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folktalesandmythsandlegends · 5 years ago

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Seleme and Dionysus

So one day Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods, visited Earth and he saw a drop-dead beautiful woman named Semele. Zeus is all like "I have to have her" because Zeus can't control himself. Ever. So he changes his appearance so Hera, his wife and Queen of the Olympians won't find out and keeps it a secret. So Semele and Zeus start to see each other, and everything is great, until Hera finds out about this. Hera, being the jealous wife/sister of Zeus decides that her honor is ruined, and she's so angry that she's out for blood. She has to destroy Semele at all costs. So she disguises herself as a mortal woman. Not just any mortal woman, she is a handmaiden to Semele herself. Hera becomes BFF's with Semele. She does her hair and nails and helps pick out her outfits and likes all her selfies. Of course, Hera is one of the few Olympians who actually thinks about what to do and had formulated a plan. She wanted all the details on Zeus and Semele's relationship.

So one day while doing each other’s nails Hera asks Semele, “Do you think your boyfriend actually loves you? I heard a rumor he was actually Zeus, is that true?”

So thinking that they are great friends Semele says, "Listen, Zeus totally loves me. He loves me so much that he promised to do whatever I ask of him to do. He even played that Ain't No Mountain High Enough song for me and it was so romantic. I guess you could say it's pretty serious."

Hera thinks to herself "Yes! My totally evil plan to defeat Semele and get back at Zeus is going to be better than I thought! I am so awesome and beautiful." So she goes back to Semele and says that if Zeus would do anything for her she should ask him to show off all his awesomeness, the same way he did when he was dating, Hera. And Semele thinks it’s a great idea.

So Zeus comes by later and is like "Hey babe, how's it going?"

So Semele says everything is great. So later when they are going on a romantic date at the local drive-in movie theatre Semele says "Hey, do you remember that sacred oath you said about doing anything I ask you?"

And he's all like "Sure I remember. What do you want? Do you want to be Queen of Greece? Or more servants and money?" And she says "No. I want to see all your awesomeness the exact same way you did with Hera." Zeus doesn't want to, but because he promised her, he agreed to show off all his power and awesomeness. He has strobe lights, a disco ball, a fog machine, confetti, there was loud music playing in the background. It was too much awesomeness for Semele so she screamed, burst into flame, and died. Zeus knew he was her baby Daddy though so he grabbed the baby she was six months pregnant with, and sewed him into his thigh to hide him from Hera. So Dionysus grows and when it's time for him to be born, Zeus took out the stitches. He then called Hermes over and said "Hera's going to be so ticked if she finds out Dionysus is still alive. So take him to his Aunt Ino and her husband. And to make sure he is super protected makes him look like a girl." Hermes is like "Kay." And does what Zeus said.

Eventually, Hera finds out that Dionysus survived, and she is super ticked. Like ten times as ticked as Zeus thought she would be. She was so ticked that she made Ino and her husband totally crazy. So Zeus took Dionysus and made him a goat. He gave goat Dionysus to some Asian nymphs to take care of, but Hera found him again and made him crazy times 10. So Dionysus is walking around all over the Mediterranean world in places like Egypt and Syria doing these awful crimes like murder and theft when he runs into Rhea, a great goddess, in Phrygia and she makes Dionysus better and forgave him for the bad things he did. She made him the leader of her cult and gave him oriental clothes and an ivy wreath to wear. And he did wear it and never changed. Ever. He taught everyone how to make wine from grapes and how to farm with yolk and ox. People joined his cult, and everyone was happy.

Well most everyone. This dude named Lycurgus, a King of Thrace did not like Dionysus' cult so he didn't let Dionysus sit with him at the plastic’s table, and imprisoned his followers. Dionysus did not like that, so he made Lycurgus so crazy he thought his son was a grapevine that needed pruning, and he murdered his son by chopping off his arms and legs. So the moment Lycurgus' son died he realized what he had done. But Dionysus was not done. He made all of Thrace barren for such a long time that Lycurgus went to go see an oracle. The King was all like "I must have ticked off Dionysus a lot. What do I need to do to make Thrace lush again?" The oracle responded, "You need to die, idiot." So because the king didn't want to die he tried to keep it a secret. And naturally, because it was a secret, everybody in the kingdom found out and they all killed him. It was a mass meeting of 1-800-choke dat hoe.

So then Dionysus went to Thebes, and a profit told the King Pentheus that if he had to do all the religious rites for Dionysus. If he didn't, then all the mothers would tear their children's arms and legs off and decorate the woods with the limbs. Pentheus' own mother would kill him that way. But Pentheus didn't believe him. So Dionysus arrives, and the party doesn’t start till he walks in. So everyone in Thebes is having a party and doing the Dionysus cult thing, and King Pentheus gets word of that. Now Pentheus is really angry. He goes around yelling at everyone and saying that he thought Thebes would have had to be taken by force of an army. “It would at least be more honorable than this!”

So he’s ticked off and demands that Dionysus be captured to determine if he is a fake. But Pentheus’ bros tried to change his mind, but it just made Pentheus even angrier. So his guards went out to try to find Dionysus, but they couldn’t find him because everyone, EVERYONE was too turnt, so they grabbed one of Dionysus’ priests because the guards were afraid to return to the king empty-handed.

So Pentheus roasts Dionysus in front of the priest when the priest decides to tell Pentheus the story of how he met Dionysus.

“It’s like this.” He said. “I was a pirate on a ship when the ship got stuck? So me and my crew spent the night and the next morning we woke up and we were thirsty so we went to go look for water, right? So then this dude wearing purple just shows up on the beach! So my crew got together without me and said “dudes I think this guy is a Prince! We could make a fortune if we sold him!” Right? So they go ashore and this guy is high or turnt, or almost asleep so it should have been easy to chain him right? Wrong! No matter how they tried to put the chains on they kept falling off. They were seriously tripped up by this. But somehow they got him on our boat, and I saw him and was like “This guy looks like a god, and that thing with the chains, he has to be a god.” So then I was yelling at my crew like “Dudes, this guy is a god for real for real! He even looks like a god, and you can’t see that? You might have captured Zeus, or his bro Poseidon, or Zeus’ son Apollo, fools! We can’t take him, ya’ll are trippin,” but my captain was like “Nah bro, you’re crazy just make like Miley Cyrus and Do Your Thing, and we’ll deal with this guy. This dude is rich, not immortal, but the gods must have sent him here to make us rich, you know what I’m saying?”

“So right then the dude wakes up, and is like “Where am I, how did I get here?” But the captain was like “You can hitch a ride with us. Where do you want to go?” So the dude said, “My home is on the island of Naxos.” So the captain was like “Lit, we’ll take you there.” But I knew that this fool was lying, so I didn’t do my job. So the captain made someone else steer the ship. So we are sailing when Purple dude says “Wait we’re not heading towards Naxos! How could you? I came out to have a good time and honestly, I’m feeling so attacked right now.” Then the ship stopped right there, like no movement, like it was dead. So we’re sitting there when suddenly homie points to the sail because there is a grapevine growing, but with vines of ivy growing and a bunch of other fruit and everything was getting covered and then it started to smell sweet, and the deck started to get covered in wine, and everyone was terrified, I mean terrified. We all looked at the purple dude who was really angry. He had on a wreath of ivy and grapes and was shaking a pole called a thyrsi that was covered in ivy and grapevines. Then all these animals appeared out of nowhere by his feet. Like a lynx a tiger and a panther. Then Yogi bear showed up and he was angry, and the dude was too. So he changed into this huge lion and killed the captain. So now everyone is running around trying to find a way to get away, ‘cuz this was some messed up stuff. They were tearing away vines to try to get to the oars that wouldn’t move, when their hands turned to fins, straight up! So they are all trying to jump overboard now, and as soon as they hit the water, BOOM! They were dolphins, for real! Nineteen of my bros became nineteen dolphins. So the young dude turns back into himself and was like “You’re cool, so I saved you. By the way I’m the son of Zeus, Dionysus.” So that was that, and since then me and my Immortal bro Dionysus are tight. And we get more mortal followers all the time, straight up.”

Pentheus was ticked off. “YOU CAN’T SIT WITH US! Take him away and beat him up, then kill him for that stupid story!”

So the guards were preparing his torture and saying to each other that they needed to let him go, when suddenly there was an earthquake, and the door opened and the chains fell and the priest walked out with a fog machine blowing smoke behind him. So the guards ran up to Pentheus and told him what happened. And Pentheus was like “Am I the only one that can do things the right way?” So he goes out and starts stalking Dionysus and all his followers on Facebook and Twitter, and Tumblr, and Pinterest, etc. He wants to know how Dionysus gets all his followers and friends. So he is looking at the likes and spying on them in a tree because he had gotten so mad at hearing the hysteric songs and shrill screams. He keeps looking and watching, trying to figure out how to defeat this “boy” when his mother sees him in the tree. She gets so mad at the fact that he is spying on all Dionysus’ followers and watching them do their rites and rituals that she takes out her iStone 11 and calls her friends to help her chase this boar that is destroying the land. So Pentheus runs like a mad man, but the women are so much faster and they catch him and cut off his hands. Pentheus starts to yell out to his mother in a desperate attempt for her to recognize him, but just like Lycurgus before her, she didn’t recognize her own son. He begged her, but she said the last words Pentheus ever heard. “This trophy of the hunt is mine!” So she cut off his head and put it on a thyrsus and scattered his body everywhere. Later at the party, she realized what she did and showed everyone. They were so afraid, but Dionysus had taken over their kingdom and everyone was happy. Well except for Hera who was angry that Dionysus could turn people to dolphins and make mothers and fathers kill their own children. Everywhere he went she tried to stop him by punishing everyone else, but she never directly punished Dionysus. Dionysus continued on his road trip to get more followers. He even went back to Naxos and married a girl named Ariadne. On one of the last of his travels, he went down into a Burning Ring of Fire, also known as Hades, or the underworld. In the underworld, he found his mother Semele, who he renamed Thyone. He brought her up to Mt. Olympus to live happily ever after.

The version of this myth was taken from Mythology and You: Classical Mythology and Its Relevance To Today’s World by Donna Rosenberg and Sorelle Baker

Notes

Some versions of the myth cite Semele as a princess of Thebes, some not only say she was a princess but the daughter of the founders of Thebes, Cadmus, Prince of Thrace brother to Europa, and Harmonia, who was the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. A scholarly analysis of another version says Semele could have been a priestess.

In other versions of the myth, after the “second birth” of Dionysus, instead of giving Dionysus to Ino and her husband, Zeus had Hermes give him to the nymphs of Nysa where he stayed until manhood. Another version says Dionysus was given to Ino and her younger sister Argave who eventually betrayed Dionysus. Ino was punished, most likely by Zeus, by making her go mad and jumping into the sea with her own son where they were saved by the sea nymphs and stayed forever helping sailors.

In another version of this myth, when Dionysus made his way to Thrace, Lycurgus still opposed the worship Dionysus was leading, insulted, and set out to capture Dionysus. However, Dionysus retreated to the ocean only to return later and defeat Lycurgus. As punishment, Dionysus imprisoned him in a cave until he went mad and realized Dionysus was a god whence Zeus struck Lycurgus blind. Lycurgus died soon after.

Almost every version talkies about the pirates who captured Dionysus, but it varies on how. One version says that Dionysus hired the Pirates after retreating to the ocean from Lycurgus and coming up on the wrong side. Other versions say he was taken while conscience and cocky and others say he was fast asleep when captured. One aspect that remains consistent is the fact that Dionysus was going to be used to get money either via ransom or sold into slavery in Egypt or other lands and at least one person objected to this arguing he might be a god. All versions have Dionysus making the sailors go bonkers.

The “Asian Nymphs” are most likely from Persia or Asia Minor which is modern day Turkey. This is my own educated guess based on the idea that, according to the myth, he wandered in that region.

Some versions have Dionysus travel as far as India.

After leaving Nysa a version of the Myth has him travel to Crete to grant Midas’ wish to turn everything he touches to gold. Chronologically, I am uncertain as to when Dionysus granted Midas’ wish, but the myth of King Midas does have Dionysus grant the wish.

Naxos, Thrace, Thebes, and Phrygia are not close together and on a map this is clearly seen. Ultimately, this was the reason I choose to start my Greek Myths with this story. We can see the sphere of influence that the Hellenic world had on the the surrounding area and get a better idea on how large the Hellenic area is even if the majority of the myth only takes place in the Aegean.

Yellow-Thrace

Red- Thebes

Purple- Naxos

Blue- Phrygia (slightly more south east than placed but unable to be seen from the above map.)

Sources Referenced

D’aularies’ Book Of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’aularie’s

Mythology And You: Classical Mythology and Its Relevance To Today’s World by Donna Rosenberg and Sorelle Baker

Mythology: Timeless Tales Of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton

Tales Of The Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green

#Greek Myths #greek mythology #dionysus #greek myth retellings #Dionysus Myth

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