Theseus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. I. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

He instituted also the Metoecia, or Festival of Settlement, on the sixteenth day of the month Hecatombaeon, and this is still celebrated. Then, laying aside the royal power, as he had agreed, he proceeded to arrange the government, and that too with the sanction of the gods. For an oracle came to him from Delphi, in answer to his enquiries about the city, as follows:—

  1. Theseus, offspring of Aegeus, son of the daughter of Pittheus,
  2. Many indeed the cities to which my father has given
  3. Bounds and future fates within your citadel’s confines.
  4. Therefore be not dismayed, but with firm and confident spirit
  5. Counsel only; the bladder will traverse the sea and its surges.
And this oracle they say the Sibyl afterwards repeated to the city, when she cried:—
  1. Bladder may be submerged; but its sinking will not be permitted.

Desiring still further to enlarge the city, he invited all men thither on equal terms, and the phrase Come hither all ye people, they say was a proclamation of Theseus when he established a people, as it were, of all sorts and conditions. However, he did not suffer his democracy to become disordered or confused from an indiscriminate multitude streaming into it, but was the first to separate the people into noblemen and husbandmen and handicraftsmen.