Oppian's Halieutica
Charting a Didactic Epic

Reveals the sophistication of a once-popular Greek didactic epic on the sea and its fish, addressed to the Roman emperor.

Emily Kneebone (Author)

9781108840835, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 October 2020

432 pages
16 x 23.5 x 3 cm, 0.83 kg

'This study is deeply researched and amply annotated; it may not be much help to those seeking to catch a fish dinner, but it opens up a work unfamiliar even to those many scholars of Greek literature under the Roman empire.' James Romm, Times Literary Supplement

Oppian's Halieutica is a dazzling five-book Greek didactic poem about the sea and its wily, chaotic inhabitants. This book offers the first sustained reading of the poem as a didactic epic that meditates on the place of human beings within the cosmos at large, and on the lessons we can learn from fish. Using a combination of close reading and wider interpretative lenses, this book examines the literary texture and cultural relevance of the Halieutica by analysing its sophisticated refraction of earlier literary-critical theories and hexameter traditions, its commentary on human-animal relations, and its contribution to imperial Greek literary, political, and cultural debates. The book demonstrates the importance and cultural centrality of this understudied Greek didactic epic; it is written for students and scholars of imperial Greek literature and culture (including the ancient novel), ancient heroic and didactic epics, and those interested in human-animal relations in the ancient world.

Introduction. On fishing
I. Didactic poetry: 1. Didactic epic
2. Knowledge and pleasure
3. Mapping the sea
II. Morality at sea: 4. Guile
5. Greed
6. Lust
III. Humans and animals: 7. Epic similes
8. Analogical animals
9. Humans and other animals
IV. Seas real and unreal: 10. Locating monsters
11. An empire of fish
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Poetry by individual poets [DCF]