Sinis

The Pine-Bender of the Isthmus of Corinth, second of the brigands Theseus slew on his way to Athens. He would force travellers to help him bend down the tops of two pines, then release them so the victim was torn in half — or, in another version, tie one man between two bent trees and let go. Theseus killed him by the same method. Sinis had a daughter Perigune, who hid in a patch of wild asparagus and rushes; Theseus found her, won her trust, and fathered by her Melanippus, ancestor of the Ioxids of Caria. In some genealogies his father is Poseidon, which — as with Sciron — made Theseus's own divine paternity the real qualification for killing him.

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