العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolSEMELE
''
:'''Stimula' redirects here. For the genus of grass skipper butterflies, see ''Stimula (butterfly).
In Greek mythology, 'Semele', daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother[1] of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his two parallel origin myths. 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.
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.[4]
Zeus' consort, Hera, a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when the latter became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone,[5] Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her husband 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.[6]
Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus, however, by sewing him into his thigh (the "Insewn" epithet of the Homeric Hymn). A few months later, Dionysus was born. This leads to his being called "the twice-born". [7]
When he grew up, Dionysus rescued his mother from Hades,[8] and she became a goddess on Mount Olympus, with the new name ''Thyone'', presiding over the frenzy inspired by her son Dionysus.[9]
In another version of the same story, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, the queen of the underworld. A jealous Hera again attempted to kill the child, this time by sending Titans to rip Dionysus to pieces after luring the baby with toys. Zeus drove the Titans away with his thunderbolts, but only after the Titans ate everything but the heart, which was saved, variously, by Athena, Rhea, or Demeter. Zeus used the heart to recreate him in the womb of Semele, hence he was again "the twice-born". Sometimes people said that he gave Semele the heart to eat to impregnate her. The rebirth in both versions of the story is the primary reason he was worshipped in mystery religions, as his death and rebirth were events of mystical reverence. This narrative was apparently used in certain Greek and Roman mystery religions. Variants of it are found in Callimachus and Nonnus, who refer to this Dionysus under the title Zagreus, and also in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus.[10]
The most usual setting for the story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of Thebes, called the ''Cadmeia''.[11] 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,[12] 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.[13]
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.[14]
''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.[15]
When the initiatory cult of Dionysus was imported to Rome, shortly before 186 BCE, to great public scandal,[16] 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:"[17]
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.
1. She is termed the "Virgin Mother of Dionysus" by Barbara Walker, in ''The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets,'' (Harper/Collins), 1983 and the assertion is repeated on the Internet, but no classical source alludes to her ''parthenogenesis'' except in Callimachus and Nonnus, who refer to this Dionysus under the title Zagreus, and also in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus.
2. Burkert 1985
3. Kerenyi 1976 p 107; Seltman 1956
4. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 7.110-8.177
5. Or in the guise of Semele's nurse, Beroë, in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' III.256ff and Hyginus, ''Fabulae''167.
6. Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' III.308-312; Hyginus, ''Fabulae'' 179; Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.178-406
7. 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).
8. Hyginus, ''Astronomy'' 2.5; Arnobius, ''Against the Gentiles'' 5.28
9. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.407-418
10. Zagreus
11. 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.
12. Kerenyi 1976 p 193 and note 13
13. Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'' 2.37; Plutarch, ''Isis and Osiris'' 35
14. Graves 1960, 14.c.5
15. Timothy Gantz, "Divine Guilt in Aischylos" ''The Classical Quarterly'' New Series, '31'.1 (1981:18-32) p 25f.
16. 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."
17. Ovid, ''Fasti'' , 6.503
★ Homeric Hymns
★ On Thyone
★
★ (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.
:'''Stimula' redirects here. For the genus of grass skipper butterflies, see ''Stimula (butterfly).
In Greek mythology, 'Semele', daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother[1] of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his two parallel origin myths. 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.
| Contents |
| Seduction by Zeus and birth of Dionysus |
| Virgin Impregnation by Zeus |
| Locations |
| Semele in Roman culture |
| Semele in later art |
| Notes |
| External links |
| References |
Seduction by 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.[4]
Zeus' consort, Hera, a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when the latter became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone,[5] Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her husband 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.[6]
Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus, however, by sewing him into his thigh (the "Insewn" epithet of the Homeric Hymn). A few months later, Dionysus was born. This leads to his being called "the twice-born". [7]
When he grew up, Dionysus rescued his mother from Hades,[8] and she became a goddess on Mount Olympus, with the new name ''Thyone'', presiding over the frenzy inspired by her son Dionysus.[9]
Virgin Impregnation by Zeus
In another version of the same story, Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, the queen of the underworld. A jealous Hera again attempted to kill the child, this time by sending Titans to rip Dionysus to pieces after luring the baby with toys. Zeus drove the Titans away with his thunderbolts, but only after the Titans ate everything but the heart, which was saved, variously, by Athena, Rhea, or Demeter. Zeus used the heart to recreate him in the womb of Semele, hence he was again "the twice-born". Sometimes people said that he gave Semele the heart to eat to impregnate her. The rebirth in both versions of the story is the primary reason he was worshipped in mystery religions, as his death and rebirth were events of mystical reverence. This narrative was apparently used in certain Greek and Roman mystery religions. Variants of it are found in Callimachus and Nonnus, who refer to this Dionysus under the title Zagreus, and also in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus.[10]
Locations
The most usual setting for the story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of Thebes, called the ''Cadmeia''.[11] 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,[12] 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.[13]
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.[14]
''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.[15]
Semele in Roman culture
When the initiatory cult of Dionysus was imported to Rome, shortly before 186 BCE, to great public scandal,[16] 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:"[17]
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.
Notes
1. She is termed the "Virgin Mother of Dionysus" by Barbara Walker, in ''The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets,'' (Harper/Collins), 1983 and the assertion is repeated on the Internet, but no classical source alludes to her ''parthenogenesis'' except in Callimachus and Nonnus, who refer to this Dionysus under the title Zagreus, and also in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus.
2. Burkert 1985
3. Kerenyi 1976 p 107; Seltman 1956
4. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 7.110-8.177
5. Or in the guise of Semele's nurse, Beroë, in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' III.256ff and Hyginus, ''Fabulae''167.
6. Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' III.308-312; Hyginus, ''Fabulae'' 179; Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.178-406
7. 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).
8. Hyginus, ''Astronomy'' 2.5; Arnobius, ''Against the Gentiles'' 5.28
9. Nonnus, ''Dionysiaca'' 8.407-418
10. Zagreus
11. 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.
12. Kerenyi 1976 p 193 and note 13
13. Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'' 2.37; Plutarch, ''Isis and Osiris'' 35
14. Graves 1960, 14.c.5
15. Timothy Gantz, "Divine Guilt in Aischylos" ''The Classical Quarterly'' New Series, '31'.1 (1981:18-32) p 25f.
16. 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."
17. Ovid, ''Fasti'' , 6.503
External links
★ Homeric Hymns
★ On Thyone
References
★
★ (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.
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
