beyond Apollo, Dionysos, and Persephonê,—the latter being confounded with Artemis and Hekatê.
But there is one new personage, begotten by Zeus, who stands preëminently marked in the Orphic Theogony, and whose adventures constitute one of its peculiar features. Zagreus, "the homed child," is the son of Zeus by his own daughter Persephonê: he is the favorite of his father, a child of magnificent promise, and predestined, if he grow up, to succeed to supreme dominion as well as to the handling of the thunderbolt. He is seated, whilst an infant, on the throne beside Zeus, guarded by Apollo and the Kurêtes. But the jealous Hêrê intercepts his career and incites the Titans against him, who, having first smeared their faces with plaster, approach him on the throne, tempt his childish fancy with playthings, and kill him with a sword while he is contemplating his face in a mirror. They then cut up his body and boil it in a caldron, leaving only the heart, which is picked up by Athênê and carried to Zeus, who in his wrath strikes down the Titans with thunder into Tartarus; whilst Apollo is directed to collect the remains of Zagreus and bury them at the foot of Mount Parnassus. The heart is given to Semelê, and Zagreus is born again from her under the form of Dionysos.[1]
- ↑ About the tale of Zagreus, see Lobeck, p. 552, sqq. Nonnus inhis Dionysiaca has given many details about it:—
Ζαγρέα γειναμένη κέροεν βρέφος, etc. (vi. 264).
Clemens Alexandria Admonit. ad Gent. p. 11,12, Sylb. The story was treated both by Callimachus and by Euphorion, Etymolog. Magu. v. Ζαγρεὺς, Schol. Lycophr. 208. In the old epic poem Alkmæônis or Epigoni, Zagreus is a surname of Hades. See Fragm. 4, p. 7, ed. Düntzer. Respecting the Orphic Theogony generally, Brandis (Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Römisch. Philosophic, c. xvii., xviii.), K. O. Müller (Prolegg. Mythol. pp. 379-396), and Zoega (Abhandlungen, v. pp. 211-263) may be consulted with much advantage. Brandis regards this Theogony as considerably older than the first Ionic philosophy, which is a higher antiquity than appears probable: some of the ideas which it contains, such, for example, as that of the Orphic egg, indicate a departure from the string of purely personal generations which both Homer and Hesiod exclusively recount, and a resort to something like physical analogies. On the whole, we cannot reasonably claim for it more than half a century above the age of Onomakritus. The Theogony of Pherekydês of Syros seems to have
