Theseus
Theseus,a legendary king of Athens, who came to embody many of the qualities Athenians thought important about their city. Apparently originating without special Attic connections, he may perhaps have merged with a local hero of northern Attica, where several of his myths are situated, and his prominence in Athenian tradition seems not to pre-date the 6th cent. bc, deriving at least in part from an epic or epics; the developed tradition of his life indicates a very different figure from older Athenian heroes such as Cecrops or Erechtheus. Detailed accounts of his life are given in Apollodorus mythographus 3. 16. 1 continued by Epitome 1. 24 and Plutarch's Life of Theseus.
Theseus' claim to membership of the Athenian royal line is somewhat shaky, since his father king Aegeus was probably a late addition to the stemma, made precisely to accommodate Theseus. The alternative version, that his real father was
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