Hymn to Dionysos

O Insewn God-born from Zeus’ thigh—

Some folk say in Drakanon,
Some in windy Ikaros,
Others say in Naxos,
Or by the deep-eddying river Alpheos,
Pregnant Semele bore you to thunder-loving Zeus.
Others say you were born in Thebes, Lord,
But all of them lie:
The father of men and gods gave birth yo you
Far from people, hidden from white-armed Hera.
There is a certain Nysa, a towering mountain,
Blooming with woods,
Far from Phonicia, near the streams of Egypt…

“…People will raise many statues in your temples.

Semele, since[…] was cut into three, every third year
Humans will sacrifice to you a hundred perfect bulls.”
So spoke the son of Kronos nodding his dark-blue brows---
The king’s divine hair swirled about
His immortal head, as he shook great Olympos.
With those words, wise Zeus nodded his command.
Be gracious, Insewn, maker of maenads.
We bards sing of you first and last; there is no way
To forget you and still remember holy song.
O Dionysos, God sewn in Zeus’ thigh, rejoice
With your mother Semele, whom some call Thyone.

Notes on Dionysos:

Dionysos, a vegetation deity, is the god of ecstasy, inspiration, religious

possession, iambic (lampooning) and dithyrambic (cult) song, theater,
and wine. Although the Greeks sometimes portrayed dionysos as an
invading foreign god, he was worshipped in Greece from very ancient
times. His name appears in the Mycenaean Linear B tablets from
Bronze Age Greece. In art, Dionysos usually wears a garland of ivy and
holds a drinking cup.

1. When Semele, daughter of Kadmos and the goddess Harmonia,

was pregnant with Zeus’ son, Hera, Zeus’ wife, tricked her into
asking Zeus to reveal himself to her in his true form. Zeus was
forced to do so because he had sworn to Semele that he would
grant any request. As a result, Zeus’ heavenly fire consumed
Semele. Zeus rescued the premature Dionysos from his mother’s
womb and sewed him into his own thigh to complete gestation.
Thus Dionysus was born twice, once from his human mother and
then from his divine father. The obscure epithet for Dionysos,
eiraphiota (Insewn), probably refers to this story. Other
etymologies of the epithet, such as “bull-god”, are possible.
Drakanon is probably “Drekanon,” a promontory on Kos, an island
southwest of modern-day Turkey.

2. Ikaros is an island in the east Aegean Sea, west of Samos. Naxos is

a large island in the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea; there Dionysos
found Ariadne after Theseus abandoned her.
3. Alpheos is a river near Olympia in Elis, in the western
Peloponnesus.
5. Thebes, a city in Boeotia, was generally accepted as Dionysos’
birthplace. Euripides’ Bacchae has Dionysos born there.
8. There were many places named Nysa, located in and out of
Greece, including in Caria and India.
9. Phonicia was the coastal region north of Israel.
10-11. After the gap, the hymn picks up with Zeus proclaiming
biennial festivals to Semele. The Greeks counted the biennial festival
as occurring “every third year” because they considered the year of
the festival to be year 3, as well as year 1 of the next cycle.

13. Zeus is the son of the Titans Kronos and Rhea.

17. Groups of women were possessed by Dionysos with religious
frenzy, and so were called “maenads,” meaning “madwomen.”
21. Some sources say that Semele was called Thyone after her
apotheosis, which took place either at her death by Zeus or when
Dionysos rescued her from the underworld.