Theseus   

cut with it; Aegeus, at once recognising the token, threw down the
cup of poison, and, questioning his son, embraced him, and having
gathered together all his citizens, owned him publicly before them,
who, on their part, received him gladly for the fame of his greatness
and bravery; and it is said, that when the cup fell, the poison was
spilt there where now is the enclosed space in the Delphinium; for
in that place stood Aegeus's house, and the figure of Mercury on the
east side of the temple is called the Mercury of Aegeus's gate.
The sons of Pallas, who before were quiet upon expectation of recovering
the kingdom after Aegeus's death, who was without issue, as soon as
Theseus appeared and was acknowledged the successor, highly resenting
that Aegeus first, an adopted son only of Pandion, and not at all
related to the family of Erechtheus, should be holding the kingdom,
and that after him, Theseus, a visitor and stranger, should be destined
to succeed to it, broke out into open war. And dividing themselves
into two companies, one part of them marched openly from Sphettus,
with their father, against the city, the other, hiding themselves
in the village of Gargettus, lay in ambush, with a design to set upon
the enemy on both sides. They had with them a crier of the township
of Agnus, named Leos, who discovered to Theseus all the designs of
the Pallantidae. He immediately fell upon those that lay in ambuscade,
and cut them all off; upon tidings of which Pallas and his company
fled and were dispersed.
From hence they say is derived the custom among the people of the
township of Pallene to have no marriages or any alliance with the
people of Agnus, nor to suffer the criers to pronounce in their proclamations
the words used in all other parts of the country, Acouete Leoi (Hear
ye people), hating the very sound of Leo, because of the treason of
Leos.
Theseus, longing to be in action, and desirous also to make himself
popular, left Athens to fight with the bull of Marathon, which did
no small mischief to the inhabitants of Tetrapolis. And having overcome
it, he brought it alive in triumph through the city, and afterwards
sacrificed it to the Delphinian Apollo. The story of Hecale, also,
of her receiving and entertaining Theseus in this expedition, seems
to be not altogether void of truth; for the townships round about,
meeting upon a certain day, used to offer a sacrifice which they called
Hecalesia, to Jupiter Hecaleius, and to pay honour to Hecale, whom,
by a diminutive name, they called Hecalene, because she, while entertaining
Theseus, who was quite a youth, addressed him, as old people do, with
similar endearing diminutives; and having made a vow to Jupiter for
him as he was going to the fight, that, if he returned in safety,
she would offer sacrifices in thanks of it, and dying before he came
back, she had these honours given her by way of return for her hospitality,
by the command of Theseus, as Philochorus tells us.
Not long after arrived the third time from Crete the collectors of
the tribute which the Athenians paid them upon the following occasion.
Androgeus having been treacherously murdered in the confines of Attica,
not only Minos, his father, put the Athenians to extreme distress
by a perpetual war, but the gods also laid waste their country; both
famine and pestilence lay heavy upon them, and even their rivers were
dried up. Being told by the oracle that, if they appeased and reconciled
Minos, the anger of the gods would cease and they should enjoy rest
from the miseries they laboured under, they sent heralds, and with
much supplication were at last reconciled, entering into an agreement
to send to Crete every nine years a tribute of seven young men and
as many virgins, as most writers agree in stating; and the most poetical
story adds, that the Minotaur destroyed them, or that, wandering in
the labyrinth, and finding no possible means of getting out, they
miserably ended their lives there; and that this Minotaur was (as
Euripides hath it)-
"A mingled form where two strange shapes combined,
And different natures, bull and man, were joined." But Philochorus
says that the Cretans will by no means allow the truth of this, but