Stories from the Mountains, Stories from the Sea - The Digressions and Developed Similes of the Halieutica of Oppian and the Cynegetica

This is an examination of two works of Greek didactic epic, the Halieutica of Oppian of Cilicia and the Cynegetica of an unknown Syrian poet from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It places them in the context of developments in Greek and Roman Epic poetry over the preceding 9 centuries, as well as Bucolic verse, Tragedy and Epigram. The book considers the non-technical part of these works, which are otherwise concerned with fishing and hunting. There has previously been no analytical commentary of either work and this provides such a commentary to all of the digressions and longer similes, as well as analytical consideration of the books as a whole.