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This tradition of the disparaging Nonnian critique is largely responsible for why the Dionysiaca is virtually unknown today. Nonnus' epic, however, is much more than just a churning and chaotic narrative of Dionysian mythology and past dismissals of the poem are largely based on fundamental misunderstandings of the poem's literary aims. Further inspection reveals that Nonnus has made a poem whose chaotic veneer conceals subtle narrative construction, vigorous engagement with abstract themes, and a deeply felt intuition for the numinous and ritualistic core of mythology. Thankfully, within the last thirty years a small number of scholars have begun to analyze the Dionysiaca as a work of literature instead of dismissing it as a mountainous heap of doggerel and have thus begun the long process of establishing the poem's merits within the academy.