thumb In Greek mythology, Semele , daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother [1] of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths. (In another version of his mythic origin, he had two mothers, Persephone and Semele.) The name "Semele", like other elements of Dionysiac cult (e.g. , thyrsus and dithyramb), is manifestly not Greek [2] but apparently Thraco-Phrygian; [3] the myth of Semele's father Cadmus gives him a Phoenician origin. Herodotus, who gives the account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 B.C. [4]

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Seduction by Zeus and birth of Dionysus

In one version of the myth, Semele was a priestess of Zeus, and on one occasion was observed by Zeus as she slaughtered a bull at his altar and afterwards swam in the river Asopus to cleanse herself of the blood. Flying over the scene in the guise of an eagle, Zeus fell in love with Semele and afterwards repeatedly visited her secretly. ^[5]

Zeus' wife, Hera, a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when she later became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone, ^[6] Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her lover was actually Zeus. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele's mind. Curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he agreed. Mortals, however, cannot look upon Zeus without dying, and she perished, consumed in lightning-ignited flame. ^[7]

Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus, however, by sewing him into his thigh (whence the epithet Eiraphiotes, "insewn", of the Homeric Hymn). A few months later, Dionysus was born. This leads to his being called "the twice-born". ^[8]

When he grew up, Dionysus rescued his mother from Hades, ^[9] and she became a goddess on Mount Olympus, with the new name Thyone , presiding over the frenzy inspired by her son Dionysus. ^[10]

"Virgin" impregnation by Zeus

There is a story in the Fabulae 167 of Gaius Julius Hyginus, or a later author whose work has been attributed to Hyginus. In this, Dionysius (called Liber) is the son of Jupiter and Proserpine, and was killed by the Titans. Jupiter gave his torn up heart in a drink to Semele, who became pregnant this way. But in another account, Zeus swallows the heart himself, in order to beget him on Semele. Hera then induces Semele to ask Zeus to come to her as a god, she dies, and Zeus seals the unborn baby up in his thigh. There is no suggestion in the text that Semele is a virgin, however. ^[11] As a result of this Dionysus "was also called Dimetor [of two mothers] ... because the two Dionysoi were born of one father, but of two mothers" ^[12]

According to , the rebirth in both this and the previous version of the story is the primary reason he was worshipped in mystery religions, as his death and rebirth were events of mystical reverence, and this narrative was apparently used in certain Greek and Roman mystery religions.

Still another variant of the narrative is found in Callimachus ^[13] and the Fifth Century AD Greek writer Nonnus. ^[14] In this version, the first Dionysius is called Zagreus. Nonnus does not present the conception as virginal; rather, the editor's notes say that Zeus swallowed Zagreus' heart, and visited the mortal woman Semele, whom he seduced and made pregnant. In he classifies Zeus's affair with Semele as one in a set of twelve, the other eleven women on whom he begot children being Io, Europa, the nymph Pluto, Danaë, Aigina, Antiope, Leda, Dia, Alcmene, Laodameia, mother of Sarpedon, and Olympias.

Locations

The most usual setting for the story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of Thebes, called the Cadmeia . ^[15] When Pausanias visited Thebes in the second century AD, he was shown the very bridal chamber where Zeus visited her and begat Dionysus. Since an Oriental inscribed cylindrical seal found at the palace can be dated 14th-13th centuries BC, ^[16] the myth of Semele must be Mycenaean or earlier in origin. At the Alcyonian Lake near the prehistoric site of Lerna, Dionysus, guided by Prosymnus or Polymnus, descended to Tartarus to free his once-mortal mother. Annual rites took place there in classical times; Pausanias refuses to describe them. ^[17]

Though the Greek myth of Semele was localized in Thebes, the fragmentary Homeric Hymn to Dionysus makes the place where Zeus gave a second birth to the god a distant one, and mythically vague:

Semele was worshipped at Athens at the Lenaia, when a yearling bull, emblematic of Dionysus, was sacrificed to her. One-ninth was burnt on the altar in the Hellenic way; the rest was torn and eaten raw by the votaries. ^[18]

Semele was a tragedy by Aeschylus; it has been lost, save a few lines quoted by other writers, and a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus, P. Oxy. 2164. ^[19]

Semele in Roman culture

When the initiatory cult of Dionysus was imported to Rome, shortly before 186 BCE, to great public scandal, ^[20] Semele's name was rendered Stimula . The groves in which the initiation rites took place were deemed sacred to Semele/Stimula. Ovid's Fasti shifts the origin of the Bacchanalian rites in Rome to a mythic rather than a historic past:

"There was a grove: known either as Semele’s or Stimula’s: Inhabited, they say, by Italian Maenads. Ino, asking them their nation, learned they were Arcadians, And that Evander was the king of the place. Hiding her divinity, Saturn’s daughter cleverly Incited the Latian Bacchae with deceiving words:"

"lucus erat, dubium Semelae Stimulaene vocetur; maenadas Ausonias incoluisse ferunt: quaerit ab his Ino quae gens foret. Arcadas esse audit et Euandrum sceptra tenere loci; dissimulata deam Latias Saturnia Bacchas instimulat fictis insidiosa sonis:" [21]

Semele in later art

In the 18th century, the story of Semele formed the basis for three operas of the same name, the first by John Eccles (1707, to a libretto by William Congreve), another by Marin Marais (1709), and a third by George Frideric Handel (1742). Handel's work, (based on Congreve's libretto but with additions), while an opera to its marrow, was originally given as an oratorio so that it could be performed in a Lenten concert series; it premièred on February 10, 1744. ^[22]

Notes

1. Although Dionysus is called the son of Zeus (see The cult of Dionysus : legends and practice, Dionysus, Greek god of wine & festivity, The Olympian Gods, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2007, etc.), Barbara Walker, in ''The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets,'' (Harper/Collins, 1983) calls Semele the "Virgin Mother of Dionysus", a term that contradicts the picture given in the ancient sources: Hesiod calls him "Dionysus whom Cadmus' daughter Semele bare of union with Zeus", Euripides calls him son of Zeus, Ovid tells how his mother Semele, rather than Hera, was "to Jove's embrace preferred", Apollodorus says that "Zeus loved Semele and bedded with her".
2. Burkert 1985
3. Kerenyi 1976 p. 107; Seltman 1956
4. Herodotus, Histories, II, 2.145
5. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 7.110-8.177 {{Harv|Dalby|2005|pp=19–27, 150}}
6. Or in the guise of Semele's nurse, Beroë, in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' III.256ff and Hyginus, ''Fabulae''167.
7. Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' III.308–312; Hyginus, ''Fabulae'' 179; Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.178-406
8. Apollodorus, ''Library'' 3.4.3; Apollonius Rhodius, ''Argonautica'' 4.1137; Lucian, ''Dialogues of the Gods'' 9; compare the birth of Asclepius, taken from Coronis on her funeral pyre (noted by L. Preller, ''Theogonie und Goetter'', vol I of ''Griechische Mythologie'' 1894:661).
9. Hyginus, ''Astronomy'' 2.5; Arnobius, ''Against the Gentiles'' 5.28 {{Harv|Dalby|2005|pp=108–117}}
10. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.407-418
11. ''Fabulae'' 167.1
12. (Diodorus Siculus, ''Library of History'' 4. 4. 5, quoted in this collection of Zagreus sources)
13. Callimachus, Fragments, in the etymol. ?a??e??; see Karl Otfried Müller, John Leitch, ''Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology'' (1844), p.319, n.5
14. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 24. 43 ff'' — translation in Zagreus
15. Semele was "made into a woman by the Thebans and called the daughter of Kadmos, thoughh her original character as an earth-goddess is transparently evident" according to William Keith Chambers Guthrie, ''Orpheus and Greek Religion'', rev. ed. 1953:56. Robert Graves is characteristically speculative: the story "seems to record the summary action taken by Hellenes of Boeotia in ending the tradition of royal sacrifice: Olympian Zeus asserts his power, takes the doomed king under his own protection, and destroys the goddess with her own thunderbolt." (Graves 1960:§14.5). The connection ''Semele''=''Selene'' is often noted, nevertheless.
16. Kerenyi 1976 p 193 and note 13
17. Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'' 2.37; Plutarch, ''Isis and Osiris'' 35 {{Harv|Dalby|2005|p=135}}
18. Graves 1960, 14.c.5
19. Timothy Gantz, "Divine Guilt in Aischylos" ''The Classical Quarterly'' New Series, '''31'''.1 (1981:18-32) p 25f.
20. The scandal was reported in Livy, ''Ab Urbe Condita'' 39.12, where the consul advised the prostitute Hispala Faecenia "that she ought to tell him what was accustomed to be done at the Bacchanalia, in the nocturnal orgies in the grove of Stimula."
21. Ovid, ''Fasti'' , 6.503
22. Handel's dramatic oratorios and masques

References

1. Although Dionysus is called the son of Zeus (see The cult of Dionysus : legends and practice, Dionysus, Greek god of wine & festivity, The Olympian Gods, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2007, etc.), Barbara Walker, in ''The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets,'' (Harper/Collins, 1983) calls Semele the "Virgin Mother of Dionysus", a term that contradicts the picture given in the ancient sources: Hesiod calls him "Dionysus whom Cadmus' daughter Semele bare of union with Zeus", Euripides calls him son of Zeus, Ovid tells how his mother Semele, rather than Hera, was "to Jove's embrace preferred", Apollodorus says that "Zeus loved Semele and bedded with her".
2. Burkert 1985
3. Kerenyi 1976 p. 107; Seltman 1956
4. Herodotus, Histories, II, 2.145
5. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 7.110-8.177 {{Harv|Dalby|2005|pp=19–27, 150}}
6. Or in the guise of Semele's nurse, Beroë, in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' III.256ff and Hyginus, ''Fabulae''167.
7. Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' III.308–312; Hyginus, ''Fabulae'' 179; Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.178-406
8. Apollodorus, ''Library'' 3.4.3; Apollonius Rhodius, ''Argonautica'' 4.1137; Lucian, ''Dialogues of the Gods'' 9; compare the birth of Asclepius, taken from Coronis on her funeral pyre (noted by L. Preller, ''Theogonie und Goetter'', vol I of ''Griechische Mythologie'' 1894:661).
9. Hyginus, ''Astronomy'' 2.5; Arnobius, ''Against the Gentiles'' 5.28 {{Harv|Dalby|2005|pp=108–117}}
10. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.407-418
11. ''Fabulae'' 167.1
12. (Diodorus Siculus, ''Library of History'' 4. 4. 5, quoted in this collection of Zagreus sources)
13. Callimachus, Fragments, in the etymol. ?a??e??; see Karl Otfried Müller, John Leitch, ''Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology'' (1844), p.319, n.5
14. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 24. 43 ff'' — translation in Zagreus
15. Semele was "made into a woman by the Thebans and called the daughter of Kadmos, thoughh her original character as an earth-goddess is transparently evident" according to William Keith Chambers Guthrie, ''Orpheus and Greek Religion'', rev. ed. 1953:56. Robert Graves is characteristically speculative: the story "seems to record the summary action taken by Hellenes of Boeotia in ending the tradition of royal sacrifice: Olympian Zeus asserts his power, takes the doomed king under his own protection, and destroys the goddess with her own thunderbolt." (Graves 1960:§14.5). The connection ''Semele''=''Selene'' is often noted, nevertheless.
16. Kerenyi 1976 p 193 and note 13
17. Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'' 2.37; Plutarch, ''Isis and Osiris'' 35 {{Harv|Dalby|2005|p=135}}
18. Graves 1960, 14.c.5
19. Timothy Gantz, "Divine Guilt in Aischylos" ''The Classical Quarterly'' New Series, '''31'''.1 (1981:18-32) p 25f.
20. The scandal was reported in Livy, ''Ab Urbe Condita'' 39.12, where the consul advised the prostitute Hispala Faecenia "that she ought to tell him what was accustomed to be done at the Bacchanalia, in the nocturnal orgies in the grove of Stimula."
21. Ovid, ''Fasti'' , 6.503
22. Handel's dramatic oratorios and masques