Minor Characters in the Dionysiaca

‘Nessuna delle figure del poema nonniano può dirsi personaggio: sono tutti, compreso Bacco, fiacchi strumenti in balia di forze superiori, endogene, come le passioni, esterne, come le stelle.’ Perhaps this rather categorical denial of character development in the Dionysiaca, pronounced by Gennaro D’Ippolito, one of the few real authorities in the field of Nonnus studies, may help to explain why this Companion contains a chapter on minor and none on major characters. For can any character (obvious candidates are Dionysus, Deriades, Zeus and Hera) be rightfully called a ‘major character’, a term often associated with round and lifelike characters, if they are all mere ‘strumenti’, puppets on the string of ‘higher powers’? In this chapter, I will not try to define when a character is ‘minor' or 'major', but rather, to discuss and analyse the representation of a selected number of characters and groups of characters that can be of interest with regard to their role in the narrative or their characterization. The 'bigger' roles, which in studies on characterization almost always receive most attention, will, in accordance with the title of this chapter, be left aside.

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