Ariadne (poem) "and both story and verse have a breath-taking rapidity that is wholly admirable." He regretted, however, that Lucas had not used language in the modernist way, with obliqueness and ambiguity. "The Listener" did not share this regret: "While preserving the great metrical tradition," its reviewer wrote, ""Ariadne" is a continuous refreshment of it, and is free at once of archaic pedantries and modernist affectations." More recently, Simon Tidworth in "The Quest for Theseus" (1970) believed that making the Minotaur Minos in a bull-mask was "a real stroke of originality", but, comparing the two works, preferred Nikos Kazantzakis' drama "Κούρος, ή
Greek hero cult Greek hero cult Hero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. In Homeric Greek, "hero" (, ) refers to a man who fought (on either side) during the Trojan War. By the historical period, however, the word came to mean specifically a "dead" man, venerated and propitiated at his tomb or at a designated shrine, because his fame during life or his unusual manner of death gave him power to support and protect the living. A hero was more than human but less than a god, and various kinds of supernatural figures came to be