Ariadne updated

[just mercedes]

Theseus -
you really suck.

You’re not the sweet
mystic hippy poet 
you pretended to be.

You’re a fake.

I betrayed my father,
my brother (well, half-brother),
my native city.

You promised
you’d take me to Athens.

Lying piece of shit; 
you dumped me on Naxos 
as plaything for this 
biker gang of winos.

Talk about betrayal.

[RiverNotch]

----eventually to be the consort of a god!

i've been reading about the Theseus myth a lot lately, so i sorta appreciate this. but i always found Ariadne's role in the affair to be somewhat, i dunno, marginal, compared to the far more compelling Medea -- then again, Medea. my favorite bits about the myth are the poeticness of it all -- in my personal redaction, it begins with him killing a bunch of primordial monsters all Heracles-style to his city, but only six of them, compared to Heracles' 12, and then when goes through katabasis all he does is get stuck there until Heracles saves him. and he dies by being thrown off a cliff by his own people! a king deposed by [a rudimentary form of] democracy, by the very people he hoisted....

but look at me, marginalizing this show's female star. how Athenian of me. as for the piece, it's nice, though it reads a little too trite (biker gang of winos sounds a tad too Roman for the sense of Dionysus I read here, and Dionysus is nowhere near as tough in Greek comedy), but maybe that's just coz' of how much i'm starting to read into this tale. apparently she hanged herself post-marriage to dionysus...and ooh, she and semele were the ones rescued by the god when he went through his own katabasis! awesome.

[just mercedes]

----eventually to be the consort of a god!

i've been reading about the Theseus myth a lot lately, so i sorta appreciate this. but i always found Ariadne's role in the affair to be somewhat, i dunno, marginal, compared to the far more compelling Medea -- then again, Medea. my favorite bits about the myth are the poeticness of it all -- in my personal redaction, it begins with him killing a bunch of primordial monsters all Heracles-style to his city, but only six of them, compared to Heracles' 12, and then when goes through katabasis all he does is get stuck there until Heracles saves him. and he dies by being thrown off a cliff by his own people! a king deposed by [a rudimentary form of] democracy, by the very people he hoisted....

but look at me, marginalizing this show's female star. how Athenian of me. as for the piece, it's nice, though it reads a little too trite (biker gang of winos sounds a tad too Roman for the sense of Dionysus I read here, and Dionysus is nowhere near as tough in Greek comedy), but maybe that's just coz' of how much i'm starting to read into this tale. apparently she hanged herself post-marriage to dionysus...and ooh, she and semele were the ones rescued by the god when he went through his own katabasis! awesome.

Thanks for knowing WTF this is about! always felt sorry for Ariadne. I wrote a whole series once, called 'We're the Greeks, baby!' and wrote alphabetically, but A was of course taken by Athena

Athena unplugged 
 
 
Of course my father gave me birth from his head.
Don’t they all? Aren’t women just mental constructs
to them, who’ll perform the world’s work, leaving men
to think about it?
 
I missed knowing my mother as I grew up.
She’d vanished into my father. I wasn’t
about to let that happen to me as well.
I lived as a boy
 
and remained sexually ambivalent.
Chaste, I prefer to manipulate mortals;
their worship amuses me, I make heroes
appear with each war.
 
There’s never a lack of wars. I spend my time
attempting to balance, encourage, instruct.
I shudder when men aspire to heaven.
It’s nothing special.


 

[Achebe]

Theseus was the strongest of the mortals, though, and stands out in Plutarch's Lives of the Greeks. Totally cool dude. Not sure why he dumped Ariadne - it's not explained very well in the account. I'd guess she wasn't all that hot, and he only needed her help after all...