Was Dionysus God of Wine once a Demigod?
The short answer is “No”, because he was birthed from Zeus’ own body. In Greek mythology, Dionysus is made out to be a son of Zeus and the mortal Semele; other versions of the myth contend that he is a son of Zeus and Persephone. Nysa, for Greek writers, is either the nymph who nursed him, or the mountain where he was attended by several nymphs (the Nysiads), who fed him and made him immortal as directed by Hermes. Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a mortal woman, Semele, the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes, and his father was Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus’ wife, Hera, a jealous and prudish goddess, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant. Appearing as an old crone (in other stories a nurse), Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele’s mind. Curious, Semele demanded
