O mito de Ariadna: um arquétipo greco-latino da condição humana

Abstract

The story of Minos’ daughter illustrates universal human feelings and behaviour. When she meets Theseus and helps him to escape from the Labyrinth, Ariadne is making her first steps to independence. In fact the Athenian prince’s promess is to marry her and bring her back with him to his homeland. In return, Ariadne has only to provide him with a safe passage from the inside of the Cnossos palace. The young girl wins a lover and expects to have an indenpendent life from that day on. Of course, what she doesn’t know is the high price she has to pay. After a small taste of the pleasures of love, she experiences the grief of loneliness. Away from her family, on the island of Naxos, the princess is deserted by her cherished first love, Theseus, son of Aegeus. It looks like she is waking from a dream. Real life is usually very different from what young and inexperienced people think it is. But this myth tells a story of hope, a pleasant message to human ears. The god Dionysus saves Ariadne from death, which seems to her, in that moment of despair, the only solution to all her problems. Another marriage and a new life is what her divine husband offers her. As we shall see, the myth of Ariadne shows quite clearly the ups and downs that frame mankind’s condition, with its capacity to rise from the ashes.