LP0103 plLoT1 The Parallel Lives

Legendary Passages #0103,
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
Life of Theseus [I. - VI.]
The Parallel Lives.
This passage begins Plutarch's comparison between the Life of Theseus and the Life of Romulus, founder of Rome.
There are a few notable parallels, including questionable or divine parentage, strength and cunning, foundation of empires, terrible relationships, and feuds with family and countrymen.
The story of Theseus began with wise Pittheus, son of Pelops, and King Aegeus, descendant of Erectheus. Aegeus went to an oracle to find out how to become a father, and then went to Pittheus to understand the strange reply. After a night of wine and romance, Aegeus suspected he had gotten Pittheus' daughter Aethra with child. He hid his sword and sandals under a rock for his son to retrieve when he came of age.
Aethra had a son named Theseus, whose father was rumored to be the sea god Poseidon, and he was raised by his grandfather Pittheus. After visiting Delphi and sacrificing some of his hair to Apollo, Aethra told Theseus to retrieve his father's tokens and set out for the city of Athens.
The Parallel Lives,
a Legendary Passage from,
Bernadotte Perrin translating,
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
Life of Theseus,
[I. - VI.]
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
I. Just as geographers, O Socius Senecio, crowd on to the outer edges of their maps the parts of the earth which elude their knowledge, with explanatory notes that “What lies beyond is sandy desert without water and full of wild beasts,” or “blind marsh,” or “Scythian cold,” or “frozen sea,” so in the writing of my Parallel Lives, now that I have traversed those periods of time which are accessible to probable reasoning and which afford basis for a history dealing with facts, I might well say of the earlier periods “What lies beyond is full of marvels and unreality, a land of poets and fabulists, of doubt and obscurity.” But after publishing my account of Lycurgus the lawgiver and Numa the king, I thought I might not unreasonably go back still farther to Romulus, now that my history had brought me near his times. And as I asked myself,
"With such a warrior” (as Aeschylus says) “who will dare to fight?
"Whom shall I set against him? Who is competent?”
it seemed to me that I must make the founder of lovely and famous Athens the counterpart and parallel to the father of invincible and glorious Rome. May I therefore succeed in purifying Fable, making her submit to reason and take on the semblance of History. But where she obstinately disdains to make herself credible, and refuses to admit any element of probability, I shall pray for kindly readers, and such as receive with indulgence the tales of antiquity.
II. It seemed to me, then, that many resemblances made Theseus a fit parallel to Romulus. For both were of uncertain and obscure parentage, and got the reputation of descent from gods;
"Both were also warriors,
as surely the whole world knoweth,”
and with their strength, combined sagacity. Of the world's two most illustrious cities, moreover, Rome and Athens, Romulus founded the one, and Theseus made a metropolis of the other, and each resorted to the rape of women. Besides, neither escaped domestic misfortunes and the resentful anger of kindred, but even in their last days both are said to have come into collision with their own fellow-citizens, if there is any aid to the truth in what seems to have been told with the least poetic exaggeration.
III. The lineage of Theseus, on the father's side, goes back to Erechtheus and the first children of the soil; on the mother's side, to Pelops. For Pelops was the strongest of the kings in Peloponnesus quite as much on account of the number of his children as the amount of his wealth. He gave many daughters in marriage to men of highest rank, and scattered many sons among the cities as their rulers. One of these, named Pittheus, the grandfather of Theseus, founded the little city of Troezen, and had the highest repute as a man versed in the lore of his times and of the greatest wisdom. Now the wisdom of that day had some such form and force as that for which Hesiod was famous, especially in the sententious maxims of his Works and Days. One of these maxims is ascribed to Pittheus, namely
"Payment pledged to a man who is dear
must be ample and certain."
At any rate, this is what Aristotle the philosopher says, and Euripides, when he has Hippolytus addressed as “nursling of the pure and holy Pittheus,” shows what the world thought of Pittheus.
Now Aegeus, king of Athens, desiring to have children, is said to have received from the Pythian priestess the celebrated oracle in which she bade him to have intercourse with no woman until he came to Athens. But Aegeus thought ...