EN
It is remarkable that Athenians of the classical period believed that the first moves towards democracy in Athens had been made by their legendary king Theseus, whom they believed to have reigned before the Trojan War. In this paper, in an exercise in how the Athenians refashioned what they believed about their past, I trace the development of the political aspects of the story of Theseus, and try to explain how he came to be seen by the democrats of the classical period as an ur-democrat.