http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== This is *G o o g l e*'s cache of http://www.pitt.edu/~edfloyd/Class1130-04-2/nonnos.html as retrieved on Jan 29, 2006 07:07:32 GMT. *G o o g l e*'s cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web. The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page without highlighting. This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only. To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: |http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:McDsDh76_tYJ:www.pitt.edu/~edfloyd/Class1130-04-2/nonnos.html+nonnos+dionysiaca&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=17| /Google is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content./ These search terms have been highlighted: *nonnos * *dionysiaca * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Information concerning *Nonnos* H&P, pp. 271-276, and p. 300 (next to last paragraph) discuss a number of parallels between the worship of Dionysos and Christianity. Besides the material which H&P cite, another very interesting indication of a kind of religious syncretism, or combination of different traditions, is to be found in the oeuvre - i.e., literary work - of *Nonnos* of Panopolis in Egypt, from around 450 CE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Not much is available on the web from which can draw an overall impression of his /*Dionysiaca*/. Some idea of the content of this work, though, can be found at the advertisement for the Loeb series translation of *Nonnos* by Rouse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ More is available on the web in the way of translation for *Nonnos*' other work, /Paraphrase of the Gospel of John/. Seemingly very different from the /*Dionysiaca*/, this is a paraphrase of the New Testament /Gospel of John/ in dactylic hexameter. (*Nonnos*' /*Dionysiaca*/ is also in dactylic hexameter, just like the /Iliad /and / Odyssey/.) Tony Prost's website includes information about *Nonnos* and also an ongoing translation of the /Paraphrase of John/. Tony Prost writes as follows concerning his translation of *Nonnos*: "This translation is an attempt to give the same effect in English as the original would have given to a reader at the time. That is, it is formal, metric, somewhat archaic in style, and calling upon old stylistic clich?s both for the purposes of the meter and the paraphrastic descriptions. *Nonnos* was perhaps trying to make a version of the Gospel which would be acceptable the literary virtuosi of late pagan empire, who would no doubt turn up their educated noses at the plain narrative style of the Gospel text. "Some experts dispute the attribution of this poem to the same poet who wrote the other poem associated with *Nonnos*, the *Dionysiaca*. That poem has enjoyed more currency, and exists in an English translation by W.H.D. Rouse, published by Loeb Classics, the classicists' Hit Parade. However, there are numerous word usages which appear to be unique to the two poems, sufficient to satisfy Occam's razor." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prost also includes a translation of about 1/3 of *Nonnos*' Paraphrase. You should read the beginning of Chapter 2 (lines 1 - 57; down to "Galileans with long Hair"). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In this selection, phrases in the first and last lines, viz., "Dawn painted rose the Rocks" and "Galileans with long Hair" pick up, with modification, well-known Homeric formulas. The first is illustrated at, e.g., the beginning of Odyssey, Book 2 (Fitzgerald, p. 19) and the beginning of Odyssey, Book 8 (Fitzgerald, p. 125). As is often the case, though, Fitzgerald translates the same Homeric formula quite differently in the two passages, as "When primal Dawn spread on the eastern sky / her fingers of pink light" and "Under the opening fingers of the dawn". The other formula (a modification of a Homeric reference to the Achaians) is illustrated (again, with variation from one passage to another) by Fitzgerald, Odyssey, Book 1, line 116 (p. 4), "Akhaian gentlemen with flowing hair" and Book 2, line 8 (p. 19) "unshorn Akaians".