THESEUS AND THE ESCAPE FROM THE LABYRINTH
Mixed media (pencil, ink, acrylic, and watercolor) on Stonehenge paper, 50" x 38"
Dating back to the pre-Classical period, the legend of the hero Theseus (whose name comes from the Greek root
associated with “the founding of institutions”) exemplifies the triumph of human ingenuity over the primitive, fixed
conduct of the beast. Theseus was the son of King Aegeus, and one of the many legends associated with this hero has it
that he once undertook a journey to Crete to put an end to the tribute of seven maidens and seven young men that King
Minos, the legendary Cretan tyrant, demanded of the people of Attica.
Sir Arthur Evans, the English archaeologist who led the excavations of the palace complex at Knossos, believes that
the legend originated in that metropolis. It is known that prior to the rise of Athens, between 2700 and 1200 B.C., the
Cretan naval empire kept many of the coastal villages of the Mediterranean in thrall, in what is known as the Minoan
Thalossokratia. The symbol of Cretan supremacy was a bull, around which the ancient Cretans developed complex
rituals and sporting competitions.
In the allegorical story of the liberating hero, it is said that Theseus defeated Asterion, the Minotaur, half bull and
half man, with the aid of Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, who gave him one end of her ball of string so that
Theseus might find his way out of the labyrinth after defeating the beast. (See Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Vol. 1,
Penguin, 1960.)
In a figurative sense, Ariadne’s string represents the emancipatory process and the evolutionary ascent of the
human species, which begins in the head of the beast and ends with the triumph of the civilizing hero. Around 1250 B.C.,
Theseus completed his act of liberation with a pact of “cohabitation,” the synoikismos, which unified the towns of Attica
into a single political entity under the governance of the city of Athens. To commemorate that deed, and the hegemony
of Athens, the ancient edifices of the Athenian acropolis were constructed.
Theseus was the great-grandson of Erectheus, a king of Athens whose memory is honored with the second most
important temple on the Acropolis, the Erechtheion. On a direct line with the legendary founders of Athens, Pericles
eventually became the king of the cities of Attica, consummating the first great rise of Humanism in the Western world.
Around 475 B.C., Pericles sent the famous Athenian general Kimon to the island of Skyros to recover the remains of
Theseus and bring them home to the temple then known as the Theseion, on the Agoraios Kolonos, northwest of the
Athenian Agora. At the present time, this hill is occupied by the Temple of Hephaestus. It is believed that under this
temple lie the remains of the legendary hero.
The Temple of Hephaestus is the best-preserved structure on the Agora, and the most complete Doric temple in the
world, since from the seventh century B.C. until the nineteenth century it was in constant use, first as a temple, then as a
Greek Orthodox church. In ancient Greece, Theseus was worshipped as the first figure in Hellenic culture, the founding
father of the civilization that would later become the primary source of Western culture. (See The Athenian Agora,
American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1993.)
This epic civilizing process constitutes an exemplary moment in the epigenetic evolution of humanity, in which
culture establishes the means for consolidating and transmitting a heritage that frees and raises to unprecedented
heights the conduct of our species. Comparable processes, in other latitudes and at other historical moments, confirm
the evolutionary potential of the species for manifesting that which most properly represents the superior actions of
human beings.
But the violence of the beast, incarnated in the Minotaur, is always with us, because it is a part of our hybrid
evolutionary inheritance. At any moment, Asterion’s violence can break through, endangering that entire structure that
we call “civilization.” The degree of control that we are able to establish over the Minotaur depends on the effectiveness
with which all those possessions, shelters, and cultural habits able to neutralize its voracity and violence can be
deployed. “So long as the tiger cannot stop being tiger, cannot un-tiger itself, man lives in permanent danger of
dehumanizing himself” (José Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente, Madrid: Revista del Oriente, 1958, p. 45). It is out of
this constant and irremovable existential uncertainty that all those defense mechanisms arise with which we either
maintain our creative vitality and ingenuity or, inevitably, perish.
In order to maintain human society in an acceptable state of living-together, of life shared in a community, with a
sufficiently high degree of certainty that it will not founder, we must institutionalize social intelligence and political
intelligence. It is not enough to trust in the prudence, honesty, and intellectual resources of a ruling minority. The
safeguard of social well-being, of the just distribution of resources and the material goods of civilization, is the
development of the capacity for thought, analytical thought, in large segments of the population.
Once again, the paradigm symbolized by Theseus with respect to the origins of Athenian civilization and that
civilization’s evolution into full creativity illustrates humanity’s potential for establishing the supremacy of reason,
creativity, and human intelligence over the ancestral, instinctive conduct symbolized by Asterion. In the social sphere,
Theseus symbolizes the process required for institutionalizing civilization and the right to share in its riches.
José Buscaglia
“Villa Pitirre,” Rhode Island
2011