Table of Contents

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.

Promotional Information

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

About the Author

Emily Kneebone is an Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek Literature in the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Nottingham. She works primarily on Greek literature of the Roman imperial period and has published on heroic ethics in posthomeric Greek epic, diaspora Jewish identity in Josephus' adaptation of the Hebrew Bible for a Greco-Roman audience, mortal expertise in didactic poetry, and animals in later Greek poetry and prose.

Reviews

'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