Zeus

Zeus occupies the theological centre of the Orphic cosmogony. Following the counsel of Night he swallows the firstborn Phanes together with the whole of the first creation, so that all beings come to exist within him; the celebrated 'Hymn to Zeus' quoted already in the fifth-century Derveni commentary proclaims him beginning, middle and end, male and female, the one body in which sky, sea, earth and gods are contained. Having absorbed the cosmos, he generates it a second time and orders it anew. In the myth of divine succession he then unites, in the form of a serpent, with his own daughter Persephone in the underworld, begetting the child-god Dionysos-Zagreus whom he destines to universal kingship. The Orphic Zeus is thus both the sovereign who gathers all prior creation into a single divine unity and the father of the suffering god whose fate underlies the sect's doctrine of the soul.

Parentage

• father: KronosOrphic Hymns 13–14 (Taylor; modern 14–15) (primary)
• mother: RheaOrphic Hymns 13–14 (Taylor; modern 14–15) (primary)

Children

• Artemis
• Athena
• Calliope
• Clio
• Dionysos
• Erato
• Euterpe
• Melinoe
• Melpomene
• Persephone
• Polyhymnia
• Terpsichore
• Thalia
• Urania
• Zagreus

Domains

• sky sovereignty
• cosmogony

Powers

• swallows the firstborn god and brings the whole cosmos to birth anew from within himself

Epithets

• μῆτις — Counsel (Zeus as bearer of Metis after swallowing Phanes)Derveni papyrus col. XV; Orphic fr. 168 Kern (primary)
• χθόνιος — of the underworld (Zeus Chthonios, in the union with Persephone)M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983), 74, 217 (secondary)

Relations

• lover: PersephoneIn serpent form Zeus unites with his daughter Persephone to beget the child Dionysos-Zagreus.Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6.155-168; Orphic frr. 153, 303 Kern (primary)
• father: KronosOrphic Hymns 13–14 (Taylor; modern 14–15) (primary)
• mother: RheaOrphic Hymns 13–14 (Taylor; modern 14–15) (primary)
• spouse: HeraOrphic Hymns 15 (Taylor; modern 16) (primary)
• counterpart of: ZeusTradition-specific counterpart; this link does not transfer parentage.Orphic Hymns, 14 (Taylor numbering) (primary)

Sources

• In the Orphic theogonies Zeus swallows the firstborn god Phanes and refounds the entire cosmos from within himself, becoming beginning, middle and end of all.: Derveni papyrus coll. XV-XIX; Orphic 'Hymn to Zeus' (Orphic frr. 21, 168 Kern; Bernabe OF 12-14, 31) (primary); G. Betegh, The Derveni Papyrus (Cambridge, 2004), 163-190 (secondary)
• Zeus fathers the child Dionysos-Zagreus upon his daughter Persephone.: Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6.155-205; Orphic frr. 153, 283, 303 Kern (primary)