Nonnus

Classics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Agosti
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Greek Epic ◽  
John's Gospel

Nonnus of Panopolis (approximately 400–460/470 ce) is the undisputed protagonist of the flourishing of Greek poetry in Late Antiquity. He composed the Dionysiaca, the longest extant Greek epic poem on the life of Dionysus, his war and triumph over the Indians, his progress from the Near East to Thebes, and his eventual apotheosis (more than twenty-one thousand verses, in forty-eight books, the sum of the Iliad and the Odyssey). The poem begins with the abduction of Europa and a long section about Cadmus, and then describes the birth and youth of Dionysus (Books 1–12). Books 13–24 are devoted to the first part of the war against Indians, with the catalogues of the troops and the first battles. After a second prologue, the conclusion of the war against Indians is narrated, with the final battle and the death of the Indian king Deriades (Books 25–40). This section “rewrites” the Iliad in a very innovative way. In Books 40–48 the poet deals with Dionysus’ return to Phrygia, his visits to Tyre and Beirut, and also Thebes, Naxos, and Phrygia again, and his apotheosis. Nonnus is also the author of a long metrical Paraphrase of St John’s Gospel, where he displays a deep theological knowledge (around 3,700 hexameters). Recent research demonstrated that the coexistence of a mythological and a Christian poem was perfectly acceptable. Nonnus was a Christian, addressing the cultivated mixed elites of Alexandria. He introduced into the tradition of epic poetry a new style, based on manneristic exuberance and imaginative language, as well as a reform of the hexameter based on regularity and stress accents. Nonnus was very popular in Late Antiquity. His style was followed by several poets of the 5th and 6th century ce, who recognized in him a new classic to imitate. Among these followers, there are Pamprepius of Panopolis, Musaeus, Colluthus of Lycopolis, Christodorus of Coptos, John of Gaza, Agathias, Paul the Silentiary and the “minor” epigrammatists of Agathias’s Cycle, as well as several metrical inscriptions and fragmentary poems transmitted by papyri. In the subsequent centuries, some Byzantine literates found it appealing and profited from its exuberant vocabulary. From the Renaissance onward Nonnus had his admirers (especially during the Baroque age). After a period of classicizing prejudice, in scholarship there is now a growing interest for his works.

Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ophir Münz-Manor
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
Contemporary View ◽  
Cultural Dialogue ◽  
The One

The article presents a contemporary view of the study of piyyut, demonstrating that Jewish poetry of late antiquity (in Hebrew and Aramaic) was closely related to Christian liturgical poetry (both Syriac and Greek) and Samaritan liturgy. These relations were expressed primarily by common poetic and prosodic characteristics, derived on the one hand from ancient Semitic poetry (mainly biblical poetry), and on the other from innovations of the period. The significant connections of content between the different genres of poetry reveal the importance of comparative study. Thus the poetry composed in late antiquity provides additional evidence for the lively cultural dialogue that took place at that time.

Epic Poetry into Contemporary Choreography

2018 ◽  
pp. 194-208
Author(s):  
Tom Sapsford
Keyword(s):  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
A Site

This chapter considers two recent dance adaptations of the Odyssey: New Movement Collective’s 2013 work Nest and Cathy Marston’s ‘Choreographing the Katabasis’, a project undertaken in 2015 at the APGRD, Oxford. The chapter analyses how both these works engage with the epic poem in ways that have historically been of interest to classical scholars. As a site-specific and multi-authored work, Nest emphasized the sense of multiplicity that has been noted both of the Odyssey’s mode of creation and its narration process. In developing her adaption from the Homeric text with the expertise of Oxford scholars, Cathy Marston produced a dance version of Odysseus’ encounter with the shade of his mother, Anticlea, which closely engaged with the formulaic aspects of the hexameter text in order to explore the interplay of rhythm and representation in both verbal and non-verbal languages.

ΛAΩ: Two Testimonia in Later Greek Poetry

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald C. McCail
Keyword(s):  
Epic Poetry ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
Bird Of Prey ◽  
Modern Treatment

The verb λάω is attested in two passages of early epic poetry, (a) Homeric Hymn to Hermes 360, where the infant Hermes is hiding in a dark cave, and (b) τ 229 ff., of a hound seizing a fawn on the brooch of Odysseus. Of the several meanings suggested by the ancient lexicographers for λάω, seeing, gazing, or crying, screeching would suit (a). These senses recur in their explanations of (b), with gripping or devouring as additional possibilities. The most extensive modern treatment of λάω is by Leumann, who explains it as a present falsely formed from the perfect λ⋯ληkα (X 141, of a hawk), and originally intended to describe the cry of a bird of prey. The unfamiliarity of the form led to its being associated later on with the sharp-sightedness of such birds, as well as with the bark of a hound fastening on its quarry.

THE POETICS OF LATER GREEK ECPHRASIS: CHRISTODORUS COPTUS, THE PALATINE ANTHOLOGY AND THE PERIOCHAE OF NONNUS’ DIONYSIACA

Ramus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Middle Ages

There is increasing interest in what might be thought ‘special’ about late antique poetry. Two volumes of recent years have focused on Latin poetry of this time, Classics Renewed: Reception and Innovation in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity edited by Scott McGill and Joseph Pucci (2016) as well as The Poetics of Late Latin Literature edited by Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato (2017), while it has become increasingly acceptable to remark on late antiquity as a cultural period in its own right, rather than a point of transition between high antiquity and the middle ages. Greek poetry of late antiquity has yet to receive the level of attention offered to Latin literature of this time, and so it is to help answer the question of what may be thought special about late antique Greek poetry that I here discuss the poetics of later Greek ecphrasis.

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