against Athens with ships—for he did not believe that they were innocent of the death of Androgeos—harassed them to such an extent, until it was agreed for him to lead seven maidens and an equal number of boys to Crete to dwell in the Labyrinth at Knossos for the so-called bull of Minos; and Theseus is said later to have driven the bull in Marathon to the Acropolis and sacrificed it to the goddess, and the dedication is from the deme of the Marathonians.