253Opinion is divided: to some the goddess seemed more violent than was fair, others praise her and call her worthy of her stern virginity; 255each side finds reasons. 256Jupiter's wife alone does not so much declare whether she blames or approves, as rejoice in the disaster of the house descended from Agenor, and she transfers the hatred gathered from the Tyrian concubine onto the partners of her race. 259Look, a fresh cause comes on top of the earlier one, and she grieves that Semele is pregnant by the seed of great Jupiter. 261As she loosed her tongue for railing, 'For what have I ever gained by railing so often?' 262she said: 'I must go for her herself, I shall destroy her herself, if I am rightly called greatest Juno, if it befits me to hold the jewelled sceptre in my right hand, if I am queen and both sister and wife of Jupiter, sister at least.
266But, I suppose, she is content with a theft, and the wrong to my marriage-bed is brief: she conceives, that was all that was lacking! 268and she carries her crime plain to see in her full womb, and wishes to become a mother by Jupiter alone, which scarcely fell to my lot: so great is her confidence in her beauty. 271I shall make sure it deceives her; 271and I am not Saturn's daughter if she does not go down to the Stygian waters, sunk there by her own Jupiter.' 273At this she rises from her throne and, hidden in a tawny cloud, comes to Semele's threshold. 274Nor did she remove the cloud before she had feigned an old woman, put white hair at her temples, furrowed her skin with wrinkles, and carried bent limbs with trembling step; 277she made her voice an old woman's too, and was Beroe herself, Semele's Epidaurian nurse.
279So when, having engaged her in conversation and talking long, they came to the name of Jupiter, she sighs and says, 'I hope it is Jupiter: yet I fear everything: many have entered chaste bedrooms under the name of gods. 283Yet it is not enough for him to be Jupiter: let him give a pledge of his love, if he is indeed the true one, and as great and as glorious as he is when received by lofty Juno, so great and so glorious, ask him, let him give you his embraces, and let him first take up his insignia.' 287With such words Juno had moulded Cadmus' unknowing daughter. 288She asks Jupiter for a gift without naming it.
289To her the god says, 'Choose: you will suffer no refusal. 290And so that you may believe it the more, let the power of the Stygian torrent also be my witness: it is the dread and the god of the gods.' 292Glad in her misfortune, too powerful, and doomed to perish by her lover's compliance, Semele said, 'As Saturn's daughter is accustomed to embrace you when you enter into the bond of Venus, give yourself to me like that.' 295The god wished to stop the speaker's mouth: the hasty words had already gone out into the air. 297He groaned; 297for neither can she not have wished this, nor can he not have sworn.
298So, most sorrowful, he climbed the high heaven and with his look drew after him the following clouds, to which he added storms and lightning mixed with winds, and thunder and the inescapable thunderbolt. 302Yet so far as he can, he tries to take away some of his strength; 303nor does he arm himself now with the fire with which he had cast down hundred-handed Typhoeus: there is too much ferocity in that. 305There is another, lighter thunderbolt, to which the Cyclopes' right hand added less savagery and flame, less anger; 307the gods above call it the second weapon. 307He takes it and enters the house of Agenor's line. 308Her mortal body did not bear the heavenly tumult, and burned with her bridal gifts.
310The infant, still unformed, is snatched from his mother's womb and, tender as he is (if it is worth believing), sewn into his father's thigh, and completes his mother's term. 313His aunt Ino secretly rears him in his first cradle: then the nymphs of Nysa hid him, handed over to them, in their own caves and gave him the nourishment of milk.