Ariadne1.0143_Daumier

Ariadne1.0143_Daumier

Honoré Daumier, 1808-1879, "Ariadne Abandoned", satiric lithograph in artist's Ancient History series, 1842.

The original publication was accompanied by an amusing caption in French, which the Japanese Museum of Western Art translates thus: "The Abandonment of Ariadne: Near her vine-trellis on the bank, / She said to herself that day: / To console me in love / It's time that Bacchus arrrived. (Poems of the heart by Miss Fl...)"
So... Daumier offers the variant possibility that Ariadne was attracted to Dionysos' alcoholic powers, as

Reid offers one bibliographic entry: Delteil 1906-30, 22: nos. 940, 949, ill.

The image at right is drawn from the Artgallery of New South Wales. Daumier's satirical print was printed as a pencil sketch transferred to newsprint.

Graves (98.n) rather pedantically has this: "Some days later, after disembarking on the island then named Dia, but now known as Naxos, Theseus left Ariadne asleep on the shore, and sailed away. Why he did so must remain a mystery. Some say that he deserted her in favour of a new mistress, Aegle, daughter of Panopeus; others that, while wind-bound on Dia, he reflected on the scandal which Ariadne's arrival at Athens would cause. [Theocr. schol. ad 2.45, et al.] Others, again that Dionysus, appearing to Theseus in a dream, threateningly demanded Ariadne for himself, and that, when Theseus awoke to see Dionysus's fleet bearing down on Dia, he weighed anchor in sudden terror; Dionysus having cast a spell which made him forget his promise to Ariadne and even her very existence. [Pausanias 10.29.2, Diod. Sic. 5.51.4, Theocr. schol. loc. cit.]" RTM notes that two Aegean islands are called Dia, the one scarcely off Crete's northern coast () and the one among the Sporades, about half-way home for Theseus. Graves misses this point.