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

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.

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.

Semele (;, Semelē ), in Greek mythology, daughter of the Boeotian hero Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.

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.

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:

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The 4th or 5th century poet Nonnus describes the Athenian celebrations given to the first Dionysus Zagreus son of Persephone, the second Dionysus Bromios son of Semele, and the third Dionysus Iacchus:

On their first encounter, Semele drugs the witch-queen's food with a magical substance that causes her to speak only the truth, thus forcing her to blurt out the truth of the fallen star.

Semele plots to find the star first and restore her own youth, but the witch-queen curses her so that she will never perceive the star in any way.

Perhaps unsurely matched to the spirit of its time, Semele then fell into prolonged neglect until its first stage performances — in Cambridge, England, in 1925 and in London in 1954.

The first of these has the poet raising an altar to Bacchus ( Zagreus ) and his mother Semele, whose death was as a result of jealousy.

In 2003 this included a fully staged version of Semele by John Eccles ; in 2005 a ‘ first ’ Conference on John Eccles ; 2007 focused on The Passions of William Hayes.

Semele was performed in Washington, DC, in 1980, and at Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1985, on the latter occasion with Kathleen Battle in the title role and John Nelson conducting.

Other roles have included Lensky in Eugene Onegin, Lysander in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, David in Carl Nielsen's Saul og David, and Jupiter in Semele, the latter of which he performed to acclaim at the English National Opera in 1999.

Cultic worship of Dionysus ( and his mother Semele, a moon goddess ) was performed in the earliest Dionysian temples ( usually located beyond the city walls, on the edges of swamps and marshes ).

The latter defines Sparta to be Lacedaemonia Civitas but Isidore defines Lacedaemonia as founded by Lacedaemon, son of Semele, relying on Eusebius.

But in another account, Zeus swallows the heart himself, in order to beget his seed on Semele.

In Dionysiaca 7. 110 he classifies Zeus's affair with Semele as one in a set of twelve, the other eleven women on whom he begot children being Io, Europa, the nymph Pluto, Danaë, Aigina, Antiope, Leda, Dia, Alcmene, Laodameia, mother of Sarpedon, and Olympias.

:" For some say, at Dracanum ; and some, on windy Icarus ; and some, in Naxos, O Heaven-born, Insewn ; and others by the deep-eddying river Alpheus that pregnant Semele bare you to Zeus the thunder-lover.

Drawing from an Etruscan mirror: Semele embracing her son Dionysus, with Apollo looking on and a satyr playing an aulos

Semele is attested with the Etruscan name form Semla, depicted on the back of a bronze mirror from the fourth century BCE.

In his poem on the Roman calendar, Ovid ( d. 17 CE ) identifies this goddess with Semele:

For, after Dionysus, the son of Semele, had traversed the world, he came to Thebes and sent the Theban women mad, compelling them to celebrate his Dionysiac festivals on Mount Cithaeron.

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.

The witch-queen, on her search for the Star, encounters Madam Semele.

The enraged witch-queen puts a curse on her, which prevents her from seeing, touching or perceiving the star in any way and causing Semele to forget their meeting the moment the witch-queen leaves.

Due to the curse the witch-queen put on her, Madam Semele is unable to see Yvaine, but agrees to transport Tristran the rest of the way to Wall, as she is going there to attend the market herself.

Tristran obtains a promise from Madam Semele that he will not be harmed, will receive board and lodging, and will arrive at Wall in the same manner and condition as he was on departure.

The silver chain that binds Una finally fades away, and she demands payment for her services, which Madam Semele must give on pain of losing her powers.

It is based on the classical myth of Semele, mother of Dionysus.

:" ... the music of Semele is so full of variety, the recitative so expressive, the orchestration so inventive, the characterization so apt, the general level of invention so high, the action so full of credible situation and incident — in a word, the piece as a whole is so suited to the operatic stage — that one can only suppose its neglect to have been due to an act of abnegation on the part of opera companies.

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.

Semele was staged on four occasions ( 1959, 1961, 1964 and 1975 ) by the Handel Opera Society under Charles Farncombe, and it entered the repertory of the English National Opera ( then Sadler ’ s Wells Opera ) in 1970.

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

* Andrew Watts with Peter Hayward on harpsichord-" Where ' er You Walk " ( from Semele ) ( Composed by George Frideric Handel )