Semele

Semele (Greek Σεμέλη ) In Greek mythology, the daughter of the goddess of harmony, Harmonia, and the King Cadmus, founder of Thebes, and the mother of the wine god Dionysus. Semele's sisters are Agave, Ino and Autonoe, her brothers Illyrios and Polydorus.

For the goddess Semele under the name Thyone.

Name

The derivation of the name " Semele " from the reconstructed Phrygian phonetic form zemelos as " earth dwellers ( in ), People " is controversial; depending on the origin of the researchers, the Phrygian origin (Anatolia) is accepted or rejected. The indogermanistische research has the Indo-European root * tuemelah proposed " the Intumescent ". Semele would be here as the pregnant mother of the fertility god Dionysus and not referred to as the resident Earth, with the Zeus received a connection.

Myth

Zeus appeared to Semele as a mortal, one of his many transformations in order to win the woman he coveted. He fathered with her Dionysus.

Hera, wife of Zeus, was jealous when she found out about the new love affair of her husband. They, too, turned - and took the shape of Semele's old nurse Beroe. As such they sowed now the doubt in Semele's heart, namely, that Zeus was not Zeus. Semele now asked for by her lover one wish, namely to be able to see it in all its splendor. Zeus loved Semele, tried to dissuade that, but they wanted certainty and got along well even to begging, so he finally showed her what it was destroyed by its luster, the same as every one earthly body to the sun comes close, can not exist any longer. They say it like this: ( as ) struck by lightning, from lightning of Zeus, she sank to the ground. With it, burned the whole palace of Cadmus and it is said that a long time high smoke rose from her grave.

The child in her womb was saved by Hermes: Zeus sewed it in his thigh and in his thigh and brought the child three months later itself to the world ( see thigh birth). So the immortal Dionysus was born.

According to another story of Semele's body was placed with the child in a box and handed over to the sea, which brings to mind the story of Zeus and the birth of Perseus by Danae, which was also exposed with their child in a crate. In Laokien the two were washed ashore where buried Semele and Dionysus was raised.

Later Semele was brought from the underworld and taken to Olympus, where she lives as Thyone among the gods.