Ariadne

The daughter of Minos

Ariadne is the daughter of Minos, ruler of Knossos on Crete. She appears in Greek poetry before any surviving text links her with the Minotaur, the monster kept inside the Labyrinth.

That first appearance is in the Iliad, an epic poem by Homer. The god Hephaestus makes a shield for Achilles and decorates it with scenes. On one, young men and women dance on a floor like the one Daedalus, the craftsman, once built for Ariadne at wide Knossos. The poet gives her city, the craftsman and the dance. He gives no monster and no escape.

This early picture means the later story is not the whole of her. Ariadne already belongs to Knossos as the woman for whom Daedalus builds a place of ordered movement. In the later story, the same craftsman builds a place whose tangled paths trap whoever is inside it.

The thread and the Labyrinth

The fullest account of the thread comes from Apollodorus, a later writer who retold the Greek myths. Theseus, a young man from Athens, is about to enter the Labyrinth. Ariadne has fallen in love with him. The Labyrinth was built so that nobody could escape it, and she must find a way out.

She goes to its maker, Daedalus, and asks him. His answer is practical. Theseus should take a thread, unwind it on the way in and gather it up on the way back. Ariadne gives him the thread. Theseus kills the Minotaur in the innermost room and follows her line back to the door.

The story is often told as if Ariadne only helps Theseus win. The order of events gives her a more exact part. She sees that strength will win the fight but not the maze. She finds the one person who understands the building, and she carries his knowledge to the man inside it. Theseus leaves Crete with the children he has saved because Ariadne has turned a secret into a route. In doing so, she turns the craftsman’s knowledge against the purpose Minos had for his building.

Two endings that cannot be joined

Theseus takes Ariadne from Crete, but she never reaches Athens. After that, the sources part ways.

In the Odyssey, Homer says Theseus means to bring her home but has no joy of her. Artemis kills her on the island of Dia, with the god Dionysus as witness. The poem does not explain why. In four lines Ariadne is dead, before any marriage in Athens can happen.

Hesiod, an early Greek poet, gives the opposite ending. Dionysus makes Ariadne his wife, and Zeus makes her immortal and ageless for his sake. Apollodorus places their meeting after Theseus reaches Naxos by night. Dionysus falls in love with Ariadne and carries her away.

These versions cannot be put into one sequence without adding events the ancient texts do not give. In one, the gods end her life. In the other, they take death away from her.

Dia, Naxos and Palatia

Dia and Naxos are not necessarily two islands. Ancient writers gave Naxos several names, among them Dia, Strongyle and Dionysiada. Local tradition places the spot where Ariadne was left on Palatia, the small harbour island also called Bacchus, another name for Dionysus. There a man named Lygdamis later began a temple to Apollo of Delos.

The site does not choose one ending. The name Bacchus supports the story of Dionysus, while the name Dia lets the deadly meeting in the Odyssey take place on the same shore. The unfinished temple belongs to Apollo, not to Ariadne, and is no evidence for either ending.

So Palatia holds several endings at once. It is where Theseus leaves Ariadne, where Apollodorus brings Dionysus to her, and where a local account fixes Homer’s Dia on Naxos. The ancient sources never decide whether Artemis kills her there or Zeus makes her deathless. Naxos keeps the disagreement by carrying both names.