Talk:Hades

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The article currently states that Dionysus is the son of Hades, which is incorrect; Dionysus is the son of Zeus. ^[1] Scottaeantor (talk) 14:26, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want made. Note that Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source, per WP:CIRC. Day Creature (talk) 16:04, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that shouldn't be in the infobox. Removed. – Michael Aurel (talk) 02:34, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

Zagreus-Dionysus is referenced to a reliable source; Hades' children also played an important role in Orphism, making them fairly notable. To exclude Hades' children from the infobox for no reason other than "I don't like it" (seeing that your reason for removal was 'Don't really think any of these parentages are important enough to Hades to deserve mention here') seems not to be very well founded. Applodion (talk) 08:12, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

My goal was not for the info box to be removed, the goal was for specifically Dionysus to be removed. My apologies if I was unclear to begin with. Scottaeantor (talk) 12:53, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

@Scottaeantor: In most retellings of the myths, Dionysus was the son of Zeus, but Dionysus (often merged with Zagreus) was regarded as Hades' son in Orphism. That's why the infobox says "and in some cases Zagreus, Dionysus" when describing them as Hades' children. Applodion (talk) 13:37, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

@Applodion: Thanks for bringing this here. I'll try to respond to each of these points.

Regarding the sourcing for Dionysus and Zagreus, the citation is to a fragment of Aeschylus from the Etymologicum Gudianum, which refers to "Zagreus and (his) most hospitable (father)". O'Sullivan and Collard's commentary on the passage states that he is "identified here with Hades' son". This does not support the claim that Dionysus is Hades's child. If you're interpreting the description of "Zagreus" as a "a cult-title of Dionysus in Orphism" to mean that Zagreus is identified with Dionysus in this passage, then I simply don't think that's what O'Sullivan and Collard are saying. In their discussions of Zagreus, Gantz, West, Gordon (in Brill's New Pauly), Chrysanthou, and Edmonds 1999 all include this passage, and none suggest it is Orphic or that Zagreus and Dionysus are identified in it. The two gods are first explicitly associated in a fragment of Callimachus, and a few scholars have detected Orphic traces in a fragment of Euripides, but I can't find a scholar who extends their identification back to this passage. After noting what I've just written about Callimachus and the Euripides fragment, Edmonds 1999 (p. 37 n. 6) in fact says that Earlier evidence, however, (e.g., Alkmaionis fr. 3 PEG; Aeschylus frr. 5, 228) suggests that Zagreus was often identified with other deities. (Aeschylus fr. 228 is, by the way, the one we're discussing here.) Similarly, Gordon discusses the fragment in his paragraph on the original nature of Z.. Even Bernabé (see II.3, p. 329), who has probably been the most maximalist Orphic scholar of the last 30 years, doesn't include the passage in his edition of Orphic fragments.

Regarding the claim that "Dionysus [...] was regarded as Hades' son in Orphism": no, Dionysus is generally the son of Zeus and Persephone in the Orphic tradition. If you're referring here to the sentence of the article which claims this, it is cited to a book by one Marguerite Rigoglioso, who I don't think can be considered a reliable source. This is her website, where she describes herself as the "Founding Director" of the "Seven Sisters Mystery School". Her books cite the unreliable Theoi.com, and I've never seen any of her works cited by reputable scholars. If you'd like a classicist's opinion on the book of hers cited in that sentence, see Andromache Karanika's review, which says: sources are not contextualized, the complexities in the transmission of ancient Greek mythology and religion are not acknowledged, and the whole picture constructed of parthenogenesis as a driving force ultimately gives not only a highly speculative but also an obsessively unified view of the origin and nature of ancient goddesses which then informs Rigoglioso's treatment of most aspects of their cult.

My edit summary for the removal of Dionysus noted that the source didn't support the parentage. My edit summary for the removal of the other children (Don't really think any of these parentages are important enough to Hades to deserve mention here) wasn't an expression of "I don't like it", but was stating that I don't think this information is important enough to Hades to deserve mention in the infobox. What determines if such information should be included there is not whether Hades's children are "fairly notable" (in Orphic literature, or anywhere else), but whether their genealogical relationships with Hades are important to Hades. As MOS:IBP says, the infobox is only for the key facts about the article's subject. I don't think any of these genealogical relationships are "key facts" about Hades: Macaria is mentioned only in a 10th-century AD encyclopedia; the Erinyes usually have different parents, with this parentage coming from a collection of Anatolian hymns composed around the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD; the parentage of Zagreus is found in a single fragment, and in another fragment of Aeschylus he is instead identified with Hades himself; and the parentage of Dionysus I've addressed above. A good way to determine whether something is a "key fact" about Hades is checking whether reference works mention it in their discussions of him. The entries on Hades in the OCD, Brill's New Pauly, Grimal, and Tripp, as well as the discussions of him in Hard (pp. 107–108) and Gantz (pp. 70–73), don't mention any of the parentages currently in the infobox, indicating to me that these are not "key facts" about Hades. (MOS:IBP also requires that facts in an infobox "appear in [the] article", something we don't have for most of the children here.)

I realise this is incredibly long, but I'm not sure it would have been possible to properly explain all this in a shorter comment. Hopefully this clears things up. – Michael Aurel (talk) 14:10, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

This all seems conclusive to me. Unless someone can present a convincing counterargument, I intend to remove this from the info box. Paul August ☎ 16:08, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

@Michael Aurel: First of all, thank you very much for your well-sourced response. I hope that you understand why I initially believed your argument to be somewhat flippant, considering your short edit summary, but now I see that you pondered the matter quite a bit. However, I disagree with some of your points, and I do have access to several sources which follow the view that Hades was sometimes regarded as Dionysius' father and describe Zagreus-Dionysius as well as Zagreus-Hades connections. I will try to quote them here tomorrow.
Furthermore, I have actually thought that it might be worthwile to use this discussion to expand this article a little bit, perhaps by adding a section dubbed "Children of Hades" where the scholarly disputes and different views could be collected, with the infobox then linking to this section (instead of just listing no one or the individual gods). What do you think? Applodion (talk) 17:46, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

I will be very interested in any sources you can provide! Note that, while the name "Zagreus" has certainly been connected with an Orphic Dionysus, it does not, in fact, occur anywhere in Orphic literature itself (Gantz, p. 118: Orphic sources preserved seem not to use the name 'Zagreus'). Paul August ☎ 18:37, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for reading and taking on board what I've written. I'll be interested to read those sources about Dionysus and Hades. I don't see an issue with mentioning at least some of these children in the article's body (though I would hesitate to add a section link to the infobox, as MOS:IBP recommends that we Avoid links to sections within the article). – Michael Aurel (talk) 01:57, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

@Michael Aurel:@Paul August: So, here are some examples of modern sources:

• Elias Koulakiotis states in Chapter 15 of Ancient Historiography on War and Empire, p. 229, when talking about Orphic Dionysos: This second cthonios Dionysos, as we see in a fragment by Heraclitus sometimes is considered to be the son of Hades or even Hades himself, citing this to Heracl. fr. 15.
• Richard Seaford in Dionysos, p. 77: In one lost play (Sisyphos) by Aeschylus the ruler of the underworld, Plouton, was called Zagreus, in another (Aigyptioi) Zagreus was the son of Hades, and in later texts Zagreus was frequently identified with Dionysos.
• Rosemarie Taylor-Perry (The God who Comes: Dionysian Mysteries Revisited), p. 184, on the term "Cthonios": "(The Dionysos) of the underworld." In later Hellenic religion, which tended toward linking all godforms into one complex and paradoxical god - a monotheism brought about by the influence of philosophy, a belief structure based upon observable phenomena, which was the forebear of modern scientific reasoning - this might be Hades himself, or the son of Hades and Persphone.
• Marios Skempis in Der orphische Hymnos auf Chthonios Hermes (57): Genealogie, Eros, Ritual Der chthonios Dionysos, der seit hellenistischer Zeit teilweise mit Zagreus geglichen wird, ist eindeutig mit dem Dasein nach dem Tod assoziiert, translated from German: The chthonios Dionysos, who has been partly equated with Zagreus since Hellenistic times, is clearly associated with existence after death.

Either way, I perhaps overestimated how often scholars work out a Zagreus-Dionysus-Hades connections; after looking into my own books and across the Internet, I have discovered that these connections were seemingly more common in older academic works (i.e., pre-1960s). One of my old professors at university made it look like these views were still common, and I was probably influenced by his statements when thinking Orphic Zagreus = son of Hades = Dionysus. :-D Applodion (talk) 22:44, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for these quotes (and sorry for the belated response). Given that passage from Koulakiotis, I do think WP:V would allow us to add a claim along the lines of "Dionysus was sometimes the child of Hades"; Koulakiotis is a scholar, and that book is clearly reliable. I'm having a little trouble understanding why he states this, though. As quoted in his note 19, the Heraclitus fragment only says "But Hades is the same as Dionysos", and the phrase "son of Hades or even Hades himself" certainly sounds as though it's referring to the Aeschylus fragments, though he doesn't cite them. This leaves me unsure as to whether he considers Zagreus and Dionysus to be identified in fr. 228, or whether he's deriving this from somewhere else. He points to Sourvinou-Inwood's Hylas, the Nymphs, Dionysos and Others, so it's possible that work contains similar conclusions (I'm not able to access it).

Taylor-Perry adds Persephone to the parentage, but doesn't cite a source, making it difficult to know whence this information derives. It also isn't clear to me how reliable her book is; the "About the Author" blurb on Amazon and the frequent citations to Robert Graves don't inspire confidence. Seaford and Skempis, from what I can tell, don't disagree with the notion that Dionysus was only identified with Zagreus after the Aeschylus fragment (in later texts Zagreus was frequently identified; partly equated with Zagreus since Hellenistic times).

A better line of attack here might be to improve the page's coverage of the relationship between Hades and Dionysus generally: Rigoglioso should be removed, some of the long quotes should probably be removed or truncated, and I'd be at least a little sceptical of claims about "tripartite deities". I'm not sure if this is something which interests you, but I'll see if I can tackle some of the more dubious claims later today. – Michael Aurel (talk) 03:11, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

While a fine piece of work, I don't think the statue with Cerberus is an ideal lead image. The subject is a syncretic amalgam of Hades and Serapis, and the statue mixes attributes of the two; the most obvious departure from Hades' regular iconography is the calathus, characteristic of Serapis. As LIMC, IV.1 p. 389 notes, Cerberus seldom appears as an attribute of Hades in Greek depictions, and the late date of the statue probably also isn't ideal.

Unfortunately, we aren't spoilt for choice when it comes to depictions of Hades. Below are a few potentially suitable replacements. Image 1 has multiple significant attributes: the empty horn, the bare chest, the position on the couch, and the presence of Persephone opposite. A crop could also be made which includes only Hades. Image 2 is a copy of a 5th-century BC statue, though the garment appears to be a modern addition. Another route would be to use a depiction of the abduction, of which Image 3 is an example.

What do others think? – Michael Aurel (talk) 00:56, 10 March 2026 (UTC)