Theseus. Theseus was the mythical king and founder-hero of Athens. Like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, Theseus battled and overcame foes that were identified with an archaic religious and social order. His role in history has been called a major cultural transition, like the making of the new Olympia by Hercules. Theseus was a founding hero for the Athenians in the same way that Heracles was the founding hero for the Dorians. The Athenians regarded Theseus as a great reformer; his name comes from the same root as, Greek for The Gathering. The myths surrounding Theseus, his journeys, exploits, and friends, have provided material for fiction throughout the ages. Theseus was responsible for the synoikismos, the political unification of Attica under Athens, represented emblematically in his journey of labours, subduing ogres and monstrous beasts. Because he was the unifying king, Theseus built and occupied a palace on the fortress of the Acropolis that may have been similar to the palace that was excavated in Mycenae. Pausanias reports that after the synoikismos, Theseus established a cult of Aphrodite Pandemos and Peitho on the southern slope of the Acropolis. Plutarch's Life of Theseus makes use of varying accounts of the death of the Minotaur, Theseus' escape, and the love of Ariadne for Theseus. Plutarch's sources, not all of whose texts have survived independently, included Pherecydes, Demon, Philochorus, and Cleidemus. As the subject of myth, the existence of Theseus as a real person has not been proven, but scholars believe that he may have been alive during the Late Bronze Age possibly as a king in the 8th or 9th century BC. Aegeus, one of the primordial kings of Athens, was childless. Desiring an heir, he asked the Oracle of Delphi for advice. Her cryptic words were Do not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until you have reached the height of Athens, lest you die of grief. Aegeus did not understand the prophecy and was disappointed. He asked the advice of his host Pittheus, king of Troezen. Pittheus understood the prophecy, got Aegeus drunk, and gave Aegeus his daughter Aethra. But following the instructions of Athena in a dream, Aethra left the sleeping Aegeus and waded across to the island of Sphairia that lay close to Troezen's shore. There she poured a libation to Sphairos and Poseidon, and was possessed by the sea god in the night. The mix gave Theseus a combination of divine as well as mortal characteristics in his nature; such double paternity, with one immortal and one mortal, was a familiar feature of other Greek heroes. After Aethra became pregnant, Aegeus decided to return to Athens. Before leaving, however, he buried his sandals and sword under a huge rock and told Aethra that when their son grew up, he should move the rock, if he were heroic enough, and take the tokens for himself as evidence of his royal parentage. In Athens, Aegeus was joined by Medea, who had left Corinth after slaughtering the children she had borne, and had taken Aegeus as her new consort. Priestess and consort together represented the old order in Athens. Thus Theseus was raised in his mother's land. When Theseus grew up and became a brave young man, he moved the rock and recovered his father's tokens. His mother then told him the truth about his father's identity and that he must take the sword and sandals back to king Aegeus to claim his birthright. To journey to Athens, Theseus could choose to go by sea or by land, following a dangerous path around the Saronic Gulf, where he would encounter a string of six entrances to the Underworld, each guarded by a chthonic enemy. Young, brave, and ambitious, Theseus decided to go alone by the land route and defeated a great many bandits along the way. At the first site, which was Epidaurus, sacred to Apollo and the healer Asclepius, Theseus turned the tables on the chthonic bandit, Periphetes, the Club Bearer, who beat his opponents into the Earth, taking from him the stout staff that often identifies Theseus in vase-paintings. At the Isthmian entrance to the Underworld was a robber named Sinis, often called Pityokamptes. He would capture travellers, tie them between two pine trees that were bent down to the ground, and then let the trees go, tearing his victims apart. Theseus killed him by his own method. He then had sex with Sinis's daughter, Perigune, fathering the child Melanippus. In another deed north of the Isthmus, at a place called Crommyon, he killed an enormous pig, the Crommyonian Sow, bred by an old crone named Phaea. Some versions name the sow herself as Phaea. The Bibliotheca by Pseudo-Apollodorus described the Crommyonian Sow as an offspring of Typhon and Echidna.