Driven from Athens by Menestheus after the underworld adventure, Theseus fled to Lycomedes on Skyros — and the king cast him into the abyss, ending the founder-hero while his sons would one day fight at Troy and recover Aethra from Helen's house.1
Menestheus takes Athens
While Theseus lay below with Pirithous, Castor and Polydeuces seized Aphidnae and carried off Aethra; Menestheus son of Peteos took the kingdom and expelled the hero's sons. When Heracles raised Theseus from the Chair of Forgetfulness, he returned to find his throne usurped and his house turned against him.2
Flight to Scyros
Theseus left Attica and came as a suppliant to Lycomedes, king of Scyros in the Sporades — the same court where Thetis would later hide Achilles in maiden's dress among the king's daughters. The fallen founder sought refuge on an isle that would one day cradle the son of Peleus before Troy.3
The abyss
Lycomedes received him with apparent friendship, then threw him down a precipice into the sea and killed him. Apollodorus gives no motive beyond the king's treachery; the Athenian hero who had cleared the road, slain the Minotaur, and buried the Argive dead perished far from the city he had united. His sons Demophon and Acamas would sail with the host to Troy and at last recover their grandmother Aethra from captivity in Helen's house.4
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
In play
Theseus
Driven from Athens, the founder-hero dies on Skyros — Lycomedes casts him into the abyss, and the exile becomes as famous as the Labyrinth.
Lycomedes
The Scyrian king who murdered his guest — Theseus' host and killer, remembered for the cliff that ends the Athenian cycle.
Parallel Lives
Plutarch
Plutarch's Life of Theseus keeps the Skyros death in the biographical canon — Menestheus' usurpation and the fall from the rock.