Part I: Duke Theseus returns from overthrowing Scythia with his new wife, Hippolyta, and her sister, Emilie. Outside Athens, he meets a band of weeping women and learns that the tyrant Creon has murdered their husbands and dishonors the dead by leaving them unburied. Incensed, Theseus quickly overthrows Creon and restores the Theban dead to the women for ceremonial burying. After the destruction of Creon's forces, booty hunters find two young knights (Palamon and Arcite) who are not quite dead. Theseus decides against executing the knights and instead imprisons them with no hope of ransom.