Note 405 — Chapter XI

As there are 3506 hexameters, the reward was over 3506 guineas sterling, which, without allowing for the increase in value of money between the second century and the twentieth, contrasts remarkably with the fourpence halfpenny a volume of Martial. According to Suidas, however, Oppian received from the Emperor 20,000 staters, which would be a far larger reward than Octavia bestowed on Virgil for his Æneid. It has been suggested that this largesse was not paid on all the verses of the Halieutica, but only on those in which Oppian records the prowess and sport of the Emperor in “The Virginia Water” of the Cæsars—where we learn from Eutropius (VII. 14) that Nero fished with golden nets drawn by purple ropes. If so the total would be a mere fraction of either the 3506 guineas or of the 16,000 guineas. Great doubt exists as to whether or not there were two poets named Oppian; and if there were, to which does the anonymous Greek Life of Oppian refer, and which of the two was the author of Ixeutica, for possibly it was to the author of this poem that the Imperial payment of gold was made. See W. H. Drummond’s paper in Royal Irish Academy, 1818. Also A. Ausfeld, De Oppiano et scriptis sub eius nomine traditis, Gotha, 1876.