The Short Version: Oedipus’ ancestor Semele becomes the mother of the god Dionysus at the cost of her own life in an event that forever marks the physical landscape of Thebes. A god is born in the same city as Oedipus, within the same city block as Oedipus.
Divinity firmly plants its flag in the Cadmean family tree with the story of Semele, and no further progress can be made in exploring the line without her tale. Like her aunt Europa before her, Semele was young and beautiful, the loveliest of the four sisters. Like her aunt Europa before her, she caught the eye of Zeus himself. Unlike her Aunt Europa before her, Zeus came to her in human form, speaking sweetly until, in Hesiod’s words, “she was joined with him in love” (Theogony, 940).
And from that love came something else; Semele was ecstatic to find that she was pregnant. Zeus’ child, what a miracle! How famous she would be, how renowned, how beloved. Zeus had made love to her, conceived a child with her. Her family would be so proud, so impressed—
Weeks and months went by and Semele’s belly grew and grew, and her family were skeptical at best, dismissive at worst. What’s more, a beggar-woman had crossed paths with her, a traveling priestess asking for alms, who had said something that stuck in Semele’s mind:
“I know you’re excited, dear, but you must be sensible. Any man would say he’s Zeus to get in a pretty girl’s bed, how can you be sure? Make him prove himself. The next time he comes to your bed, ask him to promise you anything in the world. When he agrees, bid him to show himself to you as he would to his wife. If he loves you, if he’s Zeus in truth, he’ll do as you say. Make him swear.”
Semele had left the woman behind, thanking her for her counsel. She didn’t see the hunched back straighten, the grey fade from her hair, and the tattered robe turn to peacock-feathered silk and gold. Hera herself winged away from the palace of Thebes, confident that the seed she’d planted would take root and the latest of her wayward husband’s conquests (and the potential problem she was carrying) would be dealt with neatly. The next time Zeus came to her bedchamber, Semele looked up at him with pleading eyes and asked him if he would do anything she asked of him.
“Anything,” he said.
“Swear,” she said.
“I swear.”
And she told him her request. It was too late for him to renege; gods cannot break their word, and he had given her his. So with sadness and regret, Zeus let his mortal disguise fall away, revealing the god beneath.
Semele burst into flames on the spot and was consumed in thunder and lightning, for mortals cannot look upon the divine unscathed. Her baby lay in the ashes, but time was running out for it too. It was too soon for it to be out in the world and divine or not, it would die unprotected. Zeus took the child in his hands in a panic. He wasn’t going to lose two people he loved in the same thunderstroke, he wouldn’t allow it, he was King of Olympus and would save this life. The son of Kronos slit open his own thigh and secreted the premature child away inside, sewing the wound shut with golden thread. There it would grow to term and be born a second time.
And so the god Dionysus came into the world, son of Zeus and Semele, called Twice-Born, Roaring One, Bull-Horned and Liberator. When Oedipus steps out to address the suppliants at the beginning of Oedipus Rex, if he looks over the bowed heads of the men of Thebes, he can probably see a plume of smoke rising from the spot where the thunder struck Semele down; her tomb is said to have smoke rising from it forever, to mark the place where a woman died and a god was born.
- Emma
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