Picture

The picture portrays the arrival of Theseus and his companions in Crete.
So who on earth was Theseus? Who were his companions? Why Crete? (Where is Crete anyway?)
And what about this ship of theirs?
In reality their ship was much bigger and had sails, important detail as we'll see later on in the story.
 
A strange verb-form appears here:
ἀφικνοῦνται they arrive, they're arriving
That's what is called "middle voice":

Most languages have two voices:
active (I call, I praise, I reward...) and
passive (I am called, praised, rewarded...)

The Greeks had 3:

The context will always tell whether it is passive or middle voice:
λούω I wash (ab-lu-tions = washings):
the small child λούεται by his mother (passive)
the small child λούεται washes himself (middle voice) or is washed (passive), we have to look at the context to find out for sure which it is
the small child λούεται an apple (middle voice, washes an apple so that he can eat it)
the small child λούει an apple (active, just washes it, maybe for himself, maybe for his even smaller sister, maybe just because his mum told him to)
try imagining situations where you'd use, in all three voices, the following:
φέρει , φέρεται carries, is carried, carries for himself.
ποιεῖ , ποιεῖται makes, is made, makes for himself
ἀροτρεύει, ἀροτρεύεται ploughs, is ploughed, ploughs for himself

But what about ἀφικνοῦνται ?
Some verbs, though active in meaning, don't have active forms. For those who have learnt Latin that should not be a problem, Latin also having deponent verbs, i.e. verbs that have deposed, put down, abandoned (from Latin "de-ponere") their active forms, e.g. venari, intueri, loqui, proficisci, ordiri etc. The deponent Greek verbs we meet in this lesson are: