Of all
those women Zeus fell in love with, Semele was the most unfortunate. Zeus was madly in love her. ÒAnything you ask of me,Ó he told her,
ÒI will do.Ó He swore this by the
River Styx, an oath that he himself could not break.
Alas,
Semele confessed that above all other things, she wished to see him as he lived
atop Olympus, in his absolute splendor.
For you see, Semele was not a goddess, and she only saw her lover as she
saw all other men, in mortal form.
It was the jealous wife of Zeus who put this idea into her head. Hera knew that no mortal could behold
her husband and live to tell about it; but there was nothing Zeus could
do. He had sworn by the Styx.
Finally,
when the birth of their first child grew very near, Zeus came as Semele had
asked; but before he killed her with the awful glory of burning light with
which he came, Zeus snatched the unborn child from inside her. He hid him away from Hera in his own
side until the time came for him to be born. At this time he sent the child with Hermes to be cared for
by lovely nymphs in a valley far, far away.
Some say
this place, called Nysa, was the loveliest of earthÕs valleys, but no man has
ever seen it nor knows where it lies.
But here, under the care of the Hyades, who had also nursed Zeus when
his own mother had snuck him to this place, this newborn child grew.
And so
Dionysus, the god of wine and good spirits, came into being by fire and and
rain, the hot heat that ripens and wet water that keeps alive the grapes over
which he is the patron.