In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Zagreus (Ancient Greek: Ζαγρεύς, romanized: Zagreús) was a god sometimes identified with an Orphic Dionysus who was dismembered by the Titans and reborn. In the earliest mention of Zagreus, he is paired with Gaia and called the "highest" god, though perhaps only in reference to the gods of the underworld. Aeschylus, however, links Zagreus with Hades, possibly as Hades' son, or as Hades himself. Noting "Hades' identity as Zeus' katachthonios alter ego", Timothy Gantz postulated that Zagreus, might have been a son of Hades and Persephone, later merged with the Orphic Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Persephone.
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Etymology and origins
According to Martin Litchfield West, the "most plausible etymology" derives "Zagreus" from zagre, which is "properly a pit for catching animals, but perhaps also one used for depositing animal remains or offerings to a chthonic deity", making Zagreus literally the "god of pitfalls". Based on this etymology, Karl Kerényi concludes that zagreus was the Greek word for a "hunter who catches living animals", and that "an exact translation" of "Zagreus" would be "catcher of game".
As West notes, the word zagre, which only survives in Hesychius, has an Ionic ending. So if "Zagreus" does derive from zagre, then this would suggest an Ionian origin for Zagreus. But, according to Kerényi, Hesychius' definition of zagre, "proves that the name contains the root zoë and zoön", the Greek words for "life" and "Living thing", and according to West "the vocalism, Zā- for Zō-, points to a Doric or North-west Greek home for the god".
The tenth-century Etymologicum Gudianum interpreted the name as "great hunter", deriving the word from za- ("very") and agreuein ("hunt"), an etymology rejected by both West and Kerényi. Others have suggested a relationship with the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, while Michael C. Astour suggests a derivation from the Ugaritic Sġr (pronounced ṣaġru?) meaning "the Young One".
Underworld
The early mentions of Zagreus, which occur only in fragments from lost works, connect Zagreus with the Greek underworld. The earliest is in a single quoted line from the (6th century BC?) epic Alcmeonis:
Mistress Earth [Gaia], and Zagreus highest of all the gods.
Perhaps here meaning the highest god of the underworld.
Evidently for Aeschylus, Zagreus was an underworld god. In a fragment from one of Aeschylus' lost Sisyphus plays (c. 5th century BC), Zagreus seems to be the son of Hades, while in Aeschylus' Egyptians (Aigyptioi), Zagreus was apparently identified with Hades himself.
A fragment from Euripides' lost play Cretans (Kretes) has the chorus of Cretan men describe the "pure life" they have led since they became initiates (mystai) of Idaean Zeus and celebrants of:
night-ranging Zagreus, performing his feasts of raw flesh; and raising torches high to the mountain Mother among the Curetes,
and were consecrated and received the title of "Bacchus". This passage associates Zagreus with the cult of Zeus at Cretan Mount Ida, where the infant Zeus was guarded by the Cretan Curetes. According to West, Zagreus here is "a god of nocturnal mystery-rites, associated with a sacramental feast of raw flesh (and thus with the dismemberment of an animal victim)" and infers from this Euripidean passage that Zagreus "played a part in mysteries which claimed a Cretan origin." Richard L. Gordon suggests that Zagreus was originally a master of animals god who became syncretized with Hades.
Orphic Dionysus Zagreus
The Zagreus from the Euripides fragment is suggestive of Dionysus, the wine god son of Zeus and Semele, and in fact, although it seems not to occur anywhere in Orphic sources, the name “Zagreus” is elsewhere identified with an Orphic Dionysus, who had a very different tradition from the standard one. This Dionysus Zagreus was a son of Zeus and Persephone who was, as an infant, attacked and dismembered by the Titans, but later reborn as the son of Zeus and Semele. This dismemberment of Dionysus Zagreus (the sparagmos), taken together with an assumed Orphic anthropogony, in which human beings arose from the ashes of the Titans (who had been struck by Zeus with his thunderbolt in punishment for the dismembering), is sometimes called the "Zagreus myth". This story has often been considered the most important myth of Orphism, and has been described as "one of the most enigmatic and intriguing of all Greek myths".
The sparagmos
As pieced together from various ancient sources, the reconstructed story of the sparagmos, that is, the dismemberment of Dionysus Zagreus, usually given by modern scholars, goes as follows: Zeus had intercourse with Persephone in the form of a serpent, producing Dionysus. He is taken to Mount Ida where (like the infant Zeus) he is guarded by the dancing Curetes. Zeus intended Dionysus to be his successor as ruler of the cosmos, but a jealous Hera incited the Titans to kill the child. Distracting the infant Dionysus with various toys, including a mirror, the Titans seized Dionysus and tore (or cut) him to pieces. The pieces were then boiled, roasted, and partially eaten by the Titans. But Athena managed to save Dionysus' heart, by which Zeus was able to contrive his rebirth from Semele.
Although the extant Orphic sources do not mention the name "Zagreus" in connection with this dismembered Dionysus (or anywhere else), the (c. 3rd century BC) poet Callimachus perhaps did. We know that Callimachus, as well as his contemporary Euphorion, told the story of the dismembered child, and Byzantine sources quote Callimachus as referring to the birth of a "Dionysos Zagreus", explaining that "Zagreus" was the poet's name for a chthonic Dionysus, the son of Zeus by Persephone. The earliest certain identification of Zagreus with the dismembered Dionysus occurs in the writings of the late 1st century – early 2nd century AD biographer and essayist Plutarch, who mentions "Zagreus" as one of the names given to the figure by Delphic theologians. Later, in the 5th century AD, the Greek epic poet Nonnus, who tells the story of this Orphic Dionysus, calls him the "older Dionysos ... ill fated Zagreus", "Zagreus the horned baby", "Zagreus, the first Dionysos", "Zagreus the ancient Dionysos", and "Dionysos Zagreus", and the 6th-century AD Pseudo-Nonnus similarly refers to the dismembered Dionysus as "Dionysus Zagreus".
The 1st century BC historian Diodorus Siculus says that according to "some writers of myths" there were two gods named Dionysus, an older one, who was the son of Zeus and Persephone, but that the "younger one [born to Zeus and Semele] also inherited the deeds of the older, and so the men of later times, being unaware of the truth and being deceived because of the identity of their names thought there had been but one Dionysus."
According to Diodorus, this older Dionysus, was represented in painting and sculpture with horns, because he "excelled in sagacity and was the first to attempt the yoking of oxen and by their aid to effect the sowing of the seed", and the younger was "called Dimetor (Of Two Mothers) ... because the two Dionysoi were born of one father, but of two mothers". He also said that Dionysus "was thought to have two forms ... the ancient one having a long beard, because all men in early times wore long beards, the younger one being youthful and effeminate and young."
The anthropogony
Most sources make no mention of what happened to the Titans after the murder of Dionysus. In the standard account of the Titans, given in Hesiod's Theogony (which does not mention Dionysus), after being overthrown by Zeus and the other Olympian gods, in the ten-year-long Titanomachy, the Titans are imprisoned in Tartarus. This might seem to preclude any subsequent story of the Titans killing Dionysus, and perhaps in an attempt to reconcile this standard account with the Dionysus Zagreus myth, according to Arnobius and Nonnus, the Titans end up imprisoned by Zeus in Tartarus, as punishment for their murder of Dionysus.
However, according to one source, from the fate of the Titans came a momentous event, the birth of humankind. Commonly presented as a part of the myth of the dismembered Dionysus Zagreus, is an Orphic anthropogony, that is, an Orphic account of the origin of human beings. According to this widely held view, as punishment for the crime of the sparagmos, Zeus struck the Titans with his thunderbolt, and from the remains of the destroyed Titans humankind was born, which resulted in a human inheritance of ancestral guilt, for this original sin of the Titans, and by some accounts "formed the basis for an Orphic doctrine of the divinity of man." However, when and to what extent there existed any Orphic tradition which included these elements is the subject of open debate.
The only ancient source to explicitly connect the sparagmos and the anthropogony is the 6th century AD Neoplatonist Olympiodorus, who, as part of an argument against committing suicide, states that to take one's life is "forbidden" because human bodies have a divine Dionysiac element within them. He explains that, in the Orphic tradition, after the Titans dismember and eat Dionysus, Zeus, out of anger, "strikes them with his thunderbolts, and the soot of the vapors that rise from them becomes the matter from which men are created", meaning that, because the Titans ate the flesh of Dionysus, humans are a part of Dionysus, and so suicide is "forbidden because our bodies belong to Dionysus".
The 2nd century AD biographer and essayist Plutarch, does make a connection between the sparagmos and a subsequent punishment of the Titans, but makes no mention of the anthropogony, or Orpheus, or Orphism. In his essay On the Eating of Flesh, Plutarch writes of "stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood".
In popular culture
Zagreus is the protagonist of the 2020 video game Hades. In the game, Zagreus is the son of Hades and is attempting to escape the underworld to find his mother Persephone, whom he never met, to learn why she left for the surface.