Nonnus of Panopolis in Context Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Philip R. Hardie · Stephen J. Harrison Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Kurt Raaflaub · Bernhard Zimmermann Volume 24 Nonnus of Panopolis in Context Poetry and Cultural Milieu in Late Antiquity with a Section on Nonnus and the Modern World Edited by Konstantinos Spanoudakis DE GRUYTER ISBN978-3-11-033937-6 e-ISBN978-3-11-033942-0 ISSN1868-4785 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData ACIPcatalogrecordforthisbookhasbeenappliedforattheLibraryofCongress. BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie; detailedbibliographicdataareavailableintheInternetathttp://dnb.dnb.de. ©2014WalterdeGruyterGmbH,Berlin/Boston Logo:ChristopherSchneider,Laufen Printing:Hubert&Co.GmbH&Co.KG,Göttingen ♾Printedonacid-freepaper PrintedinGermany www.degruyter.com Preface When we look back to older Nonnian scholarship the picture appears rather grim:theshadowypoetandhisextensiveoutput,toolateforclassicalHellen- istsandtooearlyforByzantinists,findthemselvescaughtbetweentheprecon- ceptions of the former and the latter. To a large extent these are the outcome ofthedissociationofNonnus’oeuvrefromitseraoftransitionthatwastoseal the centuries to come. Most classical Hellenists at some point have come acrosstheDionysiaca:passagesfromtheDionysiacaareinpassingplundered either as a source of mythology or as a source allegedly providing insights into someone else’s lost work. Insidiously the poem came to be regarded a mythologicalhandbookofthesamesortasPs.-Apollodorus’Bibliotheca,ifless systematic, certainly “poetic” and (of course) degenerate. No wonder the edi- tors of the widely used Loeb edition of the Dionysiaca saw fit to assign the mythologicalnotestoanexpert(H.J.Rose)whoprovidedalsoaten-pagelong “MythologicalIntroduction”,allsettoexplainNonnus’idiosyncratic“mythol- ogy” marred by a taste for the surreal and the erotic. Even modern scholars who consider Nonnus seriously from the perspective of a classical Hellenist often lay emphasis on his epic and Hellenistic models at a verbal or thematic level, failing to recognise the vast risemantizzazione those models have suf- fered. And at any rate for most classical Hellenists the Paraphrase remains terraincognita.Ontheotherhand,Byzantinistsneverfeltagenuineallegiance to Nonnus or his “school” and rarely ever regarded him as appropriately an author of “theirs”. Too far from Constantinople and strongly affiliated to an epic and Hellenistic past, unlike George of Pisidia, Nonnus was felt to belong to a different literary context, and perhaps rightly so. On the rare occasions whenNonnuswasfoundtohaveleftatraceonaByzantineauthor,hewould be treated by Byzantinists as another classic of the past. Unbiased readers have not been numerous and have often been deterred, or even repulsed, by the artificial style and content, the protracted circular narrative and the long andwindingcomposites.AndthosewhohavestudiedNonnusora“Nonnian” poethave suffered,andstill suffer,fromacrisis ofidentitysimply becausein thefield ofLiteraryStudies (unlikeArt,History,Philosophy orPatristics)Late Antiquity has not (yet?) been widely established as an independent area of research. Charting the map proved more complex upon realisation of the fact that it was the same man who wrote the Dionysiaca, a poem with an exuberant interestinastrology,apocryphismandnotleastthefemalebody,andthePara- phrase of the Gospel of Saint John, then (and indeed sometimes even today) regardedasanaridandgracelessrenditionoftheholymodel.Thepersonaof vi Preface Nonnus suffered accordingly: he was made to become a convert, a proselyte, a pagan, a Christian, a crypto-Christian, a false Christian, a nothing and an all in the world of Late Antique poetics. No word of Nonnus in context; no concernfortheculturalmilieuthatmadetheNonnianparadox(whichisnot) possible; no word of the large doses of Late Antique paideia injected in both hisworks;nointerestintheinfluenceofcoevalvisualarts;andnohintatthe ambitious plan of a highly educated man, gifted in producing hexameters, to represent world-history beginning from the earliest times, centred around a god of salvation, with his eye fixed to a more perfect world dominated by a more accomplished God, who had planned everything in the first place. The episodesnarratedinthelongerpoem,atourdeforceofartistryanderudition, seem like the tesserae forming the chaotic mosaic of the advances and draw- backs in the history of man. The raging language, laden with all sorts of con- tradictions and prolepses, and widely shifting like the world it purports to convey,enhancesthesameeffect.Theminorworkbringstheplantoamagnif- icentconclusion,thetriumphofGod’splantoliftmantoasuperiorlevel.This is celebrated by means of sublime poetry merging the best of man’s thought with the inspiration lavished by faith in the true God. The Paraphrase, no doubt,wasariskyundertakingatatimewhenChristiandogmaswerelargely solidified but still beset with controversy from in and out of the Church. Yet, the risk was worthwhile. It is nothing other than a convinced Christian mind behind this plan. Despite all this, even today the intrinsic unity of Nonnus’ works tends to be forgotten. Nonnus is de facto partitioned between the Dionysiaca and the Paraphrase. The Paraphrase is often considered, or relegated, to be a subject (only)fortheologianstostudy.TheDionysiacawouldbetoleratedasaUniver- sity course in Classics; the Paraphrase remains out of the question. Classics librariespileupbooksontheDionysiacawhereastheyignoretheParaphrase. ThisinsanityinawaymadeitdesirabletoorganiseaneventinwhichNonnus would be studied for his own sake, and other scholars would be invited to reflect on him in context. For this generation of scholars the goal was less hardtoattainassignificantworkhadalreadybeenundertakenonanindivid- ual basis. ThefirstInternationalConferenceentirelydevotedtothePanopolitanpoet andhisambience(“NonnusofPanopolisinContext:PoetryandCulturalMilieu in Late Antiquity”: http://www.philology.uoc.gr/conferences/Nonnus/) was held in Rethymno, Crete, 13–15 May 2011. “Once scattered but now all united in one fold, in one flock”: the words of Artemidorus the Grammarian about the “bucolic muses” (AP 9.205), would apply well to Nonnian scholars and students coming together for the first time. Those shiny days in Crete marked Preface vii quite an achievement. The articles collected here are essentially the Proceed- ingsofthatconferenceenrichedbythreeadditionalcontributions.Theycover a wide range of topics that live up to the original plan and bring discussion uptodate.Oldquestionsarerecastandnewinsightsintothepoetryitselfand its parameters are offered. AsanorganiserIamgratefultotheDepartmentofPhilologyoftheUniver- sity of Crete for funding, to the participants of my post-graduate seminar on Nonnus that year, and to my colleagues in Rethymno for their support. I am alsogratefultoEvaGemenetzi(Rethymno)andNestanEgetashvili(Tbilisi)for helping to organise the event. As an editor I am grateful to Mary Whitby and Katherine LaFrance (Oxford) for their help. I am also indebted to the editors of the series and the anonymous readers for many valuable suggestions. The largest part of the credit goes to the participants and contributors, who were the actualevent and“are” thepresent volume.To themI amalso gratefulfor their spirit of congeniality, their promptness and their understanding. Konstantinos Spanoudakis, Florence, December 2012. Contents Preface v Abbreviations xiii List of Contributors xv I: Introduction Pierre Chuvin Revisiting Old Problems: Literature and Religion in the Dionysiaca 3 II: Nonnus and the Literary Past Katerina Carvounis Peitho in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca: the Case of Cadmus and Harmonia 21 Jane Lightfoot Oracles in the Dionysiaca 39 Enrico Livrea Nonnus and the Orphic Argonautica 55 Marta Otlewska-Jung Orpheus and Orphic Hymns in the Dionysiaca 77 Michael Paschalis Ovidian Metamorphosis and Nonnian poikilon eidos 97 Maria Ypsilanti Image-Making and the Art of Paraphrasing: Aspects of Darkness and Light in the Metabole 123 III: Nonnus and the Visual Arts Gianfranco Agosti Contextualizing Nonnus’ Visual World 141