Classical Wisdom Litterae - October 2020

without a male consort. Toward the close of t h e M i n o a n c i v i l i z a t i o n—w i t h t h e Mycenaeans’ influence keenly felt—Ariadne began to be accompanied by a young male consort. Her insignia, the labyrinth—a square or circular structure with multiple circuits spiraling to the center and back again— figures prominently in her mythology and is believed to h a v e b e e n a p l a c e o f ini t iat ion where mor tals moved from one realm to another with the bull-god— the Minotaur (Hades-like)— occupying its deepest and darkest center. The decline of the Minoan Civilization was accompanied by the expansion of the Mycenaeans—as is often the ca s e when one cu l t u re subsumes another—when the Myceneans over took t h e M i n o a n s i n a b o u t fourteen hundred BCE, they recast the Minoan myths; the invader gods married the i n d i g e n o u s g o d d e s s e s r e p l a c i n g ma t r i c e n t r i c elements with patriarchal ones. By rewriting mythology the Mycenaean Greeks provoked the systemic suppression of goddess worship which would encourage the widespread denigration of women. But the patriarchal reformulating of the tales did not stop with the Mycenaeans, it continued apace into the Greek and Roman cultures. In reviewing the myths surrounding Ariadne, the purpose of this article is to expose the patriarchal tropes that have dogged her many guises for thousands of years. Ariadne is best known from a Mycenaean era myth in which the all-important great mother goddess is reduced to an unassuming princess offering succor to the invading Theseus, the legendary first hero-king of Athens. The tale begins when Poseidon—god of the earth and sea—gifts a rare white bull to King Minos of Crete with the expectation of it being sacrificed in his honor. Ever greedy to have the prized bull play stud V "In reviewing the myths surrounding Ariadne, the purpose of this article is to expose the patriarchal tropes that have dogged her many guises for thousands of yea rs . ” Ariadne at the labyrinth, by Edward Cameron \ Ariadne on the P