Zagreus is the underworld-born first Dionysos, son of Zeus and Persephone, whose passion lies at the heart of Orphic anthropology. Enthroned as an infant and entrusted with the thunderbolt and the promise of universal kingship, he is set upon by the jealous Titans, who whiten their faces with gypsum, distract him with a set of toys - mirror, knucklebones, top, bull-roarer, ball and wool - and then seize, dismember, boil and devour him. Athena rescues his still-beating heart, from which the god is brought to life again; Zeus blasts the Titans with his thunderbolt, and from their soot-blackened remains the human race is formed, compounded of a Titanic (earthly, guilty) nature and a Dionysiac (divine) spark. This 'Orphic original sin' grounds the sect's belief that the soul must be purified across successive lives to expiate the ancient crime. Sources differ on the name and the details: the epithet Zagreus for the dismembered child is prominent chiefly in Callimachus, Euphorion and Nonnus, while the older Orphic poems tend simply to call him Dionysos, and modern scholars debate how early and how central the anthropogony from the Titans' ashes actually was.