King Aegeus is still watching for a white sail

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King Aegeus is still watching for a white sail

A scavenger hunt in the Temple of Apollo, Sounion, Greece

Made by Mused

  1. The old king waits.

    Come sit with me on Poseidon's headland, friend, where King Aegeus once stood watching the sea. Long before, he hid his sword and sandals under a heavy rock for a son he had never met. Look along the rocky ground beside the path and see what the old king left behind.

  2. A thread across the sea.

    Theseus sailed south to Crete to face the Minotaur, and Princess Ariadne fell for the brave young stranger. She gave him a ball of thread so he could find his way back out of the Labyrinth. Gaze out over the blue bay and its little island, then think about the dusty path you came up.

  3. The beast in the maze.

    Every few years Athens had to send its young people to Crete to feed the Minotaur, a creature half man and half bull. Theseus offered to go himself and end it. Walk in the shadow of the great temple platform, and remember that in a maze the danger is often right behind you.

  4. Poseidon's house in ink.

    Here is the temple as a builder might have sketched it, Doric columns of local white marble raised around 440 BC. Sailors rounding the cape watched for it high above the waves as their first sight of Attica. Poseidon ruled this sea, and some tellings even call him the true father of Theseus, so his trident cannot be far from the water.

  5. The black sail.

    Right here at the cliff edge the old king stood day after day, eyes fixed on the horizon. Theseus had promised to raise a white sail if he lived, but in his joy he forgot, and a black sail came over the waves. Look out across the open sea, then search along the cliff for the little ship that should have come home in white.

  6. The story told again.

    The sun is sinking over the water now, just as it did for the old king. Homer called this cape holy Sounion in the Odyssey, and travelers have climbed up here ever since. A sea bird is waiting somewhere along the cliff to carry our tale home.

You gathered every piece, friend, and now the old tale can be told again. The sword under the rock, the thread in the dark, the bull in the maze, Poseidon's trident, the sail that never turned white and the gull that carries it all over the Aegean. Come back to this cliff at sunset someday and tell it to someone new.

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