Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

‘My darling girl,’ said Zeus, his finger running down to her belly, where it traced the outline of their child, ‘not weeping again? What am I doing wrong?’

‘You really are the god Zeus?’

‘I am.’

‘Will you promise to grant any wish?’

‘Oh, must you really?’ said Zeus with a sigh.

‘It’s nothing – not power or wisdom or jewels, or anything like that. And I don’t want you to destroy anyone. It’s a small thing, really it is.’

‘Then,’ said Zeus, chucking her affectionately under the chin, ‘I will grant your wish.’

‘You promise?’

‘I promise. I promise by this river – no, I’ve already sworn one thing by it. I shall promise you by the great Stygian stream herself.’fn4 Raising his hand with mock solemnity, he intoned, ‘Beloved Semele, I swear by sacred Styx that I will grant your next wish.’

‘Then,’ said Semele with a deep breath, ‘show yourself to me.’

‘How’s that?’

‘I want to see you as you really are. Not as a man, but as a god, in your true divinity.’

The smile froze on Zeus’s face. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘Anything but that! Do not wish such a thing. No, no, no!’

It was the tone of voice that gods often used when they realized they had been trapped into a rash promise. Apollo cried out in the same way, you will remember, when Phaeton called upon him to honour his oath. Suspicion flared up in Semele.

‘You promised, you swore by Styx! You swore, you swore an oath!’

‘But my darling girl, you don’t know what you’re asking.’

‘You swore!’ Semele actually stamped her foot.

The god looked up at the sky and groaned. ‘I did. I pledged my word and my word is sacred.’

As he spoke Zeus began to gather himself into the form of a great thundercloud. From the centre of this dark mass flashed the brightest light imaginable. Semele looked on, her face breaking into a broad and ecstatic smile of joy. Only a god could change like this. Only Zeus himself could grow and grow with such dazzling fire and golden greatness.

But the brightness was becoming so fierce, so terrible in the ferocity of its glare, that she threw up an arm to shade her eyes. Yet still the brilliance intensified. With a crack so loud that her ears burst and filled with blood, the radiance exploded in bolts of lightning that instantly struck the girl blind. Deaf and sightless she staggered backwards, but too late to avoid the blazing force of a thunderbolt so powerful that it split her body open, killing her at once.

Above him, around him, inside him, Zeus heard the triumphant laughter of his wife. Of course. He might have known. Somehow Hera had tricked this poor girl into forcing the awful promise from him. Well, she would not get their child. With a peal of thunder Zeus returned to flesh and blood and plucked the foetus from Semele’s belly. It was too young to breathe the air, so Zeus took a knife and sliced open his thigh and tucked the embryo inside. Holding it tight within this makeshift womb Zeus knelt down to sew the child safely into his warm flesh.fn5

The Newest God

Three months later Zeus and Hermes travelled to Nysus on the north coast of Africa, an area that lies, it is generally believed, somewhere between Libya and Egypt. There Hermes cut open the stitching on Zeus’s thigh and delivered him of a son, DIONYSUS.fn6 The infant was suckled by the rain nymphs of Nysus;fn7 and, once weaned, was tutored by pot-bellied Silenus, who was to become his closest companion and follower – a kind of Falstaff to the young god’s Prince Hal. Silenus had his own train of followers too, the sileni – satyr-like creatures for ever associated with antic riot, rout and revelry.

It was as a youth that Dionysus made the discovery with which he will always be associated. He found out how to make wine from grapes. It is possible that CHIRON the centaur taught him the trick; but another, more charming story relates it to the young god’s passionate love for a youth called AMPELOS.fn8 Dionysus was so besotted that he arranged all kinds of sporting contests between himself and Ampelos, always letting the youth win. This seems to have caused the boy to become rather spoiled, or at least reckless and foolhardy. Riding a wild bull one day he made the error of boasting that he rode his horned steer more skilfully than the goddess Selene rode her horned moon. Choosing a punishment straight from Hera’s vicious playbook, Selene sent a gadfly to sting the bull, which caused the maddened animal to throw and gore Ampelos.