Ariadne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 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] Ariadne as a possible goddess figure
Karl Kerenyi (and Robert Graves) theorize that Ariadne (which they derive from a Cretan-Greek form for arihagne, "utterly pure" ) was a fertility goddess of Crete, "the first divine personage of Greek mythology to be immediately recognized in Crete" (Kerenyi 1976, p 89), once archaeology had begun. Kerenyi claims that her name is merely an epithet and that she was originally the "Mistress of the Labyrinth", both a prison with the dreaded Minotaur at its centre and a winding dance-ground. Professor Barry Powell has suggested she was Crete's Snake Goddess.[1]
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, in this Attic representation, is Athena.
An ancient cult of Aphrodite-Ariadne was observed at Amathus, Cyprus, according to the obscure Hellenistic mythographer Paeon of Amathus; Paeon's works are lost, but his narrative is among the sources cited by Plutarch in his vita of Theseus (20.3-.5). According to the myth that was current at Amathus, the second most important Cypriote cult centre of Aphrodite, Theseus' ship was swept off-course and the pregnant and suffering Ariadne put ashore in the storm. Theseus, attempting to secure the ship, was inadvertently swept out to sea. The Cypriote women cared for Ariadne, who died in childbirth and was memorialized in a shrine. Theseus, returning, overcome with grief, left money for sacrifices to Ariadne and ordered two cult images, one of silver and one of bronze, set up. At the observation in her honour on the second day of the month Gorpiaeus, one of the young men lay on the ground vicariously experiencing the throes of labour. The sacred grove in which the shrine was located was called the grove of Aphrodite Ariadne.[2]
In reading the account, the primitive aspect of the cult at Amathus would appear to be much older than the Athenian-sanctioned shrine of Aphrodite, who has assumed Ariadne (hagne, "sacred") as an epithet at Amathus.
[edit] In later culture
- Claudio Monteverdi, Carlo Agostino Badia, Georg Anton Benda and Richard Strauss wrote operas called L'Arianna and Ariadne auf Naxos, respectively. Joseph Haydn composed a cantata, Arianna a 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.
- The Algerian-French writer, Hélène Cixous, calls Ariadne the anti-Ulysses.
- "Ariadne's Thread" is a song by the Screamo band Saetia and is featured on their 1997 album "A Retrospective."
- "Ariadne" is a song in "The Frogs".
- "Ariadne" is a song by The Crüxshadows on their 2007 album DreamCypher
[edit] Notes
- ^ Powell, Barry B. Classical Myth. Second ed. With new translations of ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1998, p. 368.
- ^ Edmund P. Cueva, "Plutarch's Ariadne in Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe" American Journal of Philology 117.3 (Fall 1996) pp. 473-484.
[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.
