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‘Ariadne’: A Brutal Examination of Monsters and Motherhood in Greek Mythology
“Spoilers” for a bunch of stories that are millennia old, I guess?
In Greek mythology, Ariadne is best known for two things. First, and most famously, she helps Theseus to defeat the Minotaur of Crete by giving him a string with which he can find his way back out of the labyrinth after slaying the beast. Then, later in her life, she is married to Dionysus, the god of wine and pleasure.
In between these two events, Theseus abandons Ariadne to die on the island of Naxos, and when he returns to Athens he becomes betrothed to Ariadne’s younger sister Phaedra, who eventually meets a tragic end herself. In many tellings of the myths of Theseus, the relationship between Ariadne and Phaedra is scarcely mentioned at all — the fact that Theseus hopped from one sister to another is just sort of brushed over. Theseus is often framed as one of the “great heroes before the Trojan War,” a monster slayer who stands tall alongside Perseus, Hercules and others. It’s not common to see him described as a taker of innocence, a destroyer of families.
British author Jennifer Saint has decided to take it upon herself to explore just how incredibly reprehensible Theseus’ actions were to these two sisters. It is (for the most part) an incredibly…
