Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(59)

Theseus famously kills the Minotaur with help from Ariadne, who gives him a spool of thread so he can find his way through the labyrinth and – vitally – back out again. The two elope together or, as Homer has it in Book Eleven of the Odyssey, Theseus tries to take her from Crete to Athens.3 But they don’t make it, because Artemis kills her in response to an accusation made by Dionysus. Or – in many versions of their story – Theseus abandons Ariadne on the island of Naxos. In a not-very-heroic manner, he usually leaves while she is asleep.4 Several sources suggest that Dionysus wanted Ariadne as his bride, but Plutarch offers a couple of alternatives:5 when she realizes she has been abandoned, Ariadne hangs herself; Theseus left her because he had fallen for another woman, named Aigle.

In his sixty-fourth poem, the Roman author Catullus describes the scene on Naxos as Ariadne wakes up and sees that Theseus has left her. She had abandoned her parents and the embrace of her sister, he says,6 and Theseus abandoned her while she slept. Interestingly, Catullus uses the word coniunx, meaning ‘husband’, in his description: this relationship is not a trivial one. He describes Theseus as immemoris – which is often translated as ‘forgetful’. But we can’t imagine that Theseus has literally forgotten Ariadne in the course of a single night. Rather, he is heedless of her, or perhaps forgetful of everything she has done for him. He owes his life to her and her labyrinthine assistance, after all. No wonder Ariadne is devastated when she finds he has left her behind. Catullus gives Ariadne furious words of recrimination: Traitor, she says, will you carry your perjury home with you? The speech is dozens of lines long, but its most poignant moment – at least as far as Phaedra’s story is concerned – comes early. Let no woman now believe a man who makes her promises, may no woman hope that her man’s words are true. Ariadne concludes by calling on the snake-haired Eumenides – Furies – to punish him. Don’t let my grief disappear, she says. But, with the same mind he had when he abandoned me here, let Theseus slaughter himself and his family. If she knew who her errant partner was going to marry, would she have stopped short of the final words – seque suosque – himself and his own? Ariadne cannot know as she curses him, of course, that one day her sister Phaedra will be included in this description.

Theseus continues sailing back to Athens and experiences a second strange bout of forgetfulness. When he set off on his voyage to Crete, he promised his father Aegeus that he would change the colour of his sail from black to white, if he was returning home safely. Theseus remembers these instructions carefully for ages, but then somehow forgets: as though a gust of wind had blown clouds from the top of a mountain. Aegeus sees the ship returning with the wrong sail, believes his son has died and hurls himself to his death. And so, Catullus remarks, fierce Theseus brought on himself the same kind of grief that he had given the daughter of Minos, with his heedless mind. Catullus explicitly compares Ariadne’s loss to a profound bereavement, the grief of losing a father. Loving Theseus turns out to be a very dangerous business.

Given their complicated family history, we might well imagine that Phaedra has a conflicted relationship with her husband. Theseus had, at the very least, conspired with her sister to kill her half-brother. While we may be used to thinking of the Minotaur as a monster, we only have to read Jorge Luis Borges’ beautiful short story ‘The House of Asterion’ to realize that he doesn’t seem like that to everyone. And even if we set aside any sororal feelings Phaedra may have had for Asterion, we can see that she still might not feel secure in her marriage. Theseus chose to leave Crete with Ariadne, not with her. No one loves being a second choice. Actually, this is Theseus we are discussing: the number is somewhat higher than two.

And Theseus’ wives don’t tend to die of old age. Whether or not Ariadne hangs herself, we also have the death of Antiope (sometimes called Hippolyta), the Amazon whom Theseus either elopes with or kidnaps from her home in Themiscyra. As you may remember, sometimes Antiope is killed by another Amazon, but in some accounts she is killed by Theseus during the war waged by the other Amazons for their sister’s return. Plutarch also tells us of another version7 in the now-lost poem about Theseus, the Theseid. In it, the Amazons and Antiope attack Theseus on the day of his wedding to Phaedra, and it is during this battle that she dies, killed by Heracles. Plutarch rather sniffily dismisses this variation as a fiction (for Plutarch, the bulk of these stories are ancient history rather than myth).

We must be careful, of course, not to judge ancient characters by modern standards: it is simply a waste of time expecting people who lived thousands of years ago to feel the same way about the nuances of women’s lives as we do. So it’s worth noting that Theseus is considered a pretty dubious figure by Plutarch himself. Of the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus, he says that historians and tragedians are pretty well agreed on it, so this is probably what happened (unlike the wedding-day bloodbath he is sceptical of immediately before). He doesn’t consider Phaedra a villain or a criminal, incidentally. He describes the events of her story as dustuchias8 – catastrophes. But then he goes on to make an even more interesting distinction. There are, he says, other stories about the marriages of Theseus which neither begin well nor have happy endings. But those haven’t been performed on the stage.9 He continues: Theseus is said to have carried off Anaxo . . . and, having killed Sinis and Cercyon, to have taken their daughters by force; to have married Periboia . . . and then Pheriboia, and Iope, daughter of Iphicles; to have abandoned Ariadne because of his desire for Aigle . . . and carried off Helen, filling Attica with war.