The earliest Greek writers, Homer (Odyssey xi, 321) and Hesiod (Theogony 947), told the story of Ariadne. However, even these accounts differ; in Homer Dionysos condemns Ariadne and Artemis
kills her, while in Hesiod she becomes the bride of Dionysos. Archaic vases included scenes of Ariadne, but Ariadne as sleeper and Ariadne as initiate were not among them. Nor was Ariadne particularly common in fourth-century or Hellenistic art. McNally noted that, of the rare Ariadne scenes, the marriage episode appeared most often (McNally 1985:163–165). Romans nonetheless looked to a well-established, Greek artistic model for their seminude Ariadne—that of maenads, the female followers of Dionysos.
On archaic and classical Greek vases, the only female figures that artists typically disrobed, fully or partially, were prostitutes, Amazons, nymphs, and maenads (Cohen 1997:66–92). In vase painting, the maenads’ human appearance did not distance them from actual women the way the bestial features of satyrs, Dionysos’s male companions, dissociated them from actual men (Brommer 1937, 1959; Lissarrague 1993:207–220). No reason to create a female satyr existed, as the uncivilized behaviors of maenads aligned with male perceptions of women. The maenad provided the ideal visual model for Ariadne discovered because she had a long visual tradition of being “discovered” by satyrs.
The sleeping maenad in particular, which appeared in art well before the sleeping Ariadne, became a visual prototype. For example, a vase now in Boston (MFA 01.8072) shows a sleeping maenad with arm arched over her head, the stock gesture indicating sleep and perhaps sexual vulnerability (Figure 5.2). Satyrs molest the maenad by tugging at her garments, much as the satyrs of later Roman wall painting reveal Ariadne to Dionysos. While Ariadne’s story may have had its origins in ancient religion, politics, and epic, later Roman-period artists asserted Ariadne’s sexuality and vulnerability by associating her with the maenad.
Further evidence of this trend to associate Ariadne and maenads is the Hellenistic period sculpture of the sleeping Ariadne that exists only in Roman copies, including the well-known over-life-sized Vatican sculpture and statuettes, such as that in San Antonio. While this sculpture and her sisters (Figure 5.3) serve as reflections of a lost Hellenistic model, they are nonetheless pieces that demonstrate Roman tastes. At first glance, the identification as Ariadne is tenuous; the recumbent figure could be a sleeping maenad (McNally 1985:172; Ridgway 1990:330–332). The identification as Ariadne comes from the veiling of her head, an indication that she was a bride. But if this is a discovery scene, Ariadne has yet to become the bride of Dionysos. In discussing this sculpture, McNally noted no later images in which Ariadne appeared “fully clothed in sleep” (McNally 1985:172). However, this Ariadne reveals her breast. Thus the Vatican sculpture follows the tradition of Ariadne/maenad seemingly unaware of her exposure, and this is what we will see in most Roman wall painting of the subject. Ariadne appears vulnerable.
-Lillian B. Joyce's Ariadne Transformed in Pompeii’s House of Fabius Rufus in Icon, Cult, and Context: Sacred Spaces and Objects in the Classical World
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