Characters
- Artemis — commands the recovery (Plutarchan frame)
- Cimon — Athenian general who captures Scyros and finds the coffin
- Lycomedes — Scyrian king responsible for Theseus’s death (background)
- Theseus — dead hero whose bones are translated
- Thracian metics — receive the bones; institute or enlarge cult
Places
- Pytho — source of the oracle (background)
- Rhamnus — Theseion and civic reception
- Scyros — island tomb / find-spot
Themes
Narrative
After Theseus dies on Scyros—pushed from a cliff by Lycomedes in the common tale—his resting-place is forgotten or concealed. In the fifth century the Athenians, directed by an oracle to bring Theseus’s bones home, send Cimon, who takes Scyros, finds a coffin of heroic size with a bronze spear and sword, and conveys the remains to Athens. The city receives them with processions and sacrifices; a heroon (the Theseion) is established in the city, and Theseus’s festival rites are enlarged. Pausanias describes the sanctuary and paintings of Theseus’s deeds.
The translation of bones turns a disputed exile-death into civic cult: Athens reclaims its synoecist hero as a protective presence within the walls. Catalogue this apart from the Scyrian murder and from the synoecism narrative (03/138): it is the classical act of relic-recovery and hero-installation.