ΤΟΣΣ' ΕΔΑΗΝ: The Poetics of Knowledge in Oppian's Halieutica

Abstract

τόσσ ἐδάην, σκηπτοῦχε διοτεϕές, ἔργα θαλάσσης (5.675).This much I know of the works of the sea, sceptre-bearer, you who are dear to the gods.Oppian's address to Marcus Aurelius signals the end of his five-book didactic epic on sea-fishing and encapsulates the poetic project of the Halieutica: no ordinary fish-treatise, this poem illuminates the extraordinary realm of the sea and is presented as a gift and homage to the Roman emperor. The work, written by a Cilician during the joint rule of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus (176-180 CE), attained great popularity in antiquity, was used as a Byzantine school-text and was much admired in the Renaissance and subsequent centuries. In more recent times, however, Oppian has languished in relative neglect. At the turn of the twentieth century, Wilamowitz curtly (and characteristically) dismissed the Halieutica as tedious and derivative, a poem whose subject-matter stems less from first-hand observation than from a ‘stale’ academic knowledge: This poem, which is extensive and technically quite correct, has met with acclaim which has been passed on, doubtless often without its being read. It is appallingly boring; the man may perhaps at some point have set out nets and cast a fishing-rod, but essentially he turns stale book-learning [‘abgestandene Buchweisheit’] about fish into verse, [information] which many had already relayed without any personal experience.

Etymological Explanations of Fish-names in Oppian’s Halieutica: Between Poetry, Philology, and Scholarship

“…ἔλαβε], ὅσους εὑρέθη ἔχοντα στίχους τὰ ποιήματα. 6 See, in addition to the studies mentioned above, Rebuffat 2001; Bartley 2003;Kneebone 2008 and2017; Lytle 2011, who argues for a ritual background in the description of the sargue (σαργός) in the Halieutica. Emily Kneebone's forthcoming monograph on the Halieutica is eagerly awaited.…”