The daughter of Minos who gave Theseus a ball of thread to escape the Labyrinth. After fleeing Crete, she met a disputed fate involving betrayal by Theseus and salvation by Dionysus.1
When the Athenian hero Theseus arrived in Crete as part of the human tribute for the Minotaur, the princess Ariadne fell deeply in love with him. She promised to help him kill the beast if he would take her away to Athens and marry her.2
On the advice of Daedalus, she gave Theseus a ball of thread. By tying one end to the door and unwinding it as he went, Theseus was able to find his way back out of the dark, twisting Labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur. Under the cover of night, they fled the island together.3
Her ultimate fate is famously disputed. According to Homer, she never reached Athens because Artemis killed her on the island of Dia at the testimony of Dionysus. In the more romantic tradition of Ovid and Hesiod, Theseus cruelly abandoned her while she slept on Dia, but she was soon discovered by Dionysus, who fell in love with her, married her, and made her immortal, placing her bridal crown among the stars.4⚖
Apollodorus carries the marriage into genealogy: on Lemnos Dionysus begat on Ariadne Thoas, Staphylus, Oenopion, and Peparethus. Hyginus in his Astronomica makes the Crown her wedding gift from Venus and the Horae when she wed Liber on Dia — the constellation set between the Kneeler and the Serpent-Holder in Ovid's telling, its gems turned to fires in the sky.5⚖
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
