Semele

**Semele** (/ˈsɛməli/; Greek: Σεμέλη *Semelē*), in Greek mythology, daughter of the Boeotian hero Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother[1] of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.

Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians.[2] These were modified, expanded and elaborated by the Ionian Greek invaders and colonists. Herodotus, who gives the account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 BCE.

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.[10]

Zeus' wife, Hera, a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when she later became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone,[11] 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. She 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. Zeus tried to spare her by showing her the smallest of his bolts and the sparsest thunderstorm clouds he could find. Mortals, however, cannot look upon the gods without incinerating, and she perished, consumed in lightning-ignited flame.[12]

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".[13]

When he grew up, Dionysus rescued his mother from Hades,[14] and she became a goddess on Mount Olympus, with the new name *Thyone*, presiding over the frenzy inspired by her son Dionysus.[15]

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. There is no suggestion in the text that Semele is a virgin, however.[16] 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"[17]

Still another variant of the narrative is found in Callimachus[18] and the 5th century CE Greek writer Nonnus.[19] 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. In *Dionysiaca* 7.110[20] 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, Plouto, Danaë, Aigina, Antiope, Leda, Dia, Alcmene, Laodameia, mother of Sarpedon, and Olympias.

The most usual setting for the story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of Thebes, called the *Cadmeia*.[21] 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 BCE,[22] 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.[23]

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.[24]

*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.

## Etymology

Semele is probably the Mother Earth goddess akin to Lithuanian Zemyna and Latvian Semes, both of which are 'Mother Earth' goddesses. Likely there has been an early Semele Goddess in proto-Slavic mythology as 'earth' to this day is "земля" (zemlja) in Russian, "земља" (zemlja) in Serbian and "земя" (zemja) in Bulgarian. Also compare Phrygian 'Zemelo'. According to some linguists the name "Semele" is Thraco-Phrygian,[4] derived from a PIE root meaning "earth". Julius Pokorny reconstructs her name from the PIE root *\*dgem-*meaning "earth" and relates it with Thracian *Zemele*, "mother earth".[6][7][8]However, Burkert says that while Semele is "manifestly non-Greek", he also says that "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 *baki*- over Bacchus as a name for Dionysos".