OPPIAN, a Greek poet, was born at Corycia or Anazarba, in Cilicia, towards the close of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. His father, Agesilas, held a distinguished rank in the senate of his native place, not so much on account of his birth or his riches, as the credit he obtained for the extent of his knowledge and his love of philosophy, which was the object of all his studies, and the guide of all his actions. To his son he was careful to give an education conformable to his own principles, causing him to be instructed in music, geometry, and particularly the belles-lettres. The young Oppian, however, had scarcely completed his studies, when an unlooked-for reverse damped his ardour, and destroyed all his hopes. Septimius Severus
rus, having mounted the throne, to which he had succeeded in hewing out a way with his sword, arrived at Anazarba, and immediately the senate of the place threw themselves at the feet of the conqueror. Agesilas alone, conceiving himself bound to withhold from an usurper the homage which was due only to the legitimate sovereign, stood aloof upon this occasion; a circumstance which so irritated Severus, that he deprived the philosopher of all his property, and banished him to the island of Melitus, now Meleda, situated in the Adriatic. Thither Oppian followed his father, and it was in this compulsory retreat that he conceived and executed his two poems on the Chase and on Fishing, entitled Cynegetica and Halieutica. When they were finished, he went to Rome, and presented them to the son of Severus, Antoninus Caracalla, who relished them so much that he permitted the author to demand of him whatever recompense he pleased. Oppian asked only for the release of his father, with permission to the latter to return to his own country; and the emperor, as much touched with the filial affection of the son as he had been delighted with the verses of the poet, not only granted the favour he had asked, but added the gift of a gold statera (about L.1. 4s. of our money) for each one of the verses which he had just heard recited. If, as Suidas pretends, these verses amounted to twenty thousand, never did poet receive so splendid a recompense. But Oppian did not long enjoy his good fortune. Scarcely had he returned to his own country when he sunk into the grave, at the early age of thirty, having fallen the victim of a contagious malady which then desolated the city of Anazarba. His fellow-citizens erected to his memory a magnificent tomb, whereon was engraved an inscription in Greek verse, which Lorenzo Lippi has rendered as follows:
Oppianus vatum decus immortale fuisse,
Invida ni gelidum rapuisse Parca sub Orcum,
Me juvenem placidae clarum splendore Camææ,
Si liver longæ violasset tempora vitæ,
Non mihi laude parem quemquam terra alma tullisset.
This is all that we learn of Oppian from the anonymous Greek historian of his life, whom all the succeeding biographers have faithfully copied. We must, however, except the learned editor of his works, Schneider, who, being struck with the disparity of style which he remarked in the poems on the Chase and on Fishing, conceived that two works, which, according to him, were so different in merit, could not possibly have been the productions of the same author. Accordingly, he supposed that there were two Oppians, the first of whom, a native of Cilicia, and author of the Halieutica, preceded the second by several years. In the opinion of Schneider, it is to the latter that we are indebted for the Cynegetica, in which the author has, according to him, attempted to reproduce, but with great inferiority of talent, the manner and some of the imagery of the first Oppian. M. Belin de Ballu has, however, completely refuted this bold hypothesis, in the preface to his Greek edition of the Cynegetica, published at Strasburg in 1786. How, indeed, could it be reconciled with the unanimous concert of praise which critics, ancient and modern, have lavished upon this poet? John Tzetzes calls him a model of grace; J. C. Scaliger compares him to Virgil, in point of numbers, harmony, and elegance of style; Gaspar Barth, Conrad Gesner, and many others, never cite him except to couple his name with laudatory epithets. It is
not easy, however, to reconcile so much praise bestowed on the one hand, and so little regard evinced for the works of Oppian on the other; nor can we help feeling some astonishment, when we consider that, from the date of the editio princeps, printed at Florence in 1515, two centuries elapsed before the appearance of the first really critical edition, published by Schneider in the year 1777. During this long period, it is true, there appeared several editions at considerable intervals, particularly that of Aidus, Venice, 1517, which Schneider considers as very defective, and regards as the source of all the faults which, till his time, had disfigured the text; that of Vascosan, Paris, 1549; and that of Rittershusius, Leyden, 1597. No edition appeared in the seventeenth, nor any in the eighteenth century, until the year 1777, when that of Schneider was published at Strasburg, containing the Greek text, accompanied with a Latin translation, and followed by the paraphrase in prose which the sophist Eutechnius had made of the Ixeutica, another poem attributed to Oppian, but which, unfortunately, has not come down to our time. This was followed by the edition of Belin de Ballu, published at Strasburg in 1786, but containing only the Cynegetica, of which the editor published, at the same place, the following year, a good French translation, enriched with critical notes, and a curious extract from El Domai's history of animals, translated from the Arabic by Baron Silvestre de Sacy, who, however, for some reason, withheld his name. Prior to this there were two French translations, one by Florent Christian, preceptor to Henry IV. when prince of Bearn; and another by Fermat, a counsellor of Toulouse, who, in 1690, published a prose version of the books on Hunting by Arrian and Oppian. The poem on Fishing was translated into English heroic verse by Jones and others, belonging to St John's College, Oxford, and printed there in 1722, 8vo, with a life of the author prefixed. The Latin translation of Lorenzo Lippi, printed in 1478, preceded by thirty-seven years the editio princeps of the Greek text. (A.)