Theseus at Troezen.
Before Theseus was born, the Athenian king Aegeus left his pregnant wife, Aethra, in Troezen and returned to Athens. He left her with the instruction that when their child reached manhood he should lift the rock under which Aegeus had left his sword and sandals. The boy was then to travel to Athens, where he would be acknowledged as the king’s rightful heir. When Theseus came of age, Aethra told him of Aegeus’s request and showed him the' rock his father had designated. Theseus easily lifted the weight and removed the tokens, then set out on the hazardous land route to Athens, meeting and overcoming many dangers on the way.
      There is a tradition according to which Heracles, visiting in the house of Theseus’s maternal grandfather, Pittheus, took off his lion-skin cloak and frightened all the playing children except seven-year-old Theseus, who fearlessly attacked the “monster.”
      
      Classical Sources. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 3.15.6-7, 3-i6-i-Hyginus, Fabulae 37.