What was your birth like? Did you slide freely out of your mother into the caring arms of a well-trained midwife, primed and ready with a pair of scissors to separate you from your long-suffering maternal host? Or was your entry into the world a painful, drawn out affair full of gasping and wheezing and mucus and blood? However it went down, I'm almost certain that it wasn't anywhere near as dramatic events that brought a bloke called Dionysus into the world.A few years back now, Zeus in all his infinite godly wisdom, decided to have a quick fumble with the daughter of King Cadamus of Thebes, Semele. Zeus' wife Hera got wind of the affair and was understandably slightly aggrieved by the whole thing, so she did what anyone would do that in the situation—she turned herself into a haggard old crone, befriended Semele, made her confess and then doubt Zeus' fatherhood. Semele had a bit of a prang about the whole thing and asked the big man to reveal himself to her. Zeus, being a pretty big deal, had to disguise himself so he nipped down in the ancient Greek version of the modern celebrity's massive sunglasses: a big wreath of lightning bolts. Sadly, Semele had forgotten that as a mortal she'd be unable to gaze upon an undisguised god and she croaked it there and then. Not one to fudge things, Zeus did the honourable thing and sewed his unborn son into his thigh and hot footed it back up to his palatial pad up on Mount Olympus.Read more on Thump.
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