Semele (mythology)
Semele ( Greek Σεμέλη ) is in Greek mythology the daughter of the goddess of harmony , Harmonia , and of King Kadmos , founder of Thebes , and the mother of the wine god Dionysus . Semele's sisters are Agaue , Ino and Autonoë , their brothers Illyrios and Polydoros .
Semele became a goddess under the name Thyone .
Surname
The derivation of the name "Semele" from the reconstructed Phrygian sound form zemelos as "earth dweller (in), human" is controversial; Depending on the origin of the researchers, the Phrygian origin ( Anatolia ) is accepted or rejected. The Indo-European research has the Indo-European root * tuemelah proposed "the Swelling". Semele would be referred to as the pregnant mother of the fertility god Dionysus and not as the earth inhabitant with whom Zeus entered into a connection.
myth
Zeus appeared to Semele as a mortal, one of his many metamorphoses in order to win the woman he desired. He begat Dionysus with her.
Hera , Zeus' wife, was jealous when she found out about her husband's new love affair. She changed too - and took the form of Semele's old nurse Beroe . As this she now sowed doubt in Semele's heart, namely that Zeus was not Zeus at all. Semele asked her lover one single wish, namely to see him in all his splendor. Zeus, Semele loved, tried the talk, but she wanted certainty and well understood also to pleading, he that it finally showed what they were destroyed by its luster, the same as every earthly body of the sun to comes close, can no longer exist. It is also told like this: (as) struck by lightning , namely by a lightning bolt from Zeus, she sank to the ground. The whole Palace of Kadmos burned with her, and it is said that smoke rose from her grave for a long time.
However, the child in her womb was saved by Hermes : Zeus sewed it into his hip or thigh and gave birth to the child himself three months later (see thigh birth ). This is how the immortal Dionysus was born.
According to another story, the body of Semele and the child was placed in a box and given to the sea, which brings to mind the story of Zeus and the birth of Perseus by Danaë , who was also put in a box with her child. In Laocia the two were washed ashore, where Semele was buried and Dionysus was raised.
Later Semele was taken from the underworld and taken to Olympus , where she lives as Thyone among the gods.
literature
- Otto Jessen: Semele . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 4, Leipzig 1915, Col. 662-676 ( digitized version ).
- Anneliese Kossatz-Deissmann: Semele . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume VII, Zurich / Munich 1994, pp. 718-726.
Web links
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Carlos Parada, Maicar Förlag: Semele. In: Greek Mythology Link. (English) Sweden, 1997, accessed June 22, 2013 . Info: Parada, author of Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology (1993), was a lecturer in the Department of Classics at Lund University in Sweden.
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Aaron J. Atsma: Semele Thyone. In: Theoi Project. (English) Auckland, New Zealand, 2011, accessed June 22, 2013 . Info: Atsma, without academic training, offers (translated) original sources in his mythological Theoi Project .