Wroth+and+the+Labyrinth

===In her sonnet sequence, "Pamphilia to Amphilanthus," Lady Mary Wroth includes a section built around the Petrarchan conceit of the labyrinth. Here is the background story to that classical allusion. ===

Ariadne's Thread and the Labyrinth in Classical Mythology
Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos of Crete. Minos had Daedalus build a Labyrinth, a house of winding passages, to house the bull-man, the Minotaur, the beast that his wife Pasiphae bore after having intercourse with a bull. (Minos had refused to sacrifice a bull to Poseidon, as the king promised, so the god took revenge by causing his wife to desire the bull--but that's another story.) Ovid says that Daedalus built a house in which he confused the usual passages and deceived the eye with a conflicting maze of various wandering paths (//in errorem variarum ambage viarum) (Metamorphoses// 8.161): Minos required tribute from Athens in the form of young men and women to be sacrificed to the Minotaur.

Theseus, an Athenian, volunteered to accompany one of these groups of victims to deliver his country from the tribute to Minos. Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him a thread which he let unwind through the Labyrinth so that he was able to kill the Minotaur and find his way back out again.

In return, she was abandoned by him on the island of Naxos. Here Bacchus came to her rescue. Bacchus took her jeweled crown and flung it into the heavens where it became a constellation. Ariadne was readily consoled by him and they were married shortly afterwards.