LP0104 plLoT6 Labors of Theseus

Legendary Passages #0104,
Plutarch's Life of Theseus,
Section [VI.],
Labors of Theseus.
Previously, Theseus learned that he was the son of Aegeus, king of Athens. In this passage, Theseus makes his way to Athens to be recognized as his father's heir.
Theseus retrieved his father's sword and sandals from under a boulder, but then refused to sail to Athens, wanting to go by land instead. His grandfather told him of the terrible bandits and beasts that lay on the road around the Saronic Gulf, but Theseus wanted to earn some glory for himself in the manner of his cousin Heracles.
The first bandit was the Club-Bearer Periphetes; Theseus killed him and kept the club thereafter. Second was the Pine-Bender Sinis; his daughter Perigune bore Theseus a son named Melanippus. Third was the Crommyonian Sow called Phaea, either a gigantic pig or a monstrous lady. Fourth may have been Sciron of Megara, who was either a bandit with dirty feet, or an enemy general killed in war sometime later. After killing the Wrestler Cercyon, Theseus slew Damastes via his own Procrustean Bed.
Finally, after being purified of bloodshed, Theseus arrived in Athens to discover that Aegeus had married the sorceress Medea. She planned to poison Theseus' wine, but when he pulled out his sword to carve meat, Aegeus recognized it and pushed the goblet away from his son's lips. Because of his deeds and valor, when Aegeus announced that Theseus was his heir, the citizens of Athens received him gladly.
Labors of Theseus,
a Legendary Passage from,
Bernadotte Perrin translating,
Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus,
Life of Theseus,
Sections [VI.] - [XII.]
https://www.theoi.com/Text/PlutarchTheseus.html
Theseus put his shoulder to the rock and easily raised it up, but he refused to make his journey by sea, although safety lay in that course, and his grandfather and his mother begged him to take it. For it was difficult to make the journey to Athens by land, since no part of it was clear nor yet without peril from robbers and miscreants.
For verily that age produced men who, in work of hand and speed of foot and vigor of body, were extraordinary and indefatigable, but they applied their powers to nothing that was fitting or useful. Nay rather, they exulted in monstrous insolence, and reaped from their strength a harvest of cruelty and bitterness, mastering and forcing and destroying everything that came in their path. And as for reverence and righteousness, justice and humanity, they thought that most men praised these qualities for lack of courage to do wrong and for fear of being wronged, and considered them no concern of men who were strong enough to get the upper hand. Some of these creatures Heracles cut off and destroyed as he went about, but some escaped his notice as he passed by, crouching down and shrinking back, and were overlooked in their abjectness. And when Heracles met with calamity and, after the slaying of Iphitus, removed into Lydia and for a long time did slave's service there in the house of Omphale, then Lydia indeed obtained great peace and security; but in the regions of Hellas the old villainies burst forth and broke out anew, there being none to rebuke and none to restrain them.
The journey was therefore a perilous one for travellers by land from Peloponnesus to Athens, and Pittheus, by describing each of the miscreants at length, what sort of a monster he was, and what deeds he wrought upon strangers, tried to persuade Theseus to make his journey by sea. But he, as it would seem, had long since been secretly fired by the glorious valor of Heracles, and made the greatest account of that hero, and was a most eager listener to those who told what manner of man he was, and above all to those who had seen him and been present at some deed or speech of his. And it is altogether plain that he then experienced what Themistocles many generations afterwards experienced, when he said that he could not sleep for the trophy of Miltiades. In like manner Theseus admired the valor of Heracles, until by night his dreams were of the hero's achievements, and by day his ardor led him along and spurred him on in his purpose to achieve the like.
VII. And besides, they were kinsmen, being sons of cousins-german. For Aethra was daughter of Pittheus, as Alcmene was of Lysidice, and Lysidice and Pittheus were brother and sister, children of Hippodameia and Pelops. Accordingly, he thought it a dreadful and unendurable thing that his famous cousin should go out against the wicked everywhere and purge land and sea of them, while he himself ran away from the struggles which lay in his path, disgracing his reputed father by journeying like a fugitive over the sea, and bringing to his real father as proofs of his birth only sandals and a sword unstained with blood, ...