ARIADNE (in Greek mythology), was the daughter of Minos, king of Crete, and Pasiphae, the daughter of Helios the Sun-god. When Theseus landed on the island to slay the Minotaur (q.v.), Ariadne fell in love with him, and gave him a clue of thread to guide him through the mazes of the labyrinth. After he had slain the monster, Theseus carried her off, but, according to Homer (Odyssey, xi. 322) she was slain by Artemis at the request of Dionysus in the island of Dia near Cnossus, before she could reach Athens with Theseus. In the later legend, she was abandoned, while asleep on the island of Naxos, by Theseus, who had fallen a victim to the charms of Aegle (Plutarch, Theseus, 20; Diodorus, iv. 60, 61). Her abandonment and awakening are celebrated in the beautiful Epithalamium of Catullus. On Naxos she is discovered by Dionysus on his return from India, who is enchanted with her beauty, and marries her when she awakes. She receives a crown as a bridal gift, which is placed amongst the stars, while she herself is honoured as a goddess (Ovid, Metam. viii. 152, Fasti, iii. 459).
The name probably means “very holy”＝ἀρι-αγνη; another (Cretan) form Ἀριδήλα (＝φανερά) indicates the return to a “bright” season of nature. Ariadne is the personification of spring. In keeping with this, her festivals at Naxos present a double character; the one, full of mourning and sadness, represents her death or abandonment by Theseus, the other, full of joy and revelry, celebrates her awakening from sleep and marriage with Dionysus. Thus nature sleeps and dies during winter, to awake in springtime to a life of renewed luxuriance. With this may be compared the festivals of Adonis and Osiris and the myth of Persephone. Theseus himself was said to have founded a festival at Athens in honour of Ariadne and Dionysus after his return from Crete. The story of Dionysus and Ariadne was a favourite subject for reliefs and wall-paintings. Most commonly Ariadne is represented asleep on the shore at Naxos, while Dionysus, attended by satyrs and bacchanals, gazes admiringly upon her; sometimes they are seated side by side under a spreading vine. The scene where she is holding the clue to Theseus occurs on a very early vase in the British Museum. There is a statue of the sleeping Ariadne in the Vatican Museum.
Kanter, De Ariadne (1879); Pallat, De Fabula Ariadnea (1891).
ARIANO DI PUGLIA, a town and episcopal see, which, despite its name, now belongs to Campania, Italy, in the province of Avellino, 1509 ft. above sea-level, on the railway between Benevento and Foggia, 24 m. E. of the former by rail. Pop. (1901) town, 8384; commune, 17,653. It lies in the centre of a fertile district, but has no buildings of importance, as it has often been devastated by earthquakes. A considerable part of the population still dwells in caves. It has been supposed to occupy the site of Aequum Tuticum, an ancient Samnite town, which became a post-station on the Via Traiana[1] in Roman times; but this should probably be sought at S. Eleuterio 512 m. north. It was a military position of some importance in the middle ages. Thirteen miles south-south-east is the Sorgente Mefita, identical with the pools of Ampsanctus (q.v.). (T. As.)
ARIAS MONTANO, BENITO (1527–1598), Spanish Orientalist and editor of the Antwerp Polyglot, was born at Fregenal de la Sierra, in Estremadura, in 1527. After studying at the universities of Seville and Alcala, he took orders about the year 1559 and in 1562 he was appointed consulting theologian to the council of Trent. He retired to Peña de Aracena in 1564, wrote his commentary on the minor prophets (1571), and was sent to Antwerp by Philip II. to edit the polyglot Bible projected by Christopher Plantin. The work appeared in 8 volumes folio, between 1568 and 1573. León de Castro, a professor at Salamanca, thereon brought charges of heresy against Arias Montano, who was finally acquitted after a visit to Rome in 1575–1576. He was appointed royal chaplain, but withdrew to Peña de Aracena from 1579 to 1583; he resigned the chaplaincy in 1584, and went into complete seclusion at Santiago de la Espada in Seville, where he died in 1598.
He is the subject of an Elogio histórico by Tomás Gonzalez Carvajal in the Memorias de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid, 1832), vol. vii.
ARICA (San Marcos de Arica), a town and port of the Chilean-governed province of Tacna, situated in 18° 28′ 08″ S. lat. and 70° 20′ 46″ W. long. It is the port for Tacna, the capital of the province, 38 m. distant, with which it is connected by rail, and is the outlet for a large and productive mining district. Arica at one time had a population of 30,000 and enjoyed much prosperity, but through civil war, earthquakes and conquest, its population had dwindled to 2853 in 1895 and 2824 in 1902. The great earthquake of 1868, followed by a tidal wave, nearly destroyed the town and shipping. Arica was captured, looted and burned by the Chileans in 1880, and in accordance with the terms of the treaty of Ancon (1883) should have been returned to Peru in 1894, but this was not done. Late in 1906 the town again suffered severely from an earthquake.
ARICIA (mod. Ariccia), an ancient city of Latium, on the Via Appia, 16 m. S.E. of Rome. The old town, or at any rate its acropolis, now occupied by the modern town, lay high (1350 ft. above sea-level) above the circular Valle Aricciana, which is probably an extinct volcanic crater; some remains of its fortifications, consisting of a mound of earth supported on each side by a wall of rectangular blocks of peperino stone, have been discovered (D. Marchetti, in Notizie degli scavi, 1892, 52). The lower town was situated on the north edge of the valley, close to the Via Appia, which descended into the valley from the modern Albano, and re-ascended partly upon very fine substructions of opus quadratum, some 200 yds. in length, to the modern Genzano. Remains of the walls of the lower town, of the cella of a temple built of blocks of peperino, and also of later buildings in brickwork and opus reticulatum, connected with the post-station (Aricia being the first important station out of Rome, cf. Horace, Sat. i. 5. 1, Egressum magna me excepit Aricia Roma hospitio modico) on the highroad, may still be seen (cf. T. Ashby in Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, 1903, 399). Aricia was one of the oldest cities of Latium, and appears as a serious opponent of Rome at the end of the period of the kings and beginning of the republic. In 338 B.C. it was conquered by C. Maenius and became a civitas sine suffragio, but was soon given full rights. Even in the imperial period its chief magistrate was styled dictator, and its council senatus, and it preserved its own calendar of festivals. Its vegetables and wine were famous, and the district is still fertile. (T. As.)
ARICINI, the ancient inhabitants of Aricia (q.v.), the form of the name ranking them with the Sidicini, Marrucini (q.v.), &c., as one of the communities belonging probably to the earlier or Volscian stratum of population on the west side of Italy, who were absorbed by the Sabine or Latin immigrants. Special interest attaches to this trace of their earlier origin, because of the famous cult of Diana Nemorensis, whose temple in the forest close by Aricia, beside the lacus Nemorensis, was served by “the priest who slew the slayer, and shall himself be slain”; that is to say, the priest, who was called rex Nemorensis, held office only so long as he could defend himself from any stronger rival. This cult, which is unique in Italy, is picturesquely described in the opening chapter of J. G. Frazer’s Golden Bough (2nd ed., 1900) where full references will be found. Of these references the most important are, perhaps, Strabo v. 3. 12; Ovid, Fasti, iii. 263-272; and Suetonius, Calig. 35, whose wording indicates that the old-world custom was dying out in the 1st century A.D. It is a reasonable conjecture that this extraordinary relic of barbarism was characteristic of the earlier stratum of the population who presumably called themselves Arici.
On the anthropological aspect of the cult, see also A. B. Cook, Class. Rev. xvi., 1902, p. 365, where the whole evidence is very fully collected; and Frazer’s Studies in the Early History of Kingship (1907), where he accepts Cook’s criticism of his own earlier theory. (R. S. C.)
ARIÈGE, an inland department of southern France, bounded S. by Spain, W. and N. by the department of Haute-Garonne, N.E. and E. by Aude, and S.E. by Pyrénées-Orientales. It
- ↑ This has generally been supposed to be the place referred to by Horace (Sat. i. 5. 87), as one which the metre would not allow him to mention by name; but H. Nissen (Halische Landeskunde, Berlin, 1902, ii. 845) proposes Ausculum instead.
