The Long and the Short of It: The Science of Life Span and Aging by Silvertown Jonathan

Author:Silvertown, Jonathan [Silvertown, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-10-31T20:00:00+00:00

Endless pleasure, endless love

Semele enjoys above!

On her bosom Jove reclining,

Useless now his thunder lies;

To her arms his bolts resigning,

And his lightning to her eyes

Juno knows that Jupiter himself is incorrigible, so she decides instead to take her revenge on Semele, who is pregnant with her husband’s child. She visits Semele in the guise of an old crone and asks Semele how she knows that her lover is indeed who he says he is. Men will tell you anything to get inside your toga. What you must do, says Juno, is make him promise to reveal himself in his true form, as he does when he sleeps with his wife Juno. You are entitled to no less than she is, surely? To ensure that Jupiter will not refuse her request when he hears it, Semele asks Jupiter to promise that he will grant her anything she wants. Totally smitten with Semele, Jupiter agrees, but when he hears her wish, he realizes too late that she has unwittingly asked for death, because in his true form he is a thunderbolt. Bound by Semele’s ineluctable, fatal wish, Jupiter appears to her as his real self, and Semele dies. Juno has had her revenge, but that is not quite the end of the story. From Semele’s ashes, Jupiter rescues their unborn child, which he sews into his thigh, where it completes its gestation. The baby is Bacchus, god of wine and merriment, and before the curtain falls, William Congreve sends his opera audience away on a high with these words from the chorus:

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