that the best of men should make these alliances with one who was worst,
giving and receiving mutually what was of greatest value and most dear
to them. Theseus, by their account, did not slay Sciron in his first
journey to Athens, but afterwards, when he took Eleusis, a city of the
Megarians, having circumvented Diocles, the governor. Such are the
contradictions in this story. In Eleusis he killed Cercyon, the
Arcadian, in a wrestling match. And going on a little farther, in
Erineus, he slew Damastes, otherwise called Procrustes, forcing his body
to the size of his own bed, as he himself was used to do with all
strangers; this he did in imitation of Hercules, who always returned
upon his assailants the same sort of violence that they offered to him;
sacrificed Busiris, killed Antaeus in wrestling, and Cycnus in single
combat, and Termerus by breaking his skull in pieces (whence, they say,
comes the proverb of "a Termerian mischief"), for it seems Termerus
killed passengers that he met, by running with his head against them.
And so also Theseus proceeded in the punishment of evil men, who
underwent the same violence from him which they had inflicted upon
others, justly suffering after the manner of their own injustice.

As he went forward on his journey, and was come as far as the river
Cephisus, some of the race of the Phytalidae met him and saluted him,
and, upon his desire to use the purifications, then in custom, they
performed them with all the usual ceremonies, and, having offered
propitiatory sacrifices to the gods, invited him and entertained him at
their house, a kindness which, in all his journey hitherto,
he had not met.

On the eighth day of Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, he arrived at
Athens, where he found the public affairs full of all confusion, and
divided into parties and factions, Aegeus also, and his whole private