Athamas

The cast of Semele - 2007 includes: Cecilia Bartoli as Semele William Christie as Himself - Conductor Thomas Michael Allen as Athamas Liliana Nikiteanu as Ino Birgit Remmert as Juno Isabel Rey as Iris

Phryxus was the son of Athamas and Nephele (a goddess of clouds).

His twin sister Helle and he were hated by their stepmother, Ino. Phrixus survived all the way to Colchis, where King Aeëtes, the son of the sun god Helios, took him in and treated him kindly, giving Phrixus his daughter, Chalciope, in marriage. Her sister being Medea. In gratitude, Phrixus sacrificed the ram to Zeus and gave the king the golden fleece of the ram, which Aeëtes hung in a tree in the holy grove of Ares in his kingdom, guarded by a dragon that never slept.

Phrixus and Chalciope had four sons, who later joined forces with the Argonauts. The oldest was Argos/Argus,Phrontis, Melas, and Cytisorus.

The most popular myth holds that Dionysus was the son of Zeus by Semele - who would become the goddess Thyone.

Zeus was the youngest son of Kronos (Time) and Rhea (Flow), who was the the youngest Titan son of Ouranos (Sky Dome) and Gaea (Earth); Ouranos was the son of Gaea, and Gaea either emerged from creation second, or was the offspring of Aither (Bright Upper Air) and Hemera (Day) who were born of Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night) the children of Chaos (Air) who was the first being to emerge from creation.

Now for Semele, her father was Kadmos, and her mother the goddess Harmonia - the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares.

Ares was the son of Hera (and Zeus), the sister-wife of Zeus, so his line follows that of Zeus.

Aphrodite is either the daughter of Zeus and Dione - a Titan sister of Kronos, or she was born of the sea foam caused by the blood of Ouranos at his castration.

Kadmos *(Cadmus), was a Phoenician prince, the son of King Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre.

Telephassa is either the daughter of Nilus the god of the Nile and Nephele - either a cloud nymph that Zeus created; or a daughter of Oceanus, the Titan son of Gaea and Ouranus. Nilus also being the son of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys.

Agenor is the son of either Poseidon (brother of Zeus) and Libya, the daughter of Epaphus the King of Egypt, a son of Zeus and Io - Io being the daughter of the river god Inakhos, a son of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. Melia/Argia, Io's mother, was a daughter of Oceanus.

Agenor's other set of parents are Belus (said to be his brother in the other myth of his parentage) and Achiroë/Anchirrhoë/Anchinoë his mother, a naiad daughter of Nilus, the river god of the Nile.

Antigone and Oedipus Rex are two famous plays that Sophocles [c. 496 B.C.E. - c. 406 B.C.E.] wrote. A third play, 'Oedipus at Colonus', isn't as well known as the other two. All three plays deal with the consequences of the tragic ignorance of Theban King Oedipus.