House of the Vettii hand and holds a chisel in his left, placed against the wooden beam. The final mythological scene in the north triclinium is Dionysus discovering Ariadne on the south wall. The scene of Dionysis discovering Ariadne was a popular theme in Greek vase paining. It depicts the moment Dionysus discovers Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae. After being abandoned by Theseus, the slayer of the Minotaur, Dionysus finds her sleeping on the island of Naxos and weds her. In this scene Ariadne lays on a large leopard skin, with her back to the viewer. She wears gold armlets and
Minotaur the main political and cultural potency in the Aegean Sea. As the fledgling Athens (and probably other continental Greek cities) was under tribute to Crete, it can be assumed that such tribute included young men and women for sacrifice. This ceremony was performed by a priest disguised with a bull head or mask, thus explaining the imagery of the Minotaur. Once continental Greece was free from Crete's dominance, the myth of the Minotaur worked to distance the forming religious consciousness of the Hellene "poleis" from Minoan beliefs. The Minotaur ("infamia di Creti", Italian for "infamy of Crete"), appears briefly in