Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Twice Born

The Eagle Lands

After Cadmus and Harmonia departed on their travels, their son-in-law Pentheus reigned in Thebes.fn1 He was not a strong king, but he was honest and did the best he could with the limited store of character and cunning on which he was able to call. While the city-state flourished well enough under him, he needed always to look over his shoulder to the children of Cadmus, his brothers- and sisters-in-law, whose greed and ambition posed a constant threat. Even his wife Agave seemed contemptuous of him and anxious for him to fail. His youngest sister-in-law, Semele, was the only one with whom he felt at all at ease, in truth because she was less worldly than her brothers Polydorus and Illyrius, and nothing like as ambitious for wealth and position as her sisters Agave, Autonoë and Ino. Semele was a beautiful, kindly and generous girl, content with her life as a priestess at the great temple of Zeus.

One day she sacrificed to Zeus a bull of especially impressive size and vigour. The offering complete, she took herself off to the River Asopos to wash the blood from her. It so happened that Zeus, pleased with the sacrifice and intending anyway to look in on Thebes to see how the city prospered, was flying over the river at the time in his favourite guise of an eagle. The sight of Semele’s naked body glistening in the water excited him hugely and he landed, turning himself quickly back into his proper form. I say ‘proper form’, for when the gods chose to reveal themselves to humans they presented themselves in a reduced, manageable guise that did not dazzle or overawe. Thus the figure that stood on the riverbank smiling at Semele appeared human. Large, stunningly handsome, powerfully built and possessed of an unusual radiance, but human all the same.

Crossing her arms over her breasts Semele called out, ‘Who are you? How dare you sneak up upon a priestess of Zeus?’

‘A priestess of Zeus, are you?’

‘I am. If you mean any harm to me I will cry out to the King of the Gods and he will rush to my aid.’

‘You don’t say so?’

‘You may be sure of it. Now leave.’

But the stranger came closer. ‘I am well pleased with you, Semele,’ he said.

Semele backed away. ‘You know my name?’

‘I know many things, loyal priestess. For I am the god you serve. I am the Sky Father, the King of Olympus. Zeus, the all-powerful.’

Semele, still half in the river, gasped and fell to her knees.

‘Come now,’ said Zeus, striding through the water towards her, ‘let me look into your eyes.’

It was splashy, frenzied and wet, but it was real love-making. When it was over Semele smiled, blushed, laughed and then wept, leaning her head on Zeus’s chest and sobbing without cease.

‘Don’t cry, dearest Semele,’ said Zeus, running his fingers through her hair. ‘You have pleased me.’

‘I’m sorry, my lord. But I love you and I know all too well that you can never love a mortal.’

Zeus gazed down at her. The eruption of lust he had felt was all over, but he was surprised to feel the stirrings of something deeper, glowing like embers in his heart. A god who operated in vertical moments with no real thought for consequences along the line, he really did experience just then a great wellspring of love for the beautiful Semele, and he told her so.

‘Semele, I do love you! I love you sincerely. Believe me now when I swear by the waters of this river that I will always look after you, care for you, protect you, honour you.’ He cupped her face in his hands and bent forward to bestow a tender kiss on her soft, receptive lips. ‘Now, farewell, my sweet. Once every new moon I will come.’

Dressed in her gown, her hair still damp and her whole being warm and bright with love and happiness, Semele walked back across the fields towards the temple. Looking up, a hand shading her eyes, she saw an eagle sweep and soar through the sky, seemingly into the sun itself, until the dazzle of it made her eyes water and she was forced to look away.

The Eagle’s Wife

Zeus meant well.

Those three words so often presaged disaster for some poor demigod, nymph or mortal. The King of the Gods did love Semele and he really meant to do his best by her. In the fervour of his new infatuation he managed conveniently to forget the torments Io had endured, maddened by the gadfly sent by his vengeful wife.

Alas, Hera may no longer have had Argus of the hundred eyes to gather intelligence for her, but she had thousands of eyes in other places. Whether it was one of the jealous sisters, Agave, Autonoë or Ino, who spied on Semele and whispered to Hera the story of the love-making in the river, or whether it was one of the Queen of Heaven’s own priestesses, is not known. But find out Hera did.

So it was that, one afternoon, Semele, returning with romantic sentiment to the place of her regular amorous encounters with Zeus, encountered a stooping old woman leaning on a stick.

‘My, what a pretty girl,’ croaked the old woman, slightly overdoing the cracked and cackling voice of a miserable crone.

‘Why thank you,’ said the unsuspicious Semele with a friendly smile.

‘Walk with me,’ said the hag, pulling Semele towards her with her cane. ‘Let me lean upon you.’

Semele was polite and considerate by nature in a culture where the elderly were in any case accorded the greatest attention and respect, so she accompanied the old woman and endured her roughness without complaint.

‘My name is Beroë,’ said the old woman.

‘And I am Semele.’

‘What a pretty name! And here is Asopos,’ Beroë indicated the clear waters of the river.

‘Yes,’ assented Semele, ‘that is the river’s name.’

‘I heard tell,’ here the old woman’s voice lowered into a harsh whisper, ‘that a priestess of Zeus was seduced here. Right here in the reeds.’

Semele went silent, but the flush that spread instantly up her neck to her cheeks betrayed her as completely as any spoken words.

‘Oh, my dear!’ screeched the crone. ‘It was you! And now that I look, I can see your belly. You are with child!’

‘I … I am …’ said Semele with a becoming mixture of diffidence and pride. ‘But … if you can keep a secret …?’

‘Oh, these old lips never tell tales. You may tell me anything you wish, my dear.’

‘Well, the fact is that the father of this child is – none other than Zeus himself.’

‘No!’ said Beroë. ‘You don’t say so? Really?’

Semele gave a very affirmative nod of the head. She did not like the old woman’s sceptical tone. ‘Truly. The King of the Gods himself.’

‘Zeus? The great god Zeus? Well, well. I wonder … No, I mustn’t say.’

‘Say what, lady?’

‘You seem such a sweet innocent. So trusting. But, my dear, how can you know that it was Zeus? Isn’t that exactly what some wicked seducer might say just to win you?’

‘Oh no, it was Zeus. I know it was Zeus.’

‘Bear with an old woman and describe him to me, my child.’

‘Well, he was tall. He had a beard. Strong. Kindly …’

‘Oh no, I’m sorry to say so, but that is hardly the description of a god.’

‘But it was Zeus, it was! He turned himself into an eagle. I saw it with my very own eyes.’

‘That’s a trick that can be taught. Fauns and demigods can do it. Even some mortal men.’

‘It was Zeus. I felt it.’

‘Hm …’ Beroë sounded doubtful. ‘I have lived amongst the gods. My mother is Tethys and my father Oceanus. I raised and nursed the young gods after they were reborn from Kronos’s stomach. It’s true. I know their ways and their natures and I tell you this, my daughter. When a god manifests himself or herself as they truly are it is like a great explosion. A wondrous thing of force and fire. Unforgettable. Unmistakable.’

‘And that’s just what I felt!’

‘What you felt was no more than the ecstasy of mortal love-making. Depend upon it. Tell me now, will this lover of yours come to you again?’

‘Oh, yes indeed. He visits me faithfully every change of the moon.’

‘If I were you,’ said the old woman, ‘I would make him promise to reveal himself to you as he really is. If he is Zeus you will know it. Otherwise I fear you have been made a fool of, and you are far too lovely and trusting and sweet-natured for that to be allowed. Now, leave me to contemplate the view. Shush, shush, go away.’

And so Semele left the crone, growing more and more hotly indignant all the while. She could not help it, but this warty and wrinkled old creature had got under her skin. So typical of old age to try to take away any pleasure that youth might feel. Her own sisters, Autonoë, Ino and Agave, had disbelieved her when she told them proudly of how she loved Zeus and Zeus loved her. They had shrieked with incredulous mocking laughter and called her a gullible fool. And now this Beroë doubted her story too.

Yet maybe, just maybe there was something in what her sisters and the old witch said. Gods surely had more to them than warm flesh and solid muscle, appealing as those were? ‘Well,’ Semele said to herself, ‘two more nights and there’ll be a new moon in the sky, and then I can prove that nasty interfering old hag wrong.’

Had Semele chanced to turn and look back towards the river, she might have witnessed the extraordinary sight of that nasty interfering old hag, now youthful, beautiful, magisterial and imperious, rising up to the clouds in a purple and gold chariot drawn by a dozen peacocks. And had she the gift of second sight, Semele might have been granted a vision of the actual BEROË, innocent old nurse of the gods, living out her life miles away in respectable retirement on the coast of Phoenicia.fn2

The Manifestationfn3

It was with some impatience that, on the night of the new moon, Semele paced up and down by the banks of River Asopos, awaiting her lover. He arrived at last, this time as a stallion – black, glossy and fine, galloping through the fields towards her as the sun set in the west behind him, seeming to set his mane on fire. Oh, how she loved him!

He let her stroke his flanks and palm his hot nostrils before he transformed himself into the shape she knew and loved so well. Hugging and holding him hard, she began to cry.

‘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.

Dionysus rushed to the dying youth’s mangled side, but he could not save him.fn9 Instead he caused the dead and twisted body to transform magically into a winding, writhing climbing plant, while the drops of blood solidified and swelled into luscious berries whose skin shone with the bloom and lustre the god had so admired. His lover had become a vine (which is still called ampelos in Greece to this day). From it Dionysus produced the first vintage and drank the first draught of wine. This witchcraft, as it were, of turning the blood of Ampelos into wine became the god’s gift to the world.

A combination of the intoxicating effects of his invention and the enmity of Hera – whose hatred of any bastard of Zeus’s, divine or otherwise, was always implacable – sent Dionysus mad for a while. To escape her curses, he spent the next few years travelling far and wide, spreading viticulture and the techniques of winemaking around the world.fn10 In Assyria he encountered the king and queen, STAPHYLOS and METHE, and their son BOTRYS. After a banquet in Dionysus’s honour Staphylus died of the first fatal hangover. As compensation, and in their honour, Dionysus named bunches of grapes staphylos, alcoholic liquid and drunkenness methe and the grape itself botrys.

Science has taken these names and immortalized them in a way that splendidly exemplifies the continuing relationship between Greek myth and our language. When nineteenth-century biologists looked down their microscopes and saw a bacterium with a tail, from which clusters of grape-like nodules sprouted, they called it Staphylococcus. ‘Methylated spirits’ and ‘methane’ take their names from Methe. Botrytis, the ‘noble rot’ that benignly affects grapes on the vine, lending premium dessert wines their incomparable (and shatteringly expensive) bouquet, owes its name to Botrys.

Throughout his adventures, the new god was accompanied not just by Silenus and his retinue of satyrs, but by an intense band of women followers too – the MAENADS.fn11

Dionysus was soon established as the god of wine, revelry, delirious intoxication, uninhibited dissipation and ‘the orgastic future’. The Romans called him by the name BACCHUS and worshipped him quite as devotedly as did the Greeks. He was to stand in a kind of polar opposition to Apollo – one representing the golden light of reason, harmonious music, lyric poetry and mathematics, the other embodying the darker energies of disorder, liberation, wild music, bloodlust, frenzy and unreason.

Of course the gods had living personalities and stories, and so they often strayed from such frozen symbolic identities. Apollo, as we shall see very soon, was himself capable of being bloody, crazed and cruel, while Dionysus could be more than just the embodiment of inebriation and debauchery. He was sometimes called ‘the Liberator’, a vegetal life-force whose licence could benevolently relieve and renew the world.fn12

Thirteen at Table

The vine leaf, the thyrsus – a staff topped with a pine cone – a chariot drawn by leopards or other exotic beasts, depraved attendants sporting roaring erections, jars flowing with wine – the Dionysiac Idea added much to the world. The importance of this new god was such that he simply had to be welcomed into Olympus. But there was already a full complement of twelve gods in residence and thirteen was, even then, looked on as an unlucky number. The gods scratched their chins and wondered what could be done. They wanted Dionysus – the truth was they liked him and the festive energy he brought to every gathering. And more than anything they liked the idea of wine being added to nectar, instead of fermented honey and plain fruit juice.

‘This comes at a perfect time,’ said Hestia, rising to her feet. ‘I feel more and more that I am needed down in the world to help people and their families and to be present in the temples that celebrate the virtues of hearth, home and hallway. Let young Bacchus take my place.’

There was an unconvincing murmur of protestation as Hestia stepped down, but she was insistent and the exchange was made to the delight of all the gods – save one. Hera regarded Dionysus as Zeus’s grossest insult to her. Apollo, Artemis and Athena were shameful enough as illegitimate additions to the dodecatheon, but that a bastard half-human god should be admitted to heaven offended her to the core. She vowed always to abstain from Dionysus’s poison drink and personally to shun the carousals with which he wrecked the peace and decorum of heaven.

When Aphrodite gave birth to a son by Dionysus, Hera cursed the baby, whose name was PRIAPUS, with ugliness and impotence and had it cast down from Olympus. Priapus became the god of male genitalia and phalluses; he was especially prized by the Romans as the minor deity of the major boner. But deflation and disappointment were his fate. He went about in a constant state of excitement which, on account of Hera’s curse, always failed him when he tried to do anything about it. This chronic and embarrassing problem made it natural that he should be for ever associated with alcohol, his father’s gift to the world that ever ‘provokes the desire but takes away the performance’.

Nonetheless, whether Hera liked it or not, Dionysus the Twice Born, the only god to have a mortal human parent, rose to take his place now as a full member of the finally fixed Olympian Twelve.