Ariadne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
-
For other uses, see Ariadne (disambiguation). Ariadne's thread redirects here; for the class of algorithm, see Ariadne's thread (logic).
Ariadne, in Greek mythology, was daughter of King Minos of Crete and his queen, Pasiphaë. She is associated both with the battle of Theseus and the Minotaur; and with the god Dionysus.
Contents |
[edit] Minos and Theseus
According to the legend, Minos attacked Athens after his son was killed there. The Athenians asked for terms, and were required the sacrifice of seven young men and seven maidens every nine years to the Minotaur. One year, the sacrificial party included Theseus, a young man who volunteered to come and kill the Minotaur. Ariadne fell in love at the first sight of him, and, like other female figures who helped bring about the new order, helped him by giving him a magic sword and a ball of the red fleece thread she was spinning, so that he could find his way out of the Minotaur's labyrinth.
She ran away with Theseus after he achieved his goal, and according to Homer "but he had no joy of her, for ere that Artemis slew her in sea-girt Dia because of the witness of Dionysus" (Odyssey XI, 321-5). Homer does not enlarge on the nature of Dionysus' accusation: but the Oxford Classical Dictionary theorizes that she was already married to Dionysus when Theseus ran away with her.
[edit] Naxos
In Hesiod and most other accounts, Theseus abandoned Ariadne sleeping on Naxos, and Dionysus rediscovered and wedded her.
With Dionysus, she was the mother of Oenopion, the personification of wine, and was set in the heavens as the constellation Corona.
She remained faithful to Dionysus, but was later killed by Perseus at Argos. In other myths Ariadne hanged herself from a tree, like Erigone and the hanging Artemis — a Mesopotamian theme. Some scholars think, due to her thread and winding associations, that she was a weaving goddess such as Arachne, and they support the assertion with the mytheme of the Hanged Nymph (see weaving in mythology).
Dionysus however descended into Hades and brought her and his mother Semele back. They then joined the gods in Olympus.
[edit] The Goddess Ariadne
Karl Kerenyi (and Robert Graves) explain this legend by Ariadne (which they derive from a Cretan-Greek form for arihagne, "utterly pure" ) being a fertility goddess of Crete, "the first divine personage of Greek mythology to be immediately recognized in Crete" (Kerenyi 1993, p 89), once archaeology had begun. Her name is merely an epithet, for she was originally the "Mistress of the Labyrinth", both a prison with the dreaded Minotaur at its centre and a winding dance-ground. She was especially worshipped on Naxos, Delos, Cyprus, and in Athens. (The Romans called their comparable goddess Libera, and their poets associated her with Minoan-Greek Ariadne.)
In a kylix by the painter Aison (c. 425–c. 410 BC; National Archaeological Museum of Spain, Madrid; see image), Theseus drags the Minotaur from a temple-like labyrinth; but the goddess who attends him is Athena. For Athenian mythographers the mentor of the founder of Athens is Pallas Athena and Ariadne merely the prize.
[edit] In later culture
- Georg Anton Benda and Richard Strauss wrote operas called Ariadne auf Naxos.
- Ariadne was also a play by A.A. Milne.
- Metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico painted 8 works with a classical statue of Ariadne as a theme.
[edit] References
- Kerenyi, Karl 1976. Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, especially part I.iii "The Cretan core of the Dionysos myth" (Princeton:Princeton University Press)
- Ruck, Carl A.P., and Danny Staples, 1994. The World of Classical Myth. (Durham:Carolina Academic Press)
- Barthes, Roland, "Camera Lucida." Barthes quotes Nietzsche, "A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but only his Ariadne," using Ariadne in reference to his mother, who has recently died.
