Ariadne - Greek Mythology
AI interpretation of Ariadne

The Thread

Ariadne was a princess of Crete, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphaë. When the Athenian hero Theseus arrived as one of fourteen youths to be fed to the Minotaur, Ariadne fell in love with him. She approached the craftsman Daedalus and learned the secret to surviving the Labyrinth: a ball of thread. She gave Theseus the thread and a sword, instructing him to tie one end at the entrance and follow it back after killing the beast. Without Ariadne's help, Theseus would have died in the maze like everyone before him.

The Abandonment

After Theseus killed the Minotaur and escaped the Labyrinth, he fled Crete with Ariadne. But on the island of Naxos, while Ariadne slept, Theseus sailed away without her. The reasons vary by source: some say he forgot her, some say Athena commanded him to leave her, some say he was simply cruel. Ariadne woke alone on a strange island, watching the sail of the man she had betrayed her family for disappearing over the horizon. It is one of the most devastating moments of abandonment in mythology.

The Divine Marriage

But Ariadne's story does not end in tragedy. The god Dionysus found her weeping on Naxos and fell in love with her. He married her and elevated her to divine status, making her an immortal goddess. As a wedding gift, he gave her a crown of stars, which he later placed in the sky as the constellation Corona Borealis (the Northern Crown). Ariadne went from abandoned mortal to queen of a god, from the lowest moment of her life to eternal glory.

The Transformation

Ariadne's story is one of the few in Greek mythology where a woman who is wronged by a hero ends up in a better position than the hero himself. Theseus went on to cause the death of his own father Aegeus, was eventually overthrown and exiled from Athens, and died by being pushed off a cliff. Ariadne became immortal, beloved by a god, and honoured with a constellation. The myth suggests that the gods sometimes correct the injustices that heroes create.

Classical Sources

Cross-referenced with multiple classical sources for accuracy.

Explore More

Theseus · Dionysus · Minotaur · Crete · Theseus & Minotaur · Home

The many endings of Ariadne

Few figures in Greek myth have as many conflicting endings as Ariadne, and the ancient writers knew it. The oldest one is also the darkest. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees her shade in the underworld and says Theseus was taking her from Crete to Athens when Artemis killed her on the island of Dia "on the testimony of Dionysus". The line suggests an older story in which Ariadne had already been promised to the god and was punished for leaving with a mortal. Hesiod's Theogony, by contrast, says simply that golden-haired Dionysus made Ariadne his wife and Zeus made her immortal and ageless for him.

Plutarch's Life of Theseus collects the alternatives in one long, slightly exasperated passage. Some said she hanged herself after being abandoned. Others said she married Oinarus, a priest of Dionysus on Naxos. A Cypriot historian, Paion of Amathus, said a storm drove Theseus's ship to Cyprus and he put the pregnant Ariadne ashore, where she died in childbirth before he came back. The Amathusians honoured her in a grove as "Ariadne Aphrodite", and at her festival a young man lay down and imitated the cries of a woman in labour. Plutarch also reports a Naxian tradition of two Ariadnes. One married Theseus and was abandoned, and her festival was a time of mourning. The other married Dionysus, and hers was a joyful celebration.

Apollodorus says Dionysus fell in love with her and carried her off to Lemnos, where she bore him Thoas, Staphylus, Oenopion and Peparethus. Several of these names are tied to wine or to Aegean islands. Oenopion, "wine-face", became king of Chios, and Thoas was later king of Lemnos.

A Minoan goddess behind the princess?

Many scholars think Ariadne began as a goddess, not a mortal princess. Her name looks like a Cretan form of ari-hagne, "most holy", since the ancient lexicographer Hesychius records adnon as a Cretan word for "holy". Her pattern of death and divine marriage, along with festivals of both mourning and joy, fits a goddess of vegetation better than a heroine. In the Iliad, the shield of Achilles shows a dancing floor like the one Daedalus built at Knossos for "lovely-haired Ariadne". A Linear B tablet from Knossos records an offering of honey to the "Mistress of the Labyrinth" (da-pu₂-ri-to-jo po-ti-ni-ja). The tablet does not name Ariadne, but it shows a goddess linked with a labyrinth in Bronze Age Knossos.

Ariadne in art, poetry and music

Ancient artists chose two moments again and again. One is Ariadne asleep on Naxos as Theseus leaves, or Dionysus arrives. The other is her marriage to the god, shown on countless vases and Roman sarcophagi. The bronze Derveni Krater in Thessaloniki (late fourth century BC) shows Dionysus resting with his leg across Ariadne's lap. The Vatican's marble "Sleeping Ariadne", a Roman copy of a Hellenistic type, was believed in the Renaissance to show Cleopatra dying from the asp's bite because of the snake-shaped bracelet on her arm.

Her abandonment became a favourite theme for Roman poets. Catullus's Poem 64 describes a tapestry showing her on the shore, and gives her a long, furious lament before Bacchus arrives with his rowdy followers. Ovid made her the writer of the tenth of his Heroides, a letter to Theseus written from the empty beach, and described the meeting with Bacchus in the Art of Love. These Latin versions inspired Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23, National Gallery, London). Monteverdi's opera L'Arianna (1608) is lost apart from the heroine's lament, which became one of the most imitated pieces of early opera. Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (1912, revised 1916) uses the myth as an opera within an opera.

Ancient sources

  • Homer, Odyssey 11.321–325: Theseus was taking Ariadne from Crete when Artemis killed her on Dia, on the testimony of Dionysus.
  • Homer, Iliad 18.590–592: the dancing floor Daedalus made for Ariadne at Knossos.
  • Hesiod, Theogony 947–949: Dionysus takes Ariadne as his wife, and Zeus makes her immortal and ageless.
  • Catullus, Poem 64: the tapestry showing Ariadne abandoned on Naxos, her lament, and the arrival of Bacchus.
  • Plutarch, Life of Theseus 19–20: the rival versions, including her suicide, the Cypriot cult at Amathus, Oinarus, and the two Naxian Ariadnes.
  • Apollodorus, Epitome 1.8–9: the thread, the abandonment on Naxos, and Dionysus carrying her to Lemnos, where she bears four sons.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Theseus leave Ariadne on Naxos?

The sources give different reasons. He fell in love with someone else, he forgot her, or a god made him leave. Diodorus says Dionysus appeared to Theseus in a dream and claimed her, and other versions have Athena order him to go. Plutarch says the stories were told many ways.

Was Ariadne a goddess or a mortal?

In most stories she is born a mortal princess, the daughter of Minos, and made immortal by marriage to Dionysus. Her cults and her name suggest she may originally have been a Cretan goddess.

Was the Minotaur Ariadne's brother?

Her half-brother. The Minotaur, whose name was Asterion, was the son of her mother Pasiphaë and the Cretan bull, so by helping Theseus Ariadne betrayed both her father and a member of her own family.

Which constellation is Ariadne's crown?

Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, a small semicircle of stars between Boötes and Hercules. Ovid's Metamorphoses describes Bacchus throwing it into the sky. See more constellation myths.

Books to read next

Links go to Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores. We earn a small commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you.