Theseus

Plutarch

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

The lineage of Theseus, on the father’s side, goes back to Erechtheus and the first children of the soil; on the mother’s side, to Pelops. For Pelops was the strongest of the kings in Peloponnesus quite as much on account of the number of his children as the amount of his wealth. He gave many daughters in marriage to men of highest rank, and scattered many sons among the cities as their rulers. One of these, named Pittheus, the grandfather of Theseus, founded the little city of Troezen, and had the highest repute as a man versed in the lore of his times and of the greatest wisdom.

Now the wisdom of that day had some such form and force as that for which Hesiod was famous, especially in the sententious maxims of his Works and Days. One of these maxims is ascribed to Pittheus, namely

  1. Payment pledged to a man who is dear must be ample and certain.
[*](Verse 370.) At any rate, this is what Aristotle the philosopher says,[*](Aristot. Frag. 553) and Euripides,[*](Eur. Hipp. 11) when he has Hippolytus addressed as nursling of the pure and holy Pittheus, shows what the world thought of Pittheus.