![]() This passage associates Zagreus with the cult of Zeus at Cretan Mount Ida, where the infant Zeus was guarded by the Cretan Curetes. Night-ranging Zagreus, performing his feasts of raw flesh and raising torches high to the mountain Mother among the Curetes, Īnd were consecrated and received the title of "bacchus". Ī fragment from Euripides' lost play Cretan Men ( 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: 5th century BC), Zagreus seems to be the son of Hades, while in Aeschylus' Egyptians ( Aigyptioi), Zagreus was apparently identified with Hades himself. In a fragment from one of Aeschylus' lost Sisyphus plays (c. Įvidently for Aeschylus, Zagreus was, in fact, an underworld god. Perhaps here meaning the highest god of the underworld. Mistress Earth, and Zagreus highest of all the gods. The earliest is in a single quoted line from the (6th century BC?) epic Alcmeonis: The early mentions of Zagreus, which occur only in fragments from lost works, connect Zagreus with the Greek underworld. Astour suggests a derivation from the Ugaritic Sġr (pronounced ṣaġru?) meaning "the Young One". Others have suggested a relationship with the Zagros mountains of western Iran. ![]() 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. 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". So if "Zagreus" does derive from zagre, then this would suggest an Ionian origin for Zagreus. Īs West notes, the word zagre, which only survives in Hesychius, has an Ionic ending. 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". ![]() Etymology and origins Īccording 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". Noting "Hades' identity as Zeus' katachthonios alter ego", Timothy Gantz postulated that Zagreus, originally the son of Hades and Persephone, later merged with the Orphic Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Persephone. Aeschylus, however, links Zagreus with Hades, possibly as Hades' son, or as Hades himself. 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. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Zagreus ( Greek: Ζαγρεύς) was a god sometimes identified with an Orphic Dionysus, a son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered by the Titans and reborn. For other uses, see Zagreus (disambiguation).
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