[25] See [Append. ix].
[26] It must have been chiefly the religious significance of the gods which caused the retention of their personalities and prevented them from fading into mere personifications of abstract ideas or elementary powers with which religion could have had nothing further to do.
[27] In the statements of the Neoplatonic writers this first Orphic Dionysos is regularly called Διόνυσος simply (perhaps also Βάκχος: fr. 192). Nonnus in recounting the Orphic legend calls him Zagreus: D. vi, 165; cf. Ζαγρέα γειναμένη (of Perseph.) with clear allusion to Callim. fr. 171, υἷα Διώνυσον Ζαγρέα γειναμένη. Callim. here, as elsewhere, seems to have in mind the Orphic story. Tz. on Lyc. 355 calls the god of the Orphic legend Διόνυσον τὸν καὶ Ζαγρέα καλούμενον. Ζαγρεύς the great Hunter is a name of the all-absorbing Hades: thus also the Alkmaionis fr. 3 Kink. Zagreus is identified with the Dionysos of nocturnal revelry in E., Kret. fr. 472, 10 (a reference in Ba. 1181 Kirchh.); and see above, chap. viii, [n. 28]. This Dionysos is regarded as a χθόνιος (see Hsch. Ζαγρεύς) and this must indubitably have been quite familiar to the poets who made him the son of Persephone: χθόνιος ὁ τῆς Περσεφόνης Διόνυσος (Harp. λεύκη). [353] They were as clearly conscious as was Herakleitos of the fact that ὡυτὸς Ἅιδης καὶ Διόνυσος, whereas this consciousness was undoubtedly obscured in the public ceremonial of Dionysos-worship (to which, however, Hcl.’s saying refers). Zagreus-Dionysos was never identified with the Ἴακχος of the Eleusinia (to which Orph. fr. 215, l. 2 refers); though Dionysos alone was often so identified.
[28] Ouranos casts the Titans into Tartaros: frr. 97, 100. Acc. to Procl. (fr. 205) and Arn. (196: prob. not from the Rhaps.) we should be led to suppose that the Titans after they had torn Zagreus in pieces were cast down to Tartaros by Zeus. In Arn. this is set down side by side with the statement that the Titans were destroyed by the lightning of Zeus (ἡ Τιτάνων κεραύνωσις, Plu., Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C), though obviously incompatible with the latter statement, as it is also (even more so) with the origin of mankind from the ashes of the Titans which is known not only to Olympiodoros (ad Phd., p. 68 Finckh: Lob. 566), but also to Proclus who got it from the “Rhapsodiai” (as also did Olymp.): Procl., in Rp. ii, 74, 29; i, 93 Kroll. It seems from this that Proclus (and perhaps Arn.) in error ascribed the καταταρτάρωσις of the Titans to Zeus instead of to Ouranos.
[29] Nonn. vi, 173; O., fr. 195. Perhaps Proclus is right in explaining this doubling of the god’s figure in the mirror as meaning his entrance upon the μεριστὴ δημιουργία. A reference to a similar explanation of this Διονύσου κάτοπτον occurs even in Plot. 4, 3, 12 (Lob. 555)—? also in the strange statement made by Marsilius Ficinus as to the crudelissimum apud Orpheum Narcissi fatum (was Zagreus another Narcissus?) fr. 315; cf. Plot. 1, 6, 8. The entry of the one origin of the universe into the multiplicity of phenomena is first clearly referred to in the dismemberment of Zagreus, but it would be quite like this symbol-loving poetry to introduce the same motif in a different form with a passing reference earlier in the poem.
[30] Nonn., D. vi, 197 ff.
[31] Paus. 8, 37, 5.
[32] Procl., O., frr. 195, 198, 199. In any case Nonn. vi, 169 ff. is following the Rhapsodiai.
[33] Callim. and Euphor. knew of the dismemberment of Dionysos by the Titans: Tz. ad Lyc. 208 (from the completer version in EM.). In any case it is not from the Rhaps. that this legend is also known to D.S. 5, 75, 4; Cornut. 30, p. 62, 10 Lang; Plu., Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C; Is. et Os. 35, p. 364 F; Clem. Al. (see Orph. frr. 196, 200).—A roughly caricatured drawing on a hydria belonging to the early fourth century found at Rhodos and made probably in Attica appears in JHS. xi (1890), p. 243; where it is said to represent the dismemberment of Zagreus as conceived by Orphics. The picture, however, does not agree at all with the meaning thus attributed to it; the interpretation cannot be the right one.
[34] A true ἱερὸς λόγος, i.e. an account of the origin of ritual acts founded upon myth or legend. (The Orphics had such accounts, e.g. of the prohibition against being buried in woollen clothing: Hdt. ii, 81 fin.)