Nonnos
Translated by W. H. D. Rouse, 1940
Zeus or ‘Cronion’ (‘Son of Cronos’) once abducted Europa by disguising himself as a bull (see Story 38). In this story, Eros (Cupid) fills him with passion for Semele, daughter of Cadmus, the founder-king of Thebes. The episode comes from the longest surviving poem in Greek. Little is known of its author, Nonnos, other than that he came from Panopolis in Egypt and worked in the fifth century AD. This story was as such a late response to an early myth. Dionysus, the god of wine and revelry, was embraced as a life force. Semele’s dream presaged what was to come. The myth of Semele had also appeared in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, some four centuries before.
While Eros was fluttering along to the house of Zeus, Semele also was out with the rosy morning, shaking the cracks of her silver whip while she drove her mules through the city; and the light straight track of her cartwheels only scratched the very top of the dust. She had brushed away from her eyes the oblivious wing of sleep, and sent her mind wandering after the image of a dream with riddling oracles. She thought she saw in a garden a tree with fair green leaves, laden with newgrown clusters of swelling fruit yet unripe, and drenched in the fostering dews of Zeus. Suddenly a flame fell through the air from heaven, and laid the whole tree flat, but did not touch its fruit; then a bird flying with outspread wings caught up the fruit half-grown, and carried it yet lacking full maturity to Cronion. The Father received it in his kindly bosom, and sewed it up in his thigh; then instead of the fruit, a bull-shaped horned figure of a man came forth complete over his loins. Semele was the tree!
The girl leapt from her couch trembling, and told her father the terrifying tale of leafy dreams and fiery blast. King Cadmos was shaken when he heard of Semele’s fireburnt tree, and that same morning he summoned the divine seer Teiresias son of Chariclo, and told him his daughter’s fiery dreams. As soon as he heard the seer’s inspired interpretation, the father sent his daughter to their familiar temple of Athena, and bade her sacrifice to thunderhurling Zeus a bull, the image of likehorned Lyaios, and a boar, vine-ravaging enemy of the vintage to come.
Now the maiden went forth from the city to kindle the altar of Zeus Lord of Lightning. She stood by the victims and sprinkled her bosom with the blood; her body was drenched with blood, plentiful streams of blood soaked her hair, her clothes were crimsoned with drops from the bull. Then with robes discoloured she made her way along the meadow deep in rushes, beside Asopos the river of her birthplace, and plunged in his waters to wash clean the garments which had been drenched and marked by the showers of blood.
Erinys the Avenger flying by in the air saw Semele bathing in the waters of Asopos, and laughed as she thought how Zeus was to strike both with his fiery thunderbolt in one common fate.
There the maiden cleansed her body, and naked with her attendants moved through the water with paddling hands; she kept her head stretched well above the stream unwetted, by the art she knew so well, under water to the hair and no farther, breasting the current and treading the water back with alternate feet.
There she received a new dress, and mounting upon the neighbouring river-bank, by the eastern strand which belonged to Dionysos the Guardian Spirit, she shook off into the winds and waters all the terror of her dreams. Not without God she plunged into the water, but she was led to that river’s flow by the prophetic Seasons.
Nor did the allseeing eye of Zeus fail to see her: from the heights he turned the infinite circle of his vision upon the girl. At this moment Eros stood before the father, who watched her, and the inexorable archer drew in the air that bow which fosters life. The bowstring sparkled over the flower-decked shaft, and as the bow was drawn stretched back the poet-missile sounded the Bacchic strain. Zeus was the butt—for all his greatness he bowed his neck to Eros the nobody! And like a shooting star the shaft of love flew spinning into the heart of Zeus, with a bridal whistle, but swerving with a calculated twist it had just scratched his rounded thigh with its grooves—a foretaste of the birth to come. Then Cronion quickly turned the eye which was the channel of desire, and the love-charm flogged him into passion for the girl. At the sight of Semele, he leapt up, in wonder if it were Europa whom he saw on that bank a second time, his heart was troubled as if he felt again his Phoinician passion; for she had the same radiant shape, and on her face gleamed as born in her the brightness of her father’s sister.
Father Zeus now deceitfully changed his form, and in his love, before the due season, he flew above River Asopos, the father of a daughter, as an eagle with eye sharp-shining like the bird, as he were now presaging the winged bridal of Aigina. He left the sky, and approaching the bank of the near-flowing river he scanned the naked body of the girl with her lovely hair. For he was not content to see from afar; he wished to come near and examine all the pure white body of the maiden, though he could send that eye so great—such an eye! ranging to infinity all round about, surveying all the universe, yet he thought it not enough to look at one unwedded girl.
Her rosy limbs made the dark water glow red; the stream became a lovely meadow gleaming with such graces. An unveiled naiad espying the nymph in wonder, cried out these words:
“Can it be that Cronos, after the first Cypris, again cut his father’s loins with unmanning sickle, until the foam got a mind and made the water shape itself into a selfperfected birth, delivered of a younger Aphrodite from the sea? Can it be that the river has rivalled the deep with a childbirth, and rolled a torrent of self-pregnant waves to bring forth another Cypris, not to be outdone by the sea? Can it be that one of the Muses has dived from neighbouring Helicon into my native water, and left another to take the honeydripping water of Pegasos the horse, or the stream of Olmeios! I spy a silverfooted maiden stretched under the streams of my river! I believe Selene bathes in the Aonian waves on her way to Endymion’s bed on Latmos, the bed of a sleepless shepherd; but if she has prinked herself out for her sweet shepherd, what’s the use of Asopos after the Ocean stream? And if she has a body white as the snows of heaven, what mark of the Moon has she? A team of mules unbridled and a mule-cart with silver wheels are there on the beach, but Selene knows not how to put mules to her yokestrap—she drives a team of bulls! Or if it is a goddess come down from heaven—I see a maiden’s bright eyes sparkling under the quiet eyelids, and it must be Athena Brighteyes bathing, when she threw the skin back at him after the old victory over Teiresias. This girl looks like a divine being with her rosy arms; but if she was the glorious burden of a mortal womb, she is worthy of the heavenly bed of Cronion.”
So spoke the voice from under the swirling waters. But Zeus shaken by the firebarbed sting of desire watched the rosy fingers of the swimming girl. Unrestingly he moved his wandering glance, now gazing at the sparkling rosy face, now bright eyes as full as a cow’s under the eyelids, now the hair floating on the breeze, and as the hair blew away he scanned the free neck of the unclad maid; but the bosom most of all and the naked breasts seemed to be armed against Cronides, volleying shafts of love. All her flesh he surveyed, only passed by the secrets of her lap unseen by his modest eyes. The mind of Zeus left the skies and crept down to swim beside swimming Semele. Enchanted he received the sweet maddening spark in a heart which knew it well. Allfather was worsted by a child: little Eros with his feeble shot set afire this Archer of Thunderbolts. Not the deluge of the flood, not the fiery lightning could help its possessor: that huge heavenly flame itself was vanquished by the small fire of unwarlike Paphia; little Eros faced the shaggy skin, his magical girdle faced the aegis; the heavy-booming din of the thunderclap was the slave of his lovebreeding quiver. The god was shaken by the heartbewitching sting of desire for Semele, in amazement: for love is near neighbour to admiration.
Zeus could hardly get back to his imperial heaven, thinking over his plans, having now resumed his divine shape once more. He resolved to mount Semele’s nightly couch, and turned his eye to the west, to see when sweet Hesperos would come. He blamed Phaethon that he should make the afternoon season so long, and uttered an impatient appeal with passionate lips:
“Tell me, laggard Night, when is envious Eos to set? It is time now for you to lift your torch and lead Zeus to his love—come now, foreshow the illumination of night-ranging Lyaios! Phaëthon is jealous, he constrains me! Is he in love with Semele himself and grudges my desire? Helios, you plague me, though you know the madness of love. Why do you spare the whip when you touch up your slow team? I know another nightfall that came very quickly! If I like, I will hide you and the daughter of the mists together in my clouds, and when you are covered Night will appear in the daytime, to speed the marriage of Zeus in haste; the stars will shine at midday, and I will make rising Hesperos, instead of setting Hesperos, the regular usher of the loves. Come now, draw your own forerunner Phosphoros to his setting, and do grace to your desire and mine; enjoy your Clymene all night long, and let me go quick to Semele. Yoke your own car, I pray, bright Moon, send forth your rays which make the trees and plants to grow, because this marriage foretells the birth of plant-cherishing Dionysos; rise over the lovely roof of Semele, give light to my desire with the star of the Cyprian, make long the sweet darkness for the wooing of Zeus!”
Such was the speech of Zeus, even such commands as desire knows. But when in answer to his eagerness, a huge cone of darkness sprang up from the earth and ran stretching into the heights, bringing a shadow of darkness opposite to setting Eos, Zeus passed along the starry dome of the sky to Semele’s bridal. Without leaving a trace of his footsteps, he traversed at his first bound the whole path of the air. With a second, like a wing or a thought, he reached Thebes; the bars of the palace door opened of themselves to let him through, and Semele was held fast in the loving bond of his arms.
Now he leaned over the bed, with a horned head on human limbs, lowing with the voice of a bull, the very likeness of bullhorned Dionysos. Again, he put on a shaggy lion’s form; or he was a panther, as one who begets a bold son, driver of panthers and charioteer of lions. Again, as a young bridegroom he bound his hair with coiling snakes and vine-leaves intertwined, and twisted purple ivy about his locks, the plaited ornament of Bacchos. A writhing serpent crawled over the trembling bride and licked her rosy neck with gentle lips, then slipping into her bosom girdled the circuit of her firm breasts, hissing a wedding tune, and sprinkled her with sweet honey of the swarming bees instead of the viper’s deadly poison. Zeus made long wooing, and shouted “Euoi!” as if the winepress were near, as he begat his son who would love the cry. He pressed love-mad mouth to mouth, and beaded up delicious nectar, an intoxicating bedfellow for Semele, that she might bring forth a son to hold the sceptre of nectareal vintage. As a presage of things to come, he lifted the careforgetting grapes resting his laden arm on the firebringing fennel; or again, he lifted a thyrsus twined about with purple ivy, wearing a deerskin on his back—the lovesick wearer shook the dappled fawnskin with his left arm.
All the earth laughed: a viny growth with self-sprouting leaves ran round Semele’s bed; the walls budded with flowers like a dewy meadow, at the begetting of Bromios; Zeus lurking inside rattled his thunderclaps over the unclouded bed, foretelling the drums of Dionysos in the night. And after the bed, he saluted Semele with loving words, consoling his bride with hopes of things to come:
“My wife, I your bridegroom am Cronides. Lift up your neck in pride at this union with a heavenly bedfellow; and look not among mankind for any child higher than yours. Danaë’s wedding does not rival you. You have thrown into the shade even the union of your father’s sister with her Bull; for Europa glorified by Zeus’s bed went to Crete, Semele goes to Olympos. What more do you want after heaven and the starry sky? People will say in the future, Zeus gave honour to Minos in the underworld, and to Dionysos in the heavens! Then after Autonoë’s mortal son and Ino’s child—one downed by his dogs, one to be killed by a sonslaying father’s winged arrow—after the shortlived son of mad Agauë, you bring forth a son who shall not die, and you I will call immortal. Happy woman! you have conceived a son who will make mortals forget their troubles, you shall bring forth joy for gods and men.”
Envy struck Zeus’ wife Hera, who proceeded to strike pregnant Semele with a thunderbolt. The messenger god Hermes rescued the baby from his mother’s womb and gave him to Zeus to incubate in his thigh until he reached full term. Dionysus was therefore known as ‘Twice Born’.