OPPIAN 



latest editors reach their conclusion is nothing less 

 than astounding : 



(1) Assuming f^ita A to be the most trustworthy, 

 they take the banishment to refer to the father of 

 the Cilician Oppian. 



(2) They put the visit of Severus in 19^, when he 

 was marching against Pescennius Niger. 



(3) The poet of the Halieutica, they say, died 

 in the thirtieth year of his age, after the death of 

 Severus in 211. But the Vita A — their sole 

 authority — says that the poet was about thirty years 

 of age when his father was banished, and that he 

 died at the age of thirty. In any case the whole 

 story seems to contemplate a short period of banish- 

 ment. On the showing of Messrs. Schmid-Stahlin 

 it extended at least from 194-212, a period of 

 eighteen years. 



(4) Caracalla had no son. It was, apparently, only 

 after his death that any hint was made with regard 

 to the paternity of Elagabalus or his cousin ; in any 

 case neither youth could possibly have been referred 

 to in the terms in which the poet of the Halieutica 

 refers to the son of Antoninus. Messrs. Schmid & 

 Stahlin, feeling this difficulty, comfortably say that 

 in H. i. QQ "ist wohl Trarpi statt TraiSi zu schreiben." 

 It is regrettable that their researches in Oppian 

 should not have proceeded a little further, when the 

 other references to the son, as quoted above, would 



^Jl&ve needed more serious surgery. 



Our conclusion, on the whole, is that the 

 Halieutica alone is the work of the Cilician Oppian. 

 The Cynegetica, which shows knowledge of the 

 Halieutica not merely in detail, e.g. Cyn. i. 82 

 compared with Hal. iii. S5, but in general treatment, 



