Morski świat Oppiana, czyli o kontekstach interpretacyjnych poematu Halieutiká
The Maritime World of Oppian, or On the Interpretation Contexts of “Halieutiká”

Summary/Abstract: The poem by Oppian (end of the second century A.D.) – a continuation of the tradition of the great didactic epic describing the inhabitants of the underwater world as well as the people skilled in capturing them – Is an example of an erudite dialogue with the literary past, omnipresent in post-Classical Greek culture. In her concise depiction of the interpretation contexts of On Fishing K. Bartol concentrated on presenting the author of the poem as a man of letters conducting an emulative game with the aesthetic paradigms devised by his predecessors. In doing so, she tried to prove that this is a game subjected to a supreme ideological objective, i.e. a recollection of ancient (epic) world outlook concepts, and indicated their universality. A glorification of the ethos of rivalry, consolidated by Homeric epic poems and in this case transferred into a new context, together with legible allusions to the ancient discussion about the relation between Nature and culture, aims at recognising the superiority of the latter. The article concentrates on demonstrating the finesse of Oppian’s game played with the past, a sophisticated process of embarking upon assorted themes, subtle allusions, verbal virtuosity, and the art of constructing subtexts. K. Bartol drew attention to the pragmatic transformation of these features, which in their original context are perceived as an expression of an artistic homage paid to the Greek past and the retention of the vitality of Greek ideals, which in the world of Roman domination become the determinants of an author’s mastery; freed from a genetic connection with the cult of ancient Hellas they are the reason for Oppian’s popularity (as well as that of similar authors) among successive readers all the way to contemporary times. The anthropomorphising perception of non-human worlds proposed by Oppian could prove to be close to our conceptualisation of seeing the world regardless of the cultural hinc et nunc.

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