WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE, OR, HOW TO ESCAPE THE LABYRINTH: THE
MINOTAUR
Author(s): Paul G. Kuntz
Source: The Monist , October, 1966, Vol. 50, No. 4, Symbol and Myth (October, 1966),
pp. 488-504
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27901659
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The Monist
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE, OR,
HOW TO ESCAPE THE LABYRINTH
THE MINOTAUR
Within the labyrinth of wit
I hide the minotaur
Of self; and then, a Minos, sit
And watch the Icarian shore
Of that Aegean wave
That is my daedal grave.
My spider-daughter spins the web
That helps dumb Logos find
And slay the self; the dead sea's ebb
Drowns the daedal mind:
Whom Theseus did not tarry
A god chose to marry.
My father trained me for the law;
To judge became my fate.
Why did my taurine son-in-law
Not check his daedal mate?
Now I must justify
The verdict that is I.
John Crossett
Figure A
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 489
1. The Symbol oj the Labyrinth and a Modern Version of the Story
of Theseus Slayer of the Minotaur
The myth of Theseus in Crete and the symbol of the Labyrinth
are much used today. There is also much literature about Theseus
and the Labyrinth. Yet the literature is very disappointing, and I
believe for an obvious reason. Investigators have stressed the back
ground in Egypt and have been motivated to uncover the original
meaning in the ultimate origin. But it is impossible to consult an
ancient Cretan about the connection of the myth and the symbol
with the Minotaur. Interesting as that would be, why ignore an
equally interesting question? Why do men persist in using such
an old myth and symbol in spite of revolutionary changes in
thought? To a possible answer to this question I address a brief
essay. The stress is not on the origin of the myth and the symbol but
on the persistence and function in communication today.
For this reason I should like to retell the story from a very
popular contemporary version, that of Edith Hamilton:1
When Aegeus was King of Athens, he welcomed as a guest
Androgeus, the only son of Minos, King of Crete. Androgeus, al
though a guest, was sent on an expedition of peril, to kill a danger
ous bull. When Minos* son was killed by the bull, Minos invaded the
country and captured Athens. Under threat the Athenians agreed to
send every nine years a tribute of seven maidens and seven youths.
When they reached Crete they were given to the Minotaur.
This monster, half bull, half man, was the offspring of Minos'
wife Pasipha and a bull which had been given by Poseidon to
Minos, for sacrifice. Minos failed to sacrifice the bull because of its
beauty, and Poseidon caused Pasipha to fall in love with it. Thus
the queen bore the monster, a Minotaur.
Minos had Daedalus, a great architect, construct a labyrinth of
twisting paths, so complex that escape was impossible for the unin
structed. Here dwelt the Minotaur. Into the maze the young
l Edith Hamilton, Mythology (New York, New American Library, 1953), pp.
150-152. (Hard cover edition; Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Co., 1940,
1942.) I have followed Miss Hamilton's version because contemporary students
innocent of Greek and history enjoy her retelling. If one wishes to read transla
tions of ancient authors, to see what Miss Hamilton has used and what she has
not used, the most convenient source is Robert Graves, Theseus in Crete, Vol. I
of The Greek Myths (Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1955), pp. 336-345.
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490 THE MONIST
Athenians were cast, and from the monster no youth or maiden had
ever escaped.
When the time of tribute came, Theseus, son of Aegeus, offered
himself as one of the victims. Only to his father did the noble
youth reveal his plan to kill the Minotaur. If he succeeded, he
promised to change the black sail (the sign of grief always used on
the victims' ship) to a white one. Then the father would know upon
sighting the vessel whether or not his son was safe.
The seven youths and seven maidens were paraded upon their
arrival in Crete. Among the spectators of the victims was Minos'
daughter Ariadne. She fell in love with Theseus. She asked Daedalus
for the secret of escape from the Labyrinth, and told Theseus she
would bring about his escape if he would take her back to Athens
and many her.
Ariadne provided Theseus with a ball of thread which he was to
fasten to the inside of the door and to unwind as he went on. Thus
knowing he could retrace his steps, he went in boldly seeking the
Minotaur. Theseus came upon him asleep and after a fight, slew the
monster.
Then Theseus led the other Athenian youths from the Labyrinth
and with Ariadne, they took to their ship and set sail for Athens.
When Ariadne was seasick, Theseus set her ashore on Naxos. While
she was resting Theseus returned to repair the ship. A violent wind
carried the Athenians out to sea, and when at long last they were
able to return, Ariadne had died.
The ship approached Athens, but perhaps in grief for Ariadne
or perhaps in the joy over the success of the voyage, no one thought
to replace the black sail with the white. King Aegeus, watching the
sea, caught sight of the black sail and threw himself from a rocky
cliff into the sea. Hence the sea is to this day called the Aegean.
Theseus became King of Athens, but rather than rule over his
people, he shared his power with them, retaining only the military
power as commander-in-chief. Athens thus became a commonwealth
with a council in which all citizens could participate.
2. The Meaning of the Myth: The Myth Retold Connecting Sym
bol and Myth with Ritual
If we have avoided the first trap, that of a vain search for
meaning in origin, can we avoid the second trap? For many inter
preters still the primary question seems to be: What does the myth
mean? Perhaps the proper ironic answer is to tell the story again, as
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 491
one of the responses to 'What does the music mean?' is to play the
piece again. This we shall do, not once but twice.
'What does the myth mean?' is a condescending question, as
though those who tell the story have something to say but don't
know how to say it. Must we translate narrative into propositions
factual and analytic? Must there be a translation to indicate
whether the statements are true or false? This procedure is too
much like trying to substitute Tales from Shakespeare for the plays
themselves. The plays themselves are rich and various as the
mythical stories, like this story of Theseus.
Better than the question 'What does the myth mean?' is to con
sider 'Why do we enjoy rehearing the story?' Not surely to gain
information, or alleged information. We all know by now that
Theseus will not be killed by the Minotaur, that Ariadne succeeds
in rescuing Theseus, yet by a cruel fate she does not marry Theseus
in Athens. Each version accounts differently for the desertion by
Theseus and the death of Ariadne. And why does the young prince
not change the sail? Has not the old king suffered enough wonder
ing what has happened to his son, and the other youths and maid
ens? The story is full of pathos. Is there more for us to understand?
There are probably as many interpretations of the story as there
are great schools of mythological theory. Did Max M ller find an
Aryan version that connected the characters to the life-giving
sun? Is the thread of Ariadne the bright ray piercing the deadly
darkness of the cave? Did some Freudian tell us that the myth of
escaping the labyrinth is one of birth from the womb and that the
thread must then be the umbilical cord? Did some Euhemerus point
out the historic fact that at some point a rational Athenian defied
human sacrifice, and the monster obviously is human superstition,
which degrades man to the level of the beast? Did some Plato make
of the story an allegory? We find ourselves before the world as a
maze which we cannot understand. Ariadne is the mind which
brings us into contact with the architect of the world. When we
know the plan, then we understand and it is no more a maze. Yet
when we use reason to control the world, pure reason dies of
practicality. Each of these interpretations would lead us to tell the
story in a different way. Rather than merely mock the narrowness
of the theoreticians, each zealous to find the same theme in every
story, or to support a single definition by the collective evidence
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492 THE MONIST
of all such stories, let us examine a retelling of the myth of
Theseus and Ariadne from the now dominant myth and ritual
school.2
One clue to the meaning is in the dance associated with the
story, for the dance was part of the ritual of the slaying of the bull.
The death of the bull was also the death of the king, and the mean
ing is that periodically life must be renewed. The religious ritual
was aimed "at securing the well-being of the community by the due
performance of ritual actions/'3
The story thus told has an interest of its own:
Since dancing played such an important part in the Labyrinth,
we shall not be surprised to find that the connection was preserved
in Crete. There, we find the Labyrinth associated with the myth of
Theseus and the Minotaur. According to this ancient Greek myth,
King Minos of Crete had laid upon the Athenians an annual or tri
ennial tribute of twelve youths and maidens, [footnote: "Tribute was
paid to Minos at the end of the octennial cycle, when it was neces
sary for the king to renew his life. He retired to the oracular cave
2 The three best sources for comparing theories of myth are Thomas A. Sebeok,
Myth: A Symposium (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1958),
which was originally an issue of American Folklore Society, Vol. 5, 1958; Myth
and Mythmaking, Vol. 88, No. 2, of Daedalus (Spring, 1959), also in hardcover;
T. J. J. Altizer, W. A. Beardslee, J. H. Young, Truth, Myth and Symbol (Engle
wood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962) . The analyst Michael Josef Eisler uses
a dream of escape through a narrow passageway to interpret "the meaning attach
ing to the Labyrinth of Greek mythology." This is the theme of the birth of the
hero, who, upon entrance into the world is confronted with hostile forces. "The
labyrinth from which he saves himself with the aid of the 'thread of Ariadne/
after slaying the Minotaur, represents that mysterious and secret place from
which all life emerges. It tends to corroborate such a supposition that Theseus,
after his rescue, faithlessly abandons Ariadne (the mother). It is possible that
the author (or authors) of this legend were actuated by the same infantile sexual
fantasy as finds expression in the dream reported above." In Robert Fliess (ed.),
The Psychoanalytic Reader (New York: International Universities Press, 1948),
p. 382; other references are in The Index of Psychoanalytic Writings, 1958.
One should not ignore the Jungian interpretations: Gerhard Adler, The Liv
ing Symbol: A Case Study in the Process of Individuation (Bollingen Series
LXIII, Pantheon Books, 1961), p. 292. Also dependent in its stress on the Laby
rinth upon John Layard's Stone Men of Malekula (London: Chatto and Windus,
1942), is the very rich and suggestive The Masks of God; Primitive Mythology,
by Joseph Campbell (New York: The Viking Press, 1959).
8 S. H. Hooke, The Labyrinth: Further Studies in the Relation between Myth
and Ritual in the Ancient World (London: SPCK, 1935), p. v.
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 493
on Mount Ida, to commune with his father."]4 These [youths and
maidens] were destined to be sacrificed to die Minotaur, in the
Labyrinth, the cult centre of the king-god. The legend of the slay
ing of the Minotaur by Theseus relates how the royal youth joined
the band of victims destined for the Minotaur. On arriving at Crete
he met Ariadne, the daughter of the king-god by the priestess
Pasipha . Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him the sword
with which he slew the Minotaur, and the clue by means of which
he escaped with her, together with the twelve youths and maidens,
from the Labyrinth. They all sailed to Delos, where Theseus sacri
ficed to the god and dedicated an image of Aphrodite which he had
received from Ariadne. In honour of Aphrodite, he and his com
panions wove a circling dance, in which Daedalus had instructed
him, and which depicted his wanderings in the Labyrinth. This
dance was preserved by the Delians. Lucian mentions certain
dance-themes, among which are "The Labyrinth," "Ariadne," and
"Daedalus."5
The story we retold earlier neglected to tell us what men
skilled in archeology and anthropology provide. The ritual was
led by the
king-god ... in conjunction with the goddess as his consort, and
their daughter, who would occupy an important position as priestess.
Foreign youths and maidens were offered to the god, possibly sacri
ficed. The divine bull was slain. There was a ritual dance.
The circular dance was in honor of the Egyptian mother-goddess,
Isis. Aphrodite and Pasipha were local forms dominating the cult.
In Crete the king was "her high-priest, probably united to her in
sacred marriage, and with her the life-giver of the people." Since
"the king and the bull were one," and the union of the goddess and
the king-priest must be fruitful, we can understand what was meant
by the Minotaur. 6
Our first version is probably best called artistic. If we enjoy the
story, Miss Hamilton is not troubling us by asking about the mean
ing. Nor does she affirm or deny the truth of the myth. The question
does not arise in the artistic context. The religious context of the
4 C. N. Deedes, The Labyrinth, quoting Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough,
1-vol. edition, pp. 279-280.
5 S. H. Hooke, op. cit., pp. 26-27; C. N. Deedes, The Labyrinth.
OS. H. Hooke, op. cit., pp. 27-28.
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494 THE MONIST
second version does raise the question of truth as well as meaning.
Let us examine what S. H. Hooke and members of his school mean
by the 'truth' of the myth of Theseus in Crete.
3. The Truth of the Myth: Is the Ritual the only 'Essential Truth9?
The generalized view from Myth and Ritual is that myth is true,
not as
the record of a single event which took place at a particular date in
a definite locality but it possesses a truth which is both wider and
deeper than the narrow truth of history. An historical event can
only take place once. . . . But the essential truth of the myth lies
in the fact that it embodies a situation of profound emotional sig
nificance, a situation, moreover, which is in its nature recurrent, and
which calls for the repetition of the ritual which deals with the
situation and satisfies the need evoked by it7
Yet the meaning of the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur as a
ritual is lost, concludes the interpreter. "Now, the life-giving magic
of the Labyrinth is lost, and however many clues we may yet dis
cover, it is doubtful whether we shall ever know its mystery."8 But
is it true that the survival of the myth is only "as art-motives in
decoration"? The author mentions the survival of the Labyrinth in
a few Christian churches of the Middle Ages. Perhaps the survival is
not merely the failure to eradicate the tradition but putting the
symbol to work as part of a new ritual. Allan Temko, for example,
suggests that the maze in the pavement of cathedrals in France,
called the Maison de Dalus, was the "twisting route of stone ... on
which the devout crawled to a figurative Jerusalem."9
The ritual interpretation of the truth of the myth of Theseus
is peculiar. Although the 'meaning* is said to be lost, yet there is
said to be in it an "essential truth" presumably conveyed by retell
ing the story in the context of a ritual by which life was renewed.
But does this magic work? And second, members of the ritual
school of myth condemn not only the artistic version but also the
Ubid., pp. ix-x.
S Ibid., p. 42.
. Allan Temko, Notre-Dame of Paris (New York: The Viking Press, Compass
Book Ed., 1959), p. 104.
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 495
philosophic myth or myth whose meaning is allegorical. Plato's
myths, for example, are said not to be the product "of action in
response to a concrete situation," which is the mark of a true myth.
If reflection enters into the construction of a myth, does this new
way of thinking render the story a mere 'pseudomyth'?
On the contrary, it is the philosopher and the reflective man
generally who is aware of the myth as metaphor and the myth as
allegory. It is the philosophic myth as well as the ritual myth that
stresses "the essential truth of the myth [that] lies in the fact of
profound emotional significance, a situation, moreover, which is in
its nature recurrent. . . ."10 Any reflective man is daily confronted
by a concrete situation that calls for myth, even the myth of
Theseus.
The fact that gives veracity to the myth of Theseus and the
Labyrinth is that man is confronted by what is chaotic and there
fore unintelligible. The challenge is to find an order in the appar
ently disorderly and so render the unintelligible intelligible. The
myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is a myth of chaos and order.
The problem of confronting the maze is ever-recurrent, and who
does not, in the powerful metaphor of the myth and the symbol,
stand in need of Ariadne's thread? The detective, the artist, and the
scientist need a thread to guide them through their at first mean
ingless and disconnected data. The statesman, the businessman, the
builder, the artist also, confront puzzles to be turned into orderly
and manageable situations.
But is the story so allegorized a 'profound* truth? Perhaps it
seems shallow to one concerned with the myth of the periodic re
newal of the life of a community. Discovery and creation are crucial
for communities of learning and making things.
The myth and ritual school lives in an atmosphere of pathos. As
though man in becoming literate, philosophical, scientific, has lost
his intimacy with the tribe, with nature, with the tribal and natural
gods, but gained nothing. Man in this revolution has also gained
control over his beliefs, ability to reason from principles and to
create new societies with specific purposes. Modern man as well as
primitive man is also involved in transforming chaos into cosmos.
10 S. H. Hooke, op. cit, p. x.
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496 THE MONIST
So the story of the old Labyrinth of Crete was meaningful and true
to Virgil, and is meaningful and true for us:
As when in lofty Crete (so fame reports),
The Labyrinth of old, in winding walls
A mazy way enclosed, a thousand paths
Ambiguous and perplexed, by which the steps
Should by an error intricate, untraced
Be still deluded.11
4. The Ambiguous Symbol: "A Mighty Maze but not Without a
Plan": The Labyrinth a Symbol both of Chaos and of Order: Rel
evance to the World and to Our Age.
The journal Daedalus, each issue adorned by the famous design
from a coin of ancient Knossos, uses the maze with a figure of
winged Icarus. "Daedalus invites you to escape the labyrinth."
Daedalus had built the Labyrinth with the aim of foiling escape, but
he also provided the ball of thread.
invites you
to escape
the labyrinth . . .
Figure B
ll Ibid., p. 35; Trapp's translation, 1718. I am happy to see that Robert W.
Hall also raises a question about the distinction between 'myth* and 'pseudomyth'
in "Myth-making Attitudes," a critique of William Sacksteder's "The Making of
Myths," Thesis and Counterthesis (University of Pacific Forum), Vol. 4, No. 1,
Sept., 1965.
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 497
The same square Labyrinth also adorns the jacket and the cover
of Paul Weiss' Philosophy in Process. A quick glance, which is all
that most people give the pattern, conveys the impression of im
penetrable complexity and hence conveys the emotion of intellectu
al despair. A poor symbol indeed, one might think, to proclaim
dialogue between men learned in the arts, the sciences, and in
philosophy. Yet study the pattern by tracing a path from the en
trance, and with one slightest exception, there is no alternative path,
no losing of the way. There is only one path, ending in the center.
The return requires no thread of Ariadne but only an about-face.
This maze is, as Pope characterized the world, "not without a plan,"
and it is therefore a good symbol for the transition from chaos to
order, from confusion to the triumph of understanding. The Laby
rinth is an excellent symbol because it conveys concretely an op
portunity to experience the transition from fear of the unknown to
mastery of the pattern. Although the symbol of a maze seemed at
first to impress one with forbidding complexity, in the end it is
complexity unraveled by following a principle.
Ours is not the first age in which the Labyrinth has been felt a
significant characterization of the human situation. Writing during
the Thirty Years War, the great Czech educator Jan Komensky wrote
his celebrated allegory, The Labyrinth of the World and the Parar
dise of the Heart.12 Yet the Labyrinth need not be contrasted to
Paradise, for the Labyrinth itself loses its terror and becomes a de
light when it is understood. Then it can be used. Another way to
put it is this: Am I Theseus entering the Labyrinth confident and
with Ariadne's thread or am I Theseus entering in despair without
a thread?
Clearly the use in our age is of both the despairing and the
confident ways. W. H. Auden best conveys the ambiguity:
The labyrinth is safe but endless, and broken
Is Ariadne's thread.18
Franz Kafka, like Komensky, views man expelled from Paradise
and forced to burrow. The Labyrinth is the allegory of man with a
12 John Amos Comenius, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the
Heart, trans. Matthew Spinka (Chicago, 111.: The National Union of Czechoslovak
Protestants of America, 1942).
is W. H. Auden, "Casino," Collected Poetry (New York: Random House, 1945).
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498 THE MONIST
goal but without a way: "What we call way is only wavering."14
I venture the surmise that the use of the symbol and the myth is
more prominent now than ever before. James Joyce chose as his
persona Stephen Dedalus. He made him a Labyrinth of cognition
and traced and retraced the paths of the eye and the inner ear.15
The symbol of the Labyrinth and the myth of Theseus seem cen
tral in other works, beyond those of Auden, Kafka and Joyce. With
out extended survey, I can mention Greene, Gide, Renault, Paz,
Borges, and Steinberg. 1
The Labyrinth is not only significantly ambiguous, and capable
of various interpretations, concrete yet applicable to different or
gans of man, society, intellectual tangles, the world, the search for
God; the Labyrinth is also capable of rich humor, of ironic self
mockery. Saul Steinberg, for example begins with two points, A and
B. He could go simply from A and B by a straight line, by an arc, by
a helix. But no, he wanders, as though to show how many ways
there are to start from A and to get finally to B by traversing the
area back and forth, around and around. What Rube Goldberg is
to the world of engineering, Saul Steinberg is to the world of sym
bols.i6A
14 Walter A. Strauss, "Franz Kafka: Between the Paradise and the Labyrinth,"
Centennial Review, 5 (1961), pp. 206-222.
15 H. M. McLuhan, "Joyce, Aquinas, and the Poetic Process," in Thomas F.
Connolly (ed.), Joyce's Portrait: Criticism and Critiques (New York: Appleton
Century-Crofts, 1962), pp. 258-259.
is Graham Greene, The Labyrinthine Ways (New York: The Viking Pre ,
1940).
Andr Gide, Oedipus and Theseus, trans. John Russell (London: Seeker and
Warburg, 1950); Mary Renault, The King Must Die (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1958) ; [Saul Steinberg, The Labyrinth (New York: Harper, 1960) ]; Octavio
Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude; Life and Thought in Mexico, trans. Lysanter
Kemp (New York: Grove Press, 1961) ; Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected
Stories and Other Writings, ed. Donald A. Yates and James . Inby (New York:
New Directions, 1962).
16A Another view is expressed by Saul Steinberg in a letter to the author which
is reproduced herewith with Mr. Steinberg's kind permission:
"Dear Mr. Kuntz:
Notes on my Labyrinth.
The maze has "rich humour or ironic self-mockery" only in the prejudice
caused by the context (humor book etc.). The phantasy of line causes pleasure
that is often confusing to the scholar-Your comparison with R. G. is wrong
My drawing is not a satire on anything but only an indispensable way of
showing a poetic invention.
Notice the drawing-the maze on your cover-A and B arc the eyes of the
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 499
THE LABYRINTHFigure C
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500 THE MONIST
It is to be doubted that Kafka made the Labyrinth a symbol of
chaos only, but the order is more difficult to discern. Such literature
of defeat as Kafka's, Camus* Myth of Sisyphus and other examples
of litt rature noire are healthy correctives of an over-optimistic tra
dition based on divine providence, that is on identification of the
natural and the moral orders. When the correction has been made
and men freely recognize this disharmony as well as the harmony,
then the symbol of the Labyrinth will be, I venture to predict, even
more significant than it is today.
In the world of scholarship we face a Labyrinth and candidates
for the Ph. D. do well to fear that within the tortuous chambers of
libraries there is a beast who will destroy them. Recently a sys
tematic bibliography was advertised as "a practical guide in the
labyrinth of publications concerning this author for the last eighty
years." Cassirer sought a "clue of Ariadne to guide us through the
complicated and baffling labyrinth of human speech. . .
The myth of Ariadne's thread is one of those myths by which
Theseus lived, and we must live also. Certainly we have now con
ceptualized the orders we discover in nature, the orders we create
in history, the ideal orders we regard as transcendent. But does this
break with the primitive unity of the cosmos not make the myth the
more necessary for us?18
This old myth, though encrusted in magic, did manage, in
Suzanne Langer's words, "to symbolize great conceptions." i If it is
minotaur. The maze is made of all possible lines-crooked, ugly, elegant,
caligraphic, orderly and parallel, etc.-Some are traced with a ruling pen,
others with a compass meaning that a labyrinth contains order (prejudice,
bureaucracy) and disorder or poetry of any sort, good and bad-both indis
pensable.
Sincerely,
Saul Steinberg
c/o The New Yorker
25 W. 43rd St., New York, N.Y."
IT Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Anchor
Books, 1953), p. 165.
18 John Wild, Human Freedom and Social Order (Durham, N. C.: Duke Uni
versity Press, 1959), retells the famous "Myth of the Cave," pp. 60-70. My retell
ing the myth of Theseus is partly Wild's inspiration, but not without certain
disagreement with his doctrine of sharp break between stages: "Mythical, Cosmic,
and Personal Order," Review of Metaphysics, 16, No. 4 (June 1963), pp. 718-748.
1 Suzanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York: Penguin Books,
1948), p. 39.
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 501
in the conceptual world that we are "bewildered in [our] effort to
find the centre or make [our] exit," then we should not degrade
philosophic myths.20 The positive note of Cassirer is struck by his
rendering a Stoic idea: "Man is no mere spectator; he is, according
to his measure, the creator of the world order."21
5. The Intellectual and Moral Importance of the Symbol of the
Labyrinth and of the Myth of Theseus
About symbols and myths in general what I have to say can be
said only indirectly as I conclude my reflection on the Labyrinth
and the myth of Theseus.
This myth is one of many that appeal to contemporary writers
and the reader may well not prefer this myth, as I do, to that of
Prometheus, of Oedipus, of Ulysses or of Sisyphus. The comparative
question of the Labyrinth is itself labyrinthine: if none of the myths
is factually true or false, and someone is deeply moved by each to
read man's place in the world as promethean, oedipean, ulyssean,
sisyphean, why not say the preference for the thesean view is a curi
ous expression of taste and feeling but no more? Or put another
way, isn't the myth a way of making an emotion peculiarly viable in
human communication? To rouse men to defy Zeus (that is, the
Establishment), tell the story of Prometheus. To tell of a man
caught by fate, tell of Oedipus. To tell of a long voyage by a man
cunning and persistent, tell of Ulysses. And to tell of courage to
face the unknown with intelligence, tell of Theseus. If all fails and
we feel our relation to the world absurd, then tell finally of the
stoic resignation of Sisyphus at the foot of the hill, ready to roll the
stone once again.
There is an emotional aspect of all of these myths as they are
revived by modern man, but are they merely emotive? Not if they
give a reliable picture of the world, and not if they help shape re
sponses to the world that are appropriate. I venture to claim, what
20 "Labyrinth," Encyclopaedia Britannica, XVI (11th ed., 1911), p. ll. The article
considers only the subterranean buildings discovered in Egypt, Crete and Italy
and the later garden hedges, and intricate pathways of box and privet. The
analogical meaning is for us far more important than the literal univocal refer
ence to mazes.
21 Cassirer, op. cit., p. 133.
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502 THE MONIST
I cannot here demonstrate, that subjected to the sort of analysis
that debunked Albert Camus' Le Mythe de Sisyphe, almost any
modern philosophic myth of Theseus would come off better than
did that of Sisyphus.22
T. S. Eliot in his famous essay "Ulysses, Order and Myth" cele
brated Joyce's Ulysses. The myth "is simply a way of controlling, of
ordering, or of giving shape and a significance to the immense pano
rama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history."23
The myth of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur seems to me
likewise of intellectual and moral significance. To show this I
would like to conclude by retelling the story of the Labyrinth. The
author has enjoyed the recent versions of Gide and Renault, and
although as a philosopher he is not at home in romance, the story
suggests an adventure of ideas relevant to life and love:
Every ninth year seven youths and seven maidens had to be sent
to Crete, from Athens. The people of Athens held Minos in great
fear: he was a priest with uncanny powers, and dancing with the
the mask of a bull, struck awe in all who witnessed the sacred
dance of the Labyrinth.
But Theseus, the young prince, had faced bulls. He knew that
in Crete there were acrobats who grasped bulls by the horns and
swung themselves onto the backs of the animals, stiffened them
selves upright and allowed themselves to be carried. ... He wanted
to see how young Cretans might triumph over bulls.
22 A. J. Ayer, "Albert Camus," in the series "Novelist-Philosophers," Horizon,
13, No. 74 (March 1946), 155-168.
28 T. S. Eliot, "Ulysses, Order, and Myth," Dial, 75 (November 1923), 480-483.
On the notion of the moral truth of religion and of philosophy I am indebted
to George Santayana's Reason in Religion, The Life of Reason, Vol. 3 and
"Dramatic Truth," The Realm of Truth, Realm of Being, Chap. 7. Joseph Camp
bell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (New York: Bollingen Series XVII,
Pantheon Books, 1949), pp. 23-25, has made much of the symbolic importance of
Daedalus, the single-minded scientist, and the skein of linen thread, symbol of
imagination and husbandry. Campbell tells his beautiful allegory with an em
phasis on the creative scientist, Daedalus. In rejecting the sharp dualism between
poetry and philosophy, between imagination and criticism, there is also Suzanne
Langer, "The Growing Center of Knowledge," Philosophical Sketches (Balti
more, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962). A living myth is one "invested with a
modern significance, whether personal or social, and the dead ones are plaster
reproductions of the antique," concludes Douglas Bush's Mythology and the
Romantic Tradition in English Poetry, quoted by Richard Chase, Quest for Myth
(Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1949), p. 112.
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WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD ARIADNE 503
The women wailed and their husbands were silent: the children
would be sent into the unknown never to return. The underground
prison was a place of despair: there lived the Minotaur, it was said,
sired in the body of a cow constructed by Daedalus, and the monster
fed upon human flesh.
Theseus had once laughed at the idea of a Minotaur. What a
woman to fall in love with a bull, and how did they do it? And even
more ridiculous is a flesh-eating bull. People in anguish could not
reason, Theseus had discovered, so he laughed to himself this day of
deep grief.
Theseus had always liked problems, the more impossible they
seemed, the more challenging to him. So he went to his father the
King and offered to go to Crete and kill the Minotaur, if there
was a Minotaur. He put it gaily: to kill the fear of the Minotaur.
The old King had failed to be independent of Crete. He was
angered by his subservience to Minos. Why, he asked, does not
Minos have to send me every ninth year seven Cretan youths and
seven Cretan maidens? He would not sacrifice them in a Labyrinth.
He would allow the seven maidens, curly-haired and bare-breasted
in flouncy skirts, to add beauty to the human scene, and surely those
Cretans, so strong and handsome, would add skills to the multi
farious activities of Athens. The father wondered: must I risk the
prince to do what I could not do? If he succeeds, I shall give him
the kingship, and retire. If he fails, I shall spend my old age without
a son and in grief.
In this dire choice, the old man had to yield for a political
reason. The people murmured that their children were lost, when
the prince was safe. If it was not the King's fault, it was at least his
duty to free Athens from fear and humiliation and grief.
Theseus pondered how to solve the problem of the Labyrinth.
How broad and high were the passageways? How many turns, and
in which directions? How many alternatives at the crossings? How
large an area? How long are the passages? Why can no one find the
center and retrace his steps? It all seemed ridiculous to keep a
bull-man or a man-bull in an underground cavern. What trouble
carrying hay and grain and cleaning an underground stable.
While the other youths on the Crete-bound ship were in despair
or quiet y resigned to inevitable death, or listening to the girls
singing songs of mourning, Theseus was exercising his wits and
his body. Upon arrival in Crete he looked his finest. The young
prince looked as no youth from Athens had ever looked before.
Young Ariadne saw him from the palace and thought what a
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504 THE MONIST
shame to destroy such a young mani She was high-spirited and
outspoken against many of the stupid rituals of her father. And
so with this one of human sacrifice. She would not stand by, or
participate in killing bulls or killing Athenian youth. She knew she
got nowhere at all talking with her father. Her mother, too, was
caught in the old ways. So she turned to the clever builder Daedalus.
To him she said, I don't want the young prince to be sacrified,
or any of the youth of Athens. Daedalus was shrewd and asked
whether she would like Theseus as a husband. Cretan girls were
straightforward, and she admitted it. Very well, said Daedalus, I
will tell you about the Labyrinth. There is no Minotaur.
And furthermore, said Daedalus, I have constructed the tunnels
with perfect regularity. True, they turn so that in following them
you are going now in one direction, now in another, and there is
a succession of turns, right, left, left, right, and you will feel you
are getting nowhere. But there is never a choice between left and
right, nor between north and south. There is only one next step to
get to the end.
Then there's no problem about escaping?
None whatsoever, said Daedalus. But if you wish to give your
young friend a ball of twine, he will roll up exactly what he had
unrolled.
Ariadne took the thread and, making a secret rendezvous with
Theseus, told him the secret.
The secret of the labyrinth is that an order may look confusing
because people have never thought about its pattern. All patterns
are intelligible, and everything has a pattern. Overcome the fear,
find the method, the problem gets solved.
The myth of Ariadne, Theseus, Daedalus, and the Minotaur is a
philosophic myth because it deals with man whose understanding
leads him from what he feared was chaotic to what he knows to be
orderly. It is the myth of all discovery-the guiding image of the
courage of reason to overcome fear, ignorance, and superstition.
"What is your aim in philosophy?" asked Wittgenstein, and he
answered, "To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle." Why
wouldn't it be a better metaphor to say "To find the pattern of the
Labyrinth, to end the fear of the Minotaur, to free people from the
ritual of human sacrifice"?
PAUL G. KUNTZ
EMORY UNIVERSITY
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