Silanio and Parrhasius, for making pictures and statues of
Theseus. There being then a custom for the Grecian youth, upon
their first coming to a man's estate, to go to Delphi and offer
firstfruits of their hair to the god, Theseus also went thither,
and a place there to this day is yet named Thesea, as it is said,
from him. He clipped only the fore part of his head, as Homer says
the Abantes did. And this sort of tonsure was from him named
Theseis. The Abantes first used it, not in imitation of the
Arabians, as some imagine, nor of the Mysians, but because they
were a warlike people, and used to close fighting, and above all
other nations, accustomed to engage hand to hand; as Archilochus
testifies in these verses:

Slings shall not whirl, nor many arrows fly,
When on the plain the battle joins; but swords,
Man against man, the deadly conflict try,
As is the practice of Euboea's lords
Skilled with the spear.-

Therefore, that they might not give their enemies a hold by their
hair, they cut it in this manner. They write also that this was
the reason why Alexander gave command to his captains that all the
beards of the Macedonians should be shaved, as being the readiest
hold for an enemy.

Aethra for some time concealed the true parentage of Theseus, and
a report was given out by Pittheus that he was the son of Neptune;
for the Troezenians pay Neptune the highest veneration. He is
their tutelar god, to him they offer all their firstfruits, and in
his honor stamp their money with a trident.