Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

The Labyrinth at Knossos 481

charmed he had been to find at Taormina the Labyrinth of the
Minotaur I1

The solution of the Labyrinth-problem2 here advanced is borne
out by a thrice-familiar passage in the Iliad. Daidalos, we read,

once wrought in Knosos broad
A dancing-ground for fair-haired Ariadne3.

The scholiast explains that Theseus, having escaped from the
Labyrinth by means of Ariadne's clew, with the youths and
maidens whom he had rescued ' wove a circling dance for the
gods that resembled his own entrance into and exit from the
Labyrinth, Daidalos showing them how to dance it4. Eustathios5
adds that this was the first occasion on which men and women
danced together, that Sophokles had alluded to ' the dances of
Knossos6,' and that old-fashioned folk in his own day, sailors
especially, danced a certain dance with many twists and turns
in it meant to recall the windings of the Labyrinth. Lucian too
specifies as Cretan dance-themes ' Europe, Pasiphae, both the
Bulls, the Labyrinth, Ariadne, Phaidra, Androgeos, Daidalos,
Ikaros, Glaukos, the seer-craft of Polyeidos, and Talos the bronze
sentinel of Crete7.'

The Labyrinth-dance was not confined to Crete. Plutarch in
his Life of Theseus* writes:

'Sailing away from Crete, he put in at Delos. Here he sacrificed to the
god, dedicated the image of Aphrodite that he had received from Ariadne, and
in company with the young men danced a dance, which, they say, is still kept
up by the Delians. It imitates the circuits and exits of the Labyrinth by means
of a certain measure that involves turnings and re-turnings. This type of dance,
as Dikaiarchos shows, is called the Crane by the Delians9. Theseus danced it

1 D. Comparetti Vergil in the Middle Ages trans. E. F. M. Benecke London 1895

2 Sir Arthur Evans loc. cit. p. 111 concludes 'that this first of theatres, the Stepped
Area with its dancing ground, supplies a material foundation for the Homeric tradition
of the famous "choros" [77. 18. 591 ff.].' But he does not expressly identify the said
'Area' with the Labyrinth of mythology. Indeed, he cannot, because he regards the
whole palace as the Labyrinth {Ann. Brit. Sch. Ath. 1899—r900 33)- To me xt
seems more probable that the Labyrinth proper was the dancing-ground made by
Daidalos, and that the close relation of this dancing-ground to the palace at Knossos
led the Greeks as early as the fifth century B.C., if not much earlier, to view the Labyrinth
erroneously as a palace.

3 //. 18. 591 f. 4 Schol. A.B. //. 18. 590.
5 Eustath. in II. p. 1166, 17 ff. 6 Soph. At. 700.

7 Loukian. desalt. 49. 8 Plout. v. Thes. 21.

9 The ytpavos (Loukian. de salt. 34) is described by Poll. 4. 101 tt)v 8e ytpavov Kara
irXrjdos copxovvTO, €Ka<TTOs vcf> e/catrry Kara (Ttolxop, ra &npa enarepwdev tQiv i]yefj.6vcou
ixbvTwv k.t.X. and in more general terms by Kallim. h. Del. 312 f. -woTvia, abv irepi
fiwixbv eyeipo/j.evov KidapLcrfiov \ kijkXiov (hpxwavTo k.t.X. On the kratdr of Klitias and

c. 31