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Abandoned by Theseus, Ariadne lamenting on the shore of Naxos embodies one of the most powerful tropes in literature and the arts. The fate of the heroine who helped Theseus out of the labyrinth became herself a thread (indeed, an inexhaustible series of threads) running across the ages and populating the imagination of poets, painters, composers. After exploring in detail the classical sources that canonized Ariadne’s myth (Catullus, Carmina, 64; Ovid, Heroides, 10) as well as references to the myth found in other classical authors (Homer, Hesiod, Pausanias, Plutarch, Propertius), we will turn to the reception of Ariadne in literature and music (Ariosto, Rinuccini-Monteverdi, Haydn, Nietzsche, Strauss-Von Hofmannsthal). The analysis of the various case studies will focus on the rhetorical and poetical devices used by poets and composers to reenact the vocal features of Ariadne’s lament.