a Greek poet, was born at Corycus, or Anazarba, in Cilicia, towards the close of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, in the second century after Christ. His father, Agesilaus, was equally distinguished for rank and learning, and he caused young Oppian to be instructed in music, geometry, and the belles-lettres. Septimius Severus having seized upon the throne, arrived at Anazarba, and immediately the senate of the place threw themselves at the feet of the conqueror. Agesilaus stood aloof upon this occasion, being too much engrossed with his philosophical inquiries,—a circumstance which so irritated Severus that he deprived the philosopher of all his property, and banished him to the island of Melita in the Adriatic. Thither Oppian followed his father, and it was in this compulsory retreat that he conceived and executed his two poems on Fishing (Αλιευτικόν), and on Hunting (Κυνηγετικόν), written in Greek hexameters. When they were finished he went to Rome, and presented them to the son of Severus, Antoninus Caracalla, who esteemed them so highly 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. The emperor not only granted the favour, but added the gift of a piece of gold (about 15s. 6d. of our money) for each of the verses which he had just heard recited. If, as Suidas affirms, these verses amounted to 20,000, 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 a victim to the plague, 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 still remains. 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 Schneider, the learned editor of his works, who, being struck with the disparity of style and poetic embellishment which he remarked in the poems on the Chase and on Fishing, conceived that two works which were so different in merit could not possibly have been the productions of the same author. Besides, the author of the Cynegetica states in two different passages that his native place was a city on the Orontes in Syria. The critic accordingly 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. Belin de Ballu, however, attempted to refute this hypothesis in the preface to his Greek edition of the Cynegetica, published at Strasbourg in 1786, where he proposes to get rid of the allusions to the birthplace of the author of Cynegetica by a clumsy alteration of the text! The unqualified praise generally accorded to Oppian by critics must have been bestowed in view of the Halieutica, and not of the Cynegetica, which is altogether an inferior production. John Tzetzes calls the author a model of grace; J. C. Scaliger compares him to Virgil in harmony and elegance of style; Gaspar Barth, Conrad Gesner, and many others, never cite him except to couple his name with laudatory epithets. The two poems have generally been printed together. The only separate edition of the Greek text of the Halieutica is the editio princeps, Florence 1815. The first edition of both poems is that of Aldus, Venice, 1517, with the Latin translation of the Halieutica of Lorenzo Lippi, printed in 1478. The best edition is that of Schneider, containing the Greek text, accompanied with a Latin translation, and followed by the paraphrase in Greek prose which the sophist Euteuenus had made of the Irenetica (another poem attributed to Oppian, but now lost), Strasbourg, 1776, and Leipzig, 1813. The last edition is that of Didot, Paris, 1846. Both poems were translated into Italian by Salvini, Florence, 1728. Prior to this there were two French translations of the Cynegetica, one by Florent Christian, Paris, 1575; and another by Fermat in 1690. The Halieutica was translated into English heroic verse by Jones and others, Oxford, 1722, 8vo, with a Life of the author prefixed.