great odium with their countrymen, if, that is, we may take the
stories least like poetry as our guide to truth.

Theseus was the son of Aegeus and Aethra. His lineage, by his
father's side, ascends as high as to Erechtheus and the first
inhabitants of Attica. By his mother's side, he was descended of
Pelops, who was the most powerful of all the kings of
Peloponnesus.

When Aegeus went from the home of Aethra in Troezen to Athens, he
left a sword and a pair of shoes, hiding them under a great stone
that had a hollow in it exactly fitting them; and went away making
her only privy to it, and commanding her that, if, when their son
came to man's estate, he should be able to lift up the stone and
take away what he had left there, she should send him away to him
with those things with all secrecy, and with injunctions to him as
much as possible to conceal his journey from everyone; for he
greatly feared the Pallantidae, who were continually mutinying
against him, and despised him for his want of children, they
themselves being fifty brothers, all sons of Pallas, the brother
of Aegeus.

When Aethra's son was born, some say that he was immediately named
Theseus, from the tokens which his father had put under the stone;
others that he received his name afterwards at Athens, when Aegeus
acknowledged him for his son. He was brought up under his
grandfather Pittheus, and had a tutor and attendant set over him
named Connidas, to whom the Athenians, even to this time, the day
before the feast that is dedicated to Theseus, sacrifice a ram,
giving this honor to his memory upon much juster grounds than to