Oppianus

(Ὀππιανός). (1) A Greek didactic poet of Anazarbus, in Cilicia. In the second half of the second century A.D., under the emperor Marcus Aurelius, he composed a didactic poem Halieutica (Ἁλιευτικά), in five books, on the habits of fishes and the method of capturing them. It is written in an ornate, though often bombastic, style. He was formerly confounded with

(2) Oppianus, the author of a didactic poem on the chase, consisting of four books, and entitled Cynegetica (Κυνηγετικά), written in a harsh, dry style and in halting verse. The author of the Cynegetica lived under Caracalla about the end of the second century, and came from Apamea, in Syria. A poem on bird-catching, Ixeutica (Ἰξευτικά), preserved to us only in a paraphrase by Eutechnius, was also wrongly ascribed to the author of the Halieutica. Both the Halieutica and Cynegetica are edited together by Lehrs (1846).