Dionysiaca
It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from Greco-Roman antiquity at 20,426 lines, composed in Homeric dialect and dactylic hexameters, the main subject of which is the life of Dionysus, his expedition to India, and his triumphant return to the west.
These metrical restraints encouraged the creation of new compounds, adjectives, and coined words, and Nonnus' work has some of the greatest variety of coinages in any Greek poem.
The size of Nonnus' poem and its late date between Imperial and Byzantine literature have caused the Dionysiaca to receive relatively little attention from scholars.
The contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica (8th edition, 1888), noting the poem's "vast and formless luxuriance, its beautiful but artificial versification, its delineation of action and passion to the entire neglect of character," remarked, "His chief merit consists in the systematic perfection to which he brought the Homeric hexameter.
His influence on the vocabulary of his successors was likewise very considerable," expressing the 19th-century attitude to this poem as a pretty, artificial, and disorganized collection of stories.
As with many other late classical poets, newer scholarship has avoided the value-laden judgments of 19th-century scholars and attempted to reassess and rehabilitate Nonnus' works.
[9] Nonnus remains an important source of mythology and information to those researching classical religion, Hellenistic poetry, and Late Antiquity.
Earlier scholars have looked to elaborate ring composition, a prophetic astrological program in the tablets of Harmonia, rhetorical encomium, or epyllion as structural concepts behind the poem to make sense of the unconventional narrative.
[16] Book 1 – The poem opens with the poet's invocation of the muses, his address to Proteus, and his commitment to sing the various episodes of Dionysus' life in a varied style (stylistic concept of ποικιλία, poikilia).
The following morning Typhon challenges Zeus into combat and is defeated and killed by him after a long battle that affects the whole cosmos.
While the earth repairs itself, Zeus promises to Cadmus the hand of Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, and bids him to found Thebes.
Book 3 – Cadmus' ship wanders the sea and stops at Samothrace, where Harmonia lives with her step-mother Electra and her step-brother Emathion.
The girl wakes up after a horrible nightmare predicting her death, consumed by the thunderbolt, and is told to sacrifice to Zeus to avert the omen.
Spattered by the victim's blood she bathes naked in a river nearby, where Zeus spots her beauty and falls madly in love with her.
Envy tells Hera of the deed and she disguises herself as an old woman the young girl trusts and tricks her into asking to see Zeus armed in full power with the lightning.
Hermes receives baby Dionysus after birth and carries him to the daughters of Lamos, river nymphs, until Hera drives them mad.
Dionysus adopts the vine as his personal attribute and claims to be superior to the other gods, because no other plant is so beautiful and provides so much merriment to humankind.
Book 13 – Zeus sends Iris to the halls of Rhea, ordering Dionysus to make a war against the impious Indians if he wants to join the gods on Olympus.
Maenads and satyrs massacre the Indian troops until Dionysus takes pity on them and turns the waters of the neighbouring lake Astacid.
Story of the virgin nymph Nicaea, who lives near the lake Astacid, enjoys hunting and refuses to behave like a woman.
After a day hunting, Nicaea drinks from a river whose waters are turned into wine, following Dionysus' earlier intervention in the first battle against the Indians.
Book 19 – Dionysus consoles Methe and Botrys giving them wine and hosts the funeral games for Staphylus, with contests of singing and pantomime.
The satyr Pherespondos arrives at the court of the Indian king Deriades and gives him Dionysus' message: he should accept the cult of the vine or face him in battle.
The Hydaspes is upset because his waters are fouled with blood and dead bodies and because of how easily the Bacchic troops cross it.
Return to the main narrative: the Ganges, Deriades and the Indian people are scared by a number of Bacchic miracles.
Description of the shield, covered with constellations and adorned with a number of scenes: foundation of Thebes, Ganymede and Zeus and the Lydian myth of Tylos.
In the meantime, in the Olympus, Zeus encourages Apollo and Athena to join their brother Dionysus and also addresses the gods who back the Indian side (Hera and Hephaestus).
Beginning of a new day: Morrheus nourishes his hope of love, while the Bacchic troops are completely dispirited in the absence of Dionysus.
Book 40 – Deriades returns to battle and is confronted by Dionysus who grazes him with his thyrsus and forces him to jump into the river Hydaspes, calling the war to an end.
Perseus is incited by Hera to attack the Bacchantes and turns Ariadne into stone after which the Argives accept the rites of Dionysus on Hermes' demand.
