Theseus

Everyone knows this part.
What the myth has never fully told is what he carried back with him - and what he left behind.
Theseus of Athens assembled the greatest company of heroes his age had seen, sailed to Crete as tribute, and went down into the Labyrinth that no one had survived. He killed the Minotaur. He came out. He sailed home with the survivors and the fame and the story that would define him for three thousand years.
He came out because of the thread.
And the thread came from Ariadne ...