INTRODUCTION 



I. The Authorship of the Poems 



The authorship of the Cynegetica and the Halieutica 

 presents a problem of some perplexity owing to the 

 impossibility of reconciling some of the external 

 evidence regarding Oppian with the internal evidence 

 presented by the poems themselves. 



I. External Evidence. — This consists in the 

 ancient Fitae (Bt'ot) preserved in various mss. of 

 the poems, with a short notice in Suidas, and some 

 references to and quotations from the Halieutica- — 

 there are no references to or quotations from the 

 Cynegetica — in later writers. 



Fitae. — Of the ancient Lives, which show at once 

 considerable agreement and considerable discrepancy, 

 Anton. Westermann, in his BiorPA-i-oi, Brunsvigae, 

 1845, distinguishes two recensions, which Ave shall 

 here denote as I it a A and J'ita B respectivelv. 



Fita A, " quae narrationem praebet omnium sim- 

 plicissimam," as printed by Westermann may be 

 translated as follows : — 



" Oppian the poet was the son of Agesilaus and 

 Zenodote, and his birthplace was Anazarbos in 

 Cilicia. His father, a man of wealth and considered 

 the foremost citizen of his native city, distinguished 



