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Theseus and the Robber Sciron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

The writer of the Golden Bough, Dr. Frazer, has most ably interpreted the inner meaning of the strange ritual in the grove of Diana Nemorensis near Aricia, with reference to primitive folk ideas about the deity who governs vegetation and human life. It seems possible to apply the main principle also to a part of the legend of Theseus. In some ways Theseus seems to be purely a mythological figure, to whom an historical place is assigned at the close of the Minoan supremacy, judging by the story of the ring. To him various myths after the type of the labours of Heracles have been attached, some purely invented to give him prominence, others based entirely on ritualistic elements. One of these—the myth of Sinis—has already been explained in the latter way by Dr. Farnell.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1912

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References

1 Pausauias, i. 44.

2 Pausanias, i. 44, and ch. 39.

3 Cf. Smith, C., J.H.S. ii. 64Google Scholar.

4 See pediment scene from Early Acropolis temple.

5 Farnell, , Cults, iv. 145Google Scholar, 283.

6 Farnell, , Cults, iii. 21Google Scholar.

7 Cf. Attic in the Thargelia; Aristophanes, , Wasps, 1Google Scholar. 733.

8 Pausanias, i. 36.

9 Quoted from MissHarrison's, Prolegomena, p. 135Google Scholar.

10 Cults, vol. i. p. 291.

11 Cults, vol. i. p. 329.

12 1. 925.

13 Paus, vi. 22. 9.

14 MissHarrison, , Mythology and Monuments, p. 167Google Scholar.

15 Farnell, , Cults, vol. i. p. 291Google Scholar.

16 Farnell, , Cults, vol. iv. p. 269Google Scholar.

17 Cults, vol. iv. p. 286.

18 Plato, Phaedo, ch. ii.

19 Iliad vi. 129–137.

20 Euripides, , Ion 1.Google Scholar 282.

21 Ibid. ll. 278, 279.