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.
Spanish Exemplary Rulership? Antonio de Guevara’s Relox de Príncipes (1529) in English (1557) and Dutch (1578) Translation