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The Myth of Ariadne from Homer to Catullus

  • T. B. L. Webster
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.

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

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

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

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

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

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), 55, cf. also 33, on the François vase.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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) 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. 21184; Dugas, op. cit., fig. 13; Simon, , op. cit., pl. 5, 2. Here fig. 2, by kind permission of Soprintendenza alle Anticbità, Siracusa.

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

page 28 note 2 Boston, oo. 349 (Ariadne painter). Trendall, A. D., Frühitaliotische Vasenmalerei (Leipzig, 1938), pl. 23. 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.

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.

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

page 29 note 3 Berkeley 8/3297. A.R.V. 21459; Metzger, , op. cit., pl. 8, 2; C.V., pl. 54. 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) 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., 157, 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.

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Greece & Rome
  • ISSN: 0017-3835
  • EISSN: 1477-4550
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