1. DITHYRAMB I: ZAGREUS

Spoken:
Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths: Zagreus

Zagreus, the son of god
And his child, Persephone
Secretly begotten one
Set upon by Titans he
Sat upon his father’s throne
Torn then into pieces he
Died unto the Titans’ wrath
In-sewn into tragedy

Zagreus, horned child, twice born crowned with serpents
Seized and devoured mercilessly upon Hera’s command
They offered him childish toys such as a cone, a bull roarer
Golden apples, a mirror, knuckle bone and a tuft of wool

Zagreus showed courage as they set tirelessly upon
Him, he became Zeus in goat skin coat, Cronus making rain
A lion, a horse, a horned serpent, a tiger and a bull
Titans grabbed him by the horns and feet, tore him apart with teeth
Ate his flesh raw…

Spoken:

‘To the Greeks of the Classical age Dionysus was not solely, or even mainly, the god of wine. He is the Power of the tree; the blossom bringer, the fruit bringer, or the abundance of life. His domain is, not only the liquid fire in the grape, but the sap thrusting in a young tree, the blood pounding in the veins of a young animal, all the mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature.

Our oldest witness, Homer, nowhere explicitly refers to him as a wine god; and it may be that his association with certain wild plants, such as the fir and the ivy, and with certain wild animals, is in fact older than his association with the vine. It was the Alexandrines, and above all the Romans – with their tidy functionalism and their cheerful obtuseness in all matters of the spirit – who departmentalised Dionysus as “jolly Bacchus” the wine god with his riotous crew of nymphs and satyrs. As such he was taken over from the Romans by Renaissance painters and poets; and it was they in turn who shaped the image in which the modern world pictures him. If we are to understand Him, our first step is to unthink all this: to forget the pictures of Titan and Reubens, to forget Keats and his ‘god of breathless cups and chirping mirth’, to remember that orgia are not orgies but acts of devotion, and that his worship is not to ‘revel’ but to have a particular type of religious experience – the experience of communion with God which transformed a human being into a Bachos or Bacchae.’

(The Bacchae, edited by E. R. Dodds. Oxford 1960)

Zagreus, torn into pieces
Horned child, devoured by Titans
Tore his skin, and ate his flesh raw
Bull torn god, sacrament in-sewn
Deathless one…

Born of Death
Zagreus
Son of God
Serpent crowned
Horned Child
Devoured
Begotten
Sacrificed
Titans then
Set upon
Ripped to shreds
Torn apart
Eaten raw
Dying child
Born again
Zagreus