The Myth of Dionysius, Level Two
A Great Time passes and the scene changes from heaven to earth. Zeus, assuming the form of a bull, abducted Europa. Agenor, her father, dispathched his son Cadmus in search of the lost maiden. Agenor told Cadmus not to return without Europa on the pain of death. As no mortal could outwit celestial Zeus, Cadmus failed in his search and, fearing to return to his own country, consulted an oracle as to the proper course of his future action. Te oracle bade the young man "be observant and when he should see a cow to follow the animal and wherever it stopped to rest to build a city and name it Thebes. " Following the instructions exactly, Cadmus blessed the ground where the cow rested and prepared a libation to his patron goddess Minerva. It was on the site of the proposed city that he slew the great serpent sacred to the god Ares (Mars). After he had killed the monster Cadmus, obeying the instructions of Minerva his patron deity, sowed the teeth of the dragon in the earth and there grew up immediately an army of soldiers. At first these sons of Mars appeared as thought they were about to attack Cadmus, but, obeying divine instruction, he hurled a rock among them and they fell upon one another in civil strife. At the end of the battle but five of the warriors remained alive and these survivors of the army of the serpent's teeth united with Cadmus to build the sacred city of Thebes with its seven gates.
Cadmus is a mysterious person believed by some of the earlier mythologists to be identical with the Egyptian Hermes and by others with the Patriarch Noah. His name is from the Phoenician Cadm, which means East, and he may be interpreted to represent not a person at all, but the Eastern Wisdom Teaching itself which came out of Asia and established the Grecian civilization, represented by a city with seven gates.
According to the continuation of the myth, Cadmus married Harmonia, a maiden of great beauty and virtue, that is, wisdom is united to all that is harmonious, peaceful and virtuous in the world. Five Children resulted from this union, representing the five elements, the five senses, and the five rational powers of the soul. The first and most fortunate of these children was Semele, a personification of the Great Mother, devoted to the service of the gods, and like the immaculate mothers of all Messiahs, a virgin of the temple, Zeus, beholding her, resolved that she should be the mother of the reborn Dionysius.
There are several accounts of the myth by which the divine child was conceived. One of the most unusual describes how Zeus sent to Semele the heart of his son powdered in wine. Thus by an immaculate conception the light of the world was born again of a virgin mother. But Juno was not finished with her conspiring. She took the form of old Beroe, Semele's Epidaurian nurse, and in this guise succeeded in implanting doubts in Semele's mind concerning the father of her unborn child. Juno, as Boroe, explained to Semele that if she were indeed the bride of Zeus she should demand as proof that the god appear to her in all his Olympian splendor. Semele listened to the evil advice and when Zeus next came to her in mortal form she demanded of him a favor. Zeus promised to grant her any wish and she bound him to his word by the great oath of the river Styx. Semele then demanded that the father of the gods should come to her in all his heavenly glory. Zeus implored her not to demand this of him, but she insisted and the given oath could not be broken. Bowed with sorrow, Zeus then returned to the Olympian Mount and vested himself in the mildest of his splendors. He did not don the great vestments of his terrors with which he shattered the giants, but only the simpler robes known among his attendant gods as the lesser panoply of power.
Zeus has arrayed descended from the heights in a chariot of luminous flame surrounded by vast circles of fire blazing with the splendor of the Aeons. The Vibrant glory of Zeus destroyed the house of Semele, the walls of the city were shaken, tongues of flame darted in every direction, and Semele was entirely consumed by the heavenly fire. The flames would have accomplished a still greater damage had not a miracle occured. The Pillars of the fallen house were suddenly covered by Grape and Ivy leaves and the whole ruin was immediately hidden by a thick, fire-resisting foliage.
Zeus, perceiving the disaster, immediately changed his form and gently sought among the ruins for the body of Semele. Having discovered it he rescued therefrom his still living, unborn son. Zeus then made for the child an artificial womb in his own thigh wherein Sabazius fastened the infant with golden clasps. Dionysius remained in the thigh of Zeus for two months to complete the period of gestation. During this period Zeus is said to have walked with a limp because he was pricked by the child's horns.
Having completed the prenatal period, Dionysius was delivered upon a fawn skin and bears the epithet Bimater because he was twice born. Zeus then entrusted the education of this child to Hermes, or Mercury, who carried Dionysius far from the plotting of the Olympian court to the mysterious garden of Nysa in Arabia the happy. In the midst of this garden was a great hill of mountain called Meros. Here the infant Dionysius fed upon lion's milk and grew up to manhood, cared for the tutored by the Nysean nymphs and other mysterious creatures of the elements. Among his companions were the dryads and satyrs and he taught them the divine songs and dances. Among the preceptors of young Dionysius there were none more doting and indulgent than old silenus, the most aged of the satyrs and the rotund deity of pleasure. In Roman art obese, jovial Selenus, riding tipsily upon an ass's back, is often confused with Bacchus. Zeus variously rewarded the gaurdians and tutors of his son. The Nysean nymphs were placed by Zeus among the constellations and are called the Hyades by modern astronomy. Silenus received worship suitable to a demigod.