Aphrodite, who married Hephaistos, nevertheless had an affair with Ares to have Eros ( Love ), Phobos ( Fear ), Deimos ( Cowardice ), and Harmonia ( Harmony ), who would later marry Cadmus to sire Ino ( who with her son, Melicertes would become a sea deity ), Semele ( Mother of Dionysos ), Autonoë ( Mother of Actaeon ), Polydorus, and Agave ( Mother of Pentheus ).

Jupiter and Semele ( 1894-95 ), by Gustave Moreau

The name " Semele ", like other elements of Dionysiac cult ( e. g., thyrsus and dithyramb ), is not Greek but Thraco-Phrygian ;, derived from a PIE root meaning " earth ".

Ariadne ( Etruscan Areatha ) is paired with Dionysus ( Etruscan Fufluns ) on engraved bronze Etruscan bronze mirrorbacks, where the Athenian culture-hero Theseus is absent, and Semele ( Etruscan Semla ), as mother of Dionysus, may accompany the pair, lending a particularly Etruscan air of family authority.

Tristran ( now returned to his human form ), Yvaine, Madam Semele and the witch-queen all arrive at the Wall market.

Una informs Madam Semele that she ( Una ) will soon be free, as her enslavement is due to end when the moon loses her child ( Yvaine ), if it happens in a week when two Mondays come together ( the marriage of Victoria and Monday ).

** Steven Paul ( producer ), John Nelson ( conductor ), John Aler, Kathleen Battle, Michael Chance, Mark S. Doss, Marilyn Horne, Neil Mackie, Sylvia McNair, Samuel Ramey, the Ambrosian Opera Chorus & the English Chamber Orchestra for Handel: Semele

Elizabeth Futral sang Semele, Vivica Genaux portrayed Juno ( and Ino ), and Robert Breault sang Jupiter.

** Steven Paul ( producer ), John Nelson ( conductor ), John Aler, Kathleen Battle, Michael Chance, Mark S. Doss, Marilyn Horne, Neil Mackie, Sylvia McNair, Samuel Ramey, the Ambrosian Opera Chorus & the English Chamber Orchestra for Handel: Semele

Hero cults were offered most prominently to men, though in practice the experience of the votary was of propitiating a cluster of family figures, which included women, the wife of a hero-husband, mother of a hero-son ( Alcmene and Semele ), daughter of a hero-father.

** Semele, conducted by William Christie ( with Les Arts Florissants ), staged by Robert Carsen, featuring Cecilia Bartoli

A proposed resolution of these conflicting versions involves considering an early Lysias, Elishah ( maybe the founder of Portalegre in 1900 BC ) and Lusus ( having as mortal father king Siceleo of Iberia, grandson of Atlante / Atlas, founder of Atlantis, to be a possible descendant of Elishah, and possibly having Bacchus as his real and divine father ) as coming in between this and another Lysias son of Bacchus ( who in this version is clearly the son of Semele who conquered Iberia, not the son of Jupiter and Io who conquered India or the son of Jupiter and Proserpina who was an agrarian and herding culture hero ), who was of a different cast but with the similarity of name to the above claimed be their reincarnation and became the new separate king of the Lusitanians since Lusus.

Next to them sits a goddess ( Ariadne or Semele ), with Dionysus / Bacchus lying across her lap.

In Greek mythology, he is presented as a son of Zeus and the mortal Semele, thus semi-divine or heroic: and as son of Zeus and Persephone or Demeter, thus both fully divine, part-chthonic and possibly identical with Iacchus of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Though the Greek myth of Semele was localized in 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:

But the amorous topic of Semele, which is practically a creation of the late Restoration Period, transparently drew on Greek myths, not Hebrew laws, and so it displeased those attending for a different kind of uplift.

The libretto is by William Congreve, drawing on the Greek myth of Semele.

It was named in August 2003 after Thyone, better known as Semele, one of Zeus ' conquests in Greek mythology.

* An alternative name for Semele in Greek mythology

When Hera learned that Semele, daughter of Cadmus King of Thebes, was pregnant by Zeus, she disguised herself as Semele's nurse and persuaded the princess to insist that Zeus show himself to her in his true form.

In her mortal self, Ino, the second wife of the Minyan king Athamas, the mother of Learches and Melicertes, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia and stepmother of Phrixus and Helle, was one of the three sisters of Semele, the mortal woman of the house of Cadmus who gave birth to Dionysus.

Ino, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, had an end just as tragic as her siblings: Semele died while pregnant with Zeus ' child, killed by her own pride and lack of trust in her lover ; Agave killed her own son, King Pentheus, while struck with Dionysian madness, and Actaeon, son of Autonoe, the third sibling, was torn apart by his own hunting dogs.

In the more familiar variant, Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, sister of Semele, and queen of Athamas, became a goddess after Hera drove her insane as a punishment for caring for the newborn Dionysus.

Alternatively, Lysithea is another name for Semele, daughter of Cadmos and Harmonia ; sister to Agave, Autonoë, Ino, and Polydorus ; mother of Dionysos by Zeus ( and who became Thyone after being rescued from Hades by her divine son ).

At the Alcyonian Lake, entry to the netherworld could be achieved by a hero who dared, such as Dionysus, who, guided by Prosymnus, went that way in search of his mother Semele.

Herodotus, who gives the account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 B. C.

At Thebes, Cadmus and Harmonia began a dynasty with a son Polydorus, and four daughters, Agave, Autonoë, Ino and Semele.

His mortal mother, Semele, was a mistress of Zeus, and while pregnant, she was killed because her sisters accused her of lying about her son's paternity and their father Cadmus using Zeus as a cover up.

However, Semele's family — her sisters Agave, Autonoe, and Ino, and her father, Cadmus — still believe that Semele blasphemously lied about the identity of the baby's father and that she died as a result.

With Cadmus, she was the mother of Ino, Polydorus, Autonoë, Agave and Semele.

With Harmonia, he was the father of Ino, Polydorus, Autonoe, Agave and Semele.

There are various other versions of his transgression: The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and pseudo-Apollodoran Bibliotheke state that his offense was that he was a rival of Zeus for Semele, his mother's sister, whereas in Euripides ' Bacchae he has boasted that he is a better hunter than Artemis:

:: for wine was given to men by the son of Semele and Zeus

Zeus rescued the heart and gave it to Semele to impregnate her ; or, the heart was saved, variously, by Athena, Rhea, or Demeter.

Zeus swore to give Semele whatever she wanted and was then obliged to follow through when he realized to his horror that her request would lead to her death.

In Rome, the goddess Stimula was identified as Semele.

In one version of the myth, Semele was a priestess of Zeus, and on one occasion was observed by Zeus as she slaughtered a bull at his altar and afterwards swam in the river Asopus to cleanse herself of the blood.

Appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her lover was actually Zeus.

Semele was worshipped at Athens at the Lenaia, when a yearling bull, emblematic of Dionysus, was sacrificed to her.

Semele was a tragedy by Aeschylus ; it has been lost, save a few lines quoted by other writers, and a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus, P. Oxy.

Zeus implanted the still-beating heart into the mortal woman Semele, from whom the child was eventually born again, despite Hera's intervention.

Some accounts say that he was reassembled and resurrected by Demeter ; others, that Zeus fed his heart to Semele in a drink, making her pregnant with Dionysus.

Dionysus came to his birthplace, Thebes, where neither Pentheus, his cousin who was now king, nor Pentheus ’ mother Agave, Dionysus ’ aunt ( Semele ’ s sister ) acknowledged his divinity.

Pentheus soon banned the worship of the god Dionysus, who was the son of his aunt Semele, and did not allow the women of Cadmeia to join in his rites.

Her sisters were Autonoë, Ino and Semele, and her brother was Polydorus.