Editing Semele (section)

==Locations==
[[File:Rubens - RKDimages, 248173.jpg|thumb|left|340px|Rubens. Jupiter and Semele (Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, 259-309). 
[[Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium]] ]]
The most usual setting for the story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of [[Thebes, Greece|Thebes]], called the ''[[Cadmeia]]''.<ref>Semele was "made into a woman by the Thebans and called the daughter of Kadmos, though her original character as an earth-goddess is transparently evident" according to William Keith Chambers Guthrie, ''Orpheus and Greek Religion'', rev. ed. 1953:56.<!--check this ref.--> [[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.</ref> When [[Pausanias (geographer)|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,<ref>Kerenyi 1976 p 193 and note 13</ref> the myth of Semele must be [[Mycenaean Greece|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.<ref>Pausanias, ''[[Description of Greece]]'' 2.37; [[Plutarch]], ''Isis and Osiris'' 35 {{Harv|Dalby|2005|p=135}}</ref>

Though the Greek myth of Semele was localized in [[Thebes, Greece|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 [[Icaria|Icarus]]; and some, in [[Naxos, Greece|Naxos]], O Heaven-born, Insewn; and others by the deep-eddying river [[Alpheus (mythology)|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 (mythology)|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.<ref>Graves 1960, 14.c.5</ref>

A unique tale, "found nowhere else in Greece" and considered to be a local version of her legend,<ref>Holley, N. M. “The Floating Chest”. In: ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'' 69 (1949): 39–40. doi:10.2307/629461.</ref> is narrated by geographer [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] in his ''[[Description of Greece]]'':<ref>Beaulieu, Marie-Claire. "The Floating Chest: Maidens, Marriage, and the Sea". In: ''The Sea in the Greek Imagination''. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. pp. 97-98. Accessed May 15, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17xx5hc.7.</ref> after giving birth to her semi-divine son, [[Dionysus]], fathered by [[Zeus]], Semele was banished from the realm by her father [[Cadmus]]. Their sentence was to be put into a chest or a box ({{Lang|la|larnax}}) and cast in the sea. Luckily, the casket they were in washed up by the waves at [[Prasiae]].<ref>{{Cite Pausanias|3|24|3}}-4.</ref><ref>Larson, Jennifer. ''Greek Heroine Cults''. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. pp. 94-95.</ref> However, it has been suggested that this tale might have been a borrowing from the story of Danaë and Perseus.<ref>Larson, Jennifer. ''Greek Heroine Cults''. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. p. 95.</ref><ref>[[Susan Guettel Cole|Guettel Cole, Susan]]. "Under the Open Sky: Imagining the Dionysian Landscape". In: ''Human Development in Sacred Landscapes: Between Ritual Tradition, Creativity and Emotionality''. V&R Unipress. 2015. p. 65. {{ISBN|978-3-7370-0252-3}} DOI: https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737002523.61</ref>

''Semele'' was a tragedy by [[Aeschylus]]; it has been lost, save a few lines quoted by other writers, and a [[Oxyrhynchus|papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus]], P. Oxy. 2164.<ref>Timothy Gantz, "Divine Guilt in Aischylos" ''The Classical Quarterly'' New Series, '''31'''.1 (1981:18-32) p 25f.</ref>

[[File:Illustrerad Verldshistoria band II Ill 008.png|thumb|upright=.75|right|Drawing from an Etruscan mirror: Semele embracing her son Dionysus, with Apollo looking on and a satyr playing an ''[[aulos]]'']]