Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca 8.333–418: Book 8: The thunderbolt and the birth of Dionysos

Thus Semele prayed for her own fate: the short-lived bride to be equal to Hera, and to see at her nuptials the spark of the thunderbolt gentle and peaceful.

Father Zeus heard, and blamed the jealous Portioners, and pitied Semele so soon to die: but he understood the scheming resentment of implacable Hera against Bacchos. Then he ordered Hermes to catch up his newborn son out of the thunder-fire when it should strike Thyone. He spoke thus in answer to the highheaded girl : Wife, the jealous mind of Hera has deceived you by a trick. Do you really think, wife, that my thunders are gentle ? Be patient until another time, for now you carry a child. Be patient until next time bring forth my son. Do not demand from me the murderous fire before that birth. I had no lightning in my hand when I took Danae’s maidenhood ; no booming thunder, no thunderbolts celebrated my union with your Europa, the Tyrian bride; the Inachian heifer saw no flames: you alone, mortal, demand from me what a goddess Leto did not ask.”

So he spoke, but he had no thought of fighting against the threads of Fate. He passed from the bosom of the sky shooting fire, and Flashlightning Zeus the husband unwillingly fulfilled the prayer of his young wife, He danced into Semele’s chamber, shaking in a reluctant band the bridegift, those fires of thunder which were to destroy his bride. The chamber was lit up with the lightning, the fiery breath made Ismenos to glitter and Thebes to twinkle.

When Semele saw her fiery murderers, she held up a proud neck and said with lofty arrogance :

I want no clear-sounding zither, I need no […] boy! Thunders are here for my panspipes of Zeus Love, this boom is my Olympian hoboy, the firebrands of my bridal are the flashes of heavenly lightning I care not for common torches, my torches are thunderbolts ! I am the consort of Cronion, Agaue is only Echion’s. Let them call Autonoe Aristaios’s wife. Ino’s rival is only […]. […] is Hera ! I was not the wife of […]. I was not the mother of Actaion the forester, so quickly killed and torn by dogs. I want no lesser for Cithara the heavenly harp makes music for Semele’s wedding !

So she spoke in her pride, and would have grasped the deadly lightning in her own hands— she touched the destroying thunderbolts with daring careless of Fate. Then Semele’s wedding was death, and in its celebration the Avenging Spirit made her bower serve for pyre and tomb. Zeus had mercy ; the breath of the bridal thunder with its fires of delivery burnt her all to ashes, lightning was the midwife, thunder […] of childbed ; the heavenly flames had mercy, and delivered Bacchos struggling from the mother’s burning lap when the married life was withered by the mother-murdering flash ; the thunders tempered their breath to bathe the babe, untimely born but unhurt. Semele saw her fiery end, and perished rejoicing in a childbearing death. In one bridal chamber could be seen Love, Eileithyia, and the Avengers together. So the babe half-grown, and his limbs washed with heavenly fire, was carried by Hermes to his father for the lying-in.

Zeus was able to change the mind of jealous : Hera, to calm and undo the savage threatening resentment which burdened her. Semele consumed by the fire he translated into the starry vault ; he gave the mother of Bacchos a home in the sky among the heavenly inhabitants, as one of Hera’s family, as daughter of Harmonia sprung from both Ares and Aphrodite. So her new body bathed in the purifying fire she received the immortal life of the Olympians, instead of Cadmos and the soil of earth, instead of Autonoe and Agaue, she found Artemis by her side, she had converse with Athena, she received the heavens as her wedding gift, sitting at one table with Zeus and Hermaon and Ares and Cythereia.