Short answers, pulled from the story.
Nonnus of Panopolis was a Greek epic poet from Panopolis, modern-day Akhmim, in Upper Egypt. Scholars place him between the end of the 4th century and the middle of the 5th century AD, after the composition of Claudian's Greek Gigantomachy around 394-397.
The Dionysiaca is a 48-book epic poem by Nonnus of Panopolis, totaling 21,286 lines. It is the longest surviving poem from classical antiquity and tells the life of Dionysus, including his expedition to India and triumphant return. It was written in Homeric Greek and dactylic hexameter.
Nonnus of Panopolis is credited with two major works: the Dionysiaca, a pagan epic about Dionysus, and the Metabole, a verse paraphrase of the Gospel of John. Whether the Paraphrase or the Dionysiaca came first is a debated question among scholars.
The Paraphrase of John is a hexameter verse retelling of the Gospel of John by Nonnus of Panopolis. Its composition must post-date Cyril of Alexandria's commentary on John, written between 425 and 428, because Nonnus's theological approach draws on it.
Nonnus's Dionysiaca was long considered to be of poor literary quality. Its reputation was rehabilitated by the Budé edition and commentary in 18 volumes, which argued the poem shows consummate literary skill, even if its baroque extravagance is an acquired taste.
W. H. D. Rouse translated the Dionysiaca into English for the Loeb Classical Library in 1940, producing a bilingual Greek-English edition in three volumes with notes by H. J. Rose and L. R. Lind. A 19-volume bilingual Greek-French Budé edition, edited by F. Vian, was published between 1976 and 2006.