Garstad, Benjamin2020-11-022022-05-312022-05-312012Garstad, Benjamin, review of The myth of paganism: Nonnus, Dionysus and the world of late antiquity (Classical Literature and Society series) by Robert Shorrock. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011. Mouseion 12 (2012) 158-60.1913-5416https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/1993In this slender but erudite monograph Robert Shorrock has made another important contribution to the study of Nonnus, at once learned, engaging, and immensely readable. His insistence throughout is that both poems of Nonnus, the Paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John and the Dionysiaca, must be read in their late antique context, alive with the vying claims and inextricable relations of traditional culture and Christianity. The injunction may seem simple enough, but in the brief compass of his work Shorrock shows how complicated that context is and how often scholars have neglected it, preferring to read the Paraphrase as if no Christian ever read the classics and the epic on Dionysus as if Nonnus stood in a direct and exclusive line of descent from Homer. Shorrock’s plea for good reading is full of insight and avenues for further study.enAll Rights ReservedRobert ShorrockThe myth of paganism: Nonnus, Dionysus and the world of late antiquityNonnusDionysuslate antiquityReview