The Myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus

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    THE MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMERTO CATULLUSBy T. B. L. WEBSTER

    ^ ^ I R E E K myths are so vivid that we think of the figures in them asvJTreal people and argue about their characters and what made themdo what they d id. W e forget not only tha t the people never existed(or if some of them did, they were certainly very different from therefined and sophisticated representations of them about whichweargue),but also that what we have is a number of often incompatible versionsin literature and art dating over a period of a thousand years or more,whereas what we argue about is either a single late version or a verylate amalgam of a number of versions m ade in a handbook of mythology.

    Even the classification into myth, saga, andmdrchenadopted by H. J.Rose seems unsatisfactory when a single story like that of Theseus andAriadne belongs to all thre e categories. Rose defines my th in the tech -nical sense as 'the result of the working of naive imagination upon thefacts of experience' and if the sleeping Ariadne is a vegetation goddessshe certainly belongs here; saga deals with historical events, and it isdifficult to deny that the story of Theseus and Ariadne has somethingto do with relations between Crete and Athens in the Bronze Age;mdrchen are fairy stories told to amuse, and the ball of thread whichAriadne gave to Theseus to guide him out of the labyrinth clearlyqualifies for th is classification. But m yth also has a non-technical sense,a story about gods and heroes which a later writer may handle as hepleases for his particular pu rpo se: in this sense the Theseus and A riadnestory is myth for Euripides and Catullus, and has survived for manylater writers, artists, and musicians to mould to their needs.

    The purpose of this article is merely to present some of the variousversions in literature and art and to note what interpretations writersand artists pu t upon the story. T he earliest versions in Homer andHesiod already show wild discrepancies. In the Iliad (xviii. 590) thedance on the shield of Achilles is compared to the choros which onceDaidalos arranged in honour of fair-tressed Ariadne in broad Knossos.The interpretation has been discussed in ancient and modern times.But at least the passage connects Ariadne, dance, and K nossos. Isuspect that Kallimachos (fr. 67. 13) so understood it when he speaks ofthe Naxian girl K ydippe setting her delicate foot in the dance of sleeping

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    MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUS 23Ariede (Ariede was the form of the name which Kallimachos' ratherolder contemporary Zenodotos preferred to Ariadne in the Iliadpassage). In Naxos the dance is to wake a sleeping goddess, surely towake her from her winter sleep in the spring. It is very tem pting tosuppose that the Naxian dance was a descendant of the Cretan danceswhich we know from Minoan and Mycenaean art.1 Now ProfessorCaskey's excavations in the island of Keos have made such a linkplausible.2 He has discovered a fifteenth-century shrine with ter ra-cotta figures, some over life size, of Minoan dancing ladies, one of whichwas preserved into classical times when the shrine became a holy placeof Dionysos; Bacchylides in the fifth century remembered that an earlyking of Keos was Euxantios, son of Minos, the father of Ariadne; and,interestingly but probably irrelevantly, Kallimachos' Kydippe of Naxoshad a lover, Akontios of Keos, who traced his descent back to E uxantios.No god could better awake a sleeping vegetation goddess tha n the fertilitygod Dionysos. The m yth (in the technical sense) of this ritual is givenin its simplest form by Hesiod in the Theogony(947): 'gold-hairedDionysos made fair Ariadne, daughter of Minos, his fertile wife, andZeus made her immortal and unageing for him '.

    Minoan and Mycenaean art also have representations ofagoddess or agoddess and a god sailing in a boat, p robably sailing away for the winterrather than arriving for the spring. Such representations could beinterpreted by the Greeks, particularly if they had forgotten or did notknow the original meaning, as Theseus sailing away with Ariadne,daughter of Minos, after killing the Minotaur. In some such way amyth (in Rose's sense)perhaps originally Ariadne sailed away withDionysos to the Islands of the Blestwas attached to the Theseus saga,which preserved the memory of a successful Athenian struggle withCrete in the Bronze Age.

    In the Odyssey (xi. 321) the poet has one version of this story: 'fairAriadne, daughter of cruel-hearted Minos, whom once Theseus wasbringing from Crete to Athens and did not have hisjoy, but before thatArtemis killed her in seagirt Dia on the testimony of Dionysos'. 'Crue l-hearted Minos' is clearly an allusion to the Minotaur story; Dia hasbeen identified with Naxos. But here Ariadne is a mortal who hasdeserted the god Dionysos for the mortal Theseus and suffers death asher punishment. Th is was presumably the version told by Nestor inthe Cypria when he comforted the deserted Menelaos with stories of

    1 Cf. myF rom Mycenae to Homer (London, 1958), 50 ff.2 J. L. Caskey,Hesperia,31 (1962), 263 ff.; 32 (1963),3i4ff. Bacchylides, i. H I ff.;Pindar, Paean,iv.3 5 ff.

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    24 MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUSunfortunate husbands including 'Theseus and Ariadne '. Hyginus(Astr. ii. 5) tell us that Dionysos had given Ariadne a luminous wreath,which she lent to Theseus to find his way in the dark labyrinth; later(or according to Aratos after her departure with Theseus) the wreathwas pu t in the stars. An Attic bowl1of the late eighth century shows aman embarking on a ship leading a woman who holds a large wreath inher hand: they have been interpreted as Theseus and Ariadne leavingCrete, and the interpretationisvery attractiveason the chest of Kypselos(575-550 B.C.) Ariadne was shown with a wreath and Theseus witha lyre (in preparation for the dance celebrating the victory over theM inotaur). Earlier than this, in the last third of the seventh century,on an Argive shield band of bronze,2a warrior with a sword is shownleading off a woman holding a wreath and a spindle. Kunze has inter-preted th is as Theseus leading Ariadne to his ship . But this artistperhaps did not think of the wreath as luminous: the thread wasTh eseu s' guide out of the labyrinth. The mdrchenof the thread isessential for the labyrinth story.Hesiod, however, connected the two halves of the story in the oppositeorder. Ariadne was deserted by Theseus in Naxos, because he was inlove with Aigle, and she was then taken by D ionysos. Th is has theadvantage of saving Ariadne's character and fitting into the story theNaxian cult of the sleeping Ariadne. All we have is a single line ofHesiod about Theseu s' love for Aigle, bu t Plutarch{Theseus20) explainstha t this was his reason for deserting Ariadne in Naxos. Th is becamethe canonical version of the story. It is worth rem embering that th eNaxians had a curious custom by which a boy, who had two parentsalive, slept with the bride the night before her marriage, so that the

    Naxians may have regarded T heseus as taking the place of the boy withAriadne before her marriage with Dionysos.We have, I think, no picture from Athens in the mid-sixth century ofTheseus deserting Ariadne.3 Th ere are pictures of Theseus and theMinotaur, sometimes with Ariadne and her nurse, and pictures ofTheseus and Ariadne dancing with the Athenian boys and girls tocelebrate Theseus' victory over the Minotaur.4 We also have pictures1 British Museum 1899. z-1 9. 1. Jean M . Davison, YCS 16 (1961), 67 fig. 98 .2 E. Kunze,OlympischeBerichte,ii. 75, 170, no . Vb .3 Two very useful articles are C. Dugas, R.E.G. 56 (1943), 1 ff., and E. S imon,Antike Kunst, 6(1963), 12 ff. In what follows I refer to their illustrations when possible.J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-FigureVase-Painters(Oxford, 1963), vol. iii, gives a completelist of illustrations. T he re are some good pictu res in C. Dugas and R. Flaceliere,Thesee:imagesetr^cits (Paris, 1958).4 Cf. particularly Munich 2243, Dugas fig. 6, J. D. Beazley, TheDevelopment ofAtticBlack-figure(Berkeley and Los A ngeles,1951),55,cf. also33,on the Francois vase.

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    MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUS 25of Dionysos and Ariadne:1 sometimes he arrives with his satyrs andmaenads and greets Ariadne in her bridal veil; sometimes he reclineswith her on a couch and is entertained by satyrs, maenads, or komasts.Once at any rate she has an enormous wreath. W e cannot prove thathe is meeting Ariadne in Naxos rather than earlier in Crete. But thewhole conception of these scenes is that the meeting was joyous, andthere is no hint of a disastrous future; if those painters were in factconcerned with anything beyond the blissful conception of the god andhis bride, they surely thought of this happiness as permanent and putthe scene in Naxos.On several black-figure vases Dionysos, sometimes with Hermes anda single satyr, meets a woman with either one or two children on herarms.2 She has been interpreted as Aphrodite with Himeros and E rosbecause she appears with inscriptions on fragments from the A cropolis.But in the scene where Dionysos greets a woman, Ariadne with thechildren Oinopion and S taphylos seems a more likely subject. Norm allyDionysos was regarded as their father, but in the fifth century Ion ofChios for patriotic reasons called Oinopion the son of Theseu s. Thismay have been an isolated reference, and Oinopion may, like Theseushimself and Herakles, have been given both a hum an and a divine father.There are moral difficulties in both stories for a serious-mindedgeneration like the generation which fought the Persian wars. In thefirst version Ariadne deserted a god for a mortal and used the divinegift of the wreath to help the mortal; in the second version Theseusdeserted a woman who had saved him and was to become th e bride ofa god. The wreath was not essential to the Minotaur story because itwas only an extra convenience if Theseus was provided w ith the thread.So in one version the wreath becomes a present from Theseus toAriadne. Theseus is said to have been given the wreath by A mphitritewhen on the voyage to Crete he plunged into the sea to prove thatPoseidonwashis father by retrieving M inos' ring. T he lovely red-figurecup3painted soon after 500 by Onesimos shows Theseus carried underthe sea by a dolphin to receive the wreath from Am phitrite. LaterBacchylides retold the story in his choral ode (xvn) written for theKeians to sing at Delos. At about the same time the scene under thesea was painted by M ikon in a building to protect th e bones of Theseuswhich Kimon brought back from Skyros about 475 B.C. This story

    1 Cf. the two cups illustrated by Beazley, op, cit. 56, pi. 24. Ariadne and Dionysosentertained, e.g. Florence 70995, A.Rumpf Sakonides,p i. 3.1 Discussed by Simon, op. cit. 13 with n. 45 and pi. 4, 1. Louvre G 104. A.R.V.2 318; G. M . A. Richter,Handbook ofGreekArt (London,I959)>fig 443-

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    26 MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUSbrings the wreath into what we have called the canonical version, and,according to Hyginus, Dionysos put it into the stars after Ariadne'sdeath. Yet another variantwasto m ake Dionysos give her the wreath onNaxos. Either way Ariadne was saved from misusing a divine gift.The line in which Hesiod made Theseus desert Ariadne because ofhis love for Aigle was struck ou t of the poem by Peisistratos. So clearlyat a time when Theseus was becoming more and more important astheir national hero the Athenians were offended by his desertion ofAriadne. T h e solution is shown on a num ber of red-figure vases:Theseus deserted Ariadne because it was his duty to return to Athensand her destiny to become the bride of Dionysos. T he earliest is a cupprobably by the Foundry painter.1 Hermes leads Theseus away fromthe sleeping Ariadne over whom a winged boy hovers. If the wingedboyisEros rather than H ypnos, Erosispreparing the bride for Dionysos.On a lekythosnear the Pan painter2 it is Athena who comes quietly torouse the reluctant Theseus, while a tiny Sleep squats on Ariadne'shead. Tw o vases, askyphosby the Lewis painter3 and ahydriaby theSyleus painter/ show Athena sternly driving Theseus off against hiswill. On the hydria Athena drives Theseus off to the left, Dionysosleads Ariadne off to the right. Theseus looks across to Ariadne, Ariadnelooks back to Theseus. Thi s is the cruellest picture. Perhaps the artisthas put together two scenes into one, and we should think of an inter-vening scene with Ariadne deserted and asleep. As it stands, the twogods ruthlessly disrupt mortal happiness.These vases bring the story down to about 470. For Theseus th eessential conception is that, prompted by Athena, he pursued his heroiccareer and abandoned Ariadne, as Aeneas abandoned D ido. Such aTheseus must be the subject, if not also the speaker, of some linespreserved from Euripides' Theseus (fr. 388N2): 'But there is anotherlove among men, the love of a jus t, temperate, and brave soul. Th isought to be the rule for men, that the tem perate should love the piousand say good-bye to Kypris, the daughter of Zeus.' The lines recallBellerophon's prayer for a similar sober love in the Stheneboea(fr.672N2) and even Hippolytos' attitude to love. Hyginus (fab. 43) saysthat Theseus thought Ariadne would be a disgrace to him if he broughther back to Athens, and Apollodorus(Epitomei. 710) says that Ariadnehad promised to help Th eseus if he would take her to Athens as his bride .

    1 Tarquinia RC5291. A.R.V.* 405;C.V., pi. 18.2 Taranto.A.R.V.2 560; Jahreshefte,41(1954), 78. He re fig. I , by kind permissionof Soprintendenza alle Antichita della Puglia.3 Vienna 1773. A.R.V.1 952 ; Simon, op. cit., pi. 4, 5.* Berlin 2179. A.R.V.2 252 ; Dugas, op. cit., fig. 9; Simon, op. cit., pi. 4, 2.

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    MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUS 27These themes (which recur, as we shall see, in Catullus'Peleus andThetis)may have come from Euripides' play, and a line from it (fr.

    387N2) 'and yet I will tell a tale which is worthy of blame' may beascribed to Ariadne. It looks as if Euripides saw Ariadne as a girl whowas prepared to be a traitor for love, and Theseus, a little like Jason inthe Medea,as prepared to sacrifice her for his career. The scene waslaid in Crete; the chorus were the boys and girls who were to be sacri-ficed to the Minotaur (frr. 385-6N 2). The fragment (382N2) in which theunlettered herdsman describes the letters in Theseus' name may comefrom the prologue and be a report to Minos of Theseus' arrival, if hisname was written on his ship. Th eseu s' encounter with the M inotaurmust have been told in a messenger speech to which fr. 1001N 2, 'hetook a ball of thread and carried it with h im ', should belong.If P. Oxy.2452 belongs to this play rather than to an unknown playof Sophokles on the same them e, we can add fr. 2, someone describes astrange astronomical phenomenon to another (was the appearance of thewreath in the stars reported to Minos in the prologue?); frr. 4 -5 , lyricdialogue between Ariadne and Eriboia, in which Ariadne responds tothe Athenian girl's appeal for pity; fr. 3, Theseus describes his earlierlabours to a sym pathizer; fr. 1, Theseus goes off to the M inotaur 's de n;fr. 6, description of action by a xenos,i.e. of T heseus by a Cre tan.The play must have ended with the departure of Theseus with theliberated captives and presumably also with Ariadne. But it would bein Euripides' manner to have rounded off the story by a prophecy fromadeux ex m achina, probably Athena, of the Naxian sequel.1An illustration inspired by the supposed epilogue has been seen ona kalyx-krater by the Kadmos painter, probably 430/20 B.C.2 Again pj 'fl 7

    majestic gods dispose of mortals as on the earlier hydria by the Syleus (Jpainter, but the violence and the resistance have vanished. Theseu slooks back in wonder rather than in anguish as he goes off to his ship,which the young Athenians are already boarding; Athena places awreath on his head; his divine father Poseidon surveys the scene from1 T he limits of dating are given by thee ta in the herdsm an's description of The seu s'name and by the quo tations (frr. 385-6) in the Wasps,422 B.C.;etaappears first in A tticinscriptions about 450 B.C. (Schwyzer,Gr. Gramm.i. 447) which suggests 440 B.C. as atop date, and the absence of resolutions in th e fragments suggests 427 B.C. as a botto m

    date. Within those limits 438 and 431 are excluded, and the play cannot have beenproduced in the same year as theK retes, Aigeus,HippolytosI, orHippolytosII, becauseEuripides did n ot produc e trilogies with connected plays until 415 B.C. and afterwards.Phaidra inHippolytosII 339)thinks of Ariadne's love as parallel to hers and Pasip hae 's:the love of a traitress, even if she later became the wife of Dionysos(paceM r. Barrett,Euripides does not allude to theOdysseystory here b ut perhap s to his own play).2 Syracuse 17427. A.R.V.2 1184; Du gas, op. cit., fig. 13 ; Simon, o p. cit., pi. 5, 2.He re fig. 2, by kind permission of Sop rintendenza alle Antichita, Siracusa.

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    28 MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUSabove. Ariadne sits quietly on her couch; Aphrodite has dressed her asa bride; Eros flies down with a wreath (and it is arguable that this isa p resent w hich Dionysos gives her now as in one of Hyginus' versions);Dionysos comes up to her, very stately and very gentle. In sp irit this ismuch more like the earlier black-figure representations of Dionysosgreeting the bride Ariadne, but it has been changed into the much moreexplicit style of the late fifth century . The re the way Ariadne holds herveil shows that she is a bride; here we see that Aphrodite has justfinished dressing her. A red-figure fragment1 of 450-440B.C.is similarin spirit although quite different in arrangement: a bearded Dionysos,with a satyr behind him holding cup and wine jug, stands on the left,contemplating Ariadne who sits on a couch, awake but with bowedhead; Eros pours a love-charm over her head; Theseus is not repre-sented.We have seen Theseus reluctant, Theseus resistant, and Theseusacquiescent. But there is another version where Theseus retires hastilywhen he sees the god or even draws his sword to prevent the godattacking him . A South Italian stamnos2of the very early fourth centuryshows him re tiring to h is ship on the left while Ariadne sleeps and Erosstands above her head. On a rather later Apuliankalyx-krater*Theseusretreats with drawn sword to his ship on the right; Dionysos with hismaenads and satyrs has come down the hill and assails the sleepingAriadne from the left. But this is a young naked God whose intentionsare clear. It may well be right to see here a reminiscence of the picturedescribed by Pausanias (i. 20. 3): 'Ariadne asleep and Theseus puttingto sea and D ionysos arriving to rape Ariadne*. The p icture was in thelater temple of Dionysos below the theatre; its cult statue was made byAlkamenes, a pupil of Pheidias, who worked at least until the end of thefifth century.From the beginning of the fifth century at least there were two con-ceptions of Dionysiac ecstasy, dreamy ecstasy and violent ecstasy.Dionysos' approach to Ariadne on the earlier vase shows the one; theassault of the young D ionysos shows the other. Fro m the time of theParthenon the young D ionysos is much m ore common than the beardedDionysos, and his maenads dance with a new violence to the accom pani-ment of tambourines. T he m ortal shape which Dionysos adopts inEuripides'Bacchaeis tha t ofayouth withflowinghair; I suspect that he

    1 Tubingen 5439. A.R.V.* 1057; Simon , op . cit., pi . 5, 1.2 Boston 00. 349 (Ariadne painter). A. D. Trendall, Friihitaliotische Vasenmalerei(Leipzig, 1938), pi . 23 . He re fig. 3, by kind permission of the M useum of Fine Arts,Boston.3 Taranto . A. D . Trendall,Archaeological Reports(1955), 62, pis . 5, 6.

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    MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUS 29was bearded when he appeared in majesty at the end of the play. Againas in the sixth century, we have in the late fifth and fourth centuriesa concentration on Dionysos to the exclusion of Theseus. Dionysos andAriadne appear among satyrs and maenads, but now it is the youngDionysos, and Ariadne is dressed like a maenad, except that sometimesshe has a lyre, which is not an instrumen t played by maenads. T heyoung Dionysos may recline on a couch with Ariadne, but now theentertainment is provided by the actors and chorus of a satyr play(Pronomos vase). Ariadne and Dionysos live in divine bliss, an exampleof the bliss which those who are initiated in the mysteries of Dionysoshope to attain in the after life; in this sense the pictures of Ariadne andDionysos are religious pictures.1The symbolic interpretation is justified, to give a single example, bythe magnificent bronze krater2 found at Derveni: it dates from the latefourth century and was used to contain the ashes presumably of theThessalian whose name was inscribed on it. The body is decoratedwith the young Dionysos approaching A riadne who is seated on a chair,and the satyrs and maenads swirl in dance round the other side of thevase. Here Theseus does not appear at all, bu t on a rather earlier Attic r .kalyx kraterin Berkeley3 the young Dionysos gazes at Ariadne, who is f \ t (lseated on a chair, as on the Derveni krater,and Theseus retires to the Q 'right. Th is Theseus goes quietly with his right hand raised in farewell.He abandons his claim at the sight of the god. In fact he hardly belongsin this conception of the story, where Ariadne has already been attiredas a bride and waits outside the marriage-chamber, the door of whichcan be seen behind Dionysos. Like Kastor in one version of thePersephone story, his function was to bring the god his bride. He ismuch less important than the divine pair whose marriage is myth in thetechnical sense.The bearded Dionysos is also found occasionally in the fourth century,and a marble statue of Ariadne asleep has been dated in the thirdcentury. It seems to me possible that in the late second century theywere combined either in painting or in relief to make a new sequencewith Theseus departing on the left, Ariadne asleep, and then Dionysoswith a satyr-boy untying his sandals as he approaches her, followed by

    1 Attic vase pictures of Dionysos and Ariadne in the late fifth and fourth centuriesare listed and discussed by H. Metzger, Les representations danslaceramiquea ttique duIV siecle (Paris, 1951), n o ff.2 Salonika. ArchaeologicalReports(1961/2), 15; (1963/4), 19.3 Berkeley 8/3297. A.R.V.2 1459; Metzger, op. cit., pi. 8, 2 ; C.V., p i. 54. He refig. 4,by kind permission of the Robert H . Lowie M useum of Anthropology, U niversityof California, Berkeley.

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    30 MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUShis satyrs and m aenads. Th is is a typical late Hellenistic compositioncombining earlier types into a pleasing new whole. Here no issues areraised, moral or religious.

    1This tripa rtite scheme is clearly envisaged for th e textile which C atul-lus, whether, as has been suggested,2 he is translating the Greek poetEuphorion or not, describes in the Peleus and Thetis(54). Theseus isescaping over sea, Ariadne is awake and has called for vengeance; 'atparte ex aliaflorensvolitabat Iacchus cum thiaso Satyrorum et NysigenisSilenis, te quaerens, Axiadna, tuoque incensus amore'. Th is is surelythe young Dionysos with his satyrs and maenads. But Dionysos andTheseus are merely the frame within which the detailed picture of thedeserted Ariadne is set. Theseus has forgotten her while she is asleepand pu t to sea; w hen her misery has been sufficiently dem onstratedDionysos 'flies up '. The Hellenistic poet is primarily interested in thedistress of Ariadne. This is a purely hum an sto ry: she had fallenhopelessly in love with Theseus as soon as he arrived in Crete (71), ashopelessly as Apollonios Rhodios ' Medea fell in love with Jason . Shehad feared as desperately his defeat and prayed for his success. Sheclaims that he had promised her marriage in Athens (140), and for this

    she saved him and abandoned her brother (the Minotaur, but againMedea and her murder of Apsyrtos is in the poe t's mind ). If Theseusdid not want to marry her because he was afraid of the cruel orders ofhis strict father (this suggestion and the promise of marriage may comefrom Euripides' Theseus), she could have been happy with him as hisslave; here she has borrowed from the Euripidean Andromeda, whobegged Perseus to take her as handmaiden, wife, or slave (fr. 133N 2).Finally she prays for vengeance, and the story of Theseus forgetting tohoist the white sail and of Aigeus' suicide is told as the vengeance whichJup iter g ranted her. But meanwhile 'parte ex alia florens volitabatIacchus'.

    W e may end with this highly sophisticated version of the story. Ithas no religious or moral significance but is not therefore the worse aspoetry. W hethe r it is a translation in the strict sense or not, it is abrilliant adaptation of Hellenistic Greek metrical technique to the La tinlanguage. T he form of the narrative is taken over directly or indirectlyfrom the H ellenistic short epic. To appreciate this portrait of a lady indistress the reader m ust know not only the literary genre and its technical

    1 Cf. myHellenisticP oetry and Art(London, 1964) where I argue that the so-called'Visit to Ikarios' derives from an original which had a sleeping Ariadne, like thVatican Ariadne (Richter, o p. cit., 157, fig. 226), on the left and beyond h er a depa rtingThe seus or a representation of Th eseu s' ship.2 Cf. A. Barigazzi, Studi Rostagni,450 ff.

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    iGreece Rome Vol.XIII, No. i

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    Greece Rome Vol.XIII, No. I

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    Greece Rome Vol.XIII, No. i

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    Greece Rome Vol.XIII, No.i

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    MYTH OF ARIADNE FROM HOMER TO CATULLUS 31canons; he must also feel the allusions to Euripides and ApolloniosRhodios. T he ancient reader would, of course, also know the artistictradition, as the walls of Pompeii show. This is my th in the modernsense, a story about gods and heroes used by the poet for his ownaesthetic purposes.