Ariadne

The primary beats of Ariadne’s canonical narrative remain untouched in this chapter: she is a young woman who meets the attractive young Theseus when he arrives as an Athenian tribute to the minotaur; she helps him escape, then flees Crete with him and is abandoned on the island of Naxos. In refocusing the narrative on Ariadne rather than Theseus in this adaptation, I have added some minor details about her daily life to flesh out her character more than we find in the ancient sources, but none of this significantly alters her narrative. The biggest change is that Ariadne here makes her assistance to Theseus contingent on his promise not to kill her brother, whom she names as Asterius rather than calling him by his more popular moniker – the minotaur – and it is only after it is too late that Theseus understands Asterius and the minotaur were one and the same entity. The Latin text enables readers to review result clauses.