Theseus was a Greek hero whose name crops up in so many stories there was an old saying that "Theseus had a hand in it." His stories begin before his birth, since his father -- or at least his mortal father -- King Aegeus (Αιγέας) of Athens, had trouble producing an heir. These were in the days before fertility tests, so instead of contacting a clinic, the Athenian king consulted an oracle.
The kylix in the picture is attributed to the ancient Athenian Kodrus (Codrus) painter. Above the figures in the copy of this picture in Frank Egleston Robbins' article, "The Lot Oracle at Delphi," are the names Aegeus and Themis, a goddess. [Actually, a titan.] Themis was the goddess of the Delphic oracle before Apollo took over, but such chronology is not crucial here. Here she has all the trappings of the Pythia, a priestess of Apollo, according to Robbins. He argues the column between the two figures shows that the scene takes place within the sanctuary. The laurel is a symbol of Apollo. Themis, seated on the oracular tripod, stares intently into the dish (phiale). She is about to reveal the message Aegeus seeks.
Priestesses > Pythia
Apollo's Pythian priestess at Delphi was the most important ancient oracle. She had to be celibate for life. For each of nine months of the year, she gave prophecies on a single day. Six hundred hexameters survive of her oracles. She sat on the tripod where it seems gases exuded and may have changed her mental state. While the pythia spoke her oracles in hexameters, The great Greek tragedian Euripides puts a different meter, trimeters, in the mouth of the oracle.
Euripides wrote a famous tragedy about the sorceress Medea who escapes the scene of her crime of killing her children by the intervention of a crane (mechane), a technique known as deus ex machina, god from the machine. Lifted aloft, she will escape punishment.
In "The Aegeus Episode and the Theme of Euripides' Medea," Roger Dunkle calls the appearance of Aegeus in the center of this play apparently unmotivated, but it gave ancient writers following Euripides and modern readers an opportunity to understand the connection between Medea and Aegeus as well as a bit of information about the prophecy. The following (translated) exchange between King Aegeus and Medea before her escape shows that Aegeus has received an oracle that puzzles him:
"MEDEA: What said the god? speak, if I may hear it.
AEGEUS: He bade me "not loose the wineskin's pendent neck." [The Greek for this is the trimeter referred to above.]
MEDEA: Till when? what must thou do first, what country visit?
AEGEUS: Till I to my native home return.
MEDEA: What object hast thou in sailing to this land?
AEGEUS: O'er Troezen's realm is Pittheus king.
MEDEA: Pelops' son, a man devout they say.
AEGEUS: To him I fain would impart the oracle of the god.
MEDEA: The man is shrewd and versed in such-like lore.
AEGEUS: Aye, and to me the dearest of all my warrior friends. "
In the following section, Medea promises to help Aegeus resolve his childless state [presumably, should he fail at the court of the king of Troezen]. Aegeus, in turn, promises to let Medea stay with him in Athens if she can get herself there from Corinth. Later, Medea's shenanigans at Aegeus' court when Theseus presents himself there, as a grown man, will almost lead Aegeus to kill his son [see Minotaur story summary].
Anthony Keen, in "'Undoing the Wineskin's Foot': Athenian Slang?," says that some consider Aegeus a bit dense, to the point of becoming a stock character in comedy. Later in the Theseus legend, Aegeus does something else that is hard to understand. He jumps to his death into the sea that bears his name (the Aegean) because he thinks his son has been killed. He is king. He is in charge of the people of Athens -- not just his immediate family. It is puzzling that he would give up on everything just because his son forgot to change the sails, and not even wait to hear what happened or perform funeral rites for his son, but maybe his mind always worked in odd ways.
Aegeus did not understand loosening the foot of the wineskin as a metaphor for intercourse (or urination, as Keen adds) even though he was asking the oracle how he could produce a son. The expression may have been Attic slang and, incidentally, one of the lines of vulgarity for which Euripides was criticized.
Keen does not, however, think Aegeus is stupid. Yes, in comparison with the brilliant Medea he and everyone else may be inferior, but Aegeus may also think literally. Literally, the advice could refer to abstinence from drinking wine. If so, Aegeus violates the divinely inspired advice by getting drunk with the king of Troezen.
Plutarch describes Aegeus' trip to Troezen -- where he was heading in the passage from Euripides' Medea:
"Aegeus, being desirous of children, and consulting the oracle of Delphi, received the celebrated answer which forbade him the company of any woman before his return to Athens. But the oracle being so obscure as not to satisfy him that he was clearly forbid this, he went to Troezen, and communicated to Pittheus the voice of the god, which was in this manner,--
Loose not the wine-skin foot, thou chief of men, Until to Athens thou art come again. "
From The Life of Theseus, by Plutarch in his Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
Aegeus goes to Troezen whose king, Pittheus, understands the riddle. Pittheus has a daughter Aethra whom he arranges for Aegeus to impregnate after getting Aegeus drunk. By doing so, Aegeus has untied the protruding foot of the wineskin before he reached home and his legal wife.
David Kovacs, in "And Baby Makes Three: Aegeus' Wife as Mother‐to‐Be of Theseus in Euripides' Medea," argues that this makes the prophecy false (whether by getting drunk or having intercourse before reaching home), since Aegeus succeeds in producing an heir. It's not conceivable that the word of the god would be wrong, so there has to be something else. Kovacs argues that Euripides was aware of another version of events. In this, Aegeus obeys the prophecy. He impregnates Aethra, but she is in Athens and is already his legal wife.
Another competing story of the impregnation of Aethra and conception of Theseus makes the god Poseidon the hero's father.
References
- "And Baby Makes Three: Aegeus' Wife as Mother‐to‐Be of Theseus in Euripides' Medea"
David Kovacs
Classical Philology, Vol. 103, No. 3 (July 2008), pp. 298-304 - "The Lot Oracle at Delphi"
Frank Egleston Robbins
Classical Philology, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Jul., 1916), pp. 278-292 - "Theseus the King in Fifth-Century Athens"
John N. Davie
Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Apr., 1982), pp. 25-34 - "'Undoing the Wineskin's Foot': Athenian Slang?"
Antony G. Keen
The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Dec., 2009), pp. 626-631 -
"The Aegeus Episode and the Theme of Euripides' Medea"
J. Roger Dunkle
Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
Vol. 100, (1969), pp. 97-107
