Theseus in drama

In early classical dramas that were largely about other Greek heroes, Theseus’s character represented virtues that Athenians believed him to exemplify: generosity, justice, and compassion. In Heracles by Euripides (c. 486—c. 406 BCE),Theseus supports Heracles on his deathbed; he promises his friend to uphold his name after his death.

In Suppliant Women, Euripides again casts Theseus as a compassionate hero. In the play Theseus insists that the laws of the gods be respected, and he compels the citizens of Thebes to return the bodies of slain enemies for burial. In Oedipus at Colonus, the second play in the trilogy that includes Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone, but the last one that Sophocles (c. 496—406 BCE) wrote, Theseus welcomes the aged outcast Oedipus to Athens and restores his abducted daughters to him. At the close of the play, Oedipus leads Theseus to the place where Oedipus will die and entrusts the care of the site to the Athenian leader. According to Sophocles’ play, Oedipus becomes a guardian hero of Athens and Theseus becomes a protector of Oedipus’s tomb.

Theseus also appears in postclassical literature, most notably in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by British dramatist William Shakespeare (1564—1616). Although the main action of Shakespeare’s play takes place in an enchanted forest outside Athens, the final marriage between Theseus and Hippolyte, the Amazon queen, takes place in Theseus’s Athenian palace.

Theseus’s myth is a popular subject in ancient and modern art. Depictions of his conquest of the Minotaur adorn many ancient Greek vases and Roman frescoes. Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881—1973) had a lifelong interest in bulls as well as in mythology—he painted many versions of the encounter between Theseus and the Minotaur. Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757—1822) included a statue of Theseus looking down upon the vanquished Minotaur in his classical collection; the contest also appears in the statuary copies of ancient works in the Tuileries Gardens, Paris.

In ancient Greece, Theseus’s exploits were represented on the Treasury of the Athenians in Delphi and on the Hephaesteion in Athens. This temple still overlooks the ancient Agora and was once thought to be dedicated to Theseus; it is now known to have been dedicated to the smith god Hephaestus. To this day a subway stop in Athens is called Theseion for the great Athenian hero.

Karelisa Hartigan

Bibliography

Cotterell, Arthur. Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Euripides, and P. Burian and A. Shapiro, eds. The Complete Euripides. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009—2010. Howatson, M. C. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

See also: Amazons; Ariadne; Daedalus; Heracles; Hippolytus; Minos; Pasiphae.