Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

THESEUS

T HE C HOSEN O NE It’s the archetype of fiction for children, young adults and – let’s be honest – pretend grown-ups like us too. A mysterious absent father. A doting mother who encourages you to believe that you are special. The Chosen One. ‘You’re a wizard, Harry!’ that kind of thing. It goes like this. You grow up in the city state of Troezen in the backwaters of the northeastern Peloponnese. Your mother is Aethra, daughter of the local king, Pittheus.fn1 You are a member of a royal house, yet you are treated differently because you have no father. Who is – or was – he? Your mother is exasperatingly playful on the subject. ‘Perhaps he is a great king.’ ‘Greater than grandfather Pittheus?’ ‘Maybe. But perhaps he is a god.’ ‘My father a god?’ ‘You never know.’ ‘Well, I am faster and stronger than any of the other boys. Cleverer too. Handsomer.’ ‘You’re not good at everything, Theseus.’ ‘I am! What aren’t I good at?’ ‘Modesty.’ ‘Poo! Honesty is more important.’ ‘Let’s just say immodesty is rather unattractive. Your father really wouldn’t approve.’ ‘Which father? The king or the god?’ And so the teasing and the gentle bickering would go on as you grow from boisterous toddler to proud child. One great and happy day your cousin Heracles comes to stay at the palace. He is related to your mother through an important ancestor called Pelops.fn2 You have worshipped him from the first moment you heard stories of his extraordinary adventures. The monsters he has slain, the tasks he has performed. His strength. His courage. When he arrives he slings a lion skin down in front of the fire. The pelt of the Thespian Lion, the first of his great conquests.fn3 All the other palace children scream and run away. You are only six but you run up and seize the lion by its mane. You roll round and round on the floor with it, roaring and roaring. You try to strangle it. A laughing Heracles plucks you up. ‘Here’s a young fellow after my own heart. What’s your name, copper-top?’ ‘Theseus please.’ ‘Well, Theseus Please. Plan to grow up a hero?’ ‘Oh yes, cousin, yes indeed.’ And he laughs and puts you down on the lion skin and from that moment on you know that it is your destiny, even though you are not entirely sure what the word means, to be a hero. On your twelfth birthday your mother takes your hand and leads you out of Troezen and up a path that leads to a promontory with a view over the whole city and surrounding countryside. She indicates a great rock. ‘Theseus, if you can roll that rock away I will tell you all about your father.’ You leap at the rock. You push it with arms stretched out, you turn round and strain against it with your back. You heave, you yell, you swarm all over the rock, but at last you fall exhausted to the ground. The great boulder has not budged by so much as the breadth of your little finger. ‘Come on, little Sisyphus, we’ll try again next year,’ says your mother. And each birthday from then on you go together to the rock. ‘I do believe,’ your mother says some years later, ‘that you are growing the outlines of something approaching a beard, Theseus.’ ‘It will give me strength,’ you say. ‘This is the year.’ But it is not the year. Nor is the next. You grow impatient. No one can match you in a foot race, even if you give them a half stadion start. No one can throw a javelin or discus further. Troezen seems too small for your ambitions. You are not quite sure what they are, but you know that somehow you will shake the world. You are almost weary as you trudge up the hill with your mother this particular birthday. The rock is a fake test. It will never move. But you are wrong.