Thread of ariadne

Niccolo Bambini: Ariadne and Theseus

Alfons Weisser: Artist's impression of the Ariadne thread

The Ariadne was the Greek mythology According to a gift of Princess Ariadne , daughter of the Cretan king Minos , to Theseus . With the help of the thread Theseus found his way through the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was. After Theseus had killed the Minotaur, he was able to leave the labyrinth again along the thread. The hint for the use of the thread came from Daidalos (German: Dädalus), who had also designed the labyrinth.

If you enter a maze and unroll a thread from the beginning to mark the route you have covered, you can always find your way back to the entrance without problems by simply tracing the thread back. In practice, this is used when exploring caves, especially cave diving . The protection against retreat of fire fighters in the event of a fire is also based on this principle.

See also

• The Red Thread
• Tracer
• Gaston Tarry's algorithm

literature

• Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll: Ariadne . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, column 540 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Diodor , Library 4.61; Plutarch , Theseus 19; Hyginus , Fabulae 42
2. ↑ Detailed explanation of the retraction protection