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113-514: The Dionysiaca / ˌ d aɪ . ə . n ɪ ˈ z aɪ . ə . k ə / ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : Διονυσιακά , Dionysiaká ) is an ancient Greek epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus . 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

226-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

339-583: A blind wanderer. While Dionysus is entertained in the halls of Nereus, the Bacchic army is dispirited. 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. Deriades, a son of the river ( Jhelum River ) dismisses Dionysus' offer of peace. Dionysus leaves the bottom of the sea, joins his troops and prepares for battle. Book 22 – The Bacchic troops arrive at

452-480: A bull his own. Deluded, Ampelus rides a bull and provokes Selene by saying that he is a better bull-rider than her. Selene sends a gadfly to sting the bull. The animal starts kicking and Ampelus falls on his head on the ground. A satyr brings Dionysus the ill news. Dionysus prepares the body for the funeral and makes a long lament. Eros tries to console and distract him with the story of Calamos and Carpos , two handsome youngsters who were in love with each other. During

565-512: A cave, but Zeus sleeps with her in the form of a snake, and she bears Zagreus . At Hera's bidding, the Titans kill Zagreus and chop him up. In anger, Zeus floods the world, causing havoc to the pastoral deities and the rivers. Book 7 – Life on earth is miserable. Aion , god of time, begs Zeus to ease mortal life. Zeus predicts that the birth of Dionysus will change everything. Eros makes Zeus fall in love with Semele . The girl wakes up after

678-610: A channel to recover lost Hellenistic poetry and mythic traditions. The edition of Nonnus in the Loeb Classical Library includes a "mythological introduction" which charts the "decline" of Dionysiac mythology in the poem and implies that the work's only value is as a repository of lost mythology. Nonnus remains an important source of mythology and information to those researching classical religion, Hellenistic poetry, and Late Antiquity. Recently, however, scholars have focused more positively on Nonnus' use of mythology within

791-449: A dowry. Book 4 – Harmonia refuses to marry Cadmus because of his poverty, but Aphrodite takes the shape of Peisinoe, a girl of the neighbourhood, and produces a full encomium of Cadmus' beauty to convince her. Harmonia willingly leaves Samothrace with Cadmus who sails with her to Greece. Cadmus consults the oracle at Delphi and is told to follow a cow until she collapses and found there Thebes. There he slays Ares' dragon (thus attracting

904-480: A drunken celebration. During his night with them he dreams that the wild king Lycurgus attacks him like a lion attacks a deer. The next morning Staphylus gives Dionysus splendid presents and encourages him to fight. While Dionysus is busy filling Assyria with his vine, Staphylus suddenly dies and his palace is filled with mourning voices. Dionysus returns to the palace only to find his friend dead. Book 19 – Dionysus consoles Methe and Botrys giving them wine and hosts

1017-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

1130-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

1243-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

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1356-427: A fresh perspective on familiar stories. These poems frequently delve into themes of love, passion, and the complexities of human relationships. For instance, Catullus's "Poem 64" narrates the marriage of Peleus and Thetis , weaving in the story of Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus . This focus on intimate, personal moments allows the epyllion to explore the emotional and psychological dimensions of its characters in

1469-429: 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. That night Zeus joins Semele in her bed and metamorphoses into different animals during the courtship. Book 8 – Semele becomes pregnant with Dionysus. Envy tells Hera of

1582-615: A loose structure akin to Late Antique mosaics. Vian has proposed looking at the poem's encyclopedic content as paralleling the full range of the Homeric cycle poetry. Shorrock's contention is that the Dionysiaca employs a variety of narrative organizational principles and viewpoints, attempts to narrate all of classical mythology through the myths of Dionysus, and uses allegory and allusion to challenge his readers to draw meaning from his unconventional epic. Book 1 – The poem opens with

1695-509: A narrative poem written in dactylic hexameters that is comparatively short. There is disagreement about whether the term should also be applied to works written in elegiac couplets . The exact meaning of "comparatively short" varies among modern scholars, with some considering Theocritus, Idyll 13 (75 lines) an epyllion, while Eratosthenes ' Hermes is commonly classed as an example, even though at some 1,600 lines it would probably have taken up two papyrus rolls. A similar variation in lengths

1808-492: A number of gifts, which she despises. 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. Inebriated, Nicaea falls asleep and is raped by the god as a punishment for killing Hymnus. Dionysus abandons her and when she wakes up she realises that she has been raped. She tries to find her rapist but soon she realises that she

1921-489: A series of combats and descriptions of carnage, Deriades fights one-on-one with Dionysus: Dionysus eludes him adopting different shapes, imprisons him with the tendrils of a vine and finally releases him. Dionysus orders the Rhadamanes to build a fleet for him. Deriades presides the Indian assembly, in which he harangues his troops for the sea-battle. The two armies sign a truce to bury the dead. Book 37 – Dionysus builds

2034-440: A shapeshifting god, in the proem (preamble) serves as a metaphor for Nonnus' varied style. Nonnus employs the style of the epyllion for many of his narrative sections, such as his treatment of Ampelus in 10–11, Nicaea in 15–16, and Beroe in 41–43. These epyllia are inserted into the general narrative framework and are some of the highlights of the poem. Nonnus also employs synkrisis , comparison, throughout his poem, most notably in

2147-430: A son (Polydorus). Cadmus gives Autonoe's hand to Aristaeus , well known as an inventor. They have a son, Actaeon , who becomes a passionate hunter. One day he sees Artemis bathing naked in a spring and is punished for it with his transformation into a stag which is then devoured by his dogs. Autonoe and Aristaeus search for his body but can only find it when the ghost of Actaeon appears to his father and tells him to find

2260-524: A swimming contest Carpos drowns and Calamos, incapable of living without him, commits suicide. Calamos becomes the reeds of the river and Carpos the fruit of the earth. Dionysus is comforted with the story but mourning does not leave him. In the meantime the Seasons visit the house of Helios , the Sun. Book 12 – Autumn enquires when the vine will appear on earth and become her personal attribute. Description of

2373-505: A tap of a vine cluster on Orontes' chest is enough to split his armour. Orontes plunges his sword into his own belly and throws himself into the river nearby, giving it his name ( Orontes river ). The Bacchic troops massacre the Indians. Astraeis flees. Book 18 – Dionysus arrives in Assyria, where the king Staphylus ("Cluster of grapes"), his wife Methe ("Drunkenness) and his son Botrys ("Grapes") entertain him in their marvelous palace in

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2486-483: A teenager and lives in Lydia with a court of Satyrs. He falls in love for the first time with one of them, Ampelus (Vine). His passion for the boy is only spoiled by the knowledge that he will soon die, just as all the young lovers of the gods do. Dionysus and Ampelos indulge in a series of sports contests, the god allowing the boy to win. Book 11 – Dionysus organizes a swimming contest and allows Ampelus to win. Ampelus

2599-414: A verse paraphrase of St John's Gospel , is now discredited, since a host of indications point to the latter being the earlier work and because it misses the eclecticism of late antique culture. Editors have pointed out various inconsistencies and the difficulties of Book 39 which appears to be a disjointed series of descriptions, as evidence of lack of revision. The primary models for Nonnus are Homer and

2712-442: A war against the impious Indians if he wants to join the gods on Olympus. Rhea gathers the troops for Dionysus. Catalogue of heroic troops including seven contingents from Greece and seven peripheral contingents. Book 14 – Catalogue of semi-divine troops, also gathered by Rhea for Dionysus. Dionysus sets his army in motion until they encounter the first Indian contingent, led by Astraeis. Hera deludes Astraeis to go to battle against

2825-469: A way that grand epics might not. In terms of tone, epyllion are characterized by their lively descriptions and a miniaturist approach to storytelling. They often employ a scholarly and allusive style, filled with references to other literary works and mythological tales. The tone can be elevated and formal, similar to that of elegy, but it also allows for a more subjective and emotional expression. This blend of high style with personal, emotional content gives

2938-675: Is about to rape her the serpent that protects her virginity attacks him. In the meantime Hermes lets the Bacchantes out of the city. Zeus awakens and forces Hera to cure Dionysus' madness by breastfeeding him (a sign of adoption) and anointing him with ambrosia. Dionysus rejoins his army. Book 36 – Confrontation of pro-Dionysiac and pro-Indian divinities in the Olympus: Athena defeats Ares, Hera defeats Artemis, Apollo confronts Poseidon, but Hermes pacifies them. On earth, Deriades harangues his troops and charges with his elephants. After

3051-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

3164-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

3277-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

3390-439: Is elated by his success and dresses up as a Bacchante as a form of celebration. Dionysus warns the boy to stay close to him, just in case a deity is jealous of their happiness and tries to kill him. A portent tells Dionysus that Ampelus will die and become a vine. Ate (Delusion) makes Ampelus jealous reminding him that Dionysus and the gods usually give their friends a special present, a special mount, and suggests that he should make

3503-517: Is found in epyllia that form episodes within larger works. Virgil's Nisus and Euryalus digression in the Aeneid totals 73 verses and is sometimes considered an epyllion, while the so-called Aristaeus -epyllion ( Georgics 4.315–558) is considerably more substantial and reminiscent of independent epyllia from the Hellenistic period. The subject matter of an epyllion often revolves around lesser-known myths or episodes from well-known myths, providing

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3616-399: Is pregnant and gives birth to Telete ('Initiation'). Dionysus founds the city of Nicaea , as a double commemoration of the namesake nymph and of his first battle against the Indians. Book 17 – Dionysus travels through the east and is entertained by a shepherd, Brongus, in a country fashion. In thanks for his hospitality, Dionysus gives him some wine and teaches him how to grow and harvest

3729-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

3842-438: Is so beautiful and provides so much merriment to humankind. Insertion of a second legend on the origins of the vine: it was growing wild and unknown of until Dionysus saw a snake suckling the juice from the grapes; Dionysus and his satyrs build the first wine press, make wine for the first time and have the first feast of the harvest, completely inebriated. Book 13 – Zeus sends Iris to the halls of Rhea, ordering Dionysus to make

3955-432: Is so charmed by Cadmus' song that he promises him whatever he wants in exchange for it, not understanding that Cadmus is actually singing how he is defeated by Zeus. Book 2 – Zeus steals the lightning from Typhon and takes Cadmus to a safe place. When Typhon notices the disappearance of Cadmus and of Zeus' weapons, he attacks the cosmos with all his poisons and the help of his animals. Chaos and destruction follow. During

4068-859: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Epyllion Ancient Greek ἐπύλλιον ( epyllion )

4181-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

4294-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

4407-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

4520-587: Is the diminutive of ἔπος ( epos ) in that word's senses of "verse" or "epic poem"; Liddell and Scott 's Greek–English Lexicon thus defines ἐπύλλιον as a "versicle, scrap of poetry" or "short epic poem", citing for the latter definition Athenaeus , Deipnosophistae 2.68 (65a–b): ὅτι τὸ εἰς Ὅμηρον ἀναφερόμενον ἐπύλλιον, ἐπιγραφόμενον δὲ Ἐπικιχλίδες, ἔτυχε ταύτης τῆς προσηγορίας διὰ τὸ τὸν Ὅμηρον ᾄδοντα αὐτὸ τοῖς παισὶ κίχλας δῶρον λαμβάνειν, ἱστορεῖ Μέναιχμος ἐν τῷ περὶ τεχνιτῶν. A short epic ( epyllion ) attributed to Homer , entitled The One for

4633-474: 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 poets whose work survives only in disjointed fragments is far harder to gauge, but it is likely that he alludes to earlier poets' treatments of

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4746-643: The Cyclopes and Korybantes . Book 29 – Exploits of Dionysus' lover, Hymenaeus , who is wounded by an Indian arrow and healed by Dionysus. Exploits of the Dionysiac troops, especially Aristeus, the Kabeiri and the Korybantes. Offensive of the Bacchantes, wounded by the Indians and healed by Dionysus. The battle comes to a halt with the arrival of night. Rhea sends Ares a deceitful dream: he should abandon

4859-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

4972-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

5085-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

5198-507: 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. There are two main focuses of Nonnian scholarship today: mythology and structure. Nonnus' compendious accounts of Dionysiac legend and his use of variant traditions and lost sources have encouraged scholars to use him as

5311-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

5424-503: The Bacchantes with a massive pole-axe . Dionysus jumps into the sea where he is entertained and consoled by Nereus . In his warlike paroxysm Lycurgus even attacks the sea and provokes the gods. Book 21 – Lycurgus attacks the Bacchantes a second time, in particular Ambrosia who is metamorphosed into a vine and suffocates Lycurgus with its shoots, while the Bacchantes throng to kill him. Poseidon causes an earthquake, but Hera saves him temporarily until Zeus punishes him turning him into

5537-450: The Bacchic troops. Maenads and satyrs massacre the Indian troops until Dionysus takes pity on them and turns the waters of the neighbouring lake Astacid. The Indians try wine for the first time. Book 15 – The Indians become drunk, fall asleep and are bound by the Dionysiac troops. Story of the virgin nymph Nicaea , who lives near the lake Astacid, enjoys hunting and refuses to behave like a woman. The shepherd Hymnus (a personification of

5650-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

5763-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

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5876-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

5989-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

6102-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

6215-468: The Indians in the river, where most of them drown. Hera encourages the Hydaspes to drown the Bacchic troops as they cross the river. The Bacchic army starts to cross the Hydaspes using strange means of navigation. The Hydaspes is upset because his waters are fouled with blood and dead bodies and because of how easily the Bacchic troops cross it. He tries to drown them in a flood. Dionysus responds angrily to

6328-579: The Olympus to save their protégés and the army settles in the hills nearby. Thureus tells the Indian king Deriades of what has happened. The news of the defeat reaches the Indian people and their morale deteriorates. In the forest, the Bacchic troops celebrate their victory. Leucus sings the story of Aphrodite's weaving contest with Athena and her defeat. Book 25 – The poet invokes the Muse in his second proem, saying that in emulation of Homer he will skip over

6441-470: The Thrushes , acquired this name because Homer was rewarded with thrushes when he sang it to his children—Menaechmus tells the story in his On Artisans . This is in fact the only ancient instance of the word that shows anything approaching the connotations with which it is most often employed by modern scholars, and epyllion did not enter the common language of criticism until the 19th century. Wolf

6554-424: The absence of Dionysus. Morrheus attacks the Bacchantes and takes some captives as a gift for Deriades, who sends them to be tortured and killed in various ways. Chalcomede lures Morrheus out of the battle. Deriades drives the Bacchantes inside the city walls. Book 35 – The Indians slay the Bacchantes in the city. Chalcomede lures Morrheus away from the battle making him believe that she is in love with him. When he

6667-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

6780-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

6893-421: The arrival of Dionysus' brand-new fleet. Deriades and Dionysus harangue their troops, and Aeacus and Erechtheus ask the gods for help. The narrative of the battle is dominated by descriptions of carnage until the Indians are routed by a burning ship sent into their line. Deriades flees. Book 40 – Deriades returns to battle and is confronted by Dionysus who grazes him with his thyrsus and forces him to jump into

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7006-500: The battle because Hephaestus is about to seduce Aphrodite. Ares leaves at once. Book 30 – Exploits of Morrheus, Deriades' son-in-law. Tectaphus is slain by Eurymedon (one of the Cabiri, children of Hephaestus and Cabiro). Hera encourages Deriades to fight and Dionysus is about to flee, but Athena stops him. Dionysus goes back to battle and massacres the Indian troops. Book 31 – Hera goes to Persephone and tricks her into lending her

7119-525: The bones of a stag and bury them. Agaue marries Echion and bears Pentheus to him. Ino marries Athamas, but Semele is reserved for Zeus, who is resenting the death of the first Dionysus (Zagreus), whom he had engendered with Persephone . Beginning of the story of Persephone: all the gods of the Olympus are madly in love with her. Book 6 – Demeter , upset by Zeus's attention, goes to Astraeus , god of prophecy, who casts Persephone's horoscope, telling of her imminent rape by Zeus. Demeter conceals Persephone in

7232-664: The city of the Indians in the seventh year of the war. 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 . Book 26 – Athena drives Deriades to gather his allies. Catalogue of Indian troops: fourteen contingents from the Indus valley and the eastern areas of the Median empire . Descriptions rich in ethnographic material. Book 27 – Deriades exhorts his troops to attack Dionysus near

7345-560: The comparison of Dionysus and other heroes in Book 25. The complexity of organization and the richness of the language have caused the style of the poem to be termed Nonnian "Baroque." 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

7458-493: 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 poem is notably varied in its organization. Nonnus does not seem to arrange his poem in a linear chronology; rather, episodes are arranged by a loose chronological order and by topic, much as Ovid's Metamorphoses . The poem states as its guiding principle poikilia , diversity in narrative, form, and organization. The appearance of Proteus,

7571-473: The daughters of Lamos, river nymphs, until Hera drives them mad. Hermes then gives the boy to Ino and she places him under the care of her attendant Mystis, who teaches him the rites of the mysteries. Hera finds out the whereabouts of Dionysus, but Hermes reaches him before she does and transfers him to the care of Rhea . Dionysus grows up in the mountains of Lydia where he learns to hunt and to dominate beasts. His early pursuits make his mother Semele proud. In

7684-425: 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. She does and Zeus cannot say no to her. The fires of thunder burn Semele alive and Zeus immortalizes her. Book 9 – Zeus rescues Dionysus from the fire and sews him into his thigh until he is ready to be born. Hermes receives baby Dionysus after birth and carries him to

7797-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

7910-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

8023-512: The first six years of the war. Comparison of Dionysus' deeds with those of Perseus , Minos , and Heracles , concluding that Dionysus is better than the heroes. Return to the main narrative: the Ganges, Deriades and the Indian people are scared by a number of Bacchic miracles. Dionysus is angry because Hera is delaying his victory. Rhea sends Attis to visit Dionysus and give him a shield that will protect him in battle and promises that he will conquer

8136-470: The first studies specifically devoted to the concept of the epyllion were undertaken, with Leumann's work on Hellenistic epyllia, Jackson's study of the possible Roman examples, and Crump's attempt at a diachronic study of the epyllion as a single genre whose history could be traced from the Greek poems of the Hellenistic period through the Augustan period's Latin texts. The exact meaning and applicability of

8249-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

8362-566: The funeral games for Staphylus, with contests of singing and pantomime. Book 20 – The end of the games brings the mourning to an end. In a dream, Eris drives Dionysus to war. Methe, Botrys and their servant Pithos ("Wine-jar") join the Bacchic forces. They arrive in Arabia, where king Lycurgus has been stirred to fight by Hera. At the same time Hera deludes Dionysus with a false dream, in which Hermes counsels Dionysus to approach Lycurgus peaceably and without weapons. Lycurgus attacks Dionysus and

8475-744: The girdle, they make love, and while Zeus sleeps Megaira drives Dionysus mad. In the absence of Dionysus, Deriades and Morrheus rout the Bacchantes. The Bacchic army panics. Book 33 – A Grace tells Aphrodite about Dionysus' madness and of how Morrheus is pursuing the Bacchante Chalcomede. Aphrodite sends Aglaia to fetch Eros, who is playing kottabos with Hymenaeus. In exchange for a chaplet made by Hephaestus, Eros agrees to cause Morrheus to fall in love with Chalcomede. Shaken by lovesickness Morrheus loses interest in battle and pursues Chalcomede, who makes him think that she reciprocates his feelings. Morrheus' lovesickness becomes more acute during

8588-405: The god's anger onto himself), sows its teeth, and reaps the crop of sown-men . Book 5 – Cadmus then founds Thebes, dedicating its seven doors to seven gods and planets. The gods attend to his wedding with Harmonia and enrich them with their gifts, of which the necklace given to her by Aphrodite receives particular attention. They have four daughters ( Autonoe , Agaue , Ino and Semele ) and

8701-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

8814-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

8927-571: The life of Dionysus, such as the lost poems by Euphorion , Peisander of Laranda 's elaborate encyclopedic mythological poem, Dionysius, and Soteirichus. Reflections of Hesiod 's poetry, especially the Catalogue of Women , of 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

9040-449: The meantime a mad Ino wanders in the hills until Apollo takes pity on her and restores her sanity. Ino's household mourns for her disappearance, while his husband Athamas marries Themisto. Book 10 – Themisto goes mad and kills her son. Athamas goes mad too and slaughters his son Learchos. Ino arrives when he is about to kill their son Melicertes whom she saves by jumping into the sea, becoming divinized. Meanwhile, Dionysus has become

9153-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

9266-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

9379-505: The monster Typhon , following orders of his mother, the Earth, steals Zeus' weapons (the thunderbolts) and tries to dominate the world causing chaos and destruction wherever he goes. Zeus is now making love to Europa, but when he realises the dire situation calls Pan, Eros and Cadmus for help: Pan provides Cadmus with a pastoral disguise and he is supposed to charm Typhon with a pastoral song and Eros' help, while Zeus recovers his weapons. Typhon

9492-469: The mouth of the Indus . Dionysus places his battalions carefully and harangues his troops. 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). Book 28 – The battle rages. Exploits and deaths of Phaleneus, Dexiochus and Clytios. Exploits of Corymbasos. Strange deaths in battle. Exploits of

9605-657: The night Zeus is encouraged to fight by Victory itself (Nike). 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 . Joining them at their beautiful palace, he tells Electra of his lineage. Hermes bids Electra give her daughter Harmonia to be Cadmus' bride without

9718-407: The night. Chalcomede fears for her virginity but is comforted by Thetis, who asks her to delude Morrheus and promises that a serpent will protect her virginity. Book 34 – Morrheus wanders on his own during the night and his servant Hyssacos recognises the signs of love and comforts him. Beginning of a new day: Morrheus nourishes his hope of love, while the Bacchic troops are completely dispirited in

9831-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

9944-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

10057-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

10170-495: The pastoral song) falls in love with her and courts her. Nicaea refuses even to listen to him and the boy becomes so desperate that he even asks her to kill him (a frequent line in the speeches of unrequited lovers). Nicaea takes the line literally and shoots him dead. The nature and its gods lament the dead shepherd and call for revenge. Book 16 – Eros inspires in Dionysus a mad desire for Nicaea. Dionysus woos her and offers her

10283-416: The poem as a way of talking about contemporary events, as a way of playing with generic conventions, and as a way of engaging with predecessors intertextually, leading to an encouraging reassessment of his poetic and narrative style. The unconventional structure of the Dionysiaca encouraged harsh criticism of the poem in scholarship. Robert Shorrock and Francois Vian have been at the forefront of reexamining

10396-431: 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. But the very correctness of the versification renders it monotonous. His influence on the vocabulary of his successors was likewise very considerable," expressing

10509-747: The poem. Nonnus seems to have been an important influence for the poets of Late Antiquity, especially Musaeus , Colluthus , Christodorus , and Dracontius . He remained continuously important in the Byzantine world, and his influence can be found in Genesius and Planudes . In the Renaissance, Poliziano popularized him to the West, and Goethe admired him in the 18th century. He was also admired by Thomas Love Peacock in 19th-century England. The metrics of Nonnus have been widely admired by scholars for

10622-482: The poet's careful handling of dactylic hexameter and innovation. While Homer has 32 varieties of hexameter lines, Nonnus only employs 9 variations, avoids elision, employs mostly weak caesurae , and follows a variety of euphonic and syllabic rules regarding word placement. It is especially remarkable that Nonnus was so exacting with meter because the quantitative meter of classical poetry was giving way in Nonnus' time to stressed meter. These metrical restraints encouraged

10735-400: 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 narrative starts with the origins of Dionysus: Zeus kidnaps Europa and her father orders Cadmus (Dionysus' maternal grandfather) to search for her. While Zeus is distracted making love to the maiden Pluto ,

10848-509: The pyre for Opheltes and celebrates funeral games, including a chariot race, pugilism, wrestling, foot race, discus, archery and javelin throw. Book 38 – Two omens foretell Dionysus' victory, first a solar eclipse and then an eagle (i.e. Dionysus) throwing a serpent (i.e. Deriades) to the river. The first of them is interpreted by the seer Idmon, the second by Hermes, who tells at length the story of Phaethon from his genealogy to his death and catasterism. Book 39 – The sea-battle begins on

10961-410: The river Hydaspes , where the trees and animals receive Dionysus with joy. The Indians see the miracles performed by Dionysus and are tempted to surrender, but Hera deceives their leader Thureus. The Indians try to ambush the Bacchic troops but a nymph warns Dionysus of the impending peril. In the battle Oeagrus, Aeacus , and Erectheus all distinguish themselves. Book 23 – Dionysus and Aeacus fight

11074-528: The river Hydaspes, calling the war to an end. Deriades' wife (Orsiboe) and daughters (Cheirobie and Protonoe) mourn him. Dionysus buries the dead, celebrates his victory and distributes spoils. Modaeus is appointed as governor of India. Dionysus travels to Tyre , admires the city, and hears the story of its founding from Heracles . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

11187-471: The sense of epyllion as a hexametric mythological poem that is not only comparatively short, but also imbued to some extent with the characteristics of Hellenistic poetry is Moritz Haupt 's 1855 study of Catullus 64 , but it is likely that Haupt was using a term that had in the preceding decades become common to discussions of the shorter narrative poems of the Alexandrians. In the early 20th century

11300-409: The services of a Fury , Megaira , whom she instructs to madden Dionysus. Hera also instructs Iris to persuade Hypnus to cause Zeus to sleep, claiming that as god of nocturnal revels, Dionysus is his natural enemy, and that he should not risk angering Hera, the mother of his beloved Pasithea . Hera borrows Aphrodite's girdle, the cestus , in order to seduce Zeus. Book 32 – Hera charms Zeus with

11413-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

11526-433: The structure of the poem. 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. Others have felt that the style of the poem relies on dissonant juxtaposition for effect, using the so-called "jeweled style" of detailed narrative cameoes within

11639-424: The tablets of Phanes , on which all the oracles of the future are engraved. Prediction of the metamorphosis of Ampelus into a vine. In the meantime, Dionysus mourns for Ampelus. Ampelus is transformed into the vine and Dionysus makes wine for the first time, reflecting on how Ampelus has escaped death. Dionysus adopts the vine as his personal attribute and claims to be superior to the other gods, because no other plant

11752-509: The term epyllion has remained a matter of dispute, and Richard Hunter's recent appraisal summarizes well the current opinion regarding epyllia: Even if the term "epyllion" has no ancient authority, there has seemed to be a phenomenon which cannot be ignored. Modern discussion has, however, been bedevilled by the grouping together of poems so diverse as to render that grouping almost meaningless, however many points of individual contact they may share. An epyllion is, in its most basic definition,

11865-418: The threat and sets the river banks on fire. The survival of the vegetation, fish and river nymphs is under threat. Hydaspes asks Tethys to help him. Book 24 – Zeus and Hera stay the anger of the contenders. Hydaspes surrenders and Dionysus draws back his torch. The Bacchic army finishes crossing the river only to find that Deriades has placed his troops on the other bank of the river. The gods come down from

11978-412: The vine. Astraeis informs Orontes, son-in-law of the Indian king Deriades, of the defeat of the Indian army and the ruse of the waters turned into wine. Orontes is furious and harangues his troops not to fear the effeminate Dionysus and his army of women. The Indians charge in and at first seem to win, but Dionysus screams like nine thousand men and detains them. Orontes and Dionysus engage in single combat:

12091-482: The west. The poem is thought to have been written in the 5th century AD. The suggestion that it is incomplete misses the significance of the birth of Dionysus' one son (Iacchus) in the final Book 48, quite apart from the fact that 48 is a key number as the number of books in the Iliad and Odyssey combined. The older view that Nonnus wrote this poem before conversion to Christianity and the writing of his other long poem,

12204-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

12317-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

12430-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

12543-468: Was apparently responsible for popularizing the term, for two of his essays from early in that century are referred to by titles including epyllion: Ad Scutum Herculis epyllion Hesiodo subditum animadversiones ( Observations on the Shield of Heracles , an Epyllion Falsely Attributed to Hesiod ) and Theocriti idyllia et epyllia ( The Idylls and Epyllia of Theocritus ). The locus classicus for

12656-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

12769-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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