PARTISAN REVIEW
you now the ambition to use them, and that longing for fame which
will allow you only to take up arms in defense of noble causes, and
for the weal of all mankind. Your childhood is over; be a man. Show
your fellow men what one of their kind can be, and what he means
to become. There are great things to be done. Claim yourself."
II
Aegeus, my father, was one of the best; all that could be wished.
In point of fact I suspect that I was only his son in name. That's
what I've been told, and that great Poseidon begat me. In which
case it's from this god that I inherit my inconstancy of temper. Where
women are concerned, I have never known how to settle down. Aegeus
sometimes stood rather in my way, but I am grateful to him for his
guardianship, and for having restored the cult of Aphrodite to honor
in Attica. I am sorry for the fateful slip by which I brought about his
death-when I forgot, I mean, to run up white sails in place of black,
on the ship which carried me home from Crete.
It
had been agreed
that I should do this if I were to return in triumph from my rash
venture. One can't think of everything. But to tell the truth, and if
I cross-question myself (a thing I never much care to do) I can't
swear that it was really forgetfulness. Aegeus was in my way, as I
told you, .and particularly when, through the potions of the witch
Medea, who found him (as, indeed, he found himself), a rather
elderly bed-fellow, he formed the exasperating idea that a second
meridian of enjoyment was his for the asking-thus blocking my
career, whereas, after all, it's every man to his turn. Anyway, when
he saw those black sails .... I learnt, on returning to Athens, that he
had thrown himself into the sea.
No one can deny it. It think I have performed some notable
services; I've purged the earth once and for all of a host of tyrants,
bandits and monsters; I've cleaned up certain dangerous by-roads on
which even-the bravest could not venture without a shiver; .and I've
cleared up the skies in such a way that man, his head less bowed, may
be less fearful of their surprises.
One must own that in those days the look of the country was
hardly reassuring. Between the scattered townships there were huge
stretches of uncultivated waste, crossed only by unreliable tracks.
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