Pittheus clearly perceived what the oracle must mean, and persuaded or cheated Aegeus into an intrigue with Aethra.  Afterwards, when he discovered that he had conversed with the daughter of Pittheus, as he imagined that she might prove with child, he left behind him his sword and sandals hidden under a great stone, which had a hollow inside it exactly fitting them.  This he told to Aethra alone, and charged her if a son of his should be born, and on growing to man’s estate should be able to lift the stone and take from under it the deposit, that she should send him at once with these things to himself, in all secrecy, and as far as possible concealing his journey from observation.  For he greatly feared the sons of Pallas, who plotted against him, and despised him on account of his childlessness, they themselves being fifty brothers, all the sons of Pallas.

[Footnote A:  Autochthones was the name by which the original citizens of Athens called themselves, meaning that they were sprung from the soil itself, not immigrants from some other country.]

IV.  When Aethra’s child was born, some writers say that he was at once named Theseus, from the tokens placed under the stone; others say that he was afterwards so named at Athens, when Aegeus acknowledged him as his son.  He was brought up by his grandfather Pittheus, and had a master and tutor, Konnidas, to whom even to the present day, the Athenians sacrifice a ram on the day before the feast of Theseus, a mark of respect which is much more justly due to him, than those which they pay to Silanion and Parrhasius, who have only made pictures and statues of Theseus.

V. As it was at that period still the custom for those who were coming to man’s estate to go to Delphi and offer to the god the first-fruits of their hair (which was then cut for the first time),[A] Theseus went to Delphi, and they say that a place there is even to this day named after him.  But he only cut the front part of his hair, as Homer tells us the Abantes did, and this fashion of cutting the hair was called Theseus’s fashion because of him.  The Abantes first began to cut their hair in this manner, not having, as some say, been taught to do so by the Arabians, nor yet from any wish to imitate the Mysians, but because they were a warlike race, and met their foes in close combat, and studied above all to come to a hand-to-hand fight with their enemy, as Archilochus bears witness in his verses: 

    “They use no slings nor bows,
      Euboea’s martial lords,
    But hand to hand they close
      And conquer with their swords.”

So they cut their hair short in front, that their enemies might not grasp it.  And they say that Alexander of Macedon for the same reason ordered his generals to have the beards of the Macedonians shaved, because they were a convenient handle for the enemy to grasp.

[Footnote A:  The first cutting of the hair was always an occasion of solemnity among the Greeks, the hair being dedicated to some god.  The first instance of this is in Homer’s Iliad, where Achilles speaks of having dedicated his hair to the river Spercheius.  The Athenian youth offered their hair to Herakles.  The Roman emperor Nero, in later times, imitated this custom.]