[11]
But Theseus succeeded to the sovereignty of
Athens, and killed the sons of Pallas, fifty
in number;1
likewise all who would oppose him were killed by him, and he got the whole government to
himself.
1 Pallas was the brother of Aegeus （see above, Apollod. 3.15.5）; hence his fifty sons were cousins to Theseus. So long as Aegeus was childless, his nephews hoped to succeed to the throne; but when Theseus appeared from Troezen, claiming to be the king's son and his heir apparent, they were disappointed and objected to his succession, on the ground that he was a stranger and a foreigner. Accordingly, when Theseus succeeded to the crown, Pallas and his fifty sons rebelled against him, but were defeated and slain. See Plut. Thes. 3 and Plut. Thes. 13; Paus. 1.22.2; Paus. 1.28.10; Scholiast on Eur. Hipp. 35, who quotes from Philochorus a passage about the rebellion. In order to be purified from the guilt incurred by killing his cousins, Theseus went into banishment for a year along with his wife Phaedra. The place of their exile was Troezen, where Theseus had been born; and it was there that Phaedra saw and conceived a fatal passion for her stepson Hippolytus, and laid the plot of death. See Eur. Hipp. 34ff.; Paus. 1.22.2. According to a different tradition, Theseus was tried for murder before the court of the Delphinium at Athens, and was acquitted on the plea of justifiable homicide （Paus. 1.28.10）.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
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