by Jack Lindsay
Ariagne, a dialectal variant of Ariadne, is often inscribed on Attic vases; it means someone to whom the title of agnos applies in the highest degree. We saw that her image on Delos also bore this title, which is hard to translate. ‘Pure’ or ‘holy’ are too vague; ‘untouched’ or ‘untouchable’ are better, as of a being with a nature that goes beyond human concepts of good and evil, an emanation of pure force. It was applied to female deities who embodied the mysterious element of earth: Artemis, Korē, Demeter, Aphrodite. The name Theseus occurs on Pylian tablets, as do Dionysos and Artemis. Daidalos had a fifteenth-century shrine at Knossos, where the Lady of the Labyrinth was worshipped too. She must surely be Ariadne in some earlier form. (At Knossos we also find the names Kastor and Aithon, Odysseus’ pseudonym in the Cretan tale he tells Penelope.)[355] The name Aridela conferred on Ariadne in Crete has been related to her crown that shines in the heavens, but reference to a specific constellation is unlikely at an early date. Perhaps she was just a shiner like Pasiphae and Phaidra — and maybe Helen.[356]
Among the women carried off or married by Theseus was Aiglē, Brightness, another shining woman. There were several heroines with this name: a daughter of Helios who with her sisters was changed to a poplar at the fall of her brother Phaethon (another Shiner); one of the Hesperides; the nymph for whom Theseus left Ariadne; the most lovely of the Naiads, on whom Helios begot the Graces. Aiglē is also called Koronis, though the vase that seems to show Theseus carrying her off makes her Korone. Koronis, Crowgirl, was also the faithless love of Apollo, who bore him Asklepios; yet another Koronis was changed to a crow by Athena as Poseidon pursued her. The Odyssean account of the killing of Ariadne by Artemis adds the similar killing of Koronis. Dionysos made the accusation in the first case, Apollo in the second. Nonnos cites Aiglē first in his list of the nurses of Dionysos, to whom Koronis also belonged; and to make things more confusing, on the vase where Koronē is being carried off, Helen and the Amazon Antiope attempt to prevent Theseus!
Ariadne too was a nurse of Dionysos. On a vase she appears as the nymph to whom Dionysos is given at birth by Hermes; her name is spelt Ariagne. We are reminded of Hagno of Arkadia, nurse of Zeus on Mt Lykaios; her springs flows with the same volume winter and summer; and in times of drought the priest of Lykaian Zeus ‘lowers an oak-branch to the surface of the water, not letting it sink deep’; the result is a vapour rising to form a cloud and produce rain. At Megalopolis Pausanias saw reliefs carved on a table in the temple of the Great Goddesses (Demeter and Korē): ‘Nymphs too are carved there: Neda carries baby Zeus, Anthrakia, another Arkadian nymph holds a torch, and Hagno has a water-pot in one hand and a bowl in the other. Anchirhoē and Myrtoessa carry water-pots with what is meant to be water coming down from them. In the precinct is a temple of Philios [Friendly] Zeus. Polykleitos of Argos made the image: it is like Dionysos in having buskins on its feet, a beaker in one hand, a thyrsos in the other, but an eagle seated on the thyrsos doesn’t fit in with accepted accounts of Dionysos.’ In the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea reliefs on the altar showed: ‘Rhea and the nymph Oinoe holding baby Zeus; on either side are four figures — Glaukē, Neda, Theisoa and Anthrakia on one, Ide, Hagno, Alkinoe and Phrixa on the other. There are also images of the Muses and of Mnemosynē [Memory].’ In Hesiod’s Theogony Ariadne is called the wife of Dionysos: ‘And goldhaired Dionysos made fair-haired [xanthē] Ariadne, Minos’ daughter, his buxom wife; and Kronos’ Son [Zeus] made her deathless and unageing.’
For Nonnos she is the leader of the Mainads, the chief Dionysiac nymph. In his account of the war between Perseus and Dionysos he adds yet another account of her death. ‘The heavy bronze spears of Mykenai resisted the ivy and deadly fennel, and Perseus, sickle in hand, gave way to Bacchos with his wand [thyrsos] and fled before the rage of satyrs crying Euoi. Perseus cast a furious spear and hit frail Ariadne, who had no weapons, instead of Lyaios [Deliverer, Dionysos] the warrior. I do not admire Perseus for killing a single woman, in her bridal dress still breathing of love.’ Later, however, we get a different version: ‘So he left Dionysos and fought with the mad Bacchantes. He shook in his hand the deadly face of Medousa and turned armed Ariadne into stone. Bacchos, on seeing his bride all stone, was yet more furious.’[357]
Epimenides, who can be relied on for Cretan folklore, says it was in Crete that the daughter of Minos was mated with Dionysos. The account of Argos in Pausanias shows that Nonnos was basing himself on old traditions. ‘The temple of Hera the Flowery [Anthea] is on the right of the sanctuary of Leto, and before it a grave of women. They were killed in a battle against the Argives under Perseus, having come from the Aegean islands to help Dionysos in war. So they are surnamed Haliai [Sea-Women].’ Opposite the Grave is a small bronze vessel supporting ancient images of Artemis, Zeus and Athena. ‘Lykeas in his poem states that the image is of Zeus Mechaneus [Con-triver], and that here the Argives who set out against Troy swore to carry on the war till they took Troy or were all killed fighting.’ By the bronze underground chamber, where Perseus’ mother had been shut in by her father to keep her chaste, is a temple of Cretan Dionysos. ‘They say that the god, after making war on Perseus, later put his enmity aside and received great honours at the hands of the Argives, including this precinct set specially apart for him. It was afterwards called the Precinct of the Cretan God, because, when Ariadne died, Dionysos buried her here. But Lykeas declares that at the rebuilding of the temple an earthenware coIhn was found and it was Ariadne’s. He added that both he himself and other Argives saw it. Near the temple of Dionysos is a temple of Aphrodite Ourania.’[358]
We see that Ariadne had many deaths and burials: here at Argos; at Naxos where both she and her nurse were buried; at Amathous in Cypros; on Dia. For the rite at Amathous various theories have been propounded, such as that it represented the couvade (where the male mimes the woman’s pangs of childbirth, in order to draw off any hostile spirits). Most likely, however, it was connected with the Bearded Aphrodite of Cypros (as also in Pamphylia). This deity had a female body and wore female clothes, but had the beard and genitals of a man. Its image was certainly shown with an erection, for comic poets and lexicographers connected Aphrodite with priapic daimones. But no statues of the androgynous Aphrodite have been found. The stress on Ariadne’s death suggests the role of Semele, mother of Dionysos. The latter has her one great myth moment when she bears the god and is simultaneously blasted by Zeus. She was worshipped at Thebes as one who had died; the area dedicated to her was in the precinct of Dionysos; on the acropolis was a sakos, a grave. An Orphic hymn, speaking of the honours paid to her at the festivals of Dionysos, stresses that she owed them to Persephone, queen of the dead. A scholiast speaks of the unapproachable shrine, sekos, in the mountains, which was called the Grave of Semele. Indeed the house of the god’s birth was also her grave. The blasted house was shown next to the shrine of Dionysos Kadmeios; in a third-century inscription it is called a sekos, showing that she had a cult there. She was however worshipped also at other sites. Her main cult-days were the festivals for the Advent of Dionysos and for her Resurrection by the god from the underworld. In the invocation at the Attic Lenaia, Dionysos was called Semelēios. Ploutarch tells of an eight-yearly festival at Delphoi in which the Thyiads took part; the drōmenon enacted in public suggested that the theme was Semele’s resurrection. The festival was called Herōis, referring to Semele who bore this name, just as the women of Elis called Dionysos Herōs, the Hero, in a song. The Herōis may have been celebrated elsewhere. In Lerna it was said that Dionysos had sent to the depths of the Alkyonian Sea, to the land of Ocean, to fetch her; and in Troizen people pointed out the place where she had come up from Hades.[359]
The rites at Naxos show Ariadne as a vegetation deity who dies and is reborn, who is mourned and then rejoiced over. Like Demeter’s Korē, Britomartis and Diktynna, she is carried off and mourned as dead. She appears also as the daimōn of the girl initiate who disappears (dies) and then returns with a new status. Here as at
many points we have to note how the pattern of death—birth ritual and myth is at root the same in both the nature-cults and initiation customs. A festival which illuminates Ariadne’s character is the Oschophoria at Athens: the Carrying of the Oscha, the vine-shoots laden with grapes. It was connected with the ephebes and included a contest or race and a procession with revel. The ten victors, feasted, formed into procession, one leading as herald, two following dressed as women and carrying boughs, the other seven composing the chorus. Ploutarch says that Theseus introduced the festival; and the two young men with boughs ‘on account of the myth’ performed in honour of Dionysos and Ariadne. The prize was a cup of mixed drinks, of magical virtue, a sort of panspermia or pankarpia (all-seeds, all-fruits) made up of cheese, honey, wine and so on, in the same way as the holy kykeon in Demeter’s Mysteries at Eleusis. From one aspect the Oschophoria was a survival of the old clan feast. Women called Deipnophoroi, meal-bringers, took part; they shared in the sacrifice ‘in imitation of the mothers of those on whom the lot fell’ of going to the Minotaur. And they recited myths to encourage the youths. Again we see survivals of initiation ritual. Ploutarch adds that the pair of lads in girls’ clothes represented a pair in the group that went to Crete and who had thus dressed up so as to fill the complement of girls; this pair on the return had headed the procession. That was how their transvestism was ‘on account of the myth’. Alternatively, they played their part because they came back at the time when the fruit harvest was being got in. The ten tribes of Attika seem to have contributed one each of the ephebes, the choric seven representing the lads sent in tribute to Minos.[360]
Ploutarch also tells us that an hereditary clan was in charge, the Phytalides, whose eponymous ancestor Phytalos had been taught by Demeter the art of cultivating figs, before the vine came in. (In Crete orchard cultivation was developed early.) This Phytalos we have met in the purification of Theseus at the end of his wandering ordeals. In the Oschophoria we then see three main elements: initiation, cultivation of a sacred tree, and a fertility-cult carried out by a clan or craft-fraternity. With the stress on the mothers as supervisors of the feast, as the inculculaters of traditional lore, we see elements that may well go back to Minoan-Mykenean times. Also we see Theseus in harmony with Dionysos and with Ariadne as the god’s bride, not his own.
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Further light is thrown on Ariadne by the account of the Crane Dance instituted by Theseus on Delos. The dance was a circling one which imitated the entry into, movement through, and exit from, the labyrinth. Daidalos showed the group how to dance it. Homer in the Iliad described what can only be this dance. ‘There the famous god of the strong arms cunningly fashioned a dancing floor like that which in broad Knossos Daidalos constructed of old for lovely-haired Ariadne. There were lads dancing and maidens worth many cattle, holding each the wrists of another. The girls were dressed in fine linen, while the lads wore well-woven tunics faintly glistening with oil; and the girls had beautiful crowns [stephanai] and the lads had daggers of gold attached to their silver belts. One moment they ran round very lightly on cunning feet, as when a potter sits by the wheel that’s fitted between his hands, and tries it out to see how it spins. Then another moment they ran in lines opposite to one another. And a big crowd stood around enjoying the dance of desire [passionate, charming]; and two tumblers spun around in their midst as leaders of the dance’ — that is, setting the rhythm.
Pausanias tell us of the works he considered the actual products of Daidalos (that is, very ancient works). There were two in Boiotia: ‘a Herakles in Thebes and the Trophonios at Lebadeia. Also two wooden images in Crete, a Britomartis at Olous and an Athena at Knossos, at which latter place is also Ariadne’s Dance, mentioned in the Iliad, carved in relief on white marble. At Delos as well there is a small wooden image of Aphrodite, its right hand defaced by time and with a square base for feet. It’s my opinion that Ariadne got this image from Daidalos and when she followed Theseus she took it with her from home. Losing Ariadne, say the Delians, Theseus dedicated the wooden image of the goddess to the Delian Apollo, so that he wouldn’t take it home and be drawn into remembering Ariadne, with regret for his love perpetually renewed.’
Homer’s picture seems of the sort of setting that we find in what has been called the theatral area, orchestra, or arena at Knossos, a space designed for dances and sports. There may have been a maze pattern painted or set out in some other way, of the kind we find for dance mazes in England and elsewhere, as is suggested by a passage in Hesychios on grammai for the orchestra. Eustathios says that in the dance devised by Theseus the lads and girls danced anamix, all mixed up. He also clarifies the Homeric picture, in which we cannot tell if the two sexes alternated in each line or if there were separate lines; he informs us that they did alternate, standing side by side and hand in hand, anamix. Such a combination of the two sexes was most unusual in classical times, but may have been common much earlier. It has been suggested that the dance had a cosmic significance, the rapid circular figure expressing the planetary movements, the figure of the opposing lines representing the apparent approach of the planets to one another and to the earth. Indeed, Euripides, in the Elektra, speaking of the shield of Achilles which Homer is describing, refers to its ‘ethereal dances of the stars’. In a general way this may have been so, but there was the more specific relation to the labyrinth, which was also a cosmic emblem or pattern.
Pollux tells us that the geranos was danced by performers in a line, with a leader at each end. The François vase of the early sixth century, in its topmost band of figures, shows the geranos with the lands and girls anamix. The dance was performed on Delos all through ancient times; but the dance with the same name which is still found in the Greek islands is not of the same type as the ancient geranos. Geranos, we noted, has been taken to mean Crane, but all the efforts to find bird figures in the dance have failed. Apparently the word has been misunderstood; it does not mean crane but is a homonym, based on the root *ger-, which denotes a winding movement as of rivers or snakes. Delian inscriptions mention torches and lamps for the dancers of the geranos, showing that they performed at night. No doubt the dance had many winding or circular movements. A maze dance in Cornwall, called the Snail’s Creep, was danced in June:
The head or band of the serpent keeps marching in an ever-narrowing circle, while its train of dancing followers becomes coiled round in circle after circle. It is now that the most interesting part of the dance commences; for the band, taking a sharp turn about, begins to retrace the circle, still followed as before, and a large number of young men with long leafy branches in their hands as standards, direct this counter-movement with almost military precision.
The account is of interest in turning to the snake for an image to express the twining movements; we see a double spiralling pattern as well as the use of boughs to define the dance-leaders who are making the decisive turns; also the term ‘military precision’ suggests the young men of the Game of Troy, which became the basis of military evolutions, the tattoo. The maze dance is still danced in Crete, before a marriage. An observer, seeing an Albanian version of it in the 1930s, was reminded of having last seen it in the Malekulan Islands:
The significance of the particular figure of dancing known as the maze formula is obvious when one considers that many primitive races believe that the soul on leaving the body is required to find its way through a labyrinth....These Albanians were treading the serpent maze that winds itself into a seemingly insoluble state of confusion and then calmly unwinds itself back to the centre — a solution that you least expect.
The serpentine dance of the Australian Kurnai, we may note, is an initiation dance. In ancient Greece we hear of labyrinthine dances in caves; and there is a tradition that Japanese drama was born out of dances held at a cave mouth in honour of the hidden sun-goddess. Hekate had mystery rites in the Zerynthian Cave of Samothrace; and the underground cave-temple was central in Mithraic mysteries. Indeed there seems a tradition for such
ritual that goes right back through temples like those of Egypt or Malta to palaeolithic days. The passage rite here becomes indeed the passage through dark underground ways or caves. Ploutarch defines the mystery experience at Eleusis in terms of labyrinth and cave. ‘Thus death and initiation closely correspond, word to word and thing to thing. At first there are wanderings and laborious circuits, and journeyings through the dark, full of misgivings when there is no consummation; then before the very end come terrors of every kind, shiverings and trembling and sweat and amazement. After this a wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into pure meadowlands, where are voices and dances...’ Loukian represents a man who has entered Hades as asking his companion if what was shown at Eleusis was not just the same; and elsewhere he speaks of the dances and rhythmic movements. There were also cymbal-clashes, suggesting the shield-clashings of the Cretan Kouretes. Eleusis had Mykenean origins; the polygonal walls of local limestone in the oldest Hall of the Mysteries and of the sacred precinct seem to go back to the Mykenean Age; and the use of a multiple jar called kernos suggests cult-continuity from Minoan days.
That the labyrinth, whether expressed as a laid-out maze pattern or as a winding dance, was felt as providing the correct ritual approach to the underworld, the bowels of mother-earth, is suggested by the structure of the tholos (rotunda) of the healing god Asklepios at Epidauros. It revealed on excavation two outer colonnades, then three inner rings; each of the latter was pierced by an opening in such a way that anyone at the centre, trying to get out, would have to traverse the whole length of the passages. We have here a small labyrinth, which has been dated to the fourth century BC, the work of construction taking about sixty years. It seems that sacrifices were made outside and burned on the altars there; the victim’s blood, caught in vessels, was carried along the labyrinth and poured into a bothros, a hole dug in the ground, specifically a ritual pit. The blood would thus be thought to go down into the chthonic regions below. This interpretation is strongly supported by the fact that for the tholos of Palaimon Melikertes at Corinth victims were sacrificed outside. In any event it seems sure that the labyrinthine passages of the tholos of Asklepios represented a movement down into the earth, ritually secured and safeguarded.