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For he killed the bull of Marathon, which had killed
Androgeos, Minos' son; and he drove back the famous Amazons,
the warlike women of the East, when they came from Asia, and
conquered all Hellas, and broke into Athens itself. But
Theseus stopped them there, and conquered them, and took
Hippolute their queen to be his wife. Then he went out to
fight against the Lapithai, and Peirithoos their famous king:
but when the two heroes came face to face they loved each
other, and embraced, and became noble friends; so that the
friendship of Theseus and Peirithoos is a proverb even now.
And he gathered (so the Athenians say) all the boroughs of
the land together, and knit them into one strong people,
while before they were all parted and weak: and many another
wise thing he did, so that his people honoured him after he
was dead, for many a hundred years, as the father of their
freedom and their laws. And six hundred years after his
death, in the famous fight at Marathon, men said that they
saw the ghost of Theseus, with his mighty brazen club,
fighting in the van of battle against the invading Persians,
for the country which he loved. And twenty years after
Marathon his bones (they say) were found in Scuros, an isle
beyond the sea; and they were bigger than the bones of mortal
man. So the Athenians brought them home in triumph; and all
the people came out to welcome them; and they built over them
a noble temple, and adorned it with sculptures and paintings
in which we are told all the noble deeds of Theseus, and the
Centaurs, and the Lapithai, and the Amazons; and the ruins of
it are standing still.
But why did they find his bones in Scuros? Why did he not
die in peace at Athens, and sleep by his father's side?
Because after his triumph he grew proud, and broke the laws
of God and man. And one thing worst of all he did, which
brought him to his grave with sorrow. For he went down (they
say beneath the earth) with that bold Peirithoos his friend
to help him to carry off Persephone, the queen of the world
below. But Peirithoos was killed miserably, in the dark
fire-kingdoms under ground; and Theseus was chained to a rock
in everlasting pain. And there he sat for years, till
Heracles the mighty came down to bring up the three-headed
dog who sits at Pluto's gate. So Heracles loosed him from
his chain, and brought him up to the light once more.
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