1. Claudian 6 Hon. 511–514. Translation here and henceforth by Platnauer, M., Claudian (2 vols., London 1922)Google Scholar. Claudian wrote more wisely than he knew abut the mirroring capacity of water. Recent work by Masaru Emoto shows clearly that water is markedly susceptible to the thoughts and emotions of nearby humans. Photographs of the molecular structure of subsequently frozen water are beautiful and orderly when influences are positive and noble, ugly and chaotic when negative and base, i.e. water reflects the environment molecularly as well as visually. See http://www.hado.net/

2. On W.B. Yeats’s use, for example, of an element that is both stable and changeable, to generate images of self-inquiry, approval and condemnation, see Albright, D., Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot and the Science of Modernism (Cambridge 1997), 33Google Scholar. Psychoanalytic therapy tends to bring up images of currents, storms, depths and monsters of the deep. See Barker, P., ‘From Chaos to Complex Order: Personal Values and Resources in the Process of Psychotherapy’, Perspectives in Psychiatric Care 36.2 (2000), 51–58Google Scholar; Bachelard, G., Water and Dreams, tr. E. Farrell (Iowa 1965), 1–6, 102Google Scholar.

3. Virgil, for example, had good narrative reasons for describing a storm in Aeneid 1.

4. Braden, G., The Classics and English Renaissance Poetry (New Haven 1978), 72Google Scholar; 70–74 is a useful survey of this movement. Like showy rhetoric, hyperbole and bombast, the catalogues and ecphrases of this school were nothing new but they tended to proliferate and thus stall and elbow aside narrative in favour of what Braden calls ‘trancelike abstractions from the story at hand’ (72). Speeches are fewer, longer, and rarely answered. Narrative structure is thus less organic and hypotactic, more paratactic. See Shorrock, R., The Challenge of Epic: Allusive Engagement in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus (Leiden 2001)Google Scholar, passim, on the encyclopedic nature of Nonnus’ poem. Shorrock, however, prefers to see Nonnus’ structure as an intersection and intermingling of disparate elements, rather than their juxtaposition (17–23). For the kinship between Nonnus and Claudian, the themes they explore and the nature of their treatment, see Cameron, A., Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford 1970)Google Scholar, 263 n.1, 264 n.2, 267, 286, 292, 296, 310; for similarities between the Dionysiaca and Claudian’s Greek Gigantomachy, see 7, 11, 14–18.

5. Lindsay, Hence J., Life and Pleasure in Roman Egypt (London 1965), 369Google Scholar, speaks of ‘ceaseless ambivalence’. When Lindsay says that Nonnus’ image of Dionysus ‘expressed the submission to the absolutist state and the obstinate hope of turning the ruler into the beneficent god of a world of peace and plenty’ (ibid.), he speaking of an attitude that informs much of Claudian’s work.

6. Cf. Shorrock (n.4 above), 115 n.16, on ‘the fluid nature of Nonnus’ song’. Insofar as the poem is about wine and intoxication, it is also about some of the vague feelings one has when floating in water. See Siedentopf, H., ‘Der Wein und das Meer’, in K. Viernfeisel and B. Kaeser (eds.), Kunst der Schale: Kultur des Trinkens (Munich 1990), 319–24Google Scholar.

7. Cf. 34.50f. Translation here and henceforth by Rouse, W., Nonnos Dionysiaca (3 vols., London 1940–1946)Google Scholar.

8. ‘Ημφανής, and μεσσοφανής, occur 25 times, and 13 times refer to someone half-visible in water. Of these, 10 involve feminine beings such as Artemis, Nereids, Naiads or sea goddesses like Thetis, who 5 times peep from the water. Both states, semi-visibility and peeping (4 times they occur close to each other: 1.72; 22.15; 39.254; 43.383) suggest a tremulous curiosity and a being ‘poised on the verge of an epiphany’ (Winkler, J.J., In Pursuit of the Nymphs: Comedy and Sex in Nonnos’ Tales of Dionysos [Diss. Texas 1974], 9Google Scholar), a description which well captures the tendency of characters in Nonnus to fluctuate between exhibition and refuge. Thetis emerging from the sea to dance and then sinking back at the sight of Beroe, fearing she will be made to feel inferior (41.233–36), is a good example of this uncertainty. ‘ϒπερκύΨαντα is the very word used to describe Dionysus’ first emergence from the womb on Zeus’ thigh, 9.11.

9. 1.90–117. On this scene see Schmiel, R., ‘The Style of Nonnos’ Dionysiaca’, RhM 141 (1998), 393–406Google Scholar, at 398: ‘Nonnos is more interested in the possibilities offered by a sea-going bull than in the erotic scene itself.’

10. There is a useful treatment of water and fire, pollution, swamps, death, eroticism and ambivalence in Nonnus by Fauth, W., Eidos Poikilon (Göttingen 1981), 45–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Nonnus’ handling of sea metaphors, see Gigli Piccardi, D., Metafora e poetica in Nonno di Panopolis (Firenze 1985), 36–39Google Scholar.

11. Masson, J., The Oceanic Feeling (London 1980), 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests that this is an infantile residue, a view particularly popular with children who are closer to amniotic and womb fantasies.

12. E.g. 15.370–78; 24.104; 25.273f. and 470.

13. This is one way of reading mariners’ attraction for the sea, even when they are hydrophobic and cannot swim (e.g. Horatio Nelson), as Leeuwen, T., The Springboard in the Pond (Cambridge MA 1998), 223Google Scholar, suggests. Niederland, W., ‘River Symbolism: Part I’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 25 (1956), 469–504Google Scholar, at 475, says that all dreams about water are a reliving of birth, and in ‘River Symbolism: Part II’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 26 (1957), 50–75Google Scholar, at 70, he quotes Charles Maurois: ‘Life in the bosom of the waters remains linked with the memory of lost happiness’. In archaic Greek thought, the local river identified one’s birthplace, rather than one’s town or district. Typically, heroes are conceived and born beside a river. See Larson, J., Greek Nymphs (Oxford 2001), 98Google Scholar. As the maternal voice, the ocean entrances and casts a Siren-like spell. Cf. French mer/mère, and see Masson (n.11 above), 70–72; Bachelard (n.2 above), 43.

14. See Cirlot, J., A Dictionary of Symbols, tr. J. Sage (London 1962), 365–67Google Scholar; Chessick, R., Emotional Illness and Creativity (Madison 1999), 13Google ScholarPubMed; Leeuwen (n.13 above), 258; Durand, W., The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary, tr. M, Sankey & J. Hatten (Brisbane 1999), 59f. and 99Google Scholar. Durand discusses fear of death in Poe, for whom water was death, darkness, a river to the land of no return.

15. There are exceptions. The healing and purificatory uses of pristine water made for associations with, for example, Apollo and Asclepius. See Larson (n.13 above), 111–15; Cole, S., ‘The Use of Water in Greek Sanctuaries’, in R. Hägg et al. (eds.). Early Greek Cult Practice (Stockholm 1988), 161–65Google Scholar.

16. See Shorrock (n.4 above), 164–66, and Dion. 23.94–97 and 46.54–57 on rivers as judges of legitimacy. The dangers of crossing, channelling or bridging these wrath-prone entities is discussed by Braund, D., ‘River Frontiers in the Environmental Psychology of the Roman World’, in D. Kennedy (ed.), The Roman Army in the East (Ann Arbor 1996), 43–47Google Scholar.

17. As it does in other mythologies, for the Old Man of the Sea is a widespread archetype. Such figures can be trusty and gentle, or dangerous and deceptive. Except for the pre-Greek θάλασσα, Greek words for sea are masculine. See Gerhardt, M., Old Men of the Sea (Amsterdam 1967)Google Scholar; Niederland (n.13 above), 488. The Sumerians used the same word for semen and water: Hoffman, C., The Seven Story Tower (New York 1999), 96Google Scholar. The equation of ocean with eternity helps explain why Proteus, Triton and Glaucus are associated with prophecy. They are not time-bound. But river-gods and water-spirits can be prophets too.

18. So that the fertilising rain from heaven is fire-in-liquid, semen. Divine semen is commonly fiery. See Caldwell, R., The Origin of the Gods (Oxford 1989), 86fGoogle Scholar, 89–92 and 138: ‘Male sexuality is represented sometimes by water, sometimes by its opposite, fire, sometimes by a combination of both.’ Typhon associates power over lightning with the power to generate a new race of Blessed Ones, 2.341–52. Fire and water are interchangeable in the unconscious and when imagining cosmic cataclysms.

19. Wilson, C., ‘Wine Rituals, Maenads and Dionysian Fire’, Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 10 (1998), 157–68Google Scholar, at 160; Pater, W., ‘A Study of Dionysus: The Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew’, in Greek Studies (London 1910), 9–52Google Scholar.

20. Eros lists some differences between her and Clymene, ‘offspring of Oceanos’, 40.541–73; 23.201–05.

21. Cf. Bachelard (n.2 above), 320, 407, on the sexual function of water and its tendency to evoke innocent, feminine nudity but also motherhood: waves lapping against the breast makes it seem to palpitate, that is, seem to be suckled. In similar vein, when describing the topography of Beirut, Nonnus speaks of the city offering her breast to Poseidon (41.28f). Cf 10.169; 15.9. See further Niederland (n.13 above, 490) on how being in a river fuses birth, oral, breast and genital fantasies, and on the interchangeability of fluids. Significantly, we call the bottom of seas and rivers ‘beds’. The word ‘creek’ originally designated a cleft or crevice, while terms such as ‘head’ (source), ‘arm’ (branch) and ‘mouth’ of rivers show the readiness to anthropomorphise a body of water. In the multi-nippled cosmos of the Dionysiaca, breasts flow with liquids other than milk, and, like water, offer refuge. Thetis derives etymologically from θη-, to suck or suckle (cf. θηλή, ‘nipple’). Psychoanalytic theory postulates that the infant, with face pressed against the breast while sucking, has its own individuality, its own sense of separate existence, blurred, drowned or engulfed: ‘the oceanic feeling’. The oral world of fluid intake and the liquid world of natal life tend to fuse. Hence some of the ambivalence towards breasts so evident in Nonnus, explored by Newbold, R., ‘Breasts and Milk in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca’, CW 94 (2000), 11–23Google Scholar. Flows of water and milk (and other liquids) readily combine in the imagination so that water appears as an inexhaustible mother’s milk. For a confirmatory illustration of this in Nonnus, see 48.936f.: Aura, formerly a very masculine hunter and virgin, is feminised and maternalised by impregnation and parturition. The process is completed when, having committed suicide by drowning in a river, she becomes a fountain and her breasts jet forth water forever.

22. At 15.153 an Indian is described as being a searcher-out of the deeply rich sea. The epithet βαθύπλουτος, (‘deeply rich’) is applied to the Pactolus at 11.27 and 43.446.

23. 22.101–03; 23.226–29, 259–62; 42.282–92.

24. 5.482–86, 601–08; 10.380–82; 11.406; 12.7–12; 15.249–53; 16.5–7; 35.187–89; 42.19–22; 48.335–44: cf. 35.118–21.

25. Cf. 3.167f., where, despite the rather odd use of έπεβόμεε (‘boomed’), water appears to make a pleasant sound as it plays against the root of a tree. For fragrance, 20.143f.

26. 27.40–48, 102–04; 36.451–61.

27. 11.462f. Death can be spoken of as drinking from the infernal rivers (4.151–54; 17.300–05). The deadly power of water deep below is invoked when deities swear vengeance by the Styx, as Hera does when threatening to drown the house of Dionysus’ aunt Ino ‘in a flood of innumerable woes’, 9.135–37. Although the connection is not stressed by Nonnus, it is worth noting that the worship of Dionysus’ persecutor, Hera, was always associated with water: Cole (n.15 above), 163. The waters from the Styx and Cocytus with which a Fury used to soak Agave’s room in Pentheus’ palace presaged the tragedy that was about to befall Thebes.

28. 6.284–87, within the 6.226–370 episode, which concludes by attempting to link this cosmic flood with Deucalion’s. This flood is referred to again at 12.59–63.

29. 43.171–81. Cf. 36.97–105, war in heaven, when the gods go to war in support of either Deriades or Dionysus. Hades feared that the cosmos was being shaken to its foundations, so that Tartarus might be flooded. For discussion of these floods, see Chuvin, P., Nonnos de Panopolis: Les Dionysiaques, Tome Il (Paris 1976), 142fGoogle Scholar.

30. 14.36f. Cf. Gerhardt (n.17 above, 48) on the culturally widespread belief that waters are haunted and often malignant. Telchines are described as ‘furious demons of the waters’ who scooped up water from the Styx, put it on the land of Rhodes and made the soil sterile (14.41–49).

31. Cosmic deluges are a common form of world destruction fantasy. See Spring, W., ‘Observations on World Destruction Fantasies’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 8 (1939), 48–56Google Scholar; Masson (n.11 above), 33. If such fantasies really are a mark of withdrawal of interest from the world, a form of nostalgia and narcissism, we are reminded again how strongly there runs through the poem the conflict about whether to save and engage with the world, or to withdraw from it. On the work’s recurrent quest for safe hiding places, see Newbold, R. ‘Sensitivity to Shame in Greek and Roman Epic, with Particular Reference to Claudian and Nonnus’, Ramus 14 (1985), 30–45Google Scholar, at 41f. Masson, 52, interestingly cites a study relating survival of world dissolution with themes of immortality and the capacity to walk on water. The significance of cosmic flooding is that the world, having gone under in a kind of baptismal immersion, is reborn and re-emerges. The dissolution of forms and boundaries in a flood permit recombination and renewal. But in Nonnus it is only after the flood in Book 6 that a new world order begins.

32. See Newbold, R., ‘Fear of Sex in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca’, Electronic Antiquity 4.2 (1998), 1–15Google Scholar, and id. (n.21 above).

33. Cf. Bachelard (n.2 above), 413: ‘The imagination dreams of creation as an intimate union of the double power of fire and water and this is the condition for continuous creation’.

34. 2.508f. Curiously and as if to show the interchangeability of fire and water in his armoury (not to mention in mythic consciousness), Zeus then switched to pouring a deluge of water upon him.

35. 23.217, like when Scamander attacked Achilles and Hephaestus set Scamander ablaze (Iliad 21.1–380), and part of the reason for including it here. See Shorrock (n.4 above), 166, and for the reprise of this episode in Book 39, ibid. 85f. For Scamander taking on the attributes of all the underworld rivers, see Mackie, C., ‘Scamander and the Rivers of Hades in Homer’, AJP 120 (1999), 485–501Google Scholar.

36. 21.222–26; 27.73f. Drowning his enemies is an important means of killing them, although Deriades will switch to the use of fire too at 27.99–119.

37. 23.252–79, and 39.399–401, where the sexual associations of liquid fire are as obvious. Cf. 24.24–30. With his phallic stalk Dionysus is thus able to do what Lycurgus could only threaten to do, take fire down to the bottom of the sea when Dionysus fled underwater (21.135–46).

38. Although the theme persists. In the battle of the gods that at one stage accompanies the Indian war below, Apollo took on Poseidon, ready ‘to use fire against the surging sweep of water…fiery lance and watery arrows crashed together’ (36.83–96). Small fires are usually no problem for water. When Hephaestus set the Indian warrior, Morrheus, on fire, Hydaspes, who had been watching the battle from a rock, forsaking his bull shape for a human shape, ‘poured a quenching stream’ and put out the blaze (30.86–92). On the other hand, the flames with which Dionysus set Pentheus and his palace on fire could not be extinguished by the slaves who came to help. Cisterns were emptied and a spring was dried up as their efforts only made the flames increase (45.332–56).

39. Typhon’s many heads drink rivers to dust tracks ‘beating off the troops of Naiads from the river-beds…as if the river were a roadway’, 2.53–59. Cf. 43.29–33, where an elephant drinks dry a stream and forces the resident Naiad to flee ‘thirsty and uncovered’. Ovid’s description of the flood in Met. 1.293–310 is dominated by the theme of things out of place.

40. For the connection between mutilation/castration fears and angry male water deities who threaten crossings, see Niederland (n.l3 above), 503. For scorching and scoring, cf. 48.302–04: Artemis’ ‘skin was beaten by the glow of the scorching heat, in the middle of glowing summer, at midday, when Helios blazed as he whipt the Lion's back with the fire of his rough bristling whip’; 10.142 (‘the midday lash of Helios’); 40.437. Water is flogged at 1.262; 2.394f.; 3.22f.; 43.216 and 355; and cf. 20.395. Water does the flogging at 6.330; 39.101f.; 43.296. Where there is sadism, there is usually masochism and much of the scratching, scarring and scoring is experienced from the perspective of the surface. The verbs are passive. Endemic marking of surfaces may also be about testing and proving boundaries and surfaces in a fluid, shapeshifting world where so much is fake or mimic and not to be relied upon. See Newbold, R., ‘Discipline, Bondage and the Serpent in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca’, CW (1984), 89–98Google Scholar.

41. 1.264; 7.186; 10.164–66; 23.146; 43.214f.

42. 1.322; 8.255: cf. 16.51–55 and 87–90, where the appeal of this detail leads Dionysus to fantasise about carrying Nicaea through water and keeping her dry; also 20.157f. and 46.31f. There are 5 references to being conveyed dry across water by a creature (and not a chariot) and one where it is implied (6.293–97). Of these, 4 refer to Zeus and Europa. There are 14 cases of actual passing or dancing dry upon the water, of which 5 involve mortals. There are also 3 fantasised or threatened such crossings, plus a Dionysian warrior crossing over a river on a shield and remaining dry (23.139). The idea that deities can traverse the surface of water is culturally widespread. Typically, it is a mark of divinity or sainthood: the conditions of the phenomenal world are transcended. See Thompson, S., Motif-Index of Folk Literature (Copenhagen 1955)Google Scholar, C 862; D 1524, 1766, 2125; V 51.

43. 43.268f. Scoring the surface and remaining dry are combined at 20.157–59; 23.151–91; 24.1 11;43.203f. and 351–56.

44. 24.109–16. That there is something triumphant about remaining unwetted by moisture is suggested also by 17.128f., where the liquid concerned is wine and an Indian is proud to have not touched it. On the symbolism of crossing the Hydaspes and the issues of legitimacy and relationship to the father it raises, see Shorrock (n.4 above), 164–66 and 196.

45. 13.323–27. See Vian, F., Nonnos de Panopolis: Les Dionysiaques, Tome V (Paris 1995), 234Google Scholar, for 4 other references in Nonnus to these ultimately joined rivers, and discussion.

46. 43.200, 203f.; cf. 210–13, Glaucus’ ‘dryfoot’ gallop across the sea. The swift runner Iphiclos virtually flew over water or grain fields, barely touching the surface or making the ears bend (28.284–87)—an image drawn from Iliad 20.226f. and one which also appealed to Virgil (Aen. 7.808–11) and Ovid (Met. 10.65f.).

47. Ascension is often equated with immortality. On the Icarian syndrome, see Wiklund, N., The Icarus Complex (Lund 1978)Google Scholar. Visions of flight can be positive and expansive when they express ‘an unfettered soaring into infinite space’ (Bachelard [n.2 above], 129): cf. Newbold, R., ‘Flights of Fancy in Nonnus and J. M. Barrie’, Electronic Antiquity, 3.5 (1996), 1–9Google Scholar. They are less so when more concerned about vanquishing the threat of the abyss that one constantly feels about to succumb to, especially at moments of great stress. When the bereaved contemplate or enact suicide by drowning, they may be attracted by the idea of thereby mingling with the lost one, as at 24.207f.: ‘Who will take me and bring me where my dead husband fell, that I may embrace the dripping body, that the wave may swallow me too and drown me beside my man!’

48. 39.12f. Either that, or Lycos is, in effect, flying. Cf. 39.298f., a variation on this theme: so many corpses clogged the surface (‘back’) of the sea that it became like a bridge, offering dry passage.

49. Wheeler, S., ‘The Underworld Opening of Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae’, TAPA 125 (1995), 113–34Google Scholar.

50. See Cameron (n.4 above), 270–73, on such tableaux.

51. See Christiansen, P., ‘Claudian and Eternal Rome’, LAC 40 (1971), 470–74Google Scholar, on how Claudian transforms Roma from Minerva-like warrior goddess to transcendent and eternal mother, who receives conquered peoples to her bosom (in gremium, Stil. 3.150).

52. Hermus, Tagus: Rap. 2.69; CM 30.70f.; Man. 39; cf. Man. 53.

53. On this, see Rolfe, J., ‘Claudian’, TAPA 50 (1919), 135–49Google Scholar, at 148.

54. E.g. Rap. 2.69f.; 3.5, 10–16; 6 Hon. 153; Get. 603. Cf. Cameron (n 4 above), 269: ‘Claudian can never resist giving to a river god his traditional horns.’

55. Stil. 1.220f.; 3.24f. Alaric drinking from the Po is a threat to Roman rule (Get. 532). The quiet and gentle flows of mighty rivers such as the Nile, Ganges and Danube epitomise the majesty and tranquilla potestas of Rome (Man. 231–36). Cf. Braund (n.16 above).

56. 6 Hon. 146–200. Cf. Dewar, M., ‘Hannibal and Alaric in the Later Poems of Claudian’, Mnemosyne 47 (1994), 349–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 350, 363.

57. Including the ship of state (Gild. 219–22). See Christiansen, P., The Use of Images by Claudius Claudianus (The Hague 1969), 40Google Scholar.

58. Among the many animal and elemental images Claudian uses for barbarians are storm and wave. See Christiansen, P., ‘Claudian versus the Opposition’, TAPA 97 (1966), 45–54Google Scholar, at 48. At 50 are listed all the rivers and seas which Claudian mentions as being in servitude and controlled by Roman emperors and commanders. Much of what Poignault, R., ‘Les fleuves dans le récti militaire Tacitéen’, Latomus 60 (2001), 414–32Google Scholar, says about the way rivers define and protect Roman power in Tacitus could be applied to Claudian.

59. However, very Claudianic conceits are having Phlegethon as a river god whose beard is wet with fire and Time dwelling in a garden where dew is fiery and around which runs a river of flame (Rap, 2.314–16; Stil. 2.467–69), not to mention the river Frigidus steaming with the blood of slaughter (3 Hon. 99f.).

60. Cf. Fauth, W., ‘Concussio Terrae. Das Thema der seismischen Erschütterung und der vulkanischen Eruption in Claudians De Raptu Proserpinae’, A&A 34 (1988), 63–78Google Scholar.

61. The passage is similar to earlier ones in Verg. Aen. 3.570–82, Ovid Met 15.340–55, Silius Italicus 14.55–69, the anonymous poem Aetna 110–15, and Lucretius 6.680–700, but only Claudian inserts the detail about compressed water (oppressis aquis). It is stillness that makes possible the wonderful deep transparency of the lake near Etna (Rap. 2.112–17). Cf. Alschweig, K., Beobachtungen zur poetischen Technik und dichterischen Kunst des Claudius Claudianus, besonders in seinem Werk De Raptu Proserpinae (Frankfurt 1998), 88Google Scholar and 96. On Claudian’s keen interest in science and nature, see Lindsay, J., Song of a Falling World (London 1948), 120Google Scholar. It may be significant that even the verb for expulsion that he uses here, librat, carries overtones of balance (Rap. 1.178).

62. Durand (n.14 above), 241. In such a space we find the river Tiber accoutred with urn, cloak, beard, grass, reeds, horns and flows of water. He reclines in a bedchamber, thalamus, within a uterine cave within a river within a valley (Prob. 209–25).

63. For Claudian as an optimist about Rome’s future, see Christiansen (n. 51 above).

64. CM 30.74f.; cf. CM 25.90f., cinxere cohortes Oceanum (‘cohorts have girded Ocean’) and Stil. 2.189f., Get. 319. Cf. Gruzelier, C., ‘Temporal and Timeless in Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae’, G&R 35 (1988), 56–72Google Scholar, at 58 (‘Claudian is unable to see a plain surface without feeling the urge to decorate or organise it into zones’), with Durand (n.14 above), 228 (‘display, separation and analytical partitioning [have as their] symbolic corollary the valorisation of inwardly oriented images of security and intimacy’). Durand would see Claudian’s penchant for freezing time and space in static tableaux as a form of containment.

65. Braden, G., ‘Claudian and his Influence: The Realm of Venus’, Arethusa 12 (1979), 203–31Google Scholar, at 219 and 226. To support Braden’s argument, one could point to 43 occurrences of words denoting cave, obvious and worldwide symbol of gestation and refuge, and 110 for ship or parts of a ship (plus 14 for sailor and 13 for fleet), and the poems on the porcupine, the lobster and the Nile that emphasise secure armouring and self-sufficiency (CM 9, 24, 28). Ships upon the water, semi-secure cradles upon the predominantly feminine and often dangerous element, have a doubly maternal resonance. Cf. the image of the water-borne ark (derived from arcere, ‘to enclose’) and Barthes, R., Mythologies, tr. A. Lavers (London 1973), 73Google Scholar: a ship is ‘the emblem of enclosure. An inclination for ships means the joy of perfectly enclosing oneself.’

66. Lapidge, M., ‘A Stoic Metaphor in Late Latin Poetry: The Binding of the Cosmos’, Latomus 39 (1980), 817–37Google Scholar.

67. Allowing for the corpus of Claudian’s poetry (9,624 lines) amounting to less than half of the Dionysiaca (21,187 lines).

68. innatat umbra fretis (Rap. 3.444). Claudian three times uses secare (‘cut’) to describe progress through water, plus Get. 338f, where the frozen Rhine and Danube have their ‘icy backs cut with wheels’ (glacialia secti terga rotis). Cf. Stil. 1.176–78.

69. Gild. 4541; Stil. 2.188f.; 6 Hon. 196–99; Get. 331f; CM 25.90f.: cf. CM 27.1f.; Epith. 223.

70. 4 Hon. 347f.; 6 Hon. 483–90; Stil. 1.206f.; 3.148; Ruf. 2.184f. Stil. 1.125f., however, does use calcabat for denoting what Stilicho’s horse does to the frozen Danubian surface, and Perseus uses his wings to tame the pecus Neptuni in the sea below (Ruf. 1.278f.), an image that could well have appealed to Nonnus.

71. Van Leeuwen (n.13 above, 2) writes of ‘the abandonment to an erotic embrace between Eros and Thanatos’.

72. Bachelard (n.2 above), 463.

73. Kings are father symbols. But note his failure to overcome the father figure Poseidon when he challenges him.

74. Shorrock (n.4 above), passim. My thanks to the Ramus referee for helpful comments and suggestions.