Author Description

Today, Nonnus of Panopolis is widely recognized as one of the most interesting and important Greek authors of Late Antiquity. His Dionysiaca is the last grand epic poem of Antiquity and challenges all established epic conventions; his hexametric paraphrase of the Gospel of John, in the same 'baroque' style, combines Christian content and classical epic language and style. Both are key texts to understand Late Antique poetic innovation. This volume brings together contributions by promising early career researchers and established specialists of Nonnus' poetry and adjacent fields of scholarship. It is the result of the fourth international Nonnus in Context conference, held in Ghent in the Spring of 2018. Taking the metaphor of the crossroads as a starting point, it explores Nonnus' poetry and its context(s) along the synchronic and diachronic axes of tradition and society.