Hunting Lore #6: Oppian of Apamea's Cynegetica

To thee, blessed one, I sing: thou glorious bulwark of the earth, lovely light of the warlike sons of Aeneas, sweet scion of Ausonian [=Italian] Zeus*, Antoninus**, whom Domna bare to Severus, mighty mother to mighty sire. Happy the husband whom she wedded and happy the son to whom she gave birth — bride of the best of men and mother of a noble son, Assyrian Cythereia [=Aphrodite], the uneclipsed Moon***; a son no meaner than the breed of Cronian Zeus (with favour of Titan Phaethon [=the Sun] be it spoken and of Phoebus Apollo!); to whom thy sire, by the labour of his mighty hands, gave in keeping all the dry land and all the wet sea. Yea, for thee doth earth, giver of all gifts, conceive and blossom; for thee again the sunny sea rears her splendid broods; for thee flow all the streams from Ocean; for thee with cheerful smile springs up the glorious Dawn.

(*L. Septimius Severus Pertinax Augustus, ruled 193-211 CE)
(**M. Aurelius Severus Antoninus Augustus [Caracalla], ruled 211-217 CE)
(***The "identification" with a deity, often in a rather indeterminate manner, is typical already of Hellenistic ruler cults, and is carried over into the Roman period)

Fain then am I to sing the glorious devices of the chase. So biddeth me [the Muse] Calliope, so Artemis herself. I hearkened, as is meet, I hearkened to the heavenly voice, and I answered the goddess who first to me spake thus. 

ARTEMIS. Arise, let us tread a rugged path, which never yet hath any mortal trodden with his song.

OPPIAN. Be gracious, holy Lady, and whatsoever things though thinkest in thy mind, these will we declare with our mortal voice.

ART. I would not now have thee sing Mountain-Bacchus [=Dionysus] of the triennial feast, nor his choir by the deep waters of Aonian Asopus.

OPP. We will leave, as thou biddest, the nightly rites of Sabazius [=Dionysus]; often have I danced around Dionysus, son of Thyone.

ART. Tell not of the race of heroes, tell not of the seafaring Argo; sing not the battles of men, sing not to me the Destroyer of Men.

OPP. I will not tell of wars, nor of Ares' works most evil; I have remarked the Parthians' woes and Ctesiphon.

ART. Be silent about deadly passion and leave alone the girdles18 of love: I abhor what men call the toys of the Daughter of the Sea. 

OPP. We have heard, O blessed Lady, that thou art uninitiate in marriage. 

ART. Sing the battles of wild beasts and hunting men; sing of the breeds of hounds and the varied tribes of horses; the quick-witted counsels, the deeds of skilful tracking; tell me the hates of wild beasts, sing their friendships and their bridal chambers of tearless love upon the hills, and the births which among wild beasts need no midwifery. 

Such were the counsels of the daughter of mighty Zeus. I hear, I sing: may my song hit the mark! But do thou, who rulest from the East unto the Ocean, with serene joy on thine immortal brows, vouchsafe thy right hand gracious and prosperous to land and cities and to songs of the happy chase.

So begins the Greek poem on hunting by Oppian of Apamea - not to be confused with Oppian of Cilicia. The earlier work he refers to are sadly lost, but at least we can tell from the prologue that it was not a single-minded passion that led him to the present subject. An interest in hunting must have played some role, as well as the fact that it had not been often treated in poetry, but the similarities of book 1 of the Cynegetica to the Latin Cynegeticon of Grattius suggest that the genre had formed its conventions before Oppian ever came to it. Nemesianus, who had read Grattius, claimed the same kind of originality, however, so it almost seems that this was a feature of the genre? At any rate, the following three-way distinction was already a very old convention:

Triple sorts of hunting hath [the] God bestowed on men — in air and on earth and on the sea delightful.

This Oppian, unlike the Cilician, considers the middle kind most honorable:

But thou, Nereus, and ye gods of Amphitrite and the choir of Dryads who love the birds, grant me your grace! For now dear themes of song invite me earnestly; I, turning back, proceed to sing to the gods of the chase.

Like the the other authors we have met in this series, Oppian devotes some space to the question of the origin of his art:

Come now, daughter of Zeus, fair-ankled Phoebe, maid of the golden snood, twin birth with Apollo, declare, I pray thee, who among men and mighty heroes received at thy hands the glorious devices of the chase.

By the foot of windy Pholoe did savage tribes, half-beast half-men, human to the waist but from the waist horses, invent the chase for pastime after the banquet. Among men it was invented first by him who cut off the Gorgon's head, even Perseus, the son of golden Zeus; howbeit he soared on the swift wings of his feet to capture Hares and Jackals and the tribe of wild Goats and swift Gazelles and the breeds of Oryx and the high-headed dappled Deer themselves. Hunting on horseback did Castor, bringer of light, discover; and some beasts he slew by straight hurling of his javelin to the mark; others he pursued on swift horses and put them to bay in the noontide chase. Saw-toothed dogs were first arrayed for battle with wild beasts by Polydeuces of Lacedaemon, son of Zeus; for he both slew baleful men in the battle of the fists and overcame spotted wild beasts with swift hounds. Pre-eminent in close combat on the hills shone the son of Oeneus, warlike Meleager. Nets again and nooses and curving hayes did Hippolytus first reveal to hunting men. Winged death for wild beasts did Atalanta invent, the glorious daughter of Schoeneus, the maiden huntress of the Boar. And snaring by night, the guileful hunting of the dark, crafty Orion first discovered. These were the mighty leaders of the chase in former days. But afterward the keen passion seized many; for none who has once been smitten by the charms of the delightful hunt would ever willingly forsake it again: he is held by wondrous bonds. (from book 2)

And like the other Oppian, the Apamean has an address to Eros:

Amphibious too is the Subus [unidentified]; for he also walks upon the land; but when he travels to the deep and ploughs the swift waves, then a great company of fishes attends him and travels the sea along with him; and they lick his limbs and rejoice in their horned friend, the Subus of tender body. Above all the Braize and the feeble Melanurus and the Needle-fish and the Red Mullet and the Lobster are attendant upon him. A marvel is this, a marvel unspeakable, when alien desires and strange loves distress wild beasts. For it is not alone for one another that [the] God has given them the compelling ordinance of mutual love, nor only so far that their race should wax with everlasting life. That is, indeed, a marvel, that the brute tribes should be constrained by the bonds of desire and should know the passions of their own kind and, albeit without understanding should feel mutual desire for one another, even as for men thought and intelligence opens the eye and admits love to the heart; but the wild races are also highly stirred by the frenzy of alien desires. What a passion is that of lordly Stag for the Francolin! How great that of the Partridge for that long-horned Gazelle! How again does the Bustard of the shaggy ear rejoice in the swift Horse! The Parrot again and the Wolf herd together; for Wolves have ever a passion for the grass-hued bird! 

Mighty Love, how great art thou! how infinite thy might! how many things dost thou devise and ordain, how many, mighty spirit, are thy sports! The earth is steadfast: yet is it shaken by thy shafts. Unstable is the sea: yet thou dost make it fast. Thou comest unto the upper air and high Olympus is afraid before thee. All things fear thee, wide heaven above and all that is beneath the earth and the lamentable tribes of the dead, who, though they have drained with their lips the oblivious water of Lethe, still tremble before thee. By thy might thou dost pass afar, beyond what the shining sun doth ever behold: to thy fire even the light yields place for fear and the thunderbolts of Zeus likewise give place. Such fiery arrows, fierce spirit, hast thou — sharp, consuming, mind-destroying, maddening, whose melting breath knows no healing — wherewith thou dost stir even the very wild beasts to unmeet desires. 

[...] About the Subus, indeed, the whole wandering tribe of fishes and all follow with him when he ploughs the wild waves and throng on either side for joy and the sea foams round about, lashed by their white fins. But he, recking not of their strange friendship, all lawlessly devours and banquets on them with bloody jaws. And they, though seeing doom before their eyes, hate him not even so nor desert their slayer. Wretched Subus, worker of evil, for thine own self hereafter shall the hunters devise death by sea, crafty though thou art and slayer of fishes! (from book 2)

But the poem has its own style, quite different from the other works we have seen: the gods generally appear at some distance from the voice of the poet (in the opening, that distance is created by the artifice of the direct encounter, which reminds one more of Ovid's conversation with Cupid at the beginning of the Amores than of any serious theophany), or in rather brief mentions:

Tell also, I pray thee, O clear-voiced Muse of diverse tones, of those tribes of wild beasts which are of hybrid nature and mingled of two stocks, even the Pard of spotted back joined and united with the Camel [camelopard = giraffe]. O Father Zeus, how many things hast thou devised, how many forms hast thou created for us, how many hast thou given to men, how many to the finny creatures of the sea! (from book 3)

Many are the modes of glorious and profitable hunting [...] Who could behold them all? Who could behold so much, being mortal? Only the Gods easily see all things. But I shall tell what I have seen with my own eyes when following in the woods the chase, splendid of boons, and whatever cunning mysteries of all manner of delightful craft I have learned from them whose business it is; fain as I am to sing of all these things to the son of Divine Severus. And do thou of thy grace, O lady goddess, queen of the chase, declare those things for quick royal ears, so that knowing before all the lore of thy works the king may slay wild beasts, blessed at once in hand and song.

Of wild beasts some are wise and cunning but small of body; others again are valiant in might but weak in the counsel of their breasts; others are both craven of heart and feeble of body, but swift of foot; to others again [the] God hath given all the gifts together — cunning counsel, valorous strength, and nimble knees. But they know each the splendid gifts of his own nature — where they are feeble and where they are deadly. (from book 4)

In another reminiscence of the Cilician:

Such constraining love of child and new-born babe hath [the] God instilled into the heart: not alone in men who devise all things by their wits but even in creeping things and fish and the ravenous wild beasts themselves and the high-ranging flocks of birds: so much is nature mightier than all beside. What care doth the Dolphin amind the waves take evermore of its children [...] (from book 3)

Then there are two set-pieces of anthropopoiia (personification), anthropomorphizing animal life:

A fierce and shameless frenzy stirs jealousy in all the [Wild Ass] males against their own young sons. For when the female is in the travail of Eileithyia [=goddess of birth], the male sits hard by and watches for his own offspring. And when the infant foal falls at the feet of his mother, [...] if he sees that it is a male, then, then the frenzied beast stirs his heart with deadly jealousy about the mother and he leaps forth, eager to rend with his jaws the privy parts of his child, lest afterward a new brood should grow up; while the mother, though but newly delivered and weak from the travail of birth, succours her poor child in the quarrel. 

As when in grievous war cruel warriors slay a child before the eyes of his mother and hale herself while she clings to her son yet writhing in his blood and wails with loud and lamentable cry and tears her tender cheek and is drenched below with the hot blood and warm milk of her breasts; even so the she Wild Ass is just as if she were piteously lamenting and sorrowfully wailing over her son. Thou wouldst say that all unhappy, bestriding her child, she was speaking honeyed words and uttering this prayer. "O husband, husband, wherefore is thy face hardened and thine eyes red that before were bright? It is not Medusa's brow who turned men to stone that thou beholdest near; not the venomous offspring of Dragoness implacable; not the lawless whelp of mountain-roaming Lioness. The child whom I, unhappy mother, bare, the child for whom we prayed to the gods, even thine own child, wilt thou with thine own jaws mutilate? Stay, dear, mar him not! Ah! why hast thou marred him? What a deed thou hast done! Thou  hast turned the child to nothingness and has made all his body blind. Wretched and unhappy I in my untimely motherhood, and altogether wretched thou, my child, in thy most sinful father. Wretched I, thrice miserable, who have travailed in vain, and wretched thou, marred not by the claws of Lions, but by the cruel lion jaws of thy sire." 

Thus one would say the unhappy mother speaks over her infant son, while the unheeding father with bloody jaws makes mirthless banquet of his child. O father Zeus, how fierce a heart hath Jealousy! Him hast thou made, O lord, mightier than nature to behold and hast given him the bitter force of fire, and in his right hand hast vouchsafed to him to wear a sword of adamant. He preserves not, when he comes, dear children to their loving parents, he knows nor comrade nor kin nor cousin, when he intervenes grievous and unspeakable. He also in former times arrayed against their own children heroes themselves and noble heroines — Theseus, son of Aegeus, and Athamas, son of Aeolus, and Attic Procne and Thracian Philomela and Colchian Medea and glorious Themisto. But notwithstanding, after the race of afflicted mortals, to wild beasts also he served up a banquet of Thyestes. (from book 3)

Here the gods are spoken by the writer's own persona, but in the voice of a tragedian, not of a didactic poet. In the other piece, the animal itself prays to the gods:

Notable is the care which the dam among these takes for her tender young and which the children take for their mother in her old age. And even as among men, when a parent is fettered in the grievous bonds of old age — heavy of foot, crooked of limb, feeble of hand, palsied of body, dim of eye — his children cherish and attend him with utmost heed, repaying the care of their laborious rearing: so do the young of the Goats care for their dear parents in their old age, when sorrowful bonds fetter their limbs. They cull with their mouths and proffer them dewy food and flowery, and for drink they bring them dark water which they draw from the river with their lips, while with their tongues they tend and cleanse all their body. Didst thou but take the mother alone in a snare, straightway thou mightst take young lambs with thy hands. 

For thou wouldst think that she was driving away her children with her words, entreating them afar with such bleatings as these: "Flee, children dear, the cruel hunters, lest ye be slain and make me your poor mother a mother no more!" 

Such words thou wouldst think she spoke, while they, standing before her, first sing, thou wouldst imagine, a mournful dirge about their mother, and then, breaking forth in bleating, speak in human accents and as if they used the speech of men and like as if they prayed, utter from their lips such language as this: "In the name of Zeus we pray thee, in the name of the Archer Maid herself, release to us our dear mother, and accept a ransom, even all that we unhappy can offer for our poor mother — even our hapless selves. Bend thy cruel heart and have regard unto the law of Heaven and to the old age of a parent, if thou hast thyself an aged parent left in thy bright home." 

Such prayer might one fancy that they utter. But when they see that thy heart is altogether inexorable, — how great their regard, how great their love for their parents! — they come to bondage of their own accord and of their own motion pass the bourne. (from book 2)

More attractive - in my personal estimation, which is of course subjective - than these (as I think) overwrought tragic passages, are four myths about the origins of various animals, as the lion:

First of all to the Lion let us dedicate the glorious lay. The Curetes were the nurses of the infant Zeus, the mighty son of Cronus, what time Rhea concealed his birth and carried away the newly-born child from Cronus, his sire implacable, and placed him in the vales of Crete. And when the son of Uranus beheld the lusty young child he transformed the first glorious guardians of Zeus and in vengeance made the Curetes wild beasts. And since by the devising of the god Cronus they exchanged their human shape and put upon them the form of Lions, thenceforth by the boon of Zeus they greatly lord it over the wild beasts which dwell upon the hills, and under the yoke they draw the terrible swift car of Rhea who lightens the pangs of birth. (from book 3)

And the mole:

Neither of a truth will minstrels sing the earth-born tribes of the Moles, eaters of grass and blind, albeit a rumour not to be believed has spread among men that the Moles boast themselves sprung from the blood of a king, even of Phineus, whom a famous Thracian hill nurtured. Against Phineus once on a time was the Titan Phaethon angered, wroth for the victory of prophet Phoebus, and robbed him of his sight and sent the shameless tribes of the Harpies, a winged race to dwell with him to his sorrow. But when the two glorious sons of Boreas, even Zetes and Calais, voyaged on the ship Argo in quest of the golden prize, assisting Jason, then did they take compassion on the old man and slew that tribe and gave his poor lips sweet food. But not even so did Phaethon lull his wrath to rest, but speedily turned him into the race of Moles which were before not; wherefore even now the race remains blind and gluttonous of food. (from book 2)

Leopards, whose origin story could be an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses, far longer than the usual allusions:

Very swift it is in running and valiant in a straight charge. Seeing it thou wouldst say that it sped through the air. Notwithstanding minstrels celebrate this race of beasts as having been aforetime the nurses of Bacchus, giver of the grape; wherefore even now they greatly exult in wine and receive in their mouths the great gift of Dionysus. What matter it was that changed glorious women from the race of mortals into this wild race of Leopards I shall hereafter sing. (from book 3)

Leopards are overcome also by the gifts of Dionysus, when crafty hunters pour for them the crafty draught, shunning not the anger of holy Dionysus. Leopards are now a race of wild beasts, but aforetime they were not fierce wild beasts but bright-eyed women, wine-drinking, carriers of the vine branch, celebrators of the triennial festival, flower-crowned, nurses of frenzied Bacchus who rouses the dance. For Ino, scion of Agenor, reared the infant Bacchus and first gave her breast to the son of Zeus, and Autonoe likewise and Agave joined in nursing him, but not in the baleful halls of Athamas, but on the mountain which at that time men called by the name of the Thigh (Mêros). For greatly fearing the mighty spouse of Zeus [=Hera] and dreading the tyrant Pentheus, son of Echion, they laid the holy child in a coffer of pine and covered it with fawn-skins and wreathed it with clusters of the vine, in a grotto where round the child they danced the mystic dance and beat drums and clashed cymbals in their hands, to veil the cries of the infant. It was around that hidden ark that they first showed forth their mysteries, and with them the Aonian women secretly took paint rites. 

And they arrayed a gathering of their faithful companions to journey from that mountain out of the Boeotian land. For now, now was it fated that a land, which before was wild, should cultivate the vine at the instance of Dionysus who delivers from sorrow. Then the holy choir took up secret coffer and wreathed it and set it on the back of an ass. And they came unto the shores of the Euripus, where they found a seafaring old man with his sons, and all together they besought the fishermen that they might cross the water in their boats. Then the old man had compassion on them and received on board the holy women. And lo! on the benches of his boat flowered the lush bindweed and blooming vine and ivy wreathed the stern. Now would the fishermen, cowering in god-sent terror, have dived into the sea, but ere that the boat came to land. 

And to Euboea the women came, carrying the god, and to the abode of Aristaeus, who dwelt in a cave on the top of a mountain at Caryae and who instructed the life of country-dwelling men in countless things; he was the first to establish a flock of sheep; he first pressed the fruit of the oily wild olive, first curdled milk with rennet, and brought the gentle bees from the oak and shut them up in hives. He at that time received the infant Dionysus from coffer of Ino and reared him in his cave and nursed him with the help of the Dryads and the Nymphs that have the bees in their keeping and the maidens of Euboea and the Aonian women. And, when Dionysus was now come to boyhood, he played with the other children; he would cut a fennel stalk and smite the hard rocks, and from their wounds they poured for the god sweet liquor. Otherwhiles he rent rams, skins and all, and clove them piecemeal and cast the dead bodies on the ground; and again with his hands he neatly put the limbs together, and immediately they were alive and browsed on the green pasture. And now he was attended by holy companies, and over all the earth were spread the gifts of Dionysus, son of Thyone, and everywhere he went about showing his excellence to men. 

Late and at last he set foot in Thebes, and all the daughters of Cadmus am to meet the son of fire. But rash Pentheus bound the hands of Dionysus that should not be bound and threatened with his own murderous hands to rend the god. He had not regard unto the white hair of Tyrian Cadmus nor to Agave grovelling at his feet, but called to his ill-fated companions to hale away the god — to hale him away and shut him up — and he drave away the choir of women. Now the guards of Pentheus thought to carry away Bromius in bonds of iron, and so thought the other Cadmeans; but the bonds touched not the god. And the heart of the women worshippers was chilled, and they cast on the ground all the garlands for and the holy emblems of their hands, and the cheeks of all the worshippers of Bromius flowed with tears. 

And straightway they cried: "Io! blessed one, O Dionysus, kindle thou the flaming lightning of thy faith and shake the earth and give us speedy vengeance on the evil tyrant. And, O son of fire, make Pentheus a bull upon the hills, make Pentheus of evil name a bull and make us ravenous wild beasts, armed with deadly claws, that, O Dionysus, we may rend him in our mouths." So spake they praying and the lord of Nysa speedily hearkened to their prayer. Pentheus he made a bull of deadly eye and arched his neck and made the horns spring from his forehead. But to the women he gave the grey eyes of a wild beast and armed their jaws and on their backs put a spotted hide like that of fawns and made them a savage race. And, by the devising of the god having changed their fair flesh, in the form of Leopards they rent Pentheus among the rocks. Such things let us sing, such things let us believe in our hearts! But as for the deeds of the women in the glens of Cithaeron, or the tales told of those wicked mothers, alien to Dionysus, these are the impious falsehoods of minstrels.

In this fashion does some hunter with his comrades devise a snare for the Leopards which love neat wine. They choose a spring in the thirsty land of Libya, a spring which, though small, gives forth in a very waterless place abundant dark water, mysterious and unexpected; nor does it flow onward with murmuring stream, but bubbles marvellously and remains stationary and sinks in the sands. Thereof the race of fierce Leopards come at dawn to drink. And straightway at nightfall the hunters set forth and carry with them twenty jars of sweet wine, which someone whose business is keeping of a vineyard had pressed eleven years before, and they mix the sweet liquor with the water and leave the purple spring and bivouac not far away, making shift to cover are valiant bodies with goat skins or merely with the nets, since they can find no shelter either of rock or leafy tree; for all the land stretches sandy and treeless. The Leopards, smitten by flaming sun, feel the call both of thirst and of the odour which they love, and they approach the Bromian spring and with widely gaping mouth lap up the wine. First they all leap about one another like dancers; then their limbs become heavy, and they gently nod their heads downwards to the goodly earth; then deep slumber overcomes them all and casts them here and there upon the ground. As when at a banquet youths of an age, still boys, with the down upon their cheeks, sing sweetly and challenge each other after dinner with cup for cup; and it is late ere they give over, and the strength of the wine is heavy on head and eye and throws them over one upon the other; even so those wild beasts are heaped on one another and become, without mighty toil, the prey of the hunters. (from book 4)

The final myth is about Oppian's native Syria:

The Syrian Bulls, the breed of the Chersonese, pasture about high well-builded Pella; tawny, strong, great-hearted, broad of brow, dwellers of the field, powerful, valiant of horn, wild of spirit, loud-bellowing, fierce, jealous, abundant of beard, yet they are not weighed down with fat and flesh of body, nor again are they lean and weak; so tempered are the gifts they have from heaven — at once swift to run and strong to fight. These are they which report said Heracles, the mighty son of Zeus, when fulfilling his labours, drove of old from Erytheia, what time he fought with Geryoneus beside the Ocean and slew him amid the crags; since he was doomed to fulfil yet another labour, not for Hera nor at the behest of Eurystheus, but for his comrade Archippus, lord of holy Pella. 

For aforetime all the [Syrian] plain by the foot of Emblonus was flooded; since evermore in great volume rushed [the river] Orontes in his eagerness, forgetting the sea and burning with desire of the dark-eyed nymph, the daughter of Ocean. He lingered amid the heights and he covered the fertile earth, unwilling to forgo his hopeless love of Meliboea. With mountains on either side was he encircled round, mountains that on either hand leaned their heads together. From the East came the lofty form of Diocleium, and from the West the left horn of Emblonus, and in the midst himself raging in the plains, ever waxing and drawing nigh the walls, flooding with his waters that mainland at once and island, mine own city. 

Therefore was the son of Zeus destined straightway with club and mighty hands to apportion their water unto each, and to give separate course from the plain for the waters of the fair-tressed lake and the fair-flowing river. And he wrought his mighty labour, when he cut the girdle of the encircling hills and undid their stony bonds, and sent the river belching to its mouth, surging incontinent and wildly murmuring, and guided it toward the shores. And loudly roared the deep sea, and the mighty body of the Syrian shore echoed to the din. Not with such violent flood descend those contrary-travelling rivers on either side the echoing sea: here Ister, cleaving the white barriers of the North through Scythia, roars loudly everywhere, trailing amid precipices and water-smitten heights; while on the other hand the sounding sea trembles at the holy stream of Egypt when from Libya it breaks about it. So the mighty river Orontes made a noise of dread bellowing about the shores; and mightily roared the headlands when they received within their bosom the swell of the new-come sea; and the black and fertile earth took heart again, arisen from the waves, a new plain of Heracles. 

And to this day the fields flourish everywhere with corn and everywhere the works of oxen are heavy on the prosperous threshing-floors around the Memnonian shrine, where the Assyrian dwellers mourn for Memnon, the glorious son of the Morning, whom, when he came to help the sons of Priam, the doughty husband of Deidameia swiftly slew. Howbeit the spacious glories of our fatherland we shall sing in due order with sweet Pimplean song; now I turn back to sing of glorious hunting. (from book 2)

Like his earlier work, this promised poem is also lost. One wonders what native god is identified with the mythical Memnon here?

Neither mythical or religious, but still interesting, is the following bit of natural history:

The hide of both [hyenas and wolves] the minstrels celebrate as terrible. If thou wert to cut off a piece of hide of the Hyena and wear it on thy feet, thou wouldst wear a great terror of mighty Dogs, and Dogs bark not at thee wearing those shoes, even if they barked before. 

And if thou shouldst flay a Wolf and from his hide make a sounding tabor, like the tabor of Dindymus which destroys increase, it alone of all sounds its deep note and it alone makes a din, while all the tabors that had a goodly sound before are silent and hush their noise. Sheep even when dead shudder at a dead Wolf. (from book 3)

The following is an allusion to a famous fragment of Hesiod:

The Stag, moreover, lives a long time, and of a truth men say that he lives four lives of a crow. (from book 2)

The original, in Evelyn-White's translation, runs like this:

A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag's life is four times a crow's, and a raven's life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.

I have little to say about Oppian of Apamea by way of conclusion - there are no obvious running themes in what I've collected here, no important argument that I feel should be made from them, and no really startling idea or piece of lore. Nevertheless, I think that this is good literature and that it repays careful reading.

(The translation I have used is that of A. W. Mair, as found at LacusCurtius.)