This story comes from my novelization of the Theseus story, Fateful Pathways: A Story of Theseus. It is told from Theseus’s point of view, based on what his mother had told him when he was old enough to understand.
I’m afraid it doesn’t end happily ever after, but very few of the surviving ancient Greek love stories did.
In order for you to understand my story, you must know something of my mother, Aethra. I will speak of events before I was born. What I am about to tell you I learned from my mother when I came of age. She was an honest woman, and I believe every word she told me, even though I wanted to disbelieve some of it with all my heart.
In the early part of her life, Aethra seemed destined for happiness. She was a granddaughter of Pelops, which made her a descendant of Zeus himself, and she was every bit as beautiful as you might expect a woman with such ancestry to be. But beauty was far from being her only asset. Her father, Pittheus, was legendary for his wisdom and knowledge, and Aethra had wisdom befitting the daughter of such a man. Troezen, the city which he ruled, was certainly no Athens, but it was of good repute, well-governed, and prosperous. Though there were cities powerful enough to have made war against it, their leaders restrained themselves. The advice Pittheus could give them was more valuable by far than any benefit that could be gained from conquering little Troezen.
As an adolescent, my mother had dreams of love, as all girls do. She envisioned the prince as handsome as Apollo or Hermes who would come to make her his wife and love her as much as any man had ever loved any woman. She had her share of offers for Pittheus to sift through. None of them were quite godlike, but she was still young, and Pittheus was in no hurry to see her married off. He wanted to find the best match possible—even though he thought in terms of position and advantage more than love.
My mother would not have been difficult to love. Aside from her beauty, she had a sun-bright smile and a laugh that would bring joy even to the most miserable creature who walked the earth. And she had wit enough to appeal to any man who appreciated the value of a wise woman. Perhaps she would not have found the lover of her dreams, but she would certainly have found someone who would make an excellent husband.
Indeed, it did not take long for a suitor to emerge upon whom Pittheus and Aethra could agree—Bellerophon.
He was the eldest son and heir of Glaucus, king of Corinth. At least, that was the public story. Men whispered that Eurymede, the king’s wife, had lain with Poseidon.
Pittheus didn’t care which version was true. Either way, Bellerophon would one day make his daughter queen of Corinth. Always looking to the future, Pittheus knew the marriage would eventually bring a grandson of his to the throne, perhaps even unite Corinth and Troezen as one kingdom. He nodded his head in satisfaction. It would be a good match, a good match indeed!
Aethra didn’t care much about the identity of Bellerophon’s father, either. Like the son of a god, Bellerophon stood out among men—tall, broad-shouldered, well-muscled, more handsome than the norm. But something more important than his body also set him apart. Glaucus’s face was sharp and hard, his eyes cruel. Bellerophon’s face was softer, his eyes kind. Aethra could look into them and imagine that she had known him for years.
In those days, it was not hard to find men who were fathered by gods—or at least claimed to be—but many of them were evil. Glaucus himself claimed to be a grandson of the titan Atlas on his mother’s side. On his father’s side, he could claim descent from three other titans. That did not prevent him from becoming so obsessed with perfecting his chariot horses that he fed them on human flesh, an offense against gods and men.
No, Aethra wasn’t drawn to Bellerophon’s ancestry—she was drawn by his nobility of spirit. She would be proud to love him. And he would truly mean it when he professed his love. He was awkward around her, having had little experience with women, but that made his sincerity all the more apparent. He didn’t care about the politics of their marriage. He cared about her as much as she cared about him.
Aethra was officially betrothed to Bellerophon in a ceremony in the spring, though the actual marriage would not take place until winter, during the moon sacred to Hera, goddess of marriage. To Aethra, it was the happiest day of her life.
She had no way to know then what tragedy would flow from it.
It was not customary to complete the betrothal so long before the marriage, but Pittheus was taking no chances. After all, Bellerophon was quite a desirable match, And Glaucus was not the most trustworthy man. Once the couple was betrothed, the marriage contract could only be voided by mutual consent. That should be enough to prevent Glaucus from reneging later should what he saw as a more desirable offer present itself.
Even someone as wise as Pittheus could not anticipate every possible problem, however. He was as surprised as everyone else when Bellerophon killed his own brother, Deliades.
Much later, when I was king of Athens, I tried to enforce the idea that intent should be a factor in determining guilt. Yes, Deliades had died by Bellerophon’s hand, but it was an accident. Bellerophon was no deliberate murderer and should not have been treated as such. But the law in those days—and for a long time after—was harsh and unyielding in such a case. Regardless of intent, Bellerophon was guilty, and he would have to be exiled.
Pittheus found himself caught in a trap of his own making. Bellerophon might well convince someone to purify him of the blood guilt. Indeed, he had already gone to the king of Tiryns to seek such a cleansing. But that would not allow him to return to Corinth—and an exile could never assume the throne.
My grandfather asked Glaucus’s approval to cancel the betrothal, but Glaucus, thinking only of himself, refused. Obsessed as he was by his horses, he still wanted at least one grandson, who might be able to rule Corinth eventually even if Bellerophon could not. Stained as Bellerophon was by murder and exile, he was no longer a sought-after match. If he did not marry Aethra, it was unlikely any other princess would become his wife, either.
My mother cared nothing for such complications. She knew in her heart that Bellerophon was no murderer, and she would have married him in the winter, just as she had promised to do. She was loyal, and not at all reluctant. She still loved Bellerophon with all her heart.
But Bellerophon did not come for her. No doubt, Pittheus would have barred the door against him, but perhaps Aethra could have won her father over to the idea. She was sure she would succeed if only fate would give her the chance to try.
It did not. Perhaps he was too ashamed to face her. Perhaps he was waiting until he was purified, a much longer process than he anticipated. The wife of the king of Tiryns tried to seduce him, and when she failed, she accused him of rape. The king, having already accepted Bellerophon as a guest, was unable to kill him himself, so he sent Bellerophon to his father-in-law, a Lycian king, with instructions to kill the young man.
Bellerophon survived, despite being required to perform several quests, any one of which could have killed him. Eventually, the Lycian king learned enough of Bellerophon to realize that the rape story was false. But by then, years had passed.
One sunny day—yet among the darkest in Aethra’s life—word reached Troezen that Bellerophon had married a Lycian princess. At first, my mother refused to believe the news. She had waited for him all those years, for she doubted the rape story every bit as much as she doubted the murder. Surely, he would have waited as long for her.
But, no, Bellerophon had not waited. When my mother could deny the truth no longer, she made excuses for him. He must have thought the betrothal had been cancelled. He must have thought she would never take him back. Every woman in Troezen, from the slave girls to other members of the royal family, nodded their heads as they listened to her weave a tale of pure love lost by ill-luck. But they nodded because she was the princess, not because they believed her—and in time, she knew that. She stopped retelling the tale of Bellerophon and kept her broken heart, sharp-edged and still bloody, to herself.
As for Pittheus, his heart wasn’t broken at all, though he feigned sympathy for Aethra and stretched his face to show a sorrow he didn’t feel. From the moment he had heard of the murder and exile, his strongest desire was to see Aethra married to someone else. Guilty or not, Bellerophon was damaged goods in his eyes. Even the stories of great heroism trickling into Troezen didn’t move him. Not even when he heard that Bellerophon had been given the right to fly on Pegasus—proof that Poseidon was the prince’s father—did not change Pittheus’s attitude at all. After all, what good was a god’s son if stained by scandal and without the ability to make Aethra a queen and Pitteus’s grandson king? He rejoiced in Bellerophon’s marriage every bit as much as Aethra sorrowed in it.
Yes, Pittheus’s judgment of Bellerophon was hard as stone. But at least Aethra was spared being forced into marriage against her will.
The sad truth was that no one would have her. As long as the betrothal remained in force, other kings doubted she could be legally married to anyone else, despite the bizarre circumstances. Glaucus himself died—eaten by his own horses, or so the story went. But the betrothal, unmoving as a mountain, remained as an obstacle. That stumbling block was not removed until Bellerophon’s marriage—and by then it was too late to matter.
By that time, there were whispers that my mother was cursed in some way. Why that would have been, no one ever said. Any idiot should have recognized that Glaucus was the cursed one, for he was a notorious sinner, long out of favor with the gods. Did not his grisly death prove that?
But one of the harshest goddesses of all is Pheme, goddess and rumor. Harshest—and least concerned about the truth. Aethra was cursed in the minds of men, if not in reality.
However, my mother was resilient. She still cherished the memory of her brief relationship with the unlucky Corinthian prince, still dreamed of what they could have had together. But the edges of her broken heart dulled with time and bled less. She was not the sort to throw herself into the sea and drown. No, she was too strong for such a fate. Instead, she would endure.
Want to read more of the story of Aethra—and a lot more about her son, Theseus? You can check it out on its series page. There you can also find Harmony and Disharmony: A Story of Orpheus and Jason, which includes two other, vastly different love stories—that of Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of Jason and Medea.
My current Substack serial, loosely inspired by Greek mythology, also includes an unusual love story. You can find the first episode embedded below.