Oppien de Corycos

See also: Oppien

Oppien , known as Oppien de Corycos or Oppien d' Anazarbe , is a graeco-latin author born in Cilicie, with Corycos/Anazarbe (today Korghos), which lived at the 2nd century. One knows very few things of his life, if it is not that he lived during the end of the reign of Marc-Aurèle. He grows with Malta where his/her father had been exiled. Of return to Rome, it becomes famous thanks to its poetic work. He dies young person, to thirty years, of an epidemic of Peste says one (but, often, this term indicates any kind of different epidemic diseases and seldom the plague itself, at the time the Peste antonine prevailed).

It should not be confused with Oppien of Syria which lived at the 3rd century towards Antioche and which is the author of a poem on the Chasse, the Cynégétiques .

Oppien is the author of two poems.

The first, now lost, treated hunting with the lime of the Oiseau X, Ixeutika . One knows of it only one paraphrase in prose signed by the Greek Eutecnius. This paraphrase is made up of three songs, the first describes the tamed birds and the Rapace S, the second of the water birds and the third of the technique of hunting of the birds.

The second poems, the Halieutica (Halieutics) count 3.506 worms distributed in two songs describing the Poisson S and of three songs on the art of the fishing.

Some of its descriptions are not always very scientific. Thus the Remora ( Remora will remora ) was considered able to stop a boat launched all sails outside. Others are more precise like that of a Crustacé deprived of test and concealing shells, undoubtedly the Bermard-l' hermit. The behaviors are sometimes remarkably right like the technique of fishing of the Lamproie which makes use of small mobile filaments placed close to the mouth and which, imitating worms, attract certain fish. Oppien is very eulogistic on the dolphin of which he praises several time the beauty and speed. It makes the king of fish of it.

The description of the many techniques of fishing shows the large smoothness of the observations made by the fishermen and the high degree of sophistications of the methods employed.