Theseus Coloring Pages
Welcome to our Greek Hero Theseus coloring pages section.
Theseus was the great hero of Athens and the son of King Aegeus. He's best known for slaying the Minotaur in the Labyrinth of Crete with the help of the princess Ariadne, but before he ever reached Crete he had already cleared the road to Athens of its worst robbers. Here's his story in order, with coloring pages along the way.
Jump to: The Sword | The Road to Athens | Medea | The Bull | The Tribute | The Minotaur | The Black Sails | More About Theseus | Movies and Books | The Labyrinth Story
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The Adventures of Theseus
The Sword and Sandals
King Aegeus of Athens married Aethra, a princess of Troezen, but he was called home to defend his city before their son was born. Before he left, he hid his sword and sandals under a huge flat stone on the mountainside. When the boy was strong enough to lift it, he could come to Athens. Their son, Theseus, trained every day. At sixteen, he rolled the stone away.
The Road to Athens
The sea route to Athens was safer, but Theseus wanted to be a hero like Herakles, so he walked the road everyone feared. One by one he met its robbers: Club-carrier, who struck travelers down with an iron club; Pine-bender, who tied people to bent pine trees; Sciron, who kicked travelers off a cliff while they washed his feet; Cercyon, a king who wrestled every stranger to the death; and Procrustes, who made his guests fit his iron bed, one way or another.
Theseus beat each of them at his own cruel game, and he kept Club-carrier's club for himself. In some versions he also stopped a wild sow that was terrorizing the farmers, and people sometimes call these the six labors of Theseus.
Medea and the Cup
When Theseus reached Athens, his father didn't recognize him, but the king's wife, the sorceress Medea, did. Afraid of losing her power, she told Aegeus the stranger had come to kill him, and she poured a cup of poisoned wine. At dinner, Theseus drew his sword to carve the meat. Aegeus knew that sword at once. He knocked the cup from the table and hugged his son, and Medea fled in a chariot pulled by dragons. She was the same Medea who had once helped Jason win the Golden Fleece.
The Bull of Marathon
A wild bull was rampaging across the plain of Marathon, and the farmers were too frightened to work their fields. To win the trust of the people of Athens, Theseus went out, captured the bull, and led it through the city streets in chains for everyone to see. Then he offered it to Apollo. In some tellings, it was the same bull Herakles had brought back from Crete.
The Cruel Tribute
Years before, King Minos of Crete had defeated Athens in a war over the death of his son. As punishment, Athens had to send seven young men and seven young women to Crete on a black-sailed ship, to be fed to the Minotaur, a monster with the head of a bull who lived in a maze called the Labyrinth. Theseus volunteered to go as one of the seven. He promised his father that if he survived, the ship would come home under a white sail.
Ariadne and the Thread
In Crete, the princess Ariadne watched the prisoners pass the palace gate and couldn't bear to see Theseus lost to the Minotaur. Before dawn she slipped him a sword and a ball of silken thread. He was to tie one end to the door of the Labyrinth and unwind it as he went, so he could follow it back out.
The Minotaur
Deep inside the Labyrinth, with the other young Athenians close behind him, Theseus shouted until the walls rang. The Minotaur came charging down the passage, twice as tall as a man, with sharp horns and fiery eyes.
Theseus was quicker. When the fight was over, he wound up the thread and led everyone back out, and that night they slipped away to their ship. Read the labyrinth story below.
The Black Sails
In all the excitement, the sailors forgot to raise the white sail. Every day, old King Aegeus had sat on a rock by the shore, watching for his son. When he saw the black sail coming, he believed Theseus was dead, and in his grief he fell into the sea and drowned. It has been called the Aegean Sea ever since.
King of Athens
Theseus became king, and he turned out to be a wise one. Athens was a small city surrounded by villages that each ran themselves, and Theseus convinced them to join together as one. He also founded festivals, the most important of them the Panathenaea, held in honor of Athena.
More About Theseus
Theseus and Pirithous
When a bold hero named Pirithous ran off with Theseus' cattle, Theseus gathered his men and rode out to fight him. But when the two came face to face, each admired the other so much that the fight never happened. Pirithous held out his hand and asked how he could make things right.
"I ask nothing but your friendship," said Theseus, and from then on they were best friends.
When Pirithous got married, the centaurs at the wedding drank too much wine, and one of them tried to carry off the bride. A wild battle broke out, and Theseus fought at his friend's side until the centaurs were driven away. You can find Cyllarus, a centaur's horse from that wedding, on our horses of Greek mythology page.
Guest Appearances
Theseus shows up in other heroes' stories too. He's said to have joined the hunt for the Calydonian Boar, and to have sailed with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece.
The Ship of Theseus
The people of Athens kept Theseus' ship for hundreds of years. Whenever a plank rotted, they replaced it with a new one. Eventually people began to argue: once every single plank has been replaced, is it still the Ship of Theseus?
Philosophers still debate it today, and it makes a fun question to ask at the dinner table.
Theseus in Movies and Books
Mary Renault's novel The King Must Die (1958) retells Theseus' early life for older readers, and the 2011 movie Immortals cast Henry Cavill as Theseus, though it changes nearly everything. In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books, Percy faces the Minotaur in the very first book, and The Battle of the Labyrinth sends him deep into Daedalus' maze.
Percy Jackson and Greek mythology
Theseus in the Labyrinth
The labyrinth swallowed sound. My footsteps echoed, then vanished into the stone. The air was heavy, wet with the smell of earth and something older... like a tomb that still remembered its dead.
Ariadne’s thread slipped through my fingers as I moved. I had tied it to the entrance, the single bright path back to life. The rest of the maze wound endlessly, walls leaning close, the torchlight trembling against carvings that looked like horns.
Somewhere ahead, the Minotaur breathed. I could hear it - a slow, dragging sound, half animal, half man. My heart beat so hard it felt like the creature could find me by sound alone.
When I saw it, I almost stopped. It was not just a monster. Its skin was marked with scars like brands, its eyes a human brown. The bull’s head rose above wide shoulders, muscle trembling as it sniffed the air. Chains hung from its wrists, broken long ago.
I raised my sword. The torchlight flashed across the blade, across the horns, across both of us. It charged. The ground shook. I ducked beneath the swing of its arm, the smell of blood and hay filling the tunnel.
We crashed against the wall. Stone cracked. My sword found the place beneath its ribs. The sound it made was low and terrible - more sorrow than rage. I held it until the noise faded, until the torch hissed and died.
For a long time, I couldn't move. I touched the thread again, thin and trembling in the dark, and followed it out, step by step. Behind me, the labyrinth was silent, and I didn't know whether I had killed a monster or a man.