Of the legends that they tell at Trœzen about Theseus one is that Hercules, visiting Pittheus at Trœzen, threw down during dinner his lion’s skin, and that several Trœzenian lads came into the room with Theseus, who was seven years of age at most. They say that all the other boys when they saw the lion’s skin fled helter skelter, but Theseus not being afraid kept his ground, and plucked an axe from one of the servants, and began to attack it fiercely, thinking the skin was a live lion. This is the first Trœzenian legend about him. And the next is that Ægeus put his boots and sword under a stone as means of identifying his son, and then sailed away to Athens, and Theseus when he was eighteen lifted the stone and removed what Ægeus had left there. And this legend is worked in bronze, all but the stone, in the Acropolis. They have also delineated another exploit of Theseus. This is the legend. A bull was ravaging the Cretan territory both elsewhere and by the river Tethris. In ancient times it appears wild beasts were more formidable to men, as the Nemean and Parnasian lions, and dragons in many parts of Greece, and boars at Calydon and Erymanthus and Crommyon in Corinth, of whom it was said that some sprang out of the ground, and others were sacred to the gods, and others sent for the punishment of human beings. And this bull the Cretans say Poseidon sent into their land, because Minos, who was master of the Grecian sea, held Poseidon in no greater honour than any other god. And they say that this bull crossed over from Crete to the Peloponnese, and that one of the twelve Labours of Hercules was to fetch it to Eurystheus. And when it was afterwards let go on the Argive plain, it fled through the Isthmus of Corinth, and into Attica to the township of Marathon, and killed several people whom it met, and among them Androgeos the son of Minos. And Minos sailed to Athens, (for he could not be persuaded that the Athenians had had no hand in the death of Androgeos,) and did great damage, until it was covenanted to send annually seven maidens and seven boys to Crete to the Minotaur, who was fabled to live in the Labyrinth at Gnossus. As to the bull that had got to Marathon, it is said to have been driven by Theseus into the Acropolis, and sacrificed to Athene. And the township of Marathon has a representation of it. CHAPTER XXVIII.