of honey, and meal,
and oil, to appease the Furies who revenge the deaths of kinsmen by the
hands of kinsmen.

When all was done, Jason and Medea rose from their knees, and sat down
on chairs in the hall, and Medea told Circe all her tale, except the
slaying of Absyrtus.

'More and worse than you tell me you have done,' said Circe, 'but you
are my brother's daughter.'

Then she advised them of all the dangers of their way home to Greece,
how they must shun the Sirens, and Scylla and Charybdis, and she sent a
messenger, Iris, the goddess of the Rainbow, to bid Thetis help them
through the perils of the sea, and bring them safe to Phaeacia, where the
Phaeacians would send them home.

'But you shall never be happy, nor know one good year in all your
lives,' said Circe, and she bade them farewell.

They went by the way that Ulysses went on a later day; they passed
through many perils, and came to Iolcos, where Pelias was old, and made
Jason reign in his stead.

But Jason and Medea loved each other no longer, and many stories, all
different from each other, are told concerning evil deeds that they
wrought, and certainly they left each other, and Jason took another
wife, and Medea went to Athens. Here she lived in the palace of Aegeus,
an unhappy king who had been untrue to his own true love, and therefore
the gods took from him courage and strength. But about Medea at Athens
the story is told in the next tale, the tale of Theseus, Aegeus's son.

THESEUS

I

THE WEDDING OF AETHRA

Long before Ulysses was born, there lived in Athens a young king,
strong, brave, and beautiful, named Aegeus. Athens, which later became
so great and famous, was then but a little town, perched on the top of a
cliff which rises out of the plain, two or three miles from the sea. No
doubt the place was chosen so as to be safe against pirates, who then
used to roam all about the seas, plundering merchant ships, robbing
cities, and carrying away men, women, and children, to sell as slaves.
The Athenians had then no fleet with which to put the pirates down, and
possessed not so much land as would make a large estate in England:
other little free towns held the rest of the surrounding country.

King Aegeus was young, and desired to take a wife, indeed a wife had been
found for him. But he wanted to be certain, if he could, that he was to
have sons to succeed him: so many misfortunes happen to kings who have
no children. But h