Semele | Mother of Dionysus, Lover of Zeus, Theban Princess | Britannica (original) (raw)

Semele, in Greek mythology, a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, at Thebes, and mother of Dionysus (Bacchus) by Zeus. Semele’s liaison with Zeus enraged Zeus’s wife, Hera, who, disguised as an old nurse, coaxed Semele into asking Zeus to visit her in the same splendour in which he would appear before Hera. Zeus had already promised to grant Semele her every wish and thus was forced to grant a wish that would kill her: the splendour of his firebolts, as god of thunder, destroyed Semele. Zeus saved their unborn child, Dionysus, from the womb and kept him in his thigh until the baby was ready to be born. The story that Dionysus, himself immortal, descended into Hades after reaching maturity and brought Semele back, and she too became an immortal or even a goddess is found on an Attic black-figure hydria from the Leagros Group (c. 520 bc) and in Pindar’s Olympian ode 2.