LP0041 The Queen of Athens

Legendary Passages #0041 - The Queen of Athens - Ariadne's abandonment from The Poems of Catullus.     Last time we heard about how Theseus obtained Ariadne's Crown. This time we shall hear a bit more about the story of Ariadne.     She stands on the shores of Naxos, as Theseus sails away. Ariadne is unkempt, having just awoken alone and abandoned.     Catullus retells the story of the tribute of youths bound for the Minotaur for which Theseus had volunteered. When Ariadne first saw the prince she was overwhelmed with desire, shot with Cupid's Bow. She gave him the thread and prayed fervently that he would kill the Minotaur and find his way out of the Labyrinth.     After forsaking her own family and leaving with Theseus, she was to have been his wife and Queen of Athens. Instead she is abandoned. So she calls on the Furies to curse him with complete and utter rage.     Meanwhile, Theseus is sailing home to his father. Aegeus had told him explicitly that he wished that his son would not leave him. Above all, on his return to change the sails on the mast, so that he would know that his son yet lived. But after leaving Ariadne, Theseus had forgotten his pledge. Thinking his son dead, his father jumped to his own death, Ariadne's curse fulfilled. The Queen of Athens a Legendary Passage from The Poems of Catullus Translated by A. S. Kline 64. Of the Argonauts and an Epithalamium for Peleus and Thetis Here are seen the wave-echoing shores of Naxos, Theseus, aboard his ship, vanishing swiftly, watched by Ariadne, ungovernable passion in her heart, not yet believing that she sees what she does see, still only just awoken from deceptive sleep, finding herself abandoned wretchedly to empty sands. But uncaring the hero fleeing strikes the deep with his oars, casting his vain promises to the stormy winds. The Minoan girl goes on gazing at the distance, with mournful eyes, like the statue of a Bacchante, gazes, alas, and swells with great waves of sorrow, no longer does the fine turban remain on her golden hair, no longer is she hidden by her lightly-concealing dress, no longer does the shapely band hold her milk-white breasts all of it scattered, slipping entirely from her body, plays about her feet in the salt flood. But, not caring now for turban or flowing dress, the lost girl gazed towards you, Theseus, with all her heart, spirit, mind. Wretched thing, for whom bright Venus reserved the thorny cares of constant mourning in your heart, from that time when it suited warlike Theseus, leaving the curving shores of Piraeus, to reach the Cretan regions of the unbending king. For then forced by cruel plague, they say, as punishment, to absolve the murder of Androgeos ten chosen young men of Athens and ten unmarried girls used to be given together as sacrifice to the Minotaur. With which evil the narrow walls were troubled until Theseus chose to offer himself for his dear Athens rather than such Athenian dead be carried un-dead to Crete. And so in a swift ship and with gentle breezes he came to great Minos and his proud halls. As soon as the royal girl cast her eye on him with desire, she whom the chaste bed nourished, breathing sweet perfumes in her mother’s gentle embrace, even as Eurotas’s streams surround a myrtle that sheds its varied colours on the spring breeze, she did not turn her blazing eyes away from him, till she conceived a flame through her whole body that burned utterly to the depths of her bones. Ah sadly the Boy incites inexorable passion in chaste hearts, he who mixes joy and pains for mortals, and she who rules Golgos and leafy Idalia, even she, who shakes the mind of a smitten girl, often sighing for a blonde-haired stranger! How many fears the girl suffers in her weak heart! How often she grows pallid: more so than pale gold. As Theseus went off eager to fight the savage monster either death approached or fame’s reward! Promising small gifts, not