Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/239

 THESEUS AND HIS ADVENTURES. 207 and long-sighted politician is a subsequent correction, introduced indeed by men of superior mind, but destitute of historical war- ranty, and arising out of their desire to find reasons of their own for concurring in the veneration which the general public paid more easily and heartily to their national hero. Theseus, in the Iliad and Odyssey, fights with the Lapithge against the Centaurs : Theseus, in the Hesiodic poems, is misguided by his passion for the beautiful -<Egle, daughter of Panopeus: 1 and the Theseus described in Plutarch's biography is in great part a continuation and expansion of these same or similar attributes, mingled with many local legends, explaining, like the Fasti of Ovid, or the lost Aitia of Kallimachus, the original genesis of prevalent reli- gious and social customs. 2 Plutarch has doubtless greatly soften- ed down and modified the adventures which he found in the Attic logographers as well as in the poetical epics called Theseis. For in his preface to the life of Theseus, after having emphati- cally declared that he is about to transcend the boundary both of the known and the knowable, but that the temptation of comparing the founder of Athens with the founder of Rome is irresistible, he concludes with the following remarkable words : " I pray that this fabulous matter may be so far obedient to my endeavors as to receive, when purified by reason, the aspect of history: in those cases where it haughtily scorns plausibility and will admit no alliance with what is probable, I shall beg for indulgent hear- ers, willing to receive antique narrative in a mild spirit." 3 We see here that Plutarch sat down, not to recount the old fables as he found them, but to purify them by reason and to impart to them the aspect of history. We have to thank him for having retained, after this purification, so much of what is romantic and marvellous ; but we may be sure that the sources from which he borrowed were more romantic and marvellous still. It was the 1 Iliad, i. 265 ; Odyss. xi. 321. I do not notice the suspected line, Odyss. xi. 630. has given us his chivalrous as well as his political attributes(iv. 61). 3 Plutarch, Th6seus, i. EtT? fj.lv ovv T//J.IV, iKKadaipofievov Aoy^> rd pvd&6e( VTraxovoai Kal Aa/3cZv ioTopiaf oiftiv' otrov d' uv av&aduc ~ov iridavov irepi- j, Kal pi) 6exi)Tai TTJV irpdfrb elubf pi f iv, evyvufiovuv anpoaruv irppuf rf/v upxawlioyiav
 * Diodorus also, from his disposition to assimilate Theseus to Herakles,