Zagreus

Zagreus is a name given to an older Dionysus in the Orphic and later tradition: a son of Zeus and Persephone who was torn apart by the Titans. He does not appear in Homer or Hesiod, and the ancient writers who mention him often distinguish him from the Dionysus born to Semele, while some make the later god Zagreus born again.

Zagreus' Parents

According to the Orphic tradition, Zagreus was the son of Zeus and Persephone, and he was born in Crete. Diodorus says that the god Dionysus was born in Crete, men say, of Zeus and Persephone, and that Orpheus handed down in the initiatory rites the tradition that he was torn in pieces by the Titans (Diodorus Siculus 5.75.4). Nonnus tells that Zeus came to Persephone in the form of a serpent and that she bore him a horned child, Zagreus (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6). In another version, Aeschylus made Zagreus a son of Hades, in a fragment of his lost play Sisyphus.

Zagreus and Dionysus

The Dionysus whom Greek poets knew was born to Semele, a mortal daughter of Cadmus (Hesiod, Theogony 940–942). Zeus took the unborn child from the fire that killed her and sewed him into his thigh (Apollodorus, Library 3.4.3). The Cretan child of Persephone is a different, earlier figure in the Orphic tradition. Nonnus calls him “Zagreus the ancient Dionysos” and says that Zeus gave him the throne and sceptre of Olympus (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 39). In another passage a speaker recalls bathing another Dionysus, Zagreus, whom Zeus had entrusted to her nursing nymphs, and says that the younger Bromios has the same name (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 24). In the forty-fourth book he calls the son of Semele the “later born brother” of Dionysus Zagreus (Dionysiaca 44).

Zagreus' Death

Zeus meant the child to rule after him: in Nonnus the infant sat on his father’s throne and brandished the lightning in his small hands (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6), and a later speaker recalls that “Zagreus held the thunderbolt, and came to his death” (Dionysiaca 38). Through the resentment of Hera, the Titans smeared their faces with chalk and, while the child was looking at his own reflection in a mirror, attacked him with a knife. Zagreus escaped them by changing into many shapes, among them a youth, a lion, a horse, a snake and a tiger, until in the form of a bull he was cut to pieces (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6).

Other writers also name the Titans as his killers. Diodorus gives the tradition that the god was torn in pieces by the Titans (Diodorus Siculus 5.75.4). Pausanias says that the poet Onomacritus took the name of the Titans from Homer and, in the orgies he composed for Dionysus, made them the authors of the god’s sufferings (Pausanias 8.37.5). Pausanias also records that the people of Patrae told how Dionysus was exposed to dangers through the plots of the Titans (Pausanias 7.18.4).

Zeus was enraged at the murder. In Nonnus he shut the killers in Tartarus and set the earth ablaze with his fire, then flooded it with rain (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6); another god later prays that Zeus may not be angry again for the later Bacchus “as for Zagreus” and burn and flood the world a second time (Dionysiaca 36). In the forty-eighth book a speaker recalls that Earth had armed the older Titans against the former Dionysus and the younger Giants against the later-born one (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 48).

Zagreus' Rebirth

In one version the slain child was born again as the son of Semele. Hyginus says that Liber, son of Jupiter and Proserpina, was torn apart by the Titans, and that Jupiter ground up his heart and gave it to Semele in a drink, from which she conceived (Hyginus, Fabulae 167). Nonnus too speaks of the son of Semele as the Dionysus who revived the name of the primeval Zagreus (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 44).

Zagreus Sources

Diodorus Siculus 5.75.4; Pausanias 7.18.4, 8.37.5; Hesiod, Theogony 940–942; Apollodorus, Library 3.4.3; Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6, 24, 36, 38, 39, 44, 48; Hyginus, Fabulae 167; Aeschylus, fragment of Sisyphus.

See Also: Dionysus, Zeus, Persephone, Hera, Titans, Semele, Orpheus, Hades