NONNUS (Egyptian for "saint"), Greek epic poet, a native of Panopolis (Akhmim) in the Egyptian Thebaid, probably lived at the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century A.D. His principal work is the Dionysiaca, an epic in 48 books, the main subject of which is the expedition of Dionysus to India and his return, a subject convenient at the time owing to the popular com parison of Alexander with Dionysus. In its luxuriance and pre occupation with action, it resembles the Indian epics. His chief merit consists in the systematic perfection to which he brought the Homeric hexameter, but this very quality tends to monotony. His influence on later poetic vocabulary was considerable.
We also possess under his name a paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John, which is chiefly interesting as apparently indi cating that Nonnus in his later years was a convert to Christian ity. His style, in this content, produces an impression of extreme bombast and want of taste. According to an epigram in the Pala tine Anthology (ix. 198), Nonnus was also the author of a Battle of the Giants, and four lines of the Bassarica (also on Dionysus) have been preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium.
Editio princeps (1569) ; H. Kochly ("Teubner" series, with critical introduction and full index of names, 1858) ; the most generally useful edition is that by the comte de Marcellus (1856) , with notes and pro legomena, and a French prose translation. On the metre, see J. G. Hermann, Orphica (1805), p. 69o; A. Ludwich, Beitrdge zur Kritik des Nonnus (1873), critical, grammatical and metrical; C. Lehrs, Quaes tiones epicae (1837), pp. 255-302, chiefly on metrical questions; on the sources, R. Kohler, Uber die Dionysiaka des Nonnus (1853), a short and connected analysis of the poem, with a comparison of the earlier and later myths ; see also I. Negrisoli, Studio critico . . . Nonnus Panopolita, with short bibliography (19o3). The paraphrase on St. John (editio princeps, c. 1505) is edited by F. Passow (1834) and A. Scheindler 0880, with complete index.