- Read offline
- Remove ads
- Access all content
- Use the in-app Map to find sites, and add custom locations (your hotel...)
- Build a list of your own favourites
- Search the contents with full-text search functionality
- ... and more!
Ariadne on Naxos
Why did Theseus do it?
After slaying the Minotaur, Theseus and Ariadne, the Cretan princess who loved him and gave him the ball of string to help him find his way out of the Labyrinth, stopped to rest at Náxos on their way to Athens. Yet the next morning, while Ariadne slept, Theseus set sail and abandoned her.
This, even in the eyes of the male chauvinist Athenians, was dishonourable, especially as Theseus had promised to marry Ariadne in return for the assistance she had rendered him in negotiating the Labyrinth.
Did he simply forget her or find a new mistress? Was she shot with arrows by Artemis in the Temple of Dionysos and left for dead, as the Odyssey says? Or did the god Dionysos, who soon found the abandoned Ariadne and married her, somehow warn Theseus off?
Image by Wolfgang Sauber