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The Myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

T. B. L. Webster
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Extract

Greek myths are so vivid that we think of the figures in them as real people and argue about their characters and what made them do what they did. We forget not only that the people never existed (or if some of them did, they were certainly very different from the refined and sophisticated representations of them about which we argue), but also that what we have is a number of often incompatible versions in 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 very late amalgam of a number of versions made in a handbook of mythology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 1966 , pp. 22 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1966

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References

page 23 note 1 Cf. my From Mycenae to Homer (London, 1958), 50 ff.Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 Caskey, J. L., Hesperia, 31 (1962), 263 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 32 (1963), 314 ff. Bacchylides, , i. 111 ff.Google Scholar; Pindar, , Paean, iv. 35 ff.Google Scholar

page 24 note 1 British Museum 1899. 2–19. Jean, I.Davison, M., YCS 16 (1961), 67 fig. 98.Google Scholar

page 24 note 2 Kunze, E., Olympische Berichte, ii. 75, 170, no. Vb.Google Scholar

page 24 note 3 Two very useful articles are Dugas, C., R.E.G. 56 (1943), 1 ff.Google Scholar, and Simon, E., Antike Kunst, 6 (1963), 12 ff.Google Scholar In what follows I refer to their illustrations when possible. Beazley, J. D., Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford, 1963), vol. iiiGoogle Scholar, gives a complete list of illustrations. There are some good pictures in Dugas, C. and Flacelière, R., Thésée: images et récits (Paris, 1958).Google Scholar

page 24 note 4 Cf. particularly Munich 2243, Dugas fig. 6, Beazley, J. D., The Development of Attic Black-figure (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951), 55Google Scholar, cf. also 33, on the François vase.

page 25 note 1 Cf. the two cups illustrated by Beazley, , op, cit. 56, pl. 24.Google Scholar Ariadne and Dionysos entertained, e.g. Florence 70995, Rumpf, A., Sakonides, pl. 3.Google Scholar

page 25 note 2 Discussed by Simon, , op. cit. 13Google Scholar with n. 45 and pl. 4, 1.

page 25 note 3 Louvre G 104. A.R.V. 2318Google Scholar; Richter, G. M. A., Handbook of Greek Art (London, 1959), fig. 443.Google Scholar

page 26 note 1 Tarquinia RC 5291. A.R.V. 2405Google Scholar; C.V., pl. 18.Google Scholar

page 26 note 2 Taranto, . A.R.V. 2560Google Scholar; jahreshefte, 41 (1954), 78.Google Scholar Here fig. 1, by kind permission of Soprintendenza alle Antichità della Puglia.

page 26 note 3 Vienna 1773. A.R.V. 2952Google Scholar; Simon, , op. cit., pl. 4, 5.Google Scholar

page 26 note 4 Berlin 2179. A.R.V. 2252Google Scholar; Dugas, op. cit., fig. 9; Simon, , op. cit., pl. 4, 2.Google Scholar

page 27 note 1 The limits of dating are given by the eta in the herdsman's description of Theseus' name and by the quotations (frr. 385–6) in the Wasps, 422 B.c.; eta appears first in Attic inscriptions about 450 B.c. (Schwyzer, , Gr. Gramm. i. 447)Google Scholar which suggests 440 B.c. as a top date, and the absence of resolutions in the fragments suggests 427 B.c. as a bottom date. Within those limits 438 and 431 are excluded, and the play cannot have been produced in the same year as the Kretes, Aigeus, Hippolytos I, or Hippolytos II, because Euripides did not produce trilogies with connected plays until 415 B.c. and afterwards. Phaidra in Hippolytos II (339) thinks of Ariadne's love as parallel to hers and Pasiphae's: the love of a traitress, even if she later became the wife of Dionysos (pace Mr. Barrett, Euripides does not allude to the Odyssey story here but perhaps to his own play).

page 27 note 2 Syracuse 17427. A.R.V. 21184Google Scholar; Dugas, op. cit., fig. 13; Simon, , op. cit., pl. 5, 2.Google Scholar Here fig. 2, by kind permission of Soprintendenza alle Anticbità, Siracusa.

page 28 note 1 Tübingen 5439. A.R.V. 21057Google Scholar; Simon, , op. cit., pl. 5, 1.Google Scholar

page 28 note 2 Boston, oo. 349Google Scholar (Ariadne painter). Trendall, A. D., Frühitaliotische Vasenmalerei (Leipzig, 1938), pl. 23.Google Scholar Here fig. 3, by kind permission of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

page 28 note 3 Taranto, . Trendall, A. D., Archaeological Reports (1955), 62, pls. 5, 6.Google Scholar

page 29 note 1 Attic vase pictures of Dionysos and Ariadne in the late fifth and fourth centuries are listed and discussed by Metzger, H., Les représentations dans la céramique attique du IVe siècle (Paris, 1951), 110 ff.Google Scholar

page 29 note 2 Salonika, . Archaeological Reports (1961/1962), 15Google Scholar; (1963/4), 19.

page 29 note 3 Berkeley 8/3297. A.R.V. 21459Google Scholar; Metzger, , op. cit., pl. 8, 2Google Scholar; C.V., pl. 54.Google Scholar Here fig. 4, by kind permission of the Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley.

page 30 note 1 Cf. my Hellenistic Poetry and Art (London, 1964)Google Scholar where I argue that the so-called ‘Visit to Ikarios’ derives from an original which had a sleeping Ariadne, like the Vatican Ariadne (Richter, , op. cit., 157Google Scholar, fig. 226), on the left and beyond her a departing Theseus or a representation of Theseus' ship.

page 30 note 2 Cf. Barigazzi, A., Studi Rostagni, 450 ff.Google Scholar