Editing Zagreus (section)

====Rationalized accounts====
Diodorus also reports a rationalized account of the older Dionysus.<ref>[[Diodorus Siculus]], [https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/3E*.html#64 3.64.1&ndash;2].</ref> In this account this Dionysus was a wise man, who was the inventor of the plough, as well as many other agricultural inventions. And according to Diodorus, these inventions, which greatly reduced manual labor, so pleased the people that they "accorded to him honours and sacrifices like those offered to the gods, since all men were eager, because of the magnitude of his service to them, to accord to him immortality."

The Christian apologist [[Firmicus Maternus]] gives a rationalized [[euhemeristic]] account of the myth whereby Liber (Dionysus) was the bastard son of a [[Cretan]] king named Jupiter (Zeus).<ref>Meisner, pp. 255&ndash;6; Herrero de Jáuregui, pp. 156&ndash;7; [[Firmicus Maternus]], ''De errore profanarum religionum'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=MB5LMQ5j1z8C&pg=PA54 6.1 (Forbes, p. 54)] [= Orphic fr. 304 III Bernabé (I p. 248) = [https://archive.org/stream/orphicorumfragme00orphuoft#page/234/mode/2up fr. 214 Kern]]; see also Linforth, [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015008294699;view=1up;seq=339 pp. 313&ndash;314, 315].</ref> When Jupiter left his kingdom in the boy's charge, the king's jealous wife Juno (Hera), conspired with her servants, the Titans, to murder the bastard child. Beguiling him with toys, the Titans ambushed and killed the boy. To dispose of the evidence of their crime, the Titans chopped the body into pieces, cooked, and ate them. However the boy's sister Minerva (Athena), who had been part of the murder plot, kept the heart. When her father the king returned, the sister turned informer and gave the boy's heart to the king.<ref>[[Firmicus Maternus]], ''De errore profanarum religionum'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=MB5LMQ5j1z8C&pg=PA54 6.2&ndash;3 (Forbes, pp. 54&ndash;5)] [= Orphic frr. 304 III (I p. 248), 309 VII (I p. 253), 313 III (I p. 256), 314 IV (I p. 257) Bernabé = [https://archive.org/stream/orphicorumfragme00orphuoft#page/234/mode/2up fr. 214 Kern]].</ref> In his fury, the king tortured and killed the Titans, and in his grief, he had a statue of the boy made, which contained the boy's heart in its chest, and a temple erected in the boy's honour.<ref>[[Firmicus Maternus]], ''De errore profanarum religionum'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=MB5LMQ5j1z8C&pg=PA55 6.4 (Forbes, p. 55)] [= Orphic frr. 318 V (I p. 261), 325 (I p. 267), 332 (I p. 274) Bernabé = [https://archive.org/stream/orphicorumfragme00orphuoft#page/234/mode/2up fr. 214 Kern]].</ref> The Cretans, in order to pacify their furious savage and despotic king, established the anniversary of the boy's death as a holy day. Sacred rites were held, in which the celebrants howling and feigning insanity tore to pieces a live bull with their teeth, and the basket in which boy's heart had been saved, was paraded to the blaring of flutes and the crashing of cymbals, thereby turning a mere boy into a god.<ref>[[Firmicus Maternus]], ''De errore profanarum religionum'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=MB5LMQ5j1z8C&pg=PA55 6.5 (Forber, pp. 55&ndash;6)] [= Orphic frr. 332 (I p. 274), 572 (II p. 137) Bernabé = [https://archive.org/stream/orphicorumfragme00orphuoft#page/234/mode/2up fr. 214 Kern]].</ref>