Semele - Affair with Zeus and birth of Dionysus, Locations, Semele in Roman culture, Semele in later art

In Greek mythology, the daughter of Cadmus, and mother by Zeus of Dionysus. She asked Zeus to appear in his glory before her, and was consumed in fire, but it made her son immortal. Semele is probably related to the Phrygian goddess Zemelo.

In Greek mythology, Semele, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his two parallel origin myths. the myth of Semele's father Cadmus gives him a Phoenician origin.

Affair with Zeus and birth of Dionysus

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 visited her secretly.

Zeus's consort, Hera, a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when the latter became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her husband was actually Zeus. Curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood.

Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus, however, by sewing him into his thigh (the "Insewn" epithet of the Homeric Hymn).

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

Locations

The most usual setting for the story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of Thebes, called the Cadmeia. 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, the myth of Semele must be Mycenaean or earlier in origin.

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:

"For some say, at Dracanum; and others by the deep-eddying river Alpheus that pregnant Semele bare you to Zeus the thunder-lover.

Semele was worshipped at Athens at the Lenaia, when a yearling bull, emblematic of Dionysus, was sacrificed to her.

Semele in Roman culture

When the initiatory cult of Dionysus was imported to Rome, shortly before 186 BCE, to great public scandal, Semele's name was rendered Stimula. Hiding her divinity, Saturn’s daughter cleverly Incited the Latian Bacchae with deceiving words:"

Semele in later art

In the 18th Century, the story of Semele formed the basis for three operas of the same name: by John Eccles (1707), by Marin Marais (1709), and by George Frideric Handel (1743).