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94-548: Theseus ( UK : / ˈ θ iː sj uː s / , US : / ˈ θ iː s i ə s / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Θησεύς [tʰɛːsěu̯s] ) was a divine hero in Greek mythology , famous for slaying the Minotaur . The myths surrounding Theseus, his journeys, exploits, and friends, have provided material for storytelling throughout the ages. Theseus is sometimes described as the son of Aegeus , king of Athens, and sometimes as

188-576: A West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic —the insular variety of Continental Celtic , which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages ( Welsh , Cornish , Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into

282-559: A century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English. Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England. Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in

376-515: A crowd favorite, much to the resentment of the Pallantides, who assassinated him, incurring the wrath of Minos. When King Minos heard what had befallen his son, he ordered the Cretan fleet to set sail for Athens. Minos asked Aegeus for his son's assassins, saying that if they were to be handed to him, the city would be spared. However, not knowing who the assassins were, King Aegeus surrendered

470-464: A great abductor of women, and his bosom companion, Pirithous , since they were sons of Zeus and Poseidon, pledged themselves to marry daughters of Zeus. Theseus, in an old tradition, chose Helen , and together they kidnapped her, intending to keep her until she was old enough to marry. Pirithous chose Persephone , even though she was already married to Hades , king of the underworld. They left Helen with Theseus's mother, Aethra at Aphidna , whence she

564-508: A greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. Dropping a morphological grammatical number , in collective nouns , is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: Police are investigating

658-519: A huge rock and told her that, when their son grew up, he should move the rock and bring the weapons to his father, who would acknowledge him. Upon his return to Athens, Aegeus married Medea , who had fled from Corinth and the wrath of Jason . Aegeus and Medea had one son named Medus . When Theseus grew up, he found his father's belongings left for him and went to Athens to claim his birthright. Aegeus recognized him as his son by his sword, shield, and sandals. Medea, Aegeus' wife perceived Theseus to be

752-406: A lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of

846-659: A process called T-glottalisation . National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no [ʔ] " and bottle of water being heard as "bo [ʔ] le of wa [ʔ] er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later , while often has all but regained /t/ . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p , as in pa [ʔ] er and k as in ba [ʔ] er. In most areas of England and Wales, outside

940-520: A regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and " BBC English" ), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In

1034-475: A sense her adopted children. When Theseus returned victorious to Athens, where he sacrificed the Bull, Medea tried to poison him. At the last second, Aegeus recognized the sandals and the sword and knocked the poisoned wine cup from Theseus's hands. Thus father and son were reunited, and Medea fled to Asia . When Theseus appeared in the town, his reputation had preceded him, as a result of his having traveled along

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1128-529: A tangible connection to their divine provenance. Theseus's best friend was Pirithous , king of the Lapiths . Pirithous had heard stories of Theseus's courage and strength in battle but wanted proof so he rustled Theseus's herd of cattle and drove it from Marathon and Theseus set out in pursuit. Pirithous took up his arms and the pair met to do battle but were so impressed with each other's gracefulness, beauty and courage they took an oath of friendship and joined

1222-621: A threat for her children's inheritance and first tried to discredit and then to poison Theseus. When Aegeus discovered these schemes, he drove Medea out of Athens. While visiting in Athens, King Minos ' son, Androgeus managed to defeat Aegeus in every contest during the Panathenaic Games . Out of envy, Aegeus sent him to conquer the Marathonian Bull , which killed him. Minos was angry and declared war on Athens. He offered

1316-486: A white sail as a sign that Theseus is alive, but Theseus neglected this request. When Aegeus saw Theseus' ships without a white sail, he assumed the worst and threw himself in his grief into the sea, named after him the Aegean Sea. In Troezen, Theseus grew up and became a brave young man. He managed to move the rock and took his father's weapons. His mother then told him the identity of his father and that he should take

1410-541: A wild bull that terrified Hippolytus's horses. A cult grew up around Hippolytus, associated with the cult of Aphrodite . Girls who were about to be married offered locks of their hair to him. The cult believed that Asclepius had resurrected Hippolytus and that he lived in a sacred forest near Aricia in Latium . According to some sources, Theseus also was one of the Argonauts , although Apollonius of Rhodes states in

1504-725: Is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar , where the R is not pronounced. British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in

1598-474: Is based on British English, but has more influence from American English , often grouped together due to their close proximity. British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings. Aegeus Aegeus was the son of Pandion II , king of Athens and Pylia , daughter of King Pylas of Megara and thus, brother to Pallas , Nysus , Lykos and

1692-795: Is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press . The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules , and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style . Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English ,

1786-504: Is to construct a life that parallels the Life of Romulus , the founding myth of Rome. Plutarch's sources, not all of whose texts have survived independently, include Pherecydes (mid-fifth century BC), Demon (c. 400 BC), Philochorus , and Cleidemus (both fourth century BC). As the subject of myth, the existence of Theseus as a real person has not been proven, but scholars believe that he may have been alive during

1880-641: The Argonautica that Theseus was still in the underworld at this time. Both statements are inconsistent with Medea being Aegeus' wife by the time Theseus first came to Athens. With Phaedra, Theseus fathered Acamas , who was one of those who hid in the Trojan Horse during the Trojan War . Theseus welcomed the wandering Oedipus and helped Adrastus to bury the Seven against Thebes . Lycomedes of

1974-547: The Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and

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2068-746: The synoikismos ('dwelling together'). As the unifying king, he is credited with building a palace on the fortress of the Acropolis . Pausanias reports that after synoikismos , Theseus established a cult of Aphrodite ('Aphrodite of all the People') on the southern slope of the Acropolis. Plutarch 's Life of Theseus makes use of varying accounts of the death of the Minotaur, Theseus's escape, and his romantic involvement with and betrayal of Ariadne , daughter of King Minos . Plutarch's avowed purpose

2162-530: The Calydonian boar hunt . In Iliad I, Nestor numbers Pirithous and Theseus "of heroic fame" among an earlier generation of heroes of his youth, "the strongest men that Earth has bred, the strongest men against the strongest enemies, a savage mountain-dwelling tribe whom they utterly destroyed." No trace of such an oral tradition, which Homer's listeners would have recognized in Nestor's allusion, survived in

2256-658: The East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of

2350-576: The English language in England , or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English , Welsh English , and Northern Irish English . Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with]

2444-651: The Isthmus to the Pythium, but according to Andron , only as far as Eleusis and the Thriasian Plain . Although different writers have stated the division into four parts in different ways, it suffices to take the following from Sophocles : Aegeus says that his father ordered him to depart to the shorelands, assigning to him as the eldest the best portion of this land; then to Lycus he assigns Euboea's garden that lies side by side therewith; and for Nisus he selects

2538-426: The Marathonian Bull , an emblem of Cretan power. On the way to Marathon , Theseus took shelter from a storm in the hut of an ancient woman named Hecale . She swore to make a sacrifice to Zeus if Theseus were successful in capturing the bull. Theseus did capture the bull, but when he returned to Hecale's hut, she was dead. In her honor, Theseus gave her name to one of the demes of Attica, making its inhabitants in

2632-616: The Minotaur , a half-man, half-bull monster that lived in the Labyrinth created by Daedalus . On the third occasion, Theseus volunteered to talk to the monster to stop this horror. He took the place of one of the youths and set off with a black sail, promising to his father, Aegeus, that if successful he would return with a white sail. Like the others, Theseus was stripped of his weapons when they sailed. On his arrival in Crete, Ariadne , King Minos' daughter, fell in love with Theseus and, on

2726-493: The Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways. The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over

2820-490: The Scots language or Scottish Gaelic ). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though . Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950),

2914-573: The University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC , in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout

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3008-610: The West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity . In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R . It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This

3102-401: The oracle at Delphi for advice. According to Pausanias , Aegeus ascribed this misfortune to the anger of Aphrodite and in order to conciliate her introduced her worship as Aphrodite Urania (Heavenly) in Athens. The cryptic words of the oracle were "Do not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until you have reached the height of Athens, lest you die of grief." Aegeus did not understand

3196-629: The 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire , is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents. In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ,

3290-461: The Athenians peace, however, under the condition that Athens would send seven young men and seven young women every nine years to Crete to be fed to the Minotaur , a vicious monster. This continued until Theseus killed the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne , Minos' daughter. After his adventures in Crete, Theseus returned by ship to Athens. His father, Aegeus previously had asked him to hang

3384-836: The English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform , where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers . Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication

3478-666: The Germanic schwein ) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc ) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English;

3572-530: The Late Bronze Age, or possibly as a king in the 8th or 9th century BC. Aegeus , one of the primordial kings of Athens , was childless. Desiring an heir, he asked the Oracle of Delphi for advice. Her cryptic words were "Do not loosen the bulging mouth of the wineskin until you have reached the height of Athens, lest you die of grief." Aegeus did not understand the prophecy and was disappointed. He asked

3666-922: The Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English . Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries , though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia , Malta , New Zealand , Nigeria , and South Africa . It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia , and in parts of Africa. Canadian English

3760-712: The South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. Immigrants to

3854-550: The UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. Notably Multicultural London English , a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London . Since

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3948-640: The United Kingdom , as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English , West Country , East and West Midlands English and Northern English ), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language ), and Scottish English (not to be confused with

4042-465: The West Scottish accent. Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in

4136-410: The adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within the United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English . The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to

4230-461: The advice of Daedalus, gave him a ball of thread (a clew), so he could find his way out of the Labyrinth. That night, Ariadne escorted Theseus to the Labyrinth, and Theseus promised that if he returned from the Labyrinth he would take Ariadne with him. As soon as Theseus entered the Labyrinth, he tied one end of the ball of string to the doorpost and brandished his sword which he had kept hidden from

4324-410: The advice of his host Pittheus , king of Troezen . Pittheus understood the prophecy, got Aegeus drunk, and gave Aegeus his daughter Aethra . But following the instructions of Athena in a dream, Aethra left the sleeping Aegeus and waded across to the island of Sphairia that lay close to Troezen's shore. There, she poured a libation to Sphairos (Pelops's charioteer) and Poseidon and was possessed by

4418-488: The award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country , or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink". Most people in Britain speak with

4512-434: The beast, Theseus used the string to escape the Labyrinth and managed to escape with all of the young Athenians and Ariadne as well as her younger sister Phaedra . Then he and the rest of the crew fell asleep on the beach of the island of Naxos, where they stopped on their way back, looking for water. Theseus then abandoned Ariadne, where Dionysus eventually found and married her. On his way back from Crete, he also stopped on

4606-622: The country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing

4700-668: The daughter of King Minos, bore Theseus two sons, Demophon and Acamas . While these two were still in their infancy, Phaedra fell in love with Hippolytus , Theseus' son by the Amazon queen Hippolyta . According to some versions of the story, Hippolytus had scorned Aphrodite to become a follower of Artemis , so Aphrodite made Phaedra fall in love with him as punishment. He rejected her out of chastity. Alternatively, in Euripides' version, Hippolytus , Phaedra's nurse told Hippolytus of her mistress's love and he swore he would not reveal

4794-563: The death of Pandion, now king of Megara, Aegeus in conjunction with his three brothers successfully attacked Athens, took control over the government and expelled the usurpers, the Metionids. Then, they divide the power among themselves but Aegeus obtained the sovereignty of Attica , succeeding Pandion to the throne. It has been said that Megara was at the time a part of Attica, and that Nisus received his part when he became king of that city. Lycus became king of Euboea whereas Pallas received

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4888-468: The guards inside his tunic. Theseus followed Daedalus' instructions given to Ariadne: go forwards, always down, and never left or right. Theseus came to the heart of the Labyrinth and upon the sleeping Minotaur. The beast awoke and a tremendous fight occurred. Theseus overpowered the Minotaur with his strength and stabbed the beast in the throat with his sword (according to one scholium on Pindar's Fifth Nemean Ode, Theseus strangled it). After decapitating

4982-458: The idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or

5076-499: The island of Delos (one of Apollo's most sacred sanctuaries) on the Athenian state galley—the ship itself—to pay their fealty to the god. To preserve the purity of the occasion, no executions were permitted between the time when the religious ceremony began to when the ship returned from Delos, which took several weeks. To preserve the ship, any wood that wore out or rotted was replaced; it was thus unclear to philosophers how much of

5170-402: The island of Delos , where, according to Plutarch , "Theseus danced with the young Athenians a dance still performed by the inhabitants of the island, consisting of twisting and twisted movements that reproduce the shapes of the labyrinth. Dicearchos states that this dance is called 'Crane'." Theseus forgot to put up the white sails instead of the black ones, so his father, the king, believing he

5264-439: The island of Skyros threw Theseus off a cliff after he had lost popularity in Athens. In 475 BC, in response to an oracle, Cimon of Athens, having conquered Skyros for the Athenians, identified as the remains of Theseus "a coffin of a great corpse with a bronze spear-head by its side and a sword." (Plutarch, Life of Theseus ). The remains found by Cimon were reburied in Athens. The early modern name Theseion (Temple of Theseus)

5358-624: The land route and defeated many bandits along the way. The six entrances to the underworld, more commonly known as the Six Labours, are as follows: When Theseus arrived in Athens, he did not reveal his true identity immediately. Aegeus gave him hospitality but was suspicious of the young, powerful stranger's intentions. Aegeus's consort Medea recognized Theseus immediately as Aegeus' son and worried that Theseus would be chosen as heir to Aegeus' kingdom instead of her son Medus . She tried to arrange to have Theseus killed by asking him to capture

5452-523: The last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss ). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby , five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by

5546-518: The later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary . Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of

5640-700: The literary epic. Later, Pirithous was preparing to marry Hippodamia . The centaurs were guests at the wedding feast, but got drunk and tried to abduct the women, including Hippodamia. The Lapiths won the ensuing battle. In Ovid 's Metamorphoses Theseus fights against and kills Eurytus , the "fiercest of all the fierce centaurs" at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia . Also according to Ovid, Phaedra, Theseus' wife, felt left out by her husband's love for Pirithous and she used this as an excuse to try to convince her stepson, Hippolytus, to accept being her lover, as Theseus also neglected his son because he preferred to spend long periods with his companion. Theseus,

5734-457: The mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian . It is

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5828-463: The modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages , influence on English was notably limited . However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting

5922-483: The neighboring land of Sceiron's shore; and the southerly part of the land fell to this rugged Pallas, breeder of giants. Later on, Lycus was driven from the territory by Aegeus himself, and had to seek refuge in Arene, Messenia which was ruled by King Aphareus . Pallas and his fifty sons revolted at a later time, being crushed by Aegeus' son Theseus. Still without a male heir with his previous marriages, Aegeus asked

6016-488: The notorious coastal road from Troezen and slain some of the most feared bandits there. It was not long before the Pallantides ' hopes of succeeding the childless Aegeus would be lost if they did not get rid of Theseus (the Pallantides were the sons of Pallas and nephews of King Aegeus , who was then living at the royal court in the sanctuary of Delphic Apollo). So they set a trap for him. One band of them would march on

6110-442: The nurse as his source of information. To ensure that she would die with dignity , Phaedra wrote to Theseus on a tablet claiming that Hippolytus had raped her before hanging herself. Theseus believed her and used one of the three wishes he had received from Poseidon against his son. The curse caused Hippolytus' horses to be frightened by a sea monster, usually a bull, and drag their rider to his death. Artemis would later tell Theseus

6204-400: The original ship remained, giving rise to the philosophical question of whether it should be considered "the same" ship or not. Such philosophical questions about the nature of identity are sometimes referred to as the " Ship of Theseus " paradox. Regardless of these issues, the Athenians preserved the ship. They believed that Theseus had been an actual, historical figure and the ship gave them

6298-400: The party lying in ambush, and slew them all. Thereupon the party with Pallas dispersed," Plutarch reported. Pasiphaë , wife of King Minos of Crete, had several children. The eldest of these, Androgeus , set sail for Athens to take part in the Panathenaic Games , which were held there every four years. Being strong and skillful, he did very well, winning some events outright. He soon became

6392-538: The prophecy and was disappointed. This puzzling oracle forced Aegeus to visit Pittheus , king of Troezen , who was famous for his wisdom and skill at expounding oracles. Pittheus understood the prophecy and introduced Aegeus to his daughter, Aethra , when Aegeus was drunk. They lay with each other, and then in some versions, Aethra waded to the island of Sphairia (a.k.a. Calauria) and bedded Poseidon. When Aethra became pregnant, Aegeus decided to return to Athens. Before leaving, he buried his sandal, shield, and sword under

6486-432: The rock, if he were heroic enough, and take the tokens for himself as evidence of his royal parentage. In Athens, Aegeus was joined by Medea , who had left Corinth after slaughtering the children she had borne to Jason , and had taken Aegeus as her new consort. Thus Theseus was raised in his mother's land. When Theseus grew up to be a young man, he moved the rock and recovered his father's tokens. His mother then told him

6580-425: The sea god in the night. The mix gave Theseus a combination of divine as well as mortal characteristics in his nature; such double paternity, with one immortal and one mortal, was a familiar feature of other Greek heroes . After Aethra became pregnant, Aegeus decided to return to Athens. Before leaving, however, he buried his sandals and sword under a huge rock and told Aethra that when their son grew up, he should move

6674-446: The son of the god Poseidon . He is raised by his mother, Aethra , and upon discovering his connection to Aegeus, travels overland to Athens, having many adventures on the way. When he reaches Athens, he finds that Aegeus is married to Medea (formerly wife of Jason ), who plots against him. The most famous legend about Theseus is his slaying of the Minotaur, half man and half bull. He then goes on to unite Attica under Athenian rule:

6768-399: The southern part of the territory. Aegeus, being the eldest of the brothers, received what they all regarded as the best part: Athens. The division of the land was explained further in the following text by the geographer Strabo : ... when Attica was divided into four parts, Nisus obtained Megaris as his portion and founded Nisaea . Now, according to Philochorus , his rule extended from

6862-401: The spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as is the case for English used by European Union institutions. In China, both British English and American English are taught. The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries . English is

6956-530: The stranger who came to Athens. Medea tried to have Theseus killed by encouraging Aegeus to ask him to capture the Marathonian Bull, but Theseus succeeded. She tried to poison him, but at the last second, Aegeus recognized his son and knocked the poisoned cup out of Theseus' hand. Father and son were thus reunited, and Medea was sent away to Asia . Theseus departed for Crete. Upon his departure, Aegeus told him to put up white sails when returning if he

7050-603: The theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn. A football team can be treated likewise: Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City. This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen , a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813: All

7144-410: The town from one side while another lay in wait near a place called Gargettus in ambush. The plan was that after Theseus, Aegeus, and the palace guards had been forced out the front, the other half would surprise them from behind. However, Theseus was not fooled. Informed of the plan by a herald named Leos, he crept out of the city at midnight and surprised the Pallantides. "Theseus then fell suddenly upon

7238-403: The traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne , 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with

7332-565: The truth about his father's identity and that he must take the sword and sandals back to the king Aegeus to claim his birthright. To journey to Athens, Theseus could choose to go by sea (which was the safe way) or by land, following a dangerous path around the Saronic Gulf , where he would encounter a string of six entrances to the Underworld , each guarded by a chthonic enemy. Young, brave, and ambitious, Theseus decided to go alone by

7426-660: The truth, promising to avenge her loyal follower on another follower of Aphrodite. In a version recounted by the Roman playwright Seneca , entitled Phaedra , after Phaedra told Theseus that Hippolytus had raped her, Theseus called upon Neptune (as he did Poseidon in Euripides' interpretation) to kill his son. Upon hearing the news of Hippolytus' death at the hands of Neptune's sea monster, Phaedra committed suicide out of guilt, for she had not intended for Hippolytus to die. In yet another version, Phaedra simply told Theseus Hippolytus had raped her and did not kill herself. Dionysus sent

7520-546: The underworld for his 12th task. There he persuaded Persephone to forgive him for the part he had taken in the rash venture of Pirithous. So Theseus was restored to the upper air but Pirithous never left the kingdom of the dead, for when Heracles tried to free Pirithous, the underworld shook. They then decided the task was beyond any hero and left. When Theseus returned to Athens, he found that the Dioscuri had taken Helen and Aethra to Sparta . Phaedra , Theseus' second wife and

7614-750: The varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon , eventually came to dominate. The original Old English was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman . These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it

7708-405: The weapons back to him at Athens and be acknowledged. Theseus decided to go to Athens and had the choice of going by sea, which was the safe way, or by land, following a dangerous path with thieves and bandits all the way. Young, brave and ambitious, Theseus decided to go to Athens by land. When Theseus arrived, he did not reveal his true identity. He was welcomed by Aegeus, who was suspicious about

7802-535: The whole city to Minos' mercy. His retribution was to stipulate that at the end of every Great Year , which occurred after every seven cycles on the solar calendar, the seven most courageous youths and the seven most beautiful maidens were to board a boat and be sent as tribute to Crete, never to be seen again. In another version, King Minos had waged war with the Athenians and was successful. He then demanded that, at nine-year intervals, seven Athenian boys and seven Athenian girls were to be sent to Crete to be devoured by

7896-459: The wife of Sciron . But, in some accounts, he was regarded as the son of Scyrius or Phemius and was not of the stock of the Erechtheids , since he was only an adopted son of Pandion. Aegeus' first wife was Meta , daughter of Hoples and his second wife was Chalciope , daughter of Rhexenor , neither of whom bore him any children. He was also credited to be the father of Medus by

7990-466: The witch Medea . In a rare account, Pallas was also said to be the son of Aegeus. The latter was also said to fathered Megareus , eponymous founder of Megara . Aegeides (Αἰγείδης), was a patronymic from Aegeus and especially used to designate Theseus. Aegeus was born in Megara where his father Pandion had settled after being expelled from Athens by the sons of Metion who seized the throne. After

8084-402: The word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire , whereas

8178-568: The world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives . Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows

8272-404: Was crying out. Around him gathered the terrible band of Furies with snakes in their hair, torches, and long whips in their hands. Before these monsters, the hero's courage failed and he was led away to eternal punishment. For many months in half-darkness, Theseus sat immovably fixed to the rock, mourning for both his friend and for himself. In the end, he was rescued by Heracles who had come to

8366-465: Was dead, committed suicide, throwing himself off a cliff of Sounion and into the sea, causing this body of water to be named the Aegean Sea. According to Plutarch 's Life of Theseus , the ship Theseus used on his return from Minoan Crete to Athens was kept in the Athenian harbor as a memorial for several centuries. The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and

8460-527: Was mistakenly applied to the Temple of Hephaestus which was thought to be the actual site of the hero's tomb . Primary sources Secondary sources British English British English (abbreviations: BrE , en-GB , and BE ) is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . More narrowly, it can refer specifically to

8554-422: Was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like

8648-399: Was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus , for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place... The ship had to be maintained in a seaworthy state, for, in return for Theseus's successful mission, the Athenians had pledged to honor Apollo every year henceforth. Thus, the Athenians sent a religious mission to

8742-418: Was rescued by the Dioscuri . On Pirithous's behalf they rather unwisely traveled to the underworld, domain of Persephone and her husband Hades . As they wandered through the outskirts of Tartarus , Theseus sat down to rest on a rock. As he did so he felt his limbs change and grow stiff. He tried to rise but could not. He was fixed to the rock. As he turned to cry out to his friend, he saw that Pirithous too

8836-567: Was successful in killing the Minotaur. However, when Theseus returned, he forgot these instructions. When Aegeus saw the black sails coming into Athens, mistaken in his belief that his son had been slain, he killed himself by jumping from a height: according to some, from the Acropolis or another unnamed rock; according to some Latin authors, into the sea which was therefore known as the Aegean Sea. Sophocles' tragedy Aegeus has been lost, but Aegeus features in Euripides ' Medea . At Athens,

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