THIS is said to be the crown of Ariadne. Dionysos placed it among the constellations when the gods were celebrating her wedding on the island known as Dia.* She was the first bride to be crowned in this way, having received it as a gift from the Seasons and Aphrodite. It was a work of Hephaistos, so they say, made from fiery gold and Indian jewels. It is also reported that it was by use of this crown that Theseus managed to escape from the labyrinth, because of the light that it emitted. They also say that the lock of hair that can be seen below the Lion’s tail is that of Ariadne.*
The fuller account in the Vatican Fragments makes clear that the Epitome has run two separate stories together:
This is said to be the crown of Ariadne. Dionysos placed it among the constellations when the gods were celebrating her wedding on the island known as Dia, because he wanted to make it visible to all. She was the first bride to be crowned in this way, having received it as a gift from the Seasons and Aphrodite. The author of the Cretan Tales* says that when Dionysos visited Minos with the intention of seducing Ariadne, he gave it to her as a gift, and that is how he won her over. It was a work of Hephaistos, so they say, made from fiery gold and Indian jewels; it is reported that it was by use of it that Theseus managed to escape from the labyrinth, because of the light that it emitted. It was later placed among the constellations, as a sign of their love when the two of them arrived on Naxos, with the common agreement of the gods. They also say that the lock of hair that can be seen below the Lion’s tail is that of Ariadne.
Hyginus
The Constellation
With his right shoulder Arctophylax seems almost to touch the Crown, while the figure known as the Kneeler is connected to it by the back of his right foot. It can be seen to set at the rising of the Crab and the Lion, and it rises with the Scorpion. It is made up of nine stars arranged in a circle, but three of them shine more brightly than all the rest.
The Mythology
This is supposed to be Ariadne’s crown, which was placed among the constellations by Dionysos. For it is said that when Ariadne married Dionysos on the island of Dia and all the gods brought wedding presents, she received this crown as her first gift, from Aphrodite and the Seasons.
But according to the author of the Cretan Tales, when Dionysos visited Minos with the intention of seducing Ariadne, he gave her this crown as a gift; and she was delighted with it and did not reject the terms. It is said, furthermore, that it had been made by Hephaistos from gold and Indian jewels, and that it is supposed to have enabled Theseus to escape from the darkness of the labyrinth into the light of day, because the gold and jewels produced a glow of light in the darkness.
But the authors of the Argolica* offer the following explanation. When Dionysos had obtained permission from his father to bring his mother Semele back up from the Underworld,* and was seeking a way down, he arrived in the land of the Argives and met someone there called Polymnos, a man worthy of our own age, who showed him how to get down to the Underworld when asked to do so. For on seeing this youth whose physical beauty was beyond compare, Polymnos asked* to be granted in return what that young man could give him without suffering any loss; and Dionysos, being eager to recover his mother, swore to satisfy his wish if he managed to bring her back (though only as a god would swear to a shameless man); in return for which, Polymnos showed him the way down.* When Dionysos arrived at the place in question and was about to make his descent, he deposited his crown, a gift from Aphrodite, at a place that would be known thenceforth as Stephanos (Crown), because he did not want to take it with him, for fear that a gift from an immortal would get polluted by contact with the dead. After having brought his mother back unharmed, he is said to have placed the crown among the constellations so that her name would be commemorated for ever.
According to others, this is the crown of Theseus, and it was placed next to him for that reason—for the constellation known as the Kneeler is supposed to be Theseus.* We will have more to say about him later. The story goes that when Theseus came to Minos in Crete with seven maidens and seven boys,* Minos was so captivated by the radiant beauty of one of the girls, named Eriboia, that he wanted to force himself on her. Theseus declared that he would not allow it, but said that it would be unfitting for him, as a son of Poseidon,* to fight with a tyrant over a girl’s safety. And so the argument centred no longer on the girl, but on the parentage of Theseus, as to whether or not he was a son of Poseidon. Minos pulled a gold ring from his finger, so the story goes, and threw it into the sea, telling Theseus to recover it if he wanted it to be believed that he was a son of Poseidon; while for his own part, he could easily prove that he was a son of Zeus. So praying to his father, Minos asked him to send a sign to show that he was indeed born from him, and a clap of thunder and flash of lightning provided immediate confirmation. With the same end in view, Theseus, without invoking his father in prayer or oath, hurled himself into the sea. And at once a huge throng of dolphins leapt through the sea in front of him, and conducted him through the gentlest of billows to the Nereids; from them he obtained the ring of Minos, and from Thetis* a crown that she had received from Aphrodite as a wedding present, one that glittered with a mass of jewels. Or according to others it was the wife of Poseidon who gave him the crown; he is said to have presented it to Ariadne as a gift when, because of his valour and his greatness of heart, she was granted to him in marriage. And after Ariadne’s death, Dionysos placed it among the stars.
Commentary
(i) This was usually identified as being the crown of Ariadne, daughter of Minos, who helped Theseus to escape from the labyrinth; he took her with him as he fled from Crete, but abandoned her on the way back to Athens, on the island of Dia or Naxos, either of his own accord or at the will of the gods, and Dionysos then arrived on the island and took her as his wife (Ap. Epit. 1.7–9, Plutarch, Life of Theseus 19–20).
(a) Aratus states (71–3) that Dionysos placed her crown in the sky as a memorial to her after her death; or else he placed his own ivy-leaf crown there for that purpose (schol. Arat. 71).
(b) Or according to what would become the dominant tradition, the crown was a gift that she received at her wedding to Dionysos, and it was placed in the sky at that time. In that case, it could be seen as the first bridal crown. The early mythographer Pherecydes (3F148) recounted that Athena appeared to Dionysos to tell him to sail on his way without Ariadne, and Dionysos then arrived to take her as his wife, and gave her a golden crown, which was set in the heavens by the gods as a favour to him. Eratosthenes’ main account follows the same pattern except that the crown is a wedding-present from Aphrodite and the Horai (Seasons), and it is Dionysos himself who places it in the sky.
(c) Or else the crown had been owned by Theseus originally, who had received it from Thetis or Amphitrite in circumstances that are explained by Hyginus. Bacchylides, a lyric poet of the fifth century, offers the classic account of this tale, in which it was given to him by Amphitrite, the wife of his father Poseidon (for some said that his true father was that sea-god rather than Aigeus: see p. 180). Hyginus provides little detail about the subsequent events that are more directly relevant to the catasterism, merely indicating that Theseus gave the crown to Ariadne, and that Dionysos placed it in the sky after her death, which would imply that she became the wife of Dionysos as in the usual tradition.
(d) In yet another account ascribed to Epimenides of Crete, which was already mentioned by Eratosthenes, this was a crown that Dionysos presented to her on Crete, before the arrival of Theseus, when he came there for the purpose of seducing her. It was a wondrous crown made by Hephaistos, and Theseus later used it to light his way through the labyrinth (rather than relying on Ariadne’s thread as in the usual story), before it was placed in the heavens as a sign of the love that united Theseus and Ariadne. It seems clear that Theseus did not abandon her in this version, but we do not know what became of her afterwards.
(ii) In a wholly different story, also involving Dionysos, the crown was a gift that he had received from Aphrodite, and he placed it in the sky in honour of his mother Semele after bringing her up from the Underworld. As in the case of his wife Ariadne, his mother was of mortal birth, a daughter of Cadmos, king of Thebes, but he contrived to rescue her from death, as Hyginus describes, and she then became a goddess under the name of Thyone.