remonies, and having offered
propitiatory sacrifices to the gods, invited him and entertained him at
their house, a kindness which, in all his journey hitherto, he had not
met.

On the eighth day of Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, he arrived at
Athens, where he found the public affairs full of all confusion, and
divided into parties and factions. Aegeus also, and his whole private
family, laboring under the same distemper; for Medea, having fled from
Corinth, was living with him. She was first aware of Theseus, whom as
yet Aegeus did not know, and he being in years, full of jealousies and
suspicions, and fearing everything by reason of the faction that was
then in the city, she easily persuaded him to kill him by poison at a
banquet, to which he was to be invited as a stranger. He, coming to
the entertainment, thought it not fit to discover himself at once, but,
willing to give his father the occasion of first finding him out, the
meat being on the table, he drew his sword as if he designed to cut with
it; Aegeus, at once recognizing the token, threw down the cup of poison,
and, questioning his son, embraced him, and, having gathered together
all his citizens, owned him publicly before them, who, on their part,
received him gladly for the fame of his greatness and bravery.

The sons of Pallas, who were quiet, upon expectation of recovering the
kingdom after Aegeus's death, who was without issue, as soon as Theseus
appeared and was acknowledged the successor, highly resenting that
Aegeus first, as adopted son only of Pandion, and not at all related to
the family of Erechtheus, should be holding the kingdom, and that after
him, Theseus, a visitor and stranger, should be destined to succeed
to it, broke out into open war. And, dividing themselves into two
companies, one part of them marched openly from Sphettus, with their
father, against the city; the other, hiding themselves in the village
of Gargettus, lay in ambush, with a design to set upon the enemy on both
sides. They had with them a crier of the township of Agnus, named
Leos, who discovered to Theseus all the designs of the Pallentidae. He
immediately fell upon those that lay in amuscade, and cut them all off;
upon tidings of which Pallas and his company fled and were dispersed.

From hence they say is derived the custom among the people of the
township of Pallene to have no marriages or any alliance with the people
of Agnus, nor to suffer the criers to pronoun