1. The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (London 1993), 330Google Scholar. The cosmological secrets that Calasso perceives are (i) the conception of matter and form as relatively malleable and essentially unstable and shifting, in a perpetual state of ‘churning variegation’, free from fetters and rigidities that confine and ossify; and (ii) the principle of redundancy. These, says Calasso, form the vision of divinity at the heart of the poem (331).

2. One should add that nature (trees, rocks, Mt Cithaeron) can also weep and groan in mourning the dead: see 12.117, 121, 123–32 (rivers ceasing to flow); 15.370, 372–422; 46.441–64.

3. 11.224–368, 482f.; 12.101f. Dionysus may not be able to shed tears but, despite what Maron says, he can certainly mourn (19.169f.).

4. McNeill’s, W.Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in History (Cambridge MA 1995Google Scholar) is a study of how moving muscles and giving voice rhythmically strengthen interpersonal bonds, reintegrate the bereft, elevate mood and, often, arouse libido.

5. On the connection between beauty, sorrow and touch, see Chodorow, J., Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology (London 1991), 88Google Scholar. As, for example, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter so clearly illustrates, the sorrow of loss is akin to losing one’s normal abode for a barren wasteland. However, such an experience can ultimately enhance our experience with the earth and the physical, tangible world. Ekman, P. and Davidson, R. (edd.), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions (Oxford 1991), 17 and 252–57Google Scholar, rehearse the arguments for and against the universality of affects such as grief. While certain emotions are universal in the pattern of their autonomic nervous activity (e.g. pulse, blood pressure, respiration) and in some distinct signals, their aetiology and expressive behaviour are culturally determined. On the stages and wide aetiology of grief, see Bruce, E. and Schulz, C., Nonfinite Loss and Grief (Baltimore 2001), 17–22Google Scholar.

6. 5.370–551. Icarius appears in a dream to tell Erigone what has happened to him but he had already been placed in a tomb (47.148–213).

7. 46.360f. Translation here and henceforth by Rouse, W., Nonnos: Dionysiaca (3 vols., Cambridge MA & London 1940–46Google Scholar).

8. 19.12–26; cf. 47.42, 53–55, 93, on wine as painkiller and trouble-dissolver. Not that everyone, notably the Indians, was willing to receive this gift.

9. 46.356–60. Immortals do pity the sufferings of mortals, as the above actions by Zeus and Dionysus indicate. Among the reasons Time/Aeon pities humanity and threatens to quit his job unless Zeus does something to lighten humanity’s lot is War/Enyo’s unceasing ‘harvest of quick-perishing youth’ (7.22–66). He challenged Zeus to find a way of bringing more joy to suffering humanity, which Zeus did by bringing forth Dionysus to spread viticulture and new dances that could transform pain into ecstasy. Time rates banishing sorrow (which must include bereavement grief) as superior to the gift of fire. Later, as patron of drama, Dionysus helped to heal the pain of loss and other sorrows through tragedy and comedy. And Apollo pities the sufferings of Ino driven mad by Hera (9.275–89).

10. Tελετή occurs 15 times. Note the juxtaposition of τελετή and dance at 19.36f. Dance is often part of initiation ceremonies. Mύστις, and cognate words occur 48 times. Dionysus’ nurse, Mystis, initiated him into mysteries which in turn became available to mortals (9.111–31). There is reference to the Samothracian mysteries and dancing, drumming Corybants at 3.41–44, 62–64. Apart from the mysteries of Dionysus, there were the initiations and secret guilds of the Telchines, Cabiri, Curetes, and Dactyls, variously associated with magic, dance, exposure to the secrets of Nature, and metallurgy. All these guilds are mentioned in Nonnus.

11. For many, hope is an antidote to the pain of some kind of loss. Hope only occurs in the noun form, ἐλπίς, in Nonnus 44 times. Twenty-five times it is hope for a victory in or prizes from war or a contest, three times to become a star, twice for security and reaching Olympus, once for wealth, safety at sea, dulling the pain of bereavement, to become white-skinned. In other words, hope in Nonnus is mainly directed at winning prestige and security for the self, advantage and status over others.

12. She is made to complain that Cetus still threatens her in the sky (25.123–43).

13. 38.424–34. The way Phaethon was mourned by his weeping sisters, who became trees that exuded amber, would have been sufficient to immortalise his memory.

14. 21.153f. The catasterism as Bootes of Callisto’s son, Areas, by Zeus is another example of a sympathy elevation, perhaps driven by the wish to make things up to his mother (13.296f.).

15. 42.205f.; cf. 200–04. More positively, Eros later assures Dionysus of greater success with Ariadne and Pallene (43.422–36). Less so, Eros finds something particularly attractive about the grief of abandoned Ariadne (47.311–18).

16. 4.64–66, 209. But Echo re-echoing Philomela’s groans at the loss of her tongue and virginity hardly counts (4.327f.).

17. 1.352–55. And although not stated by Nonnus, gives her name to a continent. Nicaea experiences a similar loss and gain. But Aura can in no way be recompensed by prestigious parenthood for the loss of her virginity to rape. Bearing twins to Dionysus, she kills one and tries to kill the other, the cult-significant Iacchus, before committing suicide (48.910–27).

18. 6.58–102. In two other cases of feared loss, Hades’ fear that he will lose his kingdom in the cosmic battle proves idle (36.97–105), and Psamathe, fearing the victory of Dionysus over water deities, averts this by successfully praying to Zeus (42.358–74).

19. The distress felt by Aeon at the damage to humanity caused by Aphrodite’s clumsy weaving ends when she returns the task to Athene (24.242–326), the grief of Methe and the Bacchants at Dionysus’ absence disappears when he returns (19.198f.; 21.184–99), as does the yearning of Priasus for his father and homeland when prolonged floods subside and he can return home (13.521–44).

20. Battles lost by the Indians stay lost (24.69–178; 25.274–79), Pan’s love for Echo remains unrequited (16.321–40), while Bacchants who lose their freedom to the Indians eventually drown (34.231–48).

21. These characteristics have been noted by a number of scholars, such as Chamberlayne, L., ‘A Study of Nonnus’, SPh 13 (1916), 40–68Google Scholar, at 57: ‘Monstrous and heartless cruelty everywhere…lack of sympathy and pity.’ Cf. Braden, G., ‘Nonnos Typhoon: Dionysiaca Books I and II’, Texas Studies in Language and Literature 15 (1974) 851–79Google Scholar, at 865f.

22. For example, ἐπιμαστίω occurs 16 times, μαστίζω 30, μἀστιξ 34, uaoxico 10, ίμάς, 22, ίμάσθλη 44, ίμάσσω 66, total 222.

23. Winkler, J., In Pursuit of the Nymphs: Comedy and Sex in Nonnos’ Tales of Dionysos (Diss. Texas 1974), 68Google Scholar, speaks of a prevalent anaesthesia. On the poem’s psychology of isolation, see Wifstrand, A., Von Kallimachus zu Nonnos (Lund 1933), 142Google Scholar.

24. Bertman, S., referring specifically to the honouring, ‘repositioning and revival of the loved one in an inner time and space’, in her editor’s introduction to the anthology, Grief and the Healing Arts: Creativity as Therapy (New York 1999), 15Google Scholar. This work illustrates the many resources, including music, song, all the visual and dramatic arts, ritual and therapeutic touch, which are available to heal individual and communal grief and loss. Music has a special ability to heal, reconnect and ‘touch’ the mourner.

25. Breasts, for example, shoot forth not just milk and wine but light, lightning, fire, arrows. Wombs shoot forth infants.

26. Some examples of these features: precious stones not so much emitting or radiating light but spitting or shooting it forth (5.170, 175), river banks spitting roses (10.171), Tyrian cloth shooting out purple sparks (40.305). Cf. 15.164 and the remarkable passage at 35.164–83. Semen, blood, serpent’s teeth, urine and ichor can mix fruitfully with the earth, ox-hide or water to produce centaurs, Erechtheus, Orion, Gamos, and Aphrodite. Objects ranging from sails to wine vats are not so much filled or full, but pregnant with something. Despite or perhaps because successful instances of ‘normal’ sexual relations are rare or compromised in some way, almost anything can impregnate almost anything, and fertility and fertilisation and the generation of new forms are so rampant as to be almost out of control. See Winkler (n.23 above), 70–113, on many instances of bizarre and irregular conception, parturition and lactation (animals, virgins and men who suckle human infants), and 130–38 on the often gratuitous male-female gender demarcations, such as male and female rocks (2.495–500), palm trees (3.142f.), lyre sounds (19.79). Another mark of the dynamism of Nonnus’ world is the number of α‘-compounds. Spontaneous generation (42 instances), growth and impulse from within are ubiquitous. See Lindsay, J., Leisure and Pleasure in Roman Egypt (London 1965), 377Google Scholar, 388, 455, on the 35 different words for self-spiralling, self-circling, self-rolling (e.g., wheels), self-growing etc., used altogether 292 times.

27. See Shorrock, R., The Challenge of Epic: Allusive Engagement in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus (Leiden 2001), 115fGoogle Scholar.

28. For example, on the prevalent Nonnian motif of scratching and scoring solid or liquid surfaces, or the insubstantial air, see Reimschneider, M., ‘Der Stil des Nonnos’, 48f. and 57, in Aus der byzantinische Arbeit der DDR 1 (Berlin 1957Google Scholar). Γράφω and cognates occur 50 times, χαράσσω 129 times.

29. Cf. Lindfield, M., The Dance of Change (London 1986), 25Google Scholar: ‘The molecules of matter dance to and fro, influenced by the forces binding them into substance. These movements seem to follow certain patterns and manifest themselves in rhythmic periodicities.’ Certain forms of dance, imitating and thus harmonising with the movements of heavenly bodies, can therefore be seen as both cosmically resonant and terrestrially procreative. See Cole, S., Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space (Berkeley 2004), 10 and 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Such vigorous activity is in keeping with Nonnus’ baroque style which revels in superfluity. Scenes and artefacts are painted and decorated in elaborate, sometimes cloying, detail. Vocabulary and phrasing convey a sense of bubbling, explosive, frenzied energy, a maelstrom that is only partly contained. See Newbold, R., ‘The Character and Content of Water in Nonnus and Claudian’, Ramus 30 (2001), 169–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 176–78. On Nonnus’ style, see Braden, G., The Classics and English Renaissance Poetry (Yale 1978), 70–72Google Scholar, especially the apt phrase, ‘a prevalent sensation of explosions under a thickly lacquered surface’ (72); Whitby, M., ‘From Moschus to Nonnus: the Evolution of the Nonnian Style’, in N. Hopkinson (ed.), Studies in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus (Cambridge 1994), 99–155Google Scholar, esp. 123 on its energy, variety and innovation. Horror uacui, which, at least in part, is a response to separation anxiety, prevails.

31. From redundare, ‘to flow freely’ or ‘to overflow’.

32. There is wisdom, therefore, in those cultures which include aesthetic and life-affirming activities, such as floral displays, song, music and dance, at funeral rites, even if the performers are few. Cf. the words of Maron: ‘I will dance for Staphylos after death, as if he were living…For you I dance, Staphylos, both living and not breathing, and strike up a funeral revel’ (19.178–81).

33. On the isotopy of the void, barrenness and separation from the divine, see Barrow, J., The Book of Nothing (New York 2000), 39Google Scholar and 65f.

34. Timaeus 41d, 42b. Cf. Aristophanes, Peace 832f., Cicero Republic 6.13 and for this idea in late antiquity, Fayant, M.-C., Nonnos de Panopolis: Les Dionysiaques Chant XLVll (Paris 2003), 26–38Google Scholar. For Nonnus’ eclectic embrace of all the dominant concepts of his day, from alchemy to astronomy and ritual dance, see Lindsay (n.26 above), 88 and 369: ‘He is the poet of alchemic process’ (371). On the elevation of the afterlife from the sublunary and chthonic to the celestial and transcendent in antiquity, see Thompson, W., ‘The Evolution of the Afterlife’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7.8 (2002), 61–72Google Scholar.

35. 31.30–74. Nonnus eschews evocations of the infernal world so dear to Latin poets.

36. Nature: 3.10–16, 55–76; 11.495–500; 40.338–52 (of the site of Tyre: ‘never have I beheld such beauty…image of the earth, picture of the sky’). Artefacts: the wedding-gift necklace of Harmonia (5.144–89); the shield of Dionysus with its ‘crown of many shining jewels throughout the seven zones’ and ‘sparkling company of the stars’ (25.384–567); and beautiful buildings, such as the palace of Staphylus (18.67–92).

37. The brilliance and lustre of precious stones may have this reminiscent effect on some, but not, it seems, in Nonnus. See Frangoulis, H., ‘Les pierres magiques dans les Dionysiaques de Nonnos de Panopolis’, in D. Accorintini and P. Chuvin (eds.), Des Géants à Dionysos: Melanges F. Vian (Paris 2003), 433–45Google Scholar. Armstrong, J., The Secret Power of Beauty (London 2004), 3Google Scholar, quotes Stendahl: ‘Beauty is the promise of happiness.’ Whether of a person, object or place, it gives an immediate charge. For those with ears to hear, the heavenly bodies emit sounds, a sort of music of the spheres, and noted by Nonnus at 1.222f., 466f.; 2.172–74; 13.359–62, 413–15; 38.250. For responses to the beauty of terrestrial sounds see 1.393–95, 406f., 409, 416, 513–54 and 2.9–29 (Typhon); 10.220, 230–34, 276 (Dionysus); 17.67–71 (Dionysus); 19.69–117 (Dionysus and Staphylus’ mourners); 41.250–53 (men). Dionysus’ own voice was ‘mindcharming’ (, 47.427). Emily Dickinson may be overly pessimistic when she says, ‘Parting is all we know of heaven,’ but she points to the image of the separating gap, gulf, chasm, which this paper suggests may be bridged by, amongst other things, the replication of divine creativity, activity, movement, order.

38. On Nonnus’ treatment of the aesthetic and erotic charge of floral and bodily beauty, see Winkler (n.23 above), 20–36, with discussion of many references, and the quotation from Bertman at n.24 above.

39. Cf. 24.262: Pasithea, a Grace, ‘whirled [the spindle] with wheel-like quick motion’, .

40. This intuition is confirmed by modern physics. Hence the cogency of the idea of inevitable return to a starting point. See Capra, F., The Tao of Physics³ (London 1991), 177–207Google Scholar. For peoples such as the Kogi of Colombia, the cosmos is a spindle, whose thread the sun weaves into the fabric of existence. The wobbling or spiralling movement of the earth’s axis is typically described by images of the churn, mill, wheel, spinning top—and spindle.

41. Durand, G., The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary (Brisbane 1999), 317Google Scholar, Nonnus likens to the roundness of a wheel cheeses, the breasts of Semele and Pallene, the Cyclops’ eye, the moon, the morning star, Ocean, the whirling of the Corybants, a shield boss, the celestial vault, and, most significantly if traditionally, the justice of Nemesis (three times). See Lindsay (n.26 above), 377, 387f. and 455, on the proliferation of circle and spiral imagery and its closeness to alchemical thought: ‘Nonnos’ Dionysiac spirals also are tensional movements linking all things and creating structures as well as the collisions of transformations’ (455).

42. For example, his approach to Thebes is associated with luxuriant vegetation (44.127–29). Cf. 10.141–74.

43. 11.485–521; 1.504–06. In Nonnus, almost anything can be woven. ϒφαίvω occurs 32 times, πλέκω and cognates 123 times.

44. occurring 15 times, also applied to the moon, the movement of the stars and the heavenly vault.

45. , which occurs 13 times. and cognates occur 57 times, and cognates 230 times. For a discussion of the poem’s weaving, spiral, circle and dance motifs, see Newbold, R., ‘Chaos Theory in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca’, Scholia 8 (1999), 37–51Google Scholar.

46. 40.222–33. Cf. Durand (n.41 above), 310–12, esp. 311: ‘There is an obvious isotopy between plant and man-made “tissue”, both of which belong in the schema of continuity,’ and 312: ‘Thus the technology of textiles, because of the tools it uses, the spinning-wheel and spindle, and because of its products, threads and materials, induces unitary thoughts and reveries of continuity, and of the essential fusion of cosmic contrarieties.’

47. 19.61–284: ‘beating of the dance’ (144), ‘weaving a rhythm’ (202), ‘rhythmic feet’ (220). For the way this activity creates and informs space, see further, Newbold, R., ‘Space and Scenery in Quintus of Smyrna, Claudian and Nonnus’, Ramus 10 (1981), 53–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 63–66.

48. See Durand (n.41 above), 324: ‘Sexual implications structure music as a whole and underlie musical dialogue,’ i.e., dialogue between male and female voices, different pitches and timbres, different tones of orchestral instruments. Music is inherently meta-erotic and space- or gapfilling. Cf. Holsinger, B., Music, Body and Dance in Medieval Culture (London 1990), 10 and 33–53Google Scholar, on music, sexuality and human bodies needing to resonate in harmony with the divine; and the first line of Shakespeare‘s Twelfth Night: ‘If music be the food of love, play on,’ where the notion of filling a void or empty stomach is explicit.

49. Any group rhythmic behaviour can synchronise brain-wave activity but the loud percussion of drums is particularly effective at effecting such entrainment. See D’Aquili, E., The Spectrum of Ritual (New York 1979), 123 and 245Google Scholar. The sound of the drum very obviously fills space, and deep notes, because their origin is harder to pinpoint, are particularly effective in embracing a group of people. The drum of Shiva, the cosmic dancer and god of creation and destruction to whom Dionysus has been likened, symbolises his creative role. There is by now a substantial body of research on the effects of music on plant germination and growth, e.g., Tompkins, P. and Bird, C., The Secret Life of Plants (London 1974), 135–43Google Scholar. The widespread belief in the value of fertility darices may have some basis if it is the beat of feet on the earth that affects plants. The tonoscope is a device whereby sounds are reproduced visually. The beautiful and intricate patterns produced on the screen by some sounds are strongly suggestive of organic growth and justify the description of sonic influences on life as creating a ‘wondrously resonating tapestry’ (145). For music and dance stimulating growth, see Dionysiaca 47.4–33.

50. Cf. Janowitz, N., Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (University Park PA 2002Google Scholar), xi, 61, 65, 84 and 123–26, on the prevalent late antique belief that alignment with and ascension towards heaven and its denizens, leading to astral immortality, was possible if identification with heaven was achieved through uttering the correct sounds and sacred names, or performing the correct rituals and alchemical procedures.

51. Any blending of or dialogue amongst voices, instruments, pitches, volumes, timbres, rhythms is a form of harmonisation, an alchemic coincidentia or coniunctio oppositorum, with sexual overtones. See Burckhardt, T., Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul, tr. W. Stoddart (Baltimore 1971), 115Google Scholar, for the view that what artists seek is to capture the rhythms of the inner world and express them in the outer.

52. Timaeus 47e. And as Philo, On the Creation 69–71, puts it, we become like the divine chorus of stars and planets, moving with the wisdom and beauty of perfect music, becoming eternal and in step with cosmic rhythms, and thus overcoming time. Correct rhythm in this belief system creates a harmonic resonance between heaven and earth. It makes possible the transfer of heavenly beauty and harmony to the earth, an objective of the Dervishes who by their whirling imitate the spinning of the planets and their movement around the sun.

53. . Durand (n.41 above), 326, points out that most primitive inventions, the shuttle, spinning wheel, cart wheel, potter’s wheel, churn, grinding-machine, and fire lighter, whereby a stick is rapidly rotated in a wooden hole, embody cyclical rhythm and some of them clearly suggest sexual activity.

54. See Miller’s, J. aptly titled Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (Toronto 1986Google Scholar), esp. 482, quoting from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names, 4.8–10: ‘The divine intellects are said to move in a circle because they are united to the beginningless and endless illuminations of the Beautiful and Good…and in a spiral when they guide needy inferiors while staying in the same state, ceaselessly dancing around the Beautiful and Good, the cause of their self-identity. The human soul also has a circular motion and moves in a spiral manner when it is enlightened with as much divine knowledge as it can receive.’ In other words, the pursuit of beauty is part of a project to recall or realise one’s essential divine nature, and dance, or at least the right kind of dance, is a pathway open to most.

55. See Bertholet, G., La pensée de l’asia et l’astrolobiologie (Paris 1949), 7–10Google Scholar, 24, 47, 54 and 65. For Bertholet, the stage of pre-agricultural savagery and nomadism, the Stone Age, characterised by vitalism and animism, precedes the stage of astrobiology, which in turn precedes (but also overlaps with) pre-scientific or scientific culture. Cf. Lindfield (n.29 above), 62: ‘Rhythm and motion are the essence of life, and…rhythm is simply motion expressed in balance with harmony.’ The gap between astrobiological and scientific thought (sceptical of astrology, for example) is not always wide. The vision, evident in Nonnus, of a dancing, woven, patterned, geometric, harmonic, continually transforming plenum is very close to the perspective of modern force-field theory and wave mechanics. See Lawlor, R., Sacred Geometry (London 1982), 4Google Scholar. Furthermore, the new science of heliobiology or cosmo-rhythmology, which has come a long way since the 1960s, includes the study of how the angular position of the moon and planets affects the earth’s electro-magnetic biosphere.

56. No ‘harmony of wedlock’ (3.375). Cf. 26.231–33 for an image that combines wedlock with the fruitfulness of the land.

57. 24.242–73. See Stegemann, V., Astrologie und Universalgeschichte: Interpretationen zu den Dionysiaka des Nonnos von Panopolis (Leipzig 1930), 24–26Google Scholar, on cosmic harmony as the condition of terrestrial fertility, and Winkler (n.23 above), 113–28, which includes the felicitous observation at 118f.: ‘Nonnus directs our attention to the precepts of his own art. For not only does he relate several tales of chaos surrounded by restored order, but even some of his principles of composition might be described as the unexpected emergence of hidden harmonies out of a conflicting welter of unrelated materials.’ Cf. Vian, F., Nonnos de Panopolis: Les Dionysiaques Chants I–II (Paris 1976), 103Google Scholar, on Nonnus’ strange orchestration of material in the Typhoneia whereby harmony emerges from dissonances. Winkler op. cit. describes Nonnus’ language as frequently ‘agri-sexual’ (124: gardens, for example, are where plants, fruits and bees have orgies [3.140–52]—flowers, of course, have their sexual organs oriented up and out), language very appropriate for his world of human, animal and vegetable fecundity which depends to a considerable extent on harmonious celestial movements, occasionally threatened or disrupted by cosmic chaos, and terrestrial movements that seek to harmonise with them.

58. 1.395–407. Cf. 2.221–24, where the idea is repeated and elaborated: without Aphrodite to join couples in marriage and without the ‘generative arrows’ of Eros, ‘the universe is without seed. The bonds indissoluble of harmony are dissolved’; cf. also 32.54f.

59. Eliade, M., The Myth of the Eternal Return, tr. W. Trask (New York 1954), 22–26Google Scholar, 34, 90.

60. Cf. 9.116–31, Nonnus’ description of the first Bacchant, Mystis, where dance, sound, circles, spirals and weaving are all present.

61. For example, 2.248f., where the circularity of the Ocean is conveyed 6 times in a line and a half: ‘Oceanos surrounds the circle of the world…girdling the whole earth coronet-wise with encircling band’, and 32.215, ‘the infinite circles of ever-returning years’.

62. Like all those spermatozoa, seeds and eggs that humans, plants and animals produce, and of which only some germinate.

63. And note 38.248f., ‘the moon…the sparkling nourisher of sheafproducing growth’, and 44.220–22, where the moon helps to ripen crops. At 46.99–102, the moon afflicts Pentheus with lunacy.

64. The word designating the mortal Harmonia occurs 42 times. The word otherwise occurs 25 times. The incidence of words for rim, orbit, circle, circular, circling are as follows: 49, 136, 73, 1, 5, 2, 15, 68 (several times as ), 19 (several times as , the circuit of the stars, or as , the circle of a breast). Other words for turning, circling, rolling, wheeling, applicable to dancers, Time, and the path of the Great Bear, include 15, 16, 8, 1, 7, 10, 3, 34, 5, 1, 2, which leads us to words for twisting and spiralling: 11, 23, 107, 84, 60, 26, 10, 1, 1, 26, 8, 1, 5, 4, 2. Words for girdle, noun or verb, include 60, 71, 5, 6, 2, and for crown or garland include 6, plus the star 5, 22, 31, 8, 24, 1, 5.

65. See Bertholet (n.55 above), 54–69 and 339–50. Hence temples and stone circles could also serve as observatories. Templa, divisions of terrestrial space, and structures that are usually beautifully ordered and harmonised (but also spaces inscribed by the augur in the sky: cf Greek , has the same etymology as tempora, divisions of time, and through divination the Etruscans in particular sought through this sacred meeting point of the celestial and terrestrial to ascertain what the heavens portended for humans in the days ahead. Cf. Krupp, E.: Echoes of the Ancient Skies: The Astronomy of Lost Civilizations (New York 1983), 217Google Scholar: ‘Sacred space is a realm where what we sense to be the basic organisation and meaning of the universe is experienced and celebrated….Astronomical alignments funnel celestial order into prehistoric monuments and turn them into sacred space.’

66. 5.51–87, and the specific parallel between Thebes and seven-zoned heaven at 8.52f. Or Hephaestus representing the many-circled cosmos on Dionysus’ shield at 25.384–412. Stegemann (n.57 above), 230–36, sees Thebes as the appropriate source for Dionysian redemptive religion and Dionysus’ eventual apotheosis (5.88–113, 280–86).

67. See too Eliade (n.59 above), 4–6, on how rivers, flocks, mountains, fields too can have their celestial archetype, often as a star or constellation.

68. Even more so when a deity is involved. Dionysus’ outdoor copulation with Nicaea, described as a wedding, , galvanises the natural environment into joyous activity (16.281–91), and foreshadows the celestial, vegetation-stimulating intercourse of Zeus and Hera (32.83–92). Similar intercourse with Aura makes the hill skip and dance, driving itself in a circle, yet another reminder of the many links between sexual activity and choreography (48.639f.). Cf. the energising of plant life produced by Zeus’ impregnation of Semele (7.344–47), and what seems to be a surge of plant growth at the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne (47.456–59).

69. Ordained and laid out in the tablets of Harmonia’s universal history by Nonnus, and tabulated by Stegemann (n.57 above), 197–99. Cf. the ouroboros, archetypal symbol of the eternal return, at 33.275–77. Vegetative boons have been conferred upon humanity by Apollo, Aphrodite, Athene and Demeter (12.110–13). Cf. 7.67–105, and culture heroes like Cadmus, Danaus and Aristaeus who introduced to the Greek world writing, astronomy, water-divining, honey-gathering, olive-oil pressing (4.252–84; 5.229–79). Nonnus also records the invention of the musical instruments, rock cutting and purple-dyed cloth (3.75f.; 5.56; 40.303–10; 41.372–76).

70. Hence the tablets of Time and Harmonia at 12.29–116 and 41.275–398, the use of numbers to calculate and expound heavenly laws of motion, and the Book of Numbers in the Jewish Pentateuch, depicting Jehovah as God of Order. Doing things by numbers means doing things in an orderly and, generally, harmonious way.

71. The tablets of Harmonia reinforce a sense of future destination with its token of order and stability culminating in the reign of Augustus, and of Roman law in Beirut.

72. 36.396; 38.236, 251. Aeon, ‘the shepherd of life ever-flowing’ holds ‘the key of generation’ (7.22–28).

73. Miller (n.54 above), 44, suggests that by late antiquity the spiral had overtaken the circle as the ‘dominant symbolic configuration in the dance of time’. Because our sun moves around the edge of the Milky Way at 812,000 kph and our galaxy moves around a supercluster of galaxies at 2,250,000 kph, sun, planets and stars spiral rather than circle through space. See Blair, L., Rhythms of Vision (New York 1975), 70fGoogle Scholar.

74. 14.30–32; 40.249f; 45.332–34; 28.329f.; 24.347.

75. On the celestial vault as not just a stage where terrestrial myths, such as those involving Orion and Andromeda, are re-enacted but as an actor and protagonist in the Dionysiaca, see Feraboli, S., ‘Astrologia in Nonno’, CL 4 (1985), 43–55Google Scholar. Some of Nonnus’ astronomical errors, such as the position of constellations in relation to others, are traceable to errors in his sources, such as Aratus.

76. Silenus dances himself into an ever-dancing, ever-flowing river, a remarkable passage that underlines the capacity of forms to undergo multiple change while retaining part of their original identity. He keeps dancing and maintains an organic connection with Dionysus, wine and the flow of creation (19.285–348).

77. To that extent it is permissible to say that neither Nonnus nor Dionysus has any interest in the afterlife and soteriology. See Simon, B., Nonnos de Panopolis: Les Dionysiaques Chants XXXVIII–XL (Paris 2003), 45Google Scholar n. 1.