24 



The muse of Oppian was employed on three subjects, fishing, 

 hunting, and fowhng-. His poem on the first, consisting of five 

 books, ha" come down to us entire. The last book of the (^yne- 

 getics has been lost. The Hixeutics, containing two books, have 

 been partially preserved in a Latin translation by (Jesner,* in wliose 

 days the original was said to be kept in an Italian library. Other 

 works have been attributed to Oppian, and we have his own words 

 to show that he wrote dithyrambics. He also informs us that he 

 intended to exercise his genius on a more exalted theme, of which 

 he is thought to give a specimen in his description of the Orontes. 



Some writers seem to be of opinion that Oppian was a generic 

 name of such poets as wrote on marine subjects,f and they endeavour 

 to support it by etymology. Certain it is, that a poet of tiiis name 

 furnished Martial with the subject of a satiric epigram. Schneider, 

 a learned German editor of Oppian, strenuously maintains, that 

 the author of the Cynegetics, and the author of the Halieutics, 

 were two different persons, the former a native of Apamea, a city 

 of Syria, who lived in the reign of Severus and Caracalla, and 

 wrote in a style altogether inelegant. The latter, he affirms, flou- 



• Ego nullum ex scriptoribus nondum publicatls liactenu« consequiitus, praeter Graecam 

 paraphrasin in Oppiani Ixeutica, id est de aucupio libellos, quos quidera Latinos feci, et passim 

 huic de avibus volumine inserui. Con. GfSNER. 



■f- Thus we have " the Lake poets" of our own days. " Non omittendum hie vidctur 

 qualem nominis Giammatici sea JScholia?it£e Oppiano attribuant, qua de re haec verba reperi 

 in antiquo Cod. M, S. Frederic! Sylburgii mei* Otttiuvo^ irvfioXoyinxi an-o o^tw ts* ^Mttu xut 



TV aAo5, *i B-xXetcTTXt ytviTect OwTiae^o?, xui Tpo-jTri T« T ti; 7r, KXt m A u^ », 0;riri*>05, o ra? ^uXxirirtK 



xy^xi f!mr\^m. Sive igitur hinc nomen Oppiano impositum sit, sivc aliunde, concinna est hac 

 etymologia; dummodo sciamus, hoc idem nomen aliis etiani ante hunc poetam fuisse, ut ex 

 Martiali doccbo." 



Esset, Castrice, cum maK coloris, 



Versus scribere coepit Oppianus- 



Lib. vii. 5- 



