page_title: Dionysiaca
section_title: Contents
hierarchical_section_title: Dionysiaca / Contents
caption_attribution_description: Chalcidian black-figured hydria. Side A: wrestling of Peleus and Atalanta for the funerary games of king Pelias. In background, the prize of the duel: the skin and the head of the Calydonian boar. Side B: Zeus darting its lightning on Typhon. Names inscriptions are written in the alphabet of Chalcis in Euboea. Side B
context_page_description: The Dionysiaca is an ancient Greek epic poem and the principal work of Nonnus. It is an epic in 48 books, the longest surviving poem from 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 the west.
context_section_description: Book 1  
  - The poem opens with 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 nymph Plouto, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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' attention goes to Astraeus, god of prophecy, who casts Persephone's horoscope which tells of her imminent rape by Zeus. Demeter conceals Persephone in 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. 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 eve
caption: The battle of Zeus and Typhon. Side B from a Chalcidian black-figured hydria, c. 550 BC.
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