Dionysiaca

The Dionysiaca (Greek: Διονυσιακά, Dionysiaká) is an ancient epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus. It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from 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.

The poem is thought to have been written in the late 4th and/or early 5th century AD. The Dionysiaca appears to be incomplete, and some scholars believe that a 49th book was being planned when Nonnus stopped work on the poem, although others point out that the number of books in the Dionysiaca is the same as the 48 books of the Iliad and Odyssey combined. It has been conjectured that a possible conversion to Christianity or death caused Nonnus to abandon the poem after some revisions. Editors have pointed out various inconsistencies and the difficulties of Book 39 which appears to be a disjointed series of descriptions, as evidence of the poem's lack of revision. Others have attributed these problems to copyists or later editors, but most scholars agree on the poem's incompleteness.

The primary models for Nonnus are Homer and the Cyclic poets; Homeric language, metrics, episodes, and descriptive canons are central to the Dionysiaca. The influence of Euripides' Bacchae is also significant, as is probably the influence of the other tragedians whose Dionysiac plays do not survive. His debt to fragmentary poets is far harder to gauge, but it is likely that he alludes to earlier poets' treatments of the life of Dionysus, such as the lost poems by Euphorion, Peisander of Laranda's elaborate encyclopedic mythological poem, Dionysius, and Soteirichus. Hesiod's poetry, especially the Catalogue of Women, Pindar, and Callimachus can all be seen in the work of Nonnus. Theocritus' influence can be detected in Nonnus' focus on pastoral themes. Finally, Virgil and especially Ovid seem to have influenced Nonnus' organization of the poem.

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