Semele - Semele in Roman Culture

Semele in Roman Culture

In ancient Rome, a grove (lucus) near Ostia, situated between the Aventine Hill and the mouth of the Tiber River, was dedicated to a goddess named Stimula. W.H. Roscher includes the name Stimula among the indigitamenta, the lists of Roman deities maintained by priests to assure that the correct divinity was invoked in public rituals. In his poem on the Roman calendar, Ovid (d. 17 CE) identifies this goddess with Semele:

"There was a grove: known either as Semele’s or Stimula’s:
Inhabited, they say, by Italian Maenads.
Ino, asking them their nation, learned they were Arcadians,
And that Evander was the king of the place.
Hiding her divinity, Saturn’s daughter cleverly
Incited the Latian Bacchae with deceiving words:"

"lucus erat, dubium Semelae Stimulaene vocetur;
maenadas Ausonias incoluisse ferunt:
quaerit ab his Ino quae gens foret. Arcadas esse
audit et Euandrum sceptra tenere loci;
dissimulata deam Latias Saturnia Bacchas
instimulat fictis insidiosa sonis:"

Augustine notes that the goddess is named after stimulae, "goads, whips," by means of which a person is driven to excessive actions. The goddess's grove was the site of the Dionysian scandal that led to official attempts to suppress the cult. The Romans viewed the Bacchanals with suspicion, based on reports of ecstatic behaviors contrary to Roman social norms and the secrecy of initiatory rite. In 186 BCE, the Roman senate took severe actions to limit the cult, without banning it. Religious beliefs and myths associated with Dionysus were successfully adapted and remained pervasive in Roman culture, as evidenced for instance by the Dionysian scenes of Roman wall painting and on sarcophagi from the 1st to the 4th centuries CE.

The Greek cult of Dionysus had flourished among the Etruscans in the archaic period, and had been made compatible with Etruscan religious beliefs. One of the main principles of the Dionysian mysteries that spread to Latium and Rome was the concept of rebirth, to which the complex myths surrounding the god's own birth were central. Birth and childhood deities were important to Roman religion; Ovid identifies Semele's sister Ino as the nurturing goddess Mater Matuta. This goddess had a major cult center at Satricum that was built 500–490 BCE. The female consort who appears with Bacchus in the acroterial statues there may be either Semele or Ariadne. The pair were part of the Aventine Triad in Rome as Liber and Libera, along with Ceres. The temple of the triad is located near the Grove of Stimula, and the grove and its shrine (sacrarium) were located outside Rome's sacred boundary (pomerium), perhaps as the "dark side" of the Aventine Triad.

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