Sabazios

Sabazios hand in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología Subacuática in Cartagena

Sabazios ( ancient Greek Σαβάζιος ), also Sabadios or Sabazius , was a probably Asian Minor ( Phrygian ?) Or Phoenician deity , adopted by Greeks and Romans and associated with Dionysus and Zagreus . In Pergamon, Attalus III. Zeus Sabazios brought to worship.

mythology

According to Diodorus (Diod. 4,4, cf. also Diod. 3,64), Sabazios is the son of Zeus and Persephone . He was therefore considered the god of agriculture and is said to have been the first ox to harness the plow. Accordingly, he was represented with horns. The obstetrics was one of his responsibilities.

After Sabazios ( Zagreus ) was dismembered by the Titans , he was resurrected as Dionysus .

One saw in him the representative of the blooming life of nature, which succumbs to death and awakens again and again. As a symbol of this annual renewal of nature, the snake was his peculiar symbol.

The Sabazios cult was orgiastic ; according to Diodorus, the cult activities took place at night. The more educated at the time of Demosthenes stayed away from the Sabazius cult. The worship of the deity reached Thrace from Asia Minor and came towards the end of the 5th century BC. To Athens . During the Roman Empire, it spread to the west of the empire.

archeology

The so-called Sabazian hands are a larger type of finds associated with God. Attributes such as agricultural implements (plow, yoke), a ladder, scales, earth animals (snake, lizard, toad, turtle), a pine cone, a raven, an altar, a flute, a nursing mother in a grotto and others can be placed on these be represented.

literature

• Theodor Eisele : Sabazios . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 4, Leipzig 1915, Col. 231-264 ( digitized version ).
• Hans Schaefer : Sabazios. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IA, 2, Stuttgart 1920, column 1540 f.
• Maarten J. Vermaseren , Eugene N. Lane : Corpus cultus Iovis Sabazii (CCIS) (= Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'empire romain 100). 3 volumes. Brill, Leiden 1983-1989.

Web links

Commons : Sabazios  - collection of images

• Compilation of ancient sources on Zagreus / Sabazios (in English translation).

Remarks

1. ↑ http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Zagreus.html
2. ^ Wolfgang Fauth : Sabazios . In: The Little Pauly . dtv, Munich 1979, vol. 4, col. 1479.