NONNUS, Greek epic poet, author of the Dionysiaca, was a native of Panopolis in the Egyptian Thebaid. He can scarcely have been earlier than the 5th century of our era, but probably wrote in the first half of it, as his versification is imitated by Proclus, who was born 412 a.d. Nothing is known of his personal history, but his extensive mythological erudition almost proves him to have been a grammarian. His principal work, the Dionysiaca, an epic in forty-eight books on the history of Bacchus, is a vast storehouse of legendary fable, embellished, especially in the long episode of Bacchus’s Indian expedition, with not a little of the poet’s own invention. From one point of view it may be described as the swan-song of the ancient mythology; its spirit, at the same time, is anything but Hellenic. In its vast and formless luxuriance, its beautiful but artificial versification, its delineation of action and passion to the entire neglect of character, it resembles the colossal epics of India, while its glittering but too often frigid conceits bring it near to the Italian bastard epic of Marino and his school. Like his countryman and near contemporary Claudian, Nonnus is a writer of copious learning and still more copious fancy, eminent in invention, in description, and in melody, whose faults may be charged upon his age, while his merits are his own. This is more particularly the case with the author of the Dionysiaca, whose reforms in versification originated with himself, while they were accepted by all succeeding poets. In his hands, says Hermann, the Homeric hexameter, greatly corrupted by time and licence, though losing something of its dignity, recovered its elegance and harmony, and was framed to so strict a pattern that no one ignorant of prosody could henceforth ...