Cretan princess, wife of Dionysus
Ariadne
Ariadne is a Cretan princess, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae, best known for helping Theseus escape the Labyrinth after he killed the Minotaur. In Greek myth she later became the wife of Dionysus, and her story is one of the most frequently depicted in ancient art.
The myth
According to tradition, Minos ruled Crete when, after his son Androgeus died in Athens, he attacked the city and cursed it with drought and famine. The Athenians accepted a tribute: every year they had to send seven young men and seven maidens to feed the Minotaur, a creature shut inside the Labyrinth. One year Theseus, son of King Aegeus, volunteered to put an end to the beast.
Ariadne fell in love with him at first sight and gave him a ball of thread to find his way out of the Labyrinth; other versions speak of a shining crown instead. After the Minotaur was dead, she fled with Theseus. Homer's Odyssey barely mentions her end: it says Artemis killed her on the sea-girt island of Dia, on Dionysus's accusation, without explaining what that accusation was.
In the version told by Hesiod and most other sources, Theseus left her asleep on Naxos, where Dionysus found her, fell in love and married her. The reasons for the desertion vary: Dionysus made Theseus forget her, the gods ordered it, he was ashamed to bring her to Athens, or he loved Aegle. Other traditions say she died on Cyprus in childbirth after a storm, that she hanged herself after being abandoned, or that Perseus killed her at Argos with Medusa's head during his war with Dionysus.
In some tellings Dionysus took her with him to Olympus, where she was made a goddess, and Hesiod says Zeus granted her immortality. Her wedding crown was lifted into the sky as the constellation Corona Borealis.
Worship and religion
Ariadne was worshipped on Naxos, Delos, Cyprus and in the region of Locris. At Amathus on Cyprus she was honoured together with Aphrodite in a sacred grove, where a young man lay on the ground to re-enact the pains of labour. Her tomb was believed to lie in Argos, within the temple of the Cretan Dionysus.
Legacy
Her story was depicted again and again in art, from black-figure vases to paintings and sculptures by Titian, Donatello and Tiepolo. The constellation Corona Borealis keeps the crown Dionysus gave her in the sky, and the phrase Ariadne's thread still stands for a guiding clue through a maze.
Ancient sources: Homer's Odyssey, the works of Hesiod, Apollodorus's Library and Plutarch's Life of Theseus.
In art
Music, opera and dance
- Ariadne auf Naxos · Richard Strauss, 1912
- L'Arianna · Claudio Monteverdi, 1608
- Ariane · Jules Massenet, 1906
- Bacchus and Ariadne · Albert Roussel, 1931
- Arianna in Creta · George Frideric Handel, 1734
- Bacchus · Jules Massenet, 1909
- L'abandon d'Ariane · Darius Milhaud, 1928
- Errand into the Maze · Martha Graham, 1947
- Lamento d'Arianna · Claudio Monteverdi, 1608
Film and television
- Atlantis · Howard Overman