In
Greek mythology Semachos was a doublet of
Ikarios, the recipient of
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Romans ...
'
gift of wine, who welcomed Dionysus to
Attica, with a tragic outcome. Semachos was the
founder-hero of the Athenian priestesses of Dionysus, the Semachidai.
The name could be given a Hellenic twist by linking it with ''machia'', "battle", but M.C. Astour recommended a derivation from a
Northwest Semitic word, represented by the Hebrew ''šimah'', "made to rejoice".
Dionysus was welcomed by the women of Semachos' ''
oikos''. His daughter received the gift of a deer skin (''nebris''), which
Karl Kerenyi identified as the bestowal of the rite of
maenad
In Greek mythology, maenads (; grc, μαινάδες ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Maenads were known as Bassarids, ...
s in rending limb from limb the animals they sacrificed to Dionysus: "''nebrizein'' also means the rending of an animal."
The date of the introduction of
wine making to Greece, which certainly occurred during the
Bronze Age, was given the confident precision of 1497 BCE by
Jerome in
his adaptation of
Eusebius' ''Chronicon''.
An inscription
['' Inscriptiones Graecae'' II part 2, 1582, lines 53f, noted by Kerenyi 1976:147 note 45.] records the site of the ''
heroon'' of Semachos, which lay along the pathway that led to
Laurion.
Notes
References
*
Stephanus of Byzantium
Stephanus or Stephan of Byzantium ( la, Stephanus Byzantinus; grc-gre, Στέφανος Βυζάντιος, ''Stéphanos Byzántios''; centuryAD), was a Byzantine grammarian and the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled ''Ethni ...
, ''Stephani Byzantii Ethnicorum quae supersunt,'' edited by August Meineike (1790-1870), published 1849. A few entries from this important ancient handbook of place names have been translated by Brady Kiesling
Online version at the Topos Text Project.
Greek mythological heroes
Attican characters in Greek mythology
Dionysus in mythology
{{Greek-myth-stub