Semele

Jupiter and Semele (1894-95), by Gustave Moreau

Semele (pron.: /ˈsɛməliː/; 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. In another version of his mythic origin, he is the son of Persephone.^[2] The name "Semele", like other elements of Dionysiac cult (e.g., thyrsus and dithyramb), is not Greek^[3] but Thraco-Phrygian,^[4] derived from a PIE root meaning "earth".^[5][6] Her son was a god who died in order to be reborn.^[7]

It seems that certain elements of the cult of Dionysos and Semele were adopted by the Thracians from the local populations when they moved to Asia Minor, where they were named Phrygians.^[8] These were transmitted later to the Greek colonists. Herodotus, who gives the account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 BCE^[9] In Rome, the goddess Stimula was identified as Semele.

Seduction by Zeus and birth of Dionysus [edit]

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.^[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 godhood. 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 Zeus 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]

Impregnation by Zeus [edit]

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 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.^[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, the nymph Pluto, Danaë, Aigina, Antiope, Leda, Dia, Alcmene, Laodameia, mother of Sarpedon, and Olympias.

Locations [edit]

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.^[25]

Drawing from an Etruscan mirror: Semele embracing her son Dionysus, with Apollo looking on and a satyr playing an aulos

Semele in Etruscan culture [edit]

Semele is attested with the Etruscan name form Semla, depicted on the back of a bronze mirror from the fourth century BCE.

Semele in Roman culture [edit]

In ancient Rome, a grove (lucus) near Ostia, situated between the Aventine Hill and the mouth of the Tiber River,^[26] was dedicated to a goddess named Stimula. W.H. Roscher includes the name Stimula among the indigitamenta, the lists of Roman deities maintained by priests to assure that the correct divinity was invoked in public rituals.^[27] In his poem on the Roman calendar, Ovid (d. 17 CE) identifies this goddess with Semele:

Roman sarcophagus (ca. 190 CE) depicting the triumphal procession of Bacchus as he returns from India, with scenes of his birth in the smaller top panels (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland)

Augustine notes that the goddess is named after stimulae, "goads, whips," by means of which a person is driven to excessive actions.^[29] The goddess's grove was the site of the Dionysian scandal^[30] that led to official attempts to suppress the cult. The Romans viewed the Bacchanals with suspicion, based on reports of ecstatic behaviors contrary to Roman social norms and the secrecy of initiatory rite. In 186 BCE, the Roman senate took severe actions to limit the cult, without banning it. Religious beliefs and myths associated with Dionysus were successfully adapted and remained pervasive in Roman culture, as evidenced for instance by the Dionysian scenes of Roman wall painting^[31] and on sarcophagi from the 1st to the 4th centuries CE.

The Greek cult of Dionysus had flourished among the Etruscans in the archaic period, and had been made compatible with Etruscan religious beliefs. One of the main principles of the Dionysian mysteries that spread to Latium and Rome was the concept of rebirth, to which the complex myths surrounding the god's own birth were central. Birth and childhood deities were important to Roman religion; Ovid identifies Semele's sister Ino as the nurturing goddess Mater Matuta. This goddess had a major cult center at Satricum that was built 500–490 BCE. The female consort who appears with Bacchus in the acroterial statues there may be either Semele or Ariadne. The pair were part of the Aventine Triad in Rome as Liber and Libera, along with Ceres. The temple of the triad is located near the Grove of Stimula,^[32] and the grove and its shrine (sacrarium) were located outside Rome's sacred boundary (pomerium), perhaps as the "dark side" of the Aventine Triad.^[33]

Jove and Semele (1695) by Sebastiano Ricci

Semele in the classical tradition [edit]

In the later mythological tradition of the Christian era, ancient deities and their narratives were often interpreted allegorically. In the Neoplatonic philosophy of Henry More (1614–1687), for instance, Semele was thought to embody "intellectual imagination", and was construed as the opposite of Arachne, "sense perception".^[34]

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 premiered on February 10, 1744.^[35]

Notes [edit]

References [edit]

• Burkert, Walter (1985), Greek Religion, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-36280-2 
• Dalby, Andrew (2005), The Story of Bacchus, London: British Museum Press, ISBN 0-7141-2255-6  (US ISBN 0-89236-742-3)
• Graves, Robert, 1960. The Greek Myths
• Kerenyi, Carl, 1976. Dionysus: Archetypal Image of the Indestructible Life, (Bollingen, Princeton)
• Kerenyi, Carl, 1951. The Gods of the Greeks pp. 256ff.
• Seltman, Charles, 1956. The Twelve Olympians and their Guests. Shenval Press Ltd.

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Semele

• Homeric Hymns
• On Thyone
• Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (ca 50 images of Semele)

v t e Dacia topics Tribes Aedi Albocense Anartes Apuli Artakioi Biephi Biessoi Buri Carpi Ciaginsi Clariae Costoboci Cotini Crobidae Daci Getae Moesi Osi Peukini Piephigi Potulatense Predasense Rhadacense Saldense Scaugdae Sense Suci Terizi Teurisci Trixae Tyragetae Troglodytae Kings Burebista Comosicus Coson Cotiso Cothelas Dapyx Decebalus Deceneus Dicomes Dromichaetes Dual Duras Moskon Oroles Rhemaxos Rholes Rubobostes Scorillo Zalmodegicus Zyraxes Culture and civilisation Artifacts Art, jewellery, treasures, tools bracelets Clothing Language Belagines Words of possible Dacian origin Dacian plant names Dacian names Dacian script Sinaia lead plates Daco-Thracian Thracian language Thraco-Illyrian Religion Deities Bendis Deceneus Derzelas Dionysus Gebeleizis Kotys Pleistoros Sabazios Semele Seirenes Silenus Zalmoxis Dacian Draco Kogaionon Towns and fortresses Sarmizegetusa Argidava Buridava Cumidava Piroboridava Sucidava More towns... Davae Dacian Fortresses of the Orăştie Mountains Murus dacicus Foreign relations Greeks Celts Germanic tribes Romans Warfare Falx Sica Thracian warfare Wars with the Roman Empire Domitian First Battle of Tapae Trajan First War Second Battle of Tapae Battle of Adamclisi Second War Battle of Sarmisegetusa Roman Dacia Dacia Traiana Moesia Scythia Minor Dacia Aureliana Diocese of Dacia Dacia Mediterranea Dacia Ripensis Trajan Bridge Column Towns and cities Castra Limes Alutanus Moesiae Porolissensis Sarmatiae Transalutanus Trajan's Wall Brazda lui Novac Culture Daco-Roman Thraco-Roman Eastern Romance substratum Research Archaeology sites in Romania Books Dacology Protochronism Thracology Category Portal Commons WikiProject Fortresses, settlements, sanctuaries, tombs Google Earth Community post