In Greek mythology, Semele (; ), or Thyone (; ), was the youngest daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus (her own great-grandfather).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 , , 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".
Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians.Martin Nillson (1967).Die Geschichte der Griechischen Religion, Vol I. C. H. Beck Verlag. München p. 378 These were modified, expanded, and elaborated by the Ionian Greek colonists. Doric Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), born in the city of Halicarnassus under the Achaemenid Empire, who gives the account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived either 1,000 or 1,600 years prior to his visit to Tyre in 450 BC at the end of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BC) or around 2050 or 1450 BC.Herodotus, Histories, II, 2.145 In Rome, the goddess Stimula was identified as Semele.
Semele was the subject of the now-lost tragedy by Aeschylus titled Semele (Σεμέλη) or The Water Carriers (Ὑδροφόροι).
Etymology According to some linguists the name Semele is Thraco-Phrygian,Kerenyi 1976 p. 107; Seltman 1956 derived from a PIE root meaning 'earth'. A Phrygian inscription refers to diōs zemelō (). The first word corresponds to Greek Zeus (genit. Dios) and the second to earth in some Indo-European languages.Slavonic zemlya:earth, Lithuanian žemýna: the earth goddess: Martin Nillson (1967).Die Geschichte der Griechischen Religion, Vol I. C. H. Beck Verlag. München p. 568; Julius Pokorny reconstructs her name from the PIE root * meaning 'earth', and relates it with Thracian , 'mother earth'.Julius Pokorny. Indogermanisches Etymologisches Woerterbuch: root *dgem. Compare Damia and "Demeter" (mother earth). Compare Žemyna (derived from žemė – earth), the goddess of the earth (mother goddess) in Lithuanian mythology, and Zeme, also referred to as Zemes-mãte, a Slavic and Latvian goddess of the earth.Ann, Martha; Myers Imel, Dorothy (1993). Goddesses in World Mythology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.Gimbutas, Marija. "The Living Goddesses".
Mallory and Adams suggest that, although Semele is "etymologically related" to other mother Earth/Earth goddess cognates, her name might be a borrowing "from another IE source", not inherited as part of the Ancient Greek lexicon.Mallory, James P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Routledge. p. 174. Burkert says that while Semele is "manifestly non-Greek", "it is no more possible to confirm that Semele is a Thraco-Phrygian word for earth than it is to prove the priority of the Lydian over Bacchus as a name for Dionysos".Walter Burkert (1985), Greek Religion, p. 163 M. L. West derives the Phrygian zemelo, Old Slavonic zemlya, Lithuanian zēmē from the Indo-European name *dʰéǵʰōm (earth). Semele seems to be a Thracian name of the earth goddess from gʰem-elā. The pronunciation was probably Zemelā.West, M.L. Indoeuropean poetry and myth, Oxford University Press, p. 174–175. p.174
Etymological connections of Thraco-Phrygian with Balto-Slavic earth deities have been noted, for an alternate name for Baltic Zemyna is ,Laurinkienė, Nijolė. "Gyvatė, Žemė, Žemyna: vaizdinių koreliacija nominavimo ir semantikos lygmenyje". In: Lituanistika šiuolaikiniame pasaulyje. Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2004. pp. 285–286.Jones, Prudence; Pennick, Nigel (1995). A History of Pagan Europe. Routledge. p. 175. . and in Slavic languages the word (Semele) means 'seed', and (Zemele) means 'earth'.Laurinkienė, Nijolė. "Motina Žemyna baltų deivių kontekste: 1 d.: Tacito mater deum, trakų-frigų Σεμέλη, latvių Zemes māte, Māra, lietuvių bei latvių Laima, Laumė ir lietuvių Austėja" [Mother-Goddess Žemyna in the context of Baltic deities]. In: Liaudies kultūra Nr. 2 (2007). p. 12. . Thus, according to Borissoff, "she could be an important link bridging the ancient Thracian and Slavonic cults (...)".Borissoff, Constantine L. (2014). "Non-Iranian Origin of the Eastern-Slavonic God Xŭrsŭ/Xors" [Neiranskoe proishoždenie vostočnoslavjanskogo Boga Hrsa/Horsa]. In: Studia Mythologica Slavica 17 (October). Ljubljana, Slovenia. p. 22. https://doi.org/10.3986/sms.v17i0.1491.
Mythology
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 repeatedly visited her secretly.Nonnus, Dionysiaca 7.110-8.177
Zeus's wife, Hera, a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when she later became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone,Or in the guise of Semele's nurse, Beroë, in Ovid's Metamorphoses III.256ff and Hyginus, Fabulae167. 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 asked Zeus to grant her a boon. Zeus, eager to please his beloved, promised on the River Styx to grant her anything she wanted.
Semele then demanded that Zeus reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his divinity. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted, and he was forced by his oath to comply.Ovid, Metamorphoses III.308–312; Hyginus, Fabulae 179; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 8.178-406 He appears to her in all his splendor, with concomitant thunderbolts and lightning, causing her death.Hard, p. 171.
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".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).
When he grew up, Dionysus rescued his mother from Hades,Hyginus, Astronomy 2.5; Arnobius, Against the Gentiles 5.28 and she became a goddess on Mount Olympus, with the new name Thyone, presiding over the frenzy inspired by her son Dionysus.Nonnus, Dionysiaca 8.407-418 At a later point in the epic Dionysiaca, Semele, now resurrected, boasts to her sister Ino how Zeus carried on the gestation of Dionysus and now her son gets to join the heavenly deities in Olympus, while Ino languishes with a murderous husband (since Athamas tried to kill Ino and her son), and a son that lives with maritime deities.Verhelst, Berenice. Direct Speech in Nonnus' Dionysiaca. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill. 2017. pp. 268-270.
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, Dionysus (called Liber) is the son of Jupiter and Proserpina, 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 his seed on Semele. Hera then convinces Semele to ask Zeus to come to her as a god, and on doing so she dies, and Zeus seals the unborn baby up in his thigh.Fabulae 167.1 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"(Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 4. 5, quoted in the Theoi.com collection of Zagreus sources])
Still another variant of the narrative is found in CallimachusCallimachus, Fragments, in the etymol. ζαγρεὺς, Zagreos; see Karl Otfried Müller, John Leitch, Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology (1844), p.319, n.5 and the 5th century CE Greek writer Nonnus.Nonnus, Dionysiaca 24. 43 ff — translation in Zagreus In this version, the first Dionysus 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. Nonnus 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, Pluto, Danaë, Aigina, Antiope, Leda, Dia, Alcmene, Laodameia, the mother of Sarpedon, and Olympias.Nonnus, Dionysiaca 7.110–128
Locations
The most usual setting for the story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of Thebes, called the Cadmeia.Semele was "made into a woman by the Thebans and called the daughter of Kadmos, though her original character as an earth-goddess is transparently evident" according to William Keith Chambers Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion, rev. ed. 1953:56. When Pausanias visited Thebes in the 2nd century CE, 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,Kerenyi 1976 p 193 and note 13 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.Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.37; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 35
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 some, on windy Icarus; and some, in Naxos, O Heaven-born, Insewn; and others by the deep-eddying river Alpheus that pregnant Semele bare you to Zeus the thunder-lover. And others yet, lord, say you were born in Thebes; but all these lie. The Father of men and gods gave you birth remote from men and secretly from white-armed Hera. There is a certain Nysa, a mountain most high and richly grown with woods, far off in Phoenice, near the streams of Aegyptus..."
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.