Ariadne (poem) and watch for a signal. That night the signal is seen by Ariadne; she parts tearfully from Phaedra, and arrives on the beach in time to see the survivors of the Labyrinth staggering down from the hills. The ship slips away. On board, while the exhausted survivors sleep, Theseus tells Ariadne of the night's events: how the Athenian maidens were bathed and perfumed by African eunuchs and dressed as brides; how the captives were led into the cave, down mazy passages and dim chambers, each with statues of the Cretan snake-goddess; how the last chamber contained the horror: the Minotaur
Greek hero cult began to be told to individuate the persons who were now believed to be buried in these old and imposing sites", observes Robin Lane Fox. Greek hero-cults were distinct from the clan-based ancestor worship from which they developed, in that as the "polis" evolved, they became a civic rather than familial affair, and in many cases none of the worshipers traced their descent back to the hero any longer: no shrine to a hero can be traced unbroken from Mycenaean times. Whereas the ancestor was purely local, Lewis Farnell observed, the hero might be tended in more than one locality,