Have you ever noticed in many paintings when Dionysos comes to rescue or perhaps collect Ariadne on the island of Naxos she often looks just like this?
Now I don’t know about you, but this is not the romantic meeting that I wish to picture in my head. Frankly she looks as if she could take or leave him, preferably leave him and ‘will you just get out of my face already.’
This use to bug me a lot. I wanted the Hollywood ideal of her falling into his arms in gratitude. I wanted her to immediately see Dionysos as a beautiful, caring god who came to save her from, at very least, starving to death on the desolate island full of rocks. The vast majority of artists especially those who painted before the 18th century do not see it that way.
Naturally I blamed the painters for not meeting my demands from 300 plus years ago. I decided that despite everyone concerned being naked or nearly they were purposefully trying not to show any sexual intimacy or bent on painting Ariadne ungrateful and bitchy. Perhaps they just wanted to make Dionysos all the more benevolent for putting up with her. It all seemed screwy to me.
That was all wrong. It turned out, I was condemning before I fully considered all the facts.
The story of Ariadne, at least in the incarnation pictured above, begins with her parents. Her mother was Pasiphae, a daughter of Helios, who was the sun, and her father was Minos, the son of Zeus and Europa. (Europa was seduced by Zeus while he was in a bull’s form. An interesting detail considering how the life of her son Minos turned out)
This makes Ariadne both the granddaughter of the sun and the granddaughter of Zeus. It also makes Dionysos (the son of Zeus) her Uncle.
Now when Minos stepfather Asterios died, he decided he wanted to become king of Crete, but the people demanded a sign from the gods. Minos pointed out he was the son of Zeus, but that was all too familiar to carry any real weight. So Minos prayed to Poseidon, because they were on an island presumably, to send a “bull from the depths” of the sea. If the sea god did so, Minos promised that he would sacrifice the bull to Poseidon.
Poseidon granted Minos’ request and made a big spectacle of sending a great bull from the waves to the shore. Upon seeing the magnificent animal, Minos decided to go back on his word and keep the bull, sacrificing another instead.
Poseidon, nobody’s fool, got angry and punished Minos in two ways. First he made the bull mad so that no one could approach him, and he also made Minos’ wife Pasiphae fall in love (lust) with the bull.
It just so happened that the famous architect named Daaidalos was living then in Crete after being exiled from Athens. Although he is more famous for building the Labyrinth and making wings for himself and his son Ikaros, Daidalos’ most remarkable accomplishment was what he now made for Pasiphae.
For her, he made a wooden framework on wheels, with a cows skin stretched over it. He constructed it in such a way that Pasiphae could get inside it, pedal it to the field where the mad bull was raving. After that, she could position herself so when the bull mounted the artificial cow it would also have sex with Pasiphae inside.
Pasiphae became pregnant by the bull and gave birth to the Minotaur (or Asterion), who had a human body and a bull’s head. Minos, who, of course, wanted to conceal the product of his wife’s adulterous bestiality, consulted oracles. They told him to have Daidalos build an enormous maze, the Labyrinth, and to put the Minotaur in its center (from which no one could find the way out).
Eventually, the Minotaur’s father, the bull that had been sent by Poseidon, was captured by Herakles for his seventh labor and taken to Eurystheus. In time, they released him, and he wandered around Greece and eventually came to Marathon near Athens. At this time, King Aigeus of Athens was holding athletic games during the Panathenean festival, and Minos’s son Androgeos came to compete and won all the events. Aigeus then sent Androgeos to fight the bull at Marathon, but the bull killed him.
So in other words, Androgeos, oldest brother of Ariadne, was murdered by the bull their mother Pasiphae had an affair with and whose was also the father of Asterion (the Minotaur), their half brother. It’s a lot of ‘A’ names I know.
When Minos heard of the death of his son, Androgeous, he made all haste to sail to Athens for revenge. Despite it being his fault for not sacrificing the deadly bull when he had the chance. Once there, he invaded Athens, and the war dragged on for some time. Minos prayed to his father Zeus and the great father god afflicted Athens with plague and famine because that’s what he does.
The Athenians then learned from an oracle that their only hope was to pay whatever tribute Minos would demand. Mad with power, Minos ordered Athens to send to Crete, every year, seven young men and seven maidens to be eaten by the Minotaur.
Now let’s consider Ariadne’s point of view in all of this. The vast majority of her life, up to this point, has been miserable. All due to the actions of the gods, Poseidon, Zeus and the demigod that was her father, Minos. She had to watch her mother degrade herself to become impregnated, had to watch her youngest sibling Asterion disgraced and isolated. She was the only one who could handle being near him and so it was safe to assume she was a mother to him. She also knew the people of Athens were suffering terribly for no other reason then they made Minos’s shit list for the day and Zeus was down that year for mass destruction.
She had to watch her baby brother, who she raised and loved, be forced to subsist on an annual feeding of human meat from innocent and pleading youths and maidens. All of this because the gods lack not all for sheer creativity, maliciousness, and overreactions.
From there most know the story. When she saw Theseus, one of the tributes for the Minotaur, she saw a strong young man, strong enough for her purposes, at least. She wished to get out of Crete and leave the city with a sound wound if at all possible. So she found a way to gave Theseus a ball of thread and explained to him how to escape the Labyrinth. Only Ariadne knew how to navigate it entirely, even Daidalos, the architect, claimed he would be unable to find the way out.
Theseus succeeded, killing the Minotaur and putting holes into Minos’s entire fleet of ships. He saved everyone about to be sacrificed and sailed away with Ariadne in the night. She was finally free! Free from that horrid castle where she had to live, free of her father’s tyrannical rule. She mourned for her Minotaur brother but she knew his entire existence was pain, and it was better this way.
Then Theseus started romancing her, talking of the babies they would have together and a life for her in another castle that he would set up. It would be a nice place, a safe place, full of servants to care for her and make her comfortable. Ariadne looked at him and knew that he represented yet another prison for her, the prison of domesticity and that just wasn’t going to fly, no matter how sound his intent.
There are various accounts of what happened next. I like to believe that, after Theseus’s grand proposal, she said not a word. Instead she jumped overboard, straight into the sea with a splash. Leaving Theseus (who was not the villain people like to make him out to be) standing there open mouthed. He could have turned the boat around to get her, but he didn’t. The girl was clearly mad, so why bother. She had a lovely sister that he eventually did marry.
Ariadne swam to the shore of Naxos and sat herself on a rock, letting the sun (who was her grandfather!) dry her. After a bit, she began to feel sorry for herself. Then, surprise, Aphrodite herself walked out of the sea (with or without the seashells), as she does. She consoled Ariadne with the promise that she would have an immortal lover, instead of the mortal one she had lost.
After the sea goddess had left, Ariadne took the time to consider her proposed eternal lover. An immortal lover, undoubtedly, meant a god. Ariadne saw no joy in the prospect, only dread. The gods had never done anything for her. They only gave her pain in so many ways.
By the time Dionysos showed up, fresh from his conquering of India, no simple feat, Ariadne was literally out of fucks to give. ( Naxos was Dionysos’s favorite island. It was the same one that he had told the Tyrrhenian pirates to carry him to, when they treacherously attempted to sell him into slavery.) Ariadne might have known who he was by lineage, but she had no idea to his personality or anything else about him. All she knew was that he was a god. She knew he wouldn’t be as easy to evade as Theseus was. When she looked at him, she just saw another type of prison where she would be eternally trapped.
I would like to believe, that after he had got over the surprise of her icy shoulder, Dionysos understood. Whereas the majority of the other gods, major and minor, would have gotten angry at their good graces being rebuffed or meant with scorn, he simply got down to her level and talked to her. A feat he could accomplish with ease as he was half human himself.
He might have talked to her about Beroe, the goddess of a city, whom he wooed until Poseidon came in there and decided he wanted the goddess for himself. He might have talked about Ampelos, that fatal love affair. No matter what he said we know that he said one thing, for we know what kind of god Dionysos is.
He promised her that when she was with him, she would always be free. There would be no castle where she would be forced to stay. She would never be placed somewhere to be kept safe. It wasn’t his intent to make her comfortable but to challenge her and help her grow. He promised to take her to Olympus to be his bride. Then he was honest and told her that he was a needy god. In fact, he lived in his own labyrinth of emotions and sensations. For that reason, he needed her, Ariadne, the mistress of the labyrinth, to be part of him and part of his world.
Ariadne looked at him and saw her little brother Asterion (Minotaur) in his eyes, she saw the pain he carried from a lifetime of strife. There was also love in him, overflowing amounts of it. It’s not only for her, but for the world and all living things, big and small. She realized this is no ordinary god. Dionysos is nothing like any of the others she had experienced before.
In that moment she fell in love and in that way she goes from the picture above to what we see pictured below.
theluminouscosmos 