Αριαδνη
The daughter of Minos and Pasiphae (Table 28). When Theseus arrived in Crete to do battle with the Minotaur Ariadne saw him and immediately fell deeply in love with him; to enable him to find his way in the labyrinth where the Minotaur was confined she gave him a ball of thread, which he unwound to show him the way to return. She then fled with him to escape the wrath of Minos but she did not reach Athens because when they stopped on the island of Naxos Theseus abandoned her while she slept on the shore. Different authors give varying accounts of this act of betrayal: sometimes Theseus is said to have left her because he was in love with another woman; other versions say that Theseus acted on the command of the gods because fate would not allow him to marry her.
Ariadne woke up in the morning to see the sails of her lover's ship vanishing over the horizon, but she did not remain for long in her grief, for Dionysus and his retinue soon appeared on the scene, the god's chariot drawn by a team on panthers. Overcome by her youthful beauty, Dionysus married her and carried her off to dwell on Olympus. As a wedding present he gave her a golden diadem, made by Hephaestus, which later became a constellation. Ariadne had four children by Dionysus, named Thoas, Staphylus, Oenopion and Peparethus. Another tradition tells how Ariadne was killed on the island of Dia (later identified with Naxos) by the goddess Artemis at the bidding of Dionysus (for alternative versions of the legend about Ariadne, see Theseus).
{E2 DICTIONARY OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY}
Table of Sources:
- Apollod. Epit. 1, 9
- Plutarch, Thes. 20
- Paus. 1, 20, 3; 10, 29, 4
- Catull. 64, 116ff.
- Ovid, Her. 10; Met. 8, 174ff.
- Hyg. Fab. 43
- Hom. Od. 11, 321ff.
- Prop. 1, 3, 1ff.
- Pseudo-Eratosth. Catast. 5