=Ægeus=, king of Athens, son of Pandion, being desirous of having children, went to consult the oracle, and in his return, stopped at the court of Pittheus king of Trœzene, who gave him his daughter Æthra in marriage. He left her pregnant, and told her, that if she had a son, to send him to Athens as soon as he could lift a stone under which he had concealed his sword. By this sword he was to be known to Ægeus, who did not wish to make any public discovery of a son, for fear of his nephews, the Pallantides, who expected his crown. Æthra became mother of Theseus, whom she accordingly sent to Athens with his father’s sword. At the time, Ægeus lived with Medea the divorced wife of Jason. When Theseus came to Athens, Medea attempted to poison him; but he escaped, and upon showing Ægeus the sword he wore, discovered himself to be his son. When Theseus returned from Crete after the death of the Minotaur, he forgot, agreeably to the engagement made with his father, to hoist up white sails as a signal of his success: and Ægeus, at the sight of black sails, concluding that his son was dead, threw himself from a high rock into the sea; which, from him, as some suppose, has been called the Ægean. Ægeus reigned 48 years, and died B.C. 1235. He is supposed to have first introduced into Greece the worship of Venus Urania, to render the goddess propitious to his wishes in having a son. _See:_ Theseus, Minotaurus, and Medea. _Apollodorus_, bk. 1, chs. 8, 9; bk. 3, ch. 15.――_Pausanias_, bk. 1, chs. 5, 22, 38; bk. 4, ch. 2.――_Plutarch_, _Theseus_.――_Hyginus_, fables 37, 43, 79, & 173. =Ægiăle=, one of Phaeton’s sisters changed into poplars, and their tears into amber. They are called Heliades.――――A daughter of Adrastus, by Amphitea daughter of Pronax. She married Diomedes, in whose absence, during the Trojan war, she prostituted herself to her servants, and chiefly to Cometes, whom the king had left master of his house. At his return, Diomedes, being told of his wife’s wantonness, went to settle in Daunia. Some say that Venus implanted those vicious and lustful propensities in Ægiale, to revenge herself on Diomedes, who had wounded her in the Trojan war. _Ovid_, _Ibis_, li. 350.――_Homer_, _Iliad_, bk. 5, li. 412.――_Apollodorus_, bk. 1, ch. 9.――_Statius_, bk. 3, _Sylvæ_, poem 5, li. 48. =Ægiălea=, an island near Peloponnesus, in the Cretan sea.――――Another in the Ionian sea, near the Echinades. _Pliny_, bk. 4, ch. 12.―― _Herodotus_, bk. 4, ch. 107.――――The ancient name of Peloponnesus. _Strabo_, bk. 12.――_Mela_, bk. 2, ch. 7.