Generous, brave, helpful, and intelligent, Theseus still has flaws that undermine his happiness and bring his life to a sad end. For one thing, he has a streak of rashness that harms him. In abandoning Ariadne he seems to lay a curse on all his marital attachments. He wreaks his son's destruction through angry ignorance. He nearly perishes when he goes down to the underworld to abduct Persephone. And his negligence in failing to hoist the white sail sends his father Aegeus hurtling from a cliff, a fact that may have determined the manner of his own death, since he too dies in such a fall.
The Greeks understood character in a way that other cultures failed to penetrate. They grasped how a trait like ambition could turn from a virtue into a bane, and how a noble personality might have serious defects that lead to ruin. They regarded the exploits of Jason and Theseus as worthy of emulation, but they also knew that a price had to be paid for heroism, and they did not flinch at showing that price in these legends.
