WEBVTT - Theseus and the Slashers from Hell 0:00:02.990 --> 0:00:13.560 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:13.580 --> 0:00:15.610 welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is 0:00:15.660 --> 0:00:16.210 Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.750 --> 0:00:21.390 And I am Joe McCormick. And today our Halloween offerings continue. 0:00:21.430 --> 0:00:24.770 We're going to be talking about a story from Greek legend, 0:00:25.180 --> 0:00:28.720 that has some surprising flavor of Camp Crystal Lake about it, 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:31.760 a little bit of Haddonfield action here. The story is 0:00:31.860 --> 0:00:37.000 commonly known as The Six Labors of Theseus, but we've 0:00:37.020 --> 0:00:40.890 been thinking about it as Theseus versus the Slashers from Hell. 0:00:41.090 --> 0:00:44.449 There's a bit more slasheriness to this than you would expect. 0:00:44.909 --> 0:00:47.510 That's right. Yeah, we're kind of giving it the grindhouse 0:00:47.570 --> 0:00:50.890 treatment here with the title Theseus and the Slashers from Hell. 0:00:52.090 --> 0:00:55.570 The hero is, of course, Theseus, perhaps best known certainly 0:00:55.590 --> 0:00:59.330 to many of you, and I think widely in today's world, 0:00:59.610 --> 0:01:02.550 as the slayer of the Minotaur. I think that's the 0:01:02.870 --> 0:01:07.250 most famous tale involving this hero. But here he's going 0:01:07.290 --> 0:01:12.000 up against six evildoers who are either mortals or largely 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.740 mortal in form, with a few caveats we'll get into. 0:01:15.740 --> 0:01:20.600 We may loosely frame them as slashers, as sadistic warlords, 0:01:21.340 --> 0:01:25.520 as bandits, as serial killers of antiquity, And yes, if 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.860 we're daring, individuals loosely associated with the underworld, because he's 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:32.899 going to be going up against the six different killers 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:37.130 of the Saronic Gulf, which is formed between the peninsulas 0:01:37.510 --> 0:01:41.550 of Attica and Argolis and forms part of the Aegean Sea. 0:01:42.150 --> 0:01:45.350 The sites of these killers snake around the Gulf on 0:01:45.370 --> 0:01:49.140 the land road between the cities of Treason and Athens, 0:01:49.580 --> 0:01:52.560 an area that is also riddled with caves and vents. 0:01:53.050 --> 0:01:57.910 connected in some sources and works of scholarship to openings 0:01:57.970 --> 0:02:01.610 to the underworld. So by some measures, yeah, we might 0:02:01.670 --> 0:02:05.550 think of these six killers as manifestations of these adjacent 0:02:05.590 --> 0:02:09.269 thresholds to another world. It's all a bit more nuanced 0:02:09.290 --> 0:02:11.280 than this, as we'll get into. But yeah, I think 0:02:11.340 --> 0:02:14.780 we can more or less embrace the grindhouse title of 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:16.340 Theseus and the Slashers from Hell. 0:02:17.020 --> 0:02:20.820 Do you remember the Peplum movie we watched? I think 0:02:20.860 --> 0:02:23.810 it was called Hercules in the Haunted World, the one 0:02:23.830 --> 0:02:28.010 with Reg Park in it. As him playing Hercules in 0:02:28.050 --> 0:02:31.950 this movie, it had a grossly misused Christopher Lee where 0:02:31.970 --> 0:02:36.150 they dubbed his voice, but directed by Mario Bava, where 0:02:36.630 --> 0:02:40.750 Hercules fights through the underworld and In that movie, they 0:02:40.830 --> 0:02:45.190 put one of the villains from this legend just randomly 0:02:45.310 --> 0:02:49.630 in hell. They take Procrustes, the guy, the bedtime mutilator, 0:02:49.690 --> 0:02:52.290 who we'll talk about later, and they put him as 0:02:52.389 --> 0:02:55.010 one of the villains that Hercules has to fight down 0:02:55.190 --> 0:02:55.950 in the underworld. 0:02:56.270 --> 0:02:59.290 I forgot about that entirely. I don't remember him being 0:02:59.889 --> 0:03:01.130 measured for a bed at all. 0:03:02.330 --> 0:03:04.960 Yeah, they don't really... I don't remember how that scene 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:07.579 plays out. And I remember the Procrustes in the movie 0:03:07.620 --> 0:03:11.260 is sort of this rock monster type thing. It seems 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:14.000 a little bit less human. I don't know if there's 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:19.810 any legendary or ancient text-based precedent for putting Procrustes in hell. 0:03:19.889 --> 0:03:22.609 I somewhat doubt it. I think this is an earth-dwelling 0:03:22.650 --> 0:03:24.370 killer in the stories that I know. 0:03:24.870 --> 0:03:29.500 Yeah, I'm not aware of any particular film treatment that 0:03:29.530 --> 0:03:34.900 really gets into Theseus and these six evildoers. But I 0:03:34.940 --> 0:03:38.080 think there's room there for exploration. If anyone out there 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:43.590 is looking to cash in on the post-Odyssey enthusiasm for 0:03:44.010 --> 0:03:46.550 Greek mythology, yeah, dig into it. There's a lot of 0:03:46.570 --> 0:03:48.990 stuff like this that hasn't received as much attention. 0:03:49.510 --> 0:03:52.370 I can imagine a really good Robert Eggers take on 0:03:52.410 --> 0:03:55.890 the Theseus tale, or, you know, the kind of dusty, nasty, 0:03:56.110 --> 0:03:58.440 old-world look at Theseus going out to fight all the 0:03:58.460 --> 0:04:01.760 blood spillers. But anyway, I wanted to talk for a 0:04:01.780 --> 0:04:06.110 minute about source material. Uh, so as you can imagine, the, 0:04:06.490 --> 0:04:09.970 the story of Theseus and his early six labors is 0:04:10.130 --> 0:04:13.529 one that has featured in many different ancient texts. There 0:04:13.570 --> 0:04:17.250 are many tellings of and references to this story or 0:04:17.310 --> 0:04:20.479 parts of the story throughout the ancient world. Uh, and 0:04:20.500 --> 0:04:23.520 there are a lot of differences between those tellings. So 0:04:23.700 --> 0:04:27.060 we're going to feature different texts and quote from different 0:04:27.100 --> 0:04:30.850 texts in this episode. I think, uh, One of our 0:04:30.910 --> 0:04:34.310 major sources is going to be Plutarch's Life of Theseus, 0:04:34.529 --> 0:04:38.150 especially for the prologue to the slasher part. But we 0:04:38.190 --> 0:04:42.170 can pull details from other ancient texts as needed. And 0:04:42.290 --> 0:04:44.750 when quoting from Plutarch, I'm actually going to use a 0:04:44.770 --> 0:04:49.039 couple of different translations. The older John Dryden translation is 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.240 really great for how he phrases some things. But I'm 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.400 also going to feature the Bernadotte Perrin translation, which is 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:57.460 an earlier 20th century translation. 0:04:58.140 --> 0:05:00.360 Excellent. And a source I'll be referring to a fair 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:04.620 amount here is Monsters and Monarchs, Serial Killers in Classic 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:08.670 Myth and History by Debbie Felton, the professor of classics 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:12.849 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose work we also 0:05:12.930 --> 0:05:16.050 referenced in our series on Haunted Houses of the Ancient World. 0:05:16.089 --> 0:05:18.390 It's a really cool book, and it goes into a 0:05:18.570 --> 0:05:20.849 lot more than just what we're talking about here today. 0:05:20.950 --> 0:05:24.650 So if your pyramid of interests includes both Greek mythology 0:05:25.390 --> 0:05:29.310 and true crime, definitely pick up that book. Totally. 0:05:29.410 --> 0:05:31.710 I haven't read this one, but based on your references 0:05:31.770 --> 0:05:33.390 to it in our notes and stuff, it seems like 0:05:33.430 --> 0:05:36.570 a really great source. I do want to mention one 0:05:36.610 --> 0:05:39.180 thing to avoid any confusion. So I know there's going 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.140 to be some true crime of the ancient world in 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.640 that book, but the stories we're talking about today are 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:50.190 not true crime. They are myth crime. So Theseus is 0:05:50.250 --> 0:05:54.620 considered a legendary figure. He's Probably not a person who 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.140 really lived in history, but sort of interlocks with the 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:04.280 legendary history of Greece. And so we get references to 0:06:04.339 --> 0:06:09.180 Theseus that have different levels of magical integration in them. 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.419 Like there are tellings of the Theseus story that are 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:18.110 more just like mythology. They're like any other myth you 0:06:18.140 --> 0:06:20.460 would read about gods and monsters and stuff like that. 0:06:20.850 --> 0:06:23.310 And then there are tellings of the Theseus story that 0:06:23.350 --> 0:06:26.780 are more on the rationalistic history side of things. And 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.160 I think that's more what you get with Plutarch. Plutarch 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:32.060 was offering a kind of, I'm going to try to 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:34.980 strip down the story and tell it as if like 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:37.620 what I think probably really happened in the life of 0:06:37.690 --> 0:06:38.349 this person. 0:06:39.070 --> 0:06:41.390 So, yeah, there's definitely none of that, you know, the 0:06:41.450 --> 0:06:45.130 flavor of portals to the underworld or anything. with Plutarch. 0:06:45.190 --> 0:06:47.130 I mean, we are dealing with characters that when you 0:06:47.150 --> 0:06:50.310 get into other sources, like, yeah, technically they're demigods. In 0:06:50.350 --> 0:06:54.350 some cases, they are siblings or half-siblings to Theseus himself, 0:06:54.410 --> 0:06:57.370 who is also the son of a god. But Plutarch's 0:06:57.450 --> 0:07:00.950 approach to it, yeah, is more down to earth, maybe 0:07:00.990 --> 0:07:04.550 stripped down budget-wise, if we're thinking of it as a 0:07:04.589 --> 0:07:08.910 motion picture here, you know, relying less on spectacular special 0:07:08.950 --> 0:07:13.570 effects and more on gritty, believable, like, touchable, practical effects. 0:07:14.050 --> 0:07:18.810 Like, the references to mythical animals will mostly come from 0:07:18.850 --> 0:07:22.290 the other sources. And Plutarch is going to try to 0:07:22.310 --> 0:07:25.030 be like, eh, this monster pig, I think it was 0:07:25.110 --> 0:07:26.830 really just a lady people didn't like. 0:07:27.130 --> 0:07:27.310 Yeah. 0:07:27.790 --> 0:07:28.290 Yeah. 0:07:28.310 --> 0:07:30.310 For the most part, we have just a hero, a 0:07:31.070 --> 0:07:34.340 man with a great future ahead of him, who decides that, hey, 0:07:34.380 --> 0:07:36.300 he's going to go out and challenge himself by taking 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:40.160 out some outlaws. So, yeah, almost like a Western in 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:42.930 some respects, I guess. Right. I also think of it 0:07:42.970 --> 0:07:44.950 as kind of like a biker movie, you know. 0:07:45.470 --> 0:07:46.050 Biker. 0:07:46.090 --> 0:07:46.390 Yeah. 0:07:47.010 --> 0:07:49.990 Like one good biker versus a lot of bad bikers. 0:07:50.070 --> 0:07:50.590 Yeah. 0:07:50.630 --> 0:07:50.930 Yeah. 0:07:51.110 --> 0:07:53.950 Yeah. On the road from one town to the next 0:07:54.150 --> 0:07:55.620 and the lawless highway. 0:07:56.750 --> 0:07:58.450 Oh, that's it. That's a theme I want to come 0:07:58.500 --> 0:08:02.360 back to later. So when we I guess actually we 0:08:02.380 --> 0:08:04.720 should start with some background. Talk about like who was 0:08:04.820 --> 0:08:08.400 the CS according to these storytellers and get into the 0:08:08.460 --> 0:08:12.290 background of the six laborers. And so, Rob, I'm going 0:08:12.310 --> 0:08:14.390 to work from my notes here, but I know you've 0:08:14.430 --> 0:08:16.410 got some stuff on this same part of the story. 0:08:16.430 --> 0:08:19.970 So please stop me anywhere here and add whatever you've got. 0:08:21.450 --> 0:08:25.450 So the action begins in a city called Treason, which 0:08:25.650 --> 0:08:30.630 is on the Peloponnese southwest of Athens. And the king 0:08:30.850 --> 0:08:33.959 and founder of Treason in this story is a guy 0:08:34.130 --> 0:08:40.840 named Pythias. Pythias has a daughter named Aethra. And Aethra 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.580 conceives a child with a man named Aegis, who is 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:50.839 king of Athens. Plutarch writes, this is the Bernadotte Perrin translation, quote, 0:08:51.420 --> 0:08:54.080 Learning that it was the daughter of Pythias with whom 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:57.400 he had consorted, and suspecting that she was with child 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.290 by him, he, meaning Aegis, left a sword and a 0:09:01.330 --> 0:09:05.150 pair of sandals hidden under a great rock, which had 0:09:05.170 --> 0:09:08.290 a hollow in it just large enough to receive these objects. 0:09:08.740 --> 0:09:10.780 Doesn't say how he got them under the rock. I 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:12.520 assume he's got a bunch of people working for him. 0:09:14.620 --> 0:09:18.550 But then Aegis tells Aethra that if she ever has 0:09:18.590 --> 0:09:21.590 a son and if her son is able to lift 0:09:21.690 --> 0:09:25.309 the rock and take the treasures from underneath it, that 0:09:25.390 --> 0:09:28.130 her son should come see him in Athens to receive 0:09:28.170 --> 0:09:31.700 his birthright as son of a king. But he also 0:09:31.740 --> 0:09:34.160 says he should come in secret because he's going to 0:09:34.179 --> 0:09:35.880 have many jealous enemies. 0:09:35.900 --> 0:09:36.179 Hmm. 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.900 So later, Aethra does give birth to a son, and 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:45.239 she names her son Theseus. Theseus is raised by Pythias 0:09:45.500 --> 0:09:48.550 and instructed by a tutor. It names the tutor, says 0:09:48.590 --> 0:09:51.750 it's this guy named Conadus. And I think that's to 0:09:51.770 --> 0:09:53.510 give us the idea that he's brought up right, like 0:09:53.550 --> 0:09:56.930 he gets a proper education. He probably learns philosophy and 0:09:56.970 --> 0:09:59.770 rhetoric and, you know, the kingly arts and all those things. 0:10:00.750 --> 0:10:03.599 And it says he observes the proper rituals of a 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:07.020 young man, a martial young man, a man of war. 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:11.760 He goes to Delphi and he sacrifices some of his hair. Now, 0:10:11.860 --> 0:10:15.500 all the time he's growing up, Aethra keeps the secret 0:10:15.740 --> 0:10:21.290 of his father's identity from Theseus. Plutarch says that Pythias 0:10:21.490 --> 0:10:26.890 intentionally spreads a rumor that his grandson was begotten not 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:29.239 by a king from some other city, not by the 0:10:29.260 --> 0:10:33.540 king of Athens, but by Poseidon, god of the sea. Quote, 0:10:33.940 --> 0:10:37.100 for Poseidon is highly honored by the people of treason, 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:39.920 and he is the patron god of their city. To 0:10:39.980 --> 0:10:43.660 him they offer firstfruits in sacrifice, and they have his 0:10:43.780 --> 0:10:48.070 trident as an emblem on their coinage. So Plutarch is 0:10:48.090 --> 0:10:50.760 giving a rationalization. I think he may be kind of 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:56.110 explaining away other versions of the story of Theseus saying like, oh, 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:59.620 if you've heard that his father was Poseidon, that's because 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.020 King Pythias spread this rumor about him because everybody around 0:11:03.070 --> 0:11:05.390 there liked Poseidon. So that's like a good thing to 0:11:05.450 --> 0:11:09.150 be in treason. Because there are other versions of the 0:11:09.190 --> 0:11:12.130 story in which Theseus has different fathers, right? 0:11:12.710 --> 0:11:16.530 Right, right. Yeah, definitely this idea that Theseus is himself 0:11:16.610 --> 0:11:20.430 a demigod, is a son of Poseidon, much in the 0:11:20.470 --> 0:11:23.130 same way that Hercules is, of course, a son of Zeus. 0:11:23.410 --> 0:11:25.640 And one of the things that Felton stresses that, you know, 0:11:25.660 --> 0:11:28.280 we should keep in mind with all things Theseus is 0:11:28.340 --> 0:11:31.439 that he was for the longest kind of a regional 0:11:31.500 --> 0:11:35.700 hero with popularity centered in his home city of Athens. And, 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:39.000 you know, certainly from our standpoint, you know, via the 0:11:39.020 --> 0:11:41.660 tale of Theseus and the Minotaur, You know, he is 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:46.300 canonized in our understanding of Greek mythology and antiquity. And 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:48.760 we kind of see him more or less having equal 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.699 stature with Hercules. I was thinking about this. Like, if 0:11:52.740 --> 0:11:55.000 you ask an average person on the street, name one 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:58.760 Greek hero, they're probably going to say Heracles or Hercules, 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:03.869 you know. But if you ask them, well, tell me 0:12:03.910 --> 0:12:07.680 what Theseus slayed and tell me what Heracles slayed. they're probably, 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.620 if they're going to name any kind of monster, they're 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.479 going to name the Minotaur. Or at least that's my 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:16.300 guess anyway. I feel like Theseus and the Minotaur is, 0:12:16.500 --> 0:12:19.630 you know, certainly together, they have this iconic stature that's 0:12:20.130 --> 0:12:22.070 up there with anything else in Greek mythology. 0:12:23.150 --> 0:12:25.929 With Heracles, you got so many slayings, they kind of 0:12:25.970 --> 0:12:28.490 blur together. People remember maybe the Hydra. 0:12:28.590 --> 0:12:31.050 Yeah. But then he has his cousin's help on that. But, 0:12:31.190 --> 0:12:32.860 you know, in any story, there's going to be a 0:12:32.860 --> 0:12:35.960 little bit of help, right? But yeah, it's kind of like, 0:12:36.830 --> 0:12:40.050 We have Heracles at home, if home is Athens. That's 0:12:40.110 --> 0:12:42.340 basically what's going on here. And so for the longest, 0:12:42.770 --> 0:12:47.500 like Theseus' fandom was tied to Athens, to the city-state 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.839 of Athens, and is tied up as well with propaganda 0:12:52.660 --> 0:12:56.179 about Athens and against the enemies of Athens. So we're 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:58.660 going to come back to elements of that as this 0:12:58.740 --> 0:13:02.340 all plays out. But yeah, Heracles was widely popular throughout 0:13:02.380 --> 0:13:04.860 the Greek world, while Theseus was, again, more of a 0:13:04.900 --> 0:13:09.840 regional city-state Heracles. Both are mentioned in the writings of Homer, roughly, 0:13:09.860 --> 0:13:12.980 you know, 8th century BCE. But Theseus wasn't really all 0:13:13.020 --> 0:13:17.559 that popular in Athens till after 510 BCE. And the 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.500 sorts of things that we're seeing Theseus do in this story, 0:13:20.809 --> 0:13:23.550 it's exactly the same sort of things that Heracles was 0:13:23.610 --> 0:13:27.170 also up to. Heracles also slayed a whole bunch of 0:13:27.230 --> 0:13:32.890 bandits and headhunters and skull crushers and so forth. So 0:13:34.170 --> 0:13:35.980 there is a lot to this that is kind of like, 0:13:36.190 --> 0:13:41.010 you know, generic Heracles adventure, but tied to a different city, um, 0:13:41.250 --> 0:13:44.450 that eventually has equal stature with it. And I believe 0:13:44.510 --> 0:13:46.750 Plutarch even kind of, you know, more or less alludes 0:13:46.830 --> 0:13:48.530 to this as, uh, to some of this as well, 0:13:48.570 --> 0:13:50.910 like pointing out, I was like, look, Heracles is great. 0:13:50.929 --> 0:13:53.200 And he killed a lot of bandits, but he couldn't 0:13:53.220 --> 0:13:56.120 kill all of them. There's some clever bandits, some clever 0:13:56.220 --> 0:13:59.420 evildoers out there. Uh, you know, one hero can only 0:13:59.460 --> 0:14:02.920 do some so much. Some of them hid from Heracles. Uh, 0:14:02.980 --> 0:14:05.770 there are plenty of villains out there for, uh, You know, 0:14:05.910 --> 0:14:08.370 lesser heroes like Theseus to deal with. 0:14:09.190 --> 0:14:13.550 Totally. And the comparison between Theseus and Heracles is not 0:14:13.590 --> 0:14:19.300 just something we're observing retrospectively. Like, it's there in the text. Like, 0:14:19.340 --> 0:14:24.140 Plutarch says that Theseus is obsessed with Heracles. He's, you know, 0:14:24.180 --> 0:14:25.940 he's all about him. I'll get to a quote about 0:14:25.980 --> 0:14:38.080 that in just a minute. But anyway, just to continue 0:14:38.100 --> 0:14:40.250 the story up to the beginning of the six labors. 0:14:40.970 --> 0:14:43.470 So Theseus, yeah, he grows up to be a young man. 0:14:43.490 --> 0:14:46.610 It says of strength and many virtues. He is strong 0:14:46.630 --> 0:14:49.770 of body. He has skill and prowess. It says he 0:14:49.810 --> 0:14:54.840 has firm spirit, intelligence and wisdom. So one day, Aethra 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:58.740 reveals the truth to Theseus about his father, that his 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:02.300 father is Aegis, the king of Athens. and about the 0:15:02.380 --> 0:15:05.560 treasures that are waiting for him hidden under the rock. Remember, 0:15:05.580 --> 0:15:08.020 he left those in the hollow under the rock. Theseus 0:15:08.060 --> 0:15:10.420 goes to the rock. It says he easily lifts it up, 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:13.120 puts his shoulder to it. No problem. Just lifts that 0:15:13.180 --> 0:15:16.230 rock right up there and retrieves the sword and the 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:20.270 sandals that were put there for him. And now Pythias 0:15:20.410 --> 0:15:23.910 instructs Theseus to travel to Athens by sea. So we're 0:15:23.950 --> 0:15:26.540 again talking about how even though the action of the 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:28.940 story does not begin in Athens, Theseus is going to 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:31.980 go on to become associated with the city of Athens. 0:15:32.020 --> 0:15:35.720 He's sort of the natural, the national hero of Athens. 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:38.180 And he's got to get there before he can, can 0:15:38.220 --> 0:15:39.780 become the patron of Athens. 0:15:40.420 --> 0:15:42.960 Yeah. But how are you going to get there? Right. 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:45.970 And in fact, he advises him. He's like, look, The 0:15:46.030 --> 0:15:50.610 land road to Athens is, of course, famously dangerous. It's 0:15:50.710 --> 0:15:55.359 just a death trap. There are these six different evildoers, 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:57.620 bandits or warlords, however you want to think of them. 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:00.420 We'll get into the terminology here in a minute. But yeah, 0:16:00.460 --> 0:16:04.280 they rule the land route. If you take the highway 0:16:04.700 --> 0:16:08.060 to Athens, that's just a death sentence. So don't do that. 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.800 You want to just shoot straight across the Saronic Gulf. 0:16:11.820 --> 0:16:15.690 You want to travel to Athens by boat. And you'll 0:16:16.010 --> 0:16:17.820 get there faster and more to the point you'll get 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:18.480 there alive. 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:23.360 Now, it's funny that Plutarch explains the problem with overland 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.780 travel as not something just specific to Theseus, but like 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.080 a general problem. So I'm going to read from Plutarch here. 0:16:31.140 --> 0:16:35.270 This is the Perrin translation. Quote, For verily that age 0:16:35.350 --> 0:16:39.090 produced men who in work of hand and speed of 0:16:39.210 --> 0:16:43.740 foot and vigor of body were extraordinary and indefatigable men. 0:16:44.150 --> 0:16:46.810 But they applied their powers to nothing that was fitting 0:16:46.870 --> 0:16:51.490 or useful. Nay, rather, they exulted in monstrous insolence and 0:16:51.630 --> 0:16:54.960 reaped from their strength the harvest of cruelty and bitterness, 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:59.540 mastering and forcing and destroying everything that came in their path. 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.520 And as for reverence and righteousness, justice and humanity, they 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.850 thought that most men praised these qualities for lack of 0:17:08.010 --> 0:17:11.330 courage to do wrong and for fear of being wronged. 0:17:11.770 --> 0:17:14.970 and considered them no concern of men who were strong 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:17.480 enough to get the upper hand. It's like, oh yeah, 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:21.440 people only do right because they're weak. You know, real 0:17:21.500 --> 0:17:26.300 tough guys, they just take what they want. Anyway, continuing 0:17:26.460 --> 0:17:30.180 from Plutarch, quote, some of these creatures Heracles cut off 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.340 and destroyed as he went about, but some escaped his 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:37.100 notice as he passed by, crouching down and shrinking back 0:17:37.460 --> 0:17:41.480 and were overlooked in their abjectness. And when Heracles met 0:17:41.540 --> 0:17:46.230 with calamity, and after the slaying of Iphidus, removed into Lydia, 0:17:46.350 --> 0:17:49.050 and for a long time did slave service there in 0:17:49.070 --> 0:17:53.330 the house of Umphali, then Lydia indeed obtained great peace 0:17:53.430 --> 0:17:56.770 and security. But in the regions of Hellas the old 0:17:56.910 --> 0:18:00.760 villainies burst forth and broke out anew, there being none 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:04.899 to rebuke and none to restrain them. Wow. So killers 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.260 are just everywhere. The old villainy broke forth. It's like 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.159 a flood spilling out. It had once been dammed up 0:18:11.220 --> 0:18:13.960 by Hercules, but Hercules missed a few. And then they 0:18:14.109 --> 0:18:18.270 just multiplied like cockroaches. Now they're just villains everywhere. And 0:18:18.290 --> 0:18:20.230 so you can't take the land roads. 0:18:20.550 --> 0:18:25.270 Yeah, it sounds kind of like a sequel spinoff. Like 0:18:25.290 --> 0:18:27.109 he didn't get all the bad guys. There's some left 0:18:27.150 --> 0:18:30.430 and we have this new character just as exciting as Heracles. 0:18:30.810 --> 0:18:33.369 I think you guys in Athens are especially going to 0:18:33.390 --> 0:18:34.330 like Yeah. 0:18:34.690 --> 0:18:38.550 So Pythias tells Theseus to go by sea, but Theseus says, no, 0:18:39.170 --> 0:18:41.750 I'm not going to do that. Instead, he says he's 0:18:41.790 --> 0:18:43.869 going to travel by land and he's going to face 0:18:44.010 --> 0:18:47.090 all of these bandits by himself in order to prove 0:18:47.150 --> 0:18:50.680 his worth. And Plutarch says there are two reasons for this. 0:18:51.300 --> 0:18:54.300 One is, again, that he is obsessed with Heracles, who 0:18:54.420 --> 0:18:57.120 is a distant cousin of his. I think maybe they're 0:18:57.380 --> 0:19:01.540 second cousins or something. or first cousins once removed. I 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:04.879 don't remember how that works out, but he's somehow cousins 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:08.440 with Heracles, and he wants to be a vanquisher of 0:19:08.550 --> 0:19:13.150 evildoers just like his cousin. But also, he does not 0:19:13.210 --> 0:19:16.690 want to appear before his father as a boy with 0:19:16.770 --> 0:19:19.350 no great deeds to his name. There's a line about 0:19:19.390 --> 0:19:22.780 how he doesn't want to show up with an unstained sword, 0:19:22.900 --> 0:19:24.359 like this sword needs blood on. 0:19:24.830 --> 0:19:28.470 Yeah, because he's grown up outside of Athens, but with, again, 0:19:28.530 --> 0:19:31.230 kind of like an Athenian upbringing. He's been given all 0:19:31.260 --> 0:19:35.459 of the educational and cultural advantages, but he is untested. 0:19:36.020 --> 0:19:37.700 And so he wants to test himself. 0:19:38.460 --> 0:19:41.400 Quote, in such a spirit and with such thoughts, he 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:44.730 set out determined to do no man any wrong, but 0:19:44.770 --> 0:19:49.370 to punish those who offered him violence. So he's been warned. 0:19:49.570 --> 0:19:52.200 It's dangerous. out there. You shouldn't do it. But he's 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:55.080 going anyway, and he's going to slash the slashers. 0:19:55.520 --> 0:20:00.179 Yeah, yeah. Now, you know, we're using different terms for 0:20:00.220 --> 0:20:03.530 these guys. Slashers, that's more what we're calling them. But 0:20:03.830 --> 0:20:07.629 you also see them called just villains, robbers, bandits. As 0:20:07.710 --> 0:20:11.100 Felton points out, Yeah, a lot of modern translations and 0:20:11.140 --> 0:20:13.380 retellings are going to use words like robbers and bandits, 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:17.380 but most of the ancient Greek literary sources do not. 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:20.639 And in fact, they don't categorize them as anything on 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.220 the whole, often just referring to each individual by their 0:20:23.260 --> 0:20:28.640 given name. There is a term that is frequently, that 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:31.010 is at least sometimes used in the ancient texts. She 0:20:31.050 --> 0:20:35.850 points out kakorgos, which apparently means evildoer. So I think 0:20:35.890 --> 0:20:38.619 if you're going to call them anything, as a group, 0:20:38.670 --> 0:20:44.080 they are evildoers. And this is important when you get 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.700 into the details of, the overarching details of who they 0:20:47.900 --> 0:20:51.560 are and what they do. Felton stresses that in each case, 0:20:51.580 --> 0:20:55.880 you know, loot is not the primary motivation for these 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:59.340 different killers. You know, they are engaging, at least some 0:20:59.380 --> 0:21:02.340 of them are engaging in some form of banditry as well. 0:21:02.940 --> 0:21:06.480 But it seems that the cruelty, the murder, the mutilation 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:10.570 itself targeting innocent individuals on the whole, that is the 0:21:10.609 --> 0:21:12.989 whole point of what they're up to. Uh, they're out 0:21:13.030 --> 0:21:17.629 there in the wilds, um, you know, ungoverned, ungovernable, and 0:21:17.810 --> 0:21:20.090 all they want to do is cause misery and mayhem. 0:21:20.710 --> 0:21:22.850 With a couple of them, it feels like they're trying 0:21:22.890 --> 0:21:26.560 to exert a kind of dominance or superiority over people 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:29.460 who travel through by, by beating them up or killing them. 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:32.700 I think you get that with paraffinities and something somewhat 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:37.000 with Circe on, um, And then with others, you get 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:42.120 more of a flavor of just criminal insanity. People doing 0:21:42.140 --> 0:21:44.300 things that don't make any sense, but they just kill. 0:21:44.740 --> 0:21:48.439 Yeah. And so one of Felton's main focuses is to 0:21:48.570 --> 0:21:51.890 compare them to serial killers. And she writes, quote, they 0:21:51.910 --> 0:21:55.469 resemble modern serial killers in many ways. They kill primarily 0:21:55.530 --> 0:21:58.730 for the pleasure they derive from it and only secondarily 0:21:59.090 --> 0:22:02.600 for profit. They exhibited sadism and a consistent pattern in 0:22:02.619 --> 0:22:06.419 the methods of killing. Their brutality far surpassed that of 0:22:06.460 --> 0:22:10.060 the typical highway marauder. They not only robbed and killed, 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:14.460 but tortured and mutilated their victims. And as we'll see, 0:22:14.500 --> 0:22:16.740 I think, yeah, I think the serial killer comparison is 0:22:16.820 --> 0:22:19.620 right on, especially if we compare it not so much 0:22:19.700 --> 0:22:23.480 to real world serial killers, but the sort of sensational 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:27.159 fictional serial killers that you see in modern media, you know, 0:22:27.180 --> 0:22:31.400 TV shows like Hannibal and so forth. As we've already 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:33.540 teased out, I think there's More than a little bit 0:22:33.580 --> 0:22:35.740 of the slasher from the horror movie to be found 0:22:35.780 --> 0:22:39.940 in many of these examples. And also just any kind 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:42.820 of modern media where you have kind of a no 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.310 man's land and some sort of like deranged individuals that 0:22:46.350 --> 0:22:49.730 are enjoying the lawlessness. Like, again, my mind comes back 0:22:49.770 --> 0:22:54.190 to 70s outlaw biker films about, you know, deranged anti 0:22:54.250 --> 0:22:56.280 hippies who are killing people just for kicks. 0:22:56.900 --> 0:23:00.380 Yeah, I absolutely see that. Strangely, I kept thinking about 0:23:00.780 --> 0:23:06.020 what slasher movies these stories most remind me of. And 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.660 more than anything, I was thinking of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 0:23:09.680 --> 0:23:13.660 These get closer to TCM than any other slasher franchise 0:23:13.770 --> 0:23:14.480