But Oppian’s poems were held in the very highest favour, not only by our stingy stepmother, Posterity, but by his contemporaries. The Emperor (whether he were Antoninus—of all the Emperors[403] perhaps the keenest fisherman—Caracalla, or Severus is not clear, as Oppian’s exact date is still unsettled[404]), on hearing the author recite his verses revoked the decree of banishment on Oppian’s father (to Malta), and paid the poet a golden _stater_, or more than a guinea a verse.[405] With this very liberal payment by piece or verse-work may be contrasted the treatment meted out to the great Persian poet Firdausi by the Emperor Mahmud. The most romantic of the versions of the story makes the latter promise a _miskal_ (or something less than ¼ oz.) for every couplet of the former’s epic, _Shah Nameh_. On the poem’s arrival at Court, joy reigned till discovery that it contained some 60,000 couplets. Aghast at the amount, Mahmud or his Chancellor of Exchequer took advantage of some ambiguity in the terms and, despite the protests of Firdausi that the largesse was promised in _gold_, made payment in _silver_. It chanced that the treasure arrived while the author was in the public baths at Tús; furious at the fraud, he gave 20,000 to the bathkeeper, 20,000 to the refreshment seller, and 20,000 to the camel driver who had brought the bags of bullion. Many years after, the Emperor, either repenting him of his broken word or moved by reports of the great poverty in which the poet had long lived, dispatched the sum in _gold_, or, as some say, indigo. Alas! as the convoy entered Tús by the Rudbar gate, by that of the Razan was Firdausi being borne to his grave.[406] At the death of Oppian in his thirtieth year, the citizens of his native place in Cilicia erected a statue to his memory. It bore the most laudatory of inscriptions, of which the last two lines have been Englished—“All” (_i.e._ preceding poets) “All the inspired him their chief allowed And all to him their humbler laurels bowed,” —to which halting and involved translation we at least neither bow laurels nor doff hats. The _Halieutica_ is divided into five books. The first two treat of the natural history of fishes, the other three of the art of fishing. Despite this proportion of space, fish rather than fishermen are the heroes of the scenes. The work displays considerable knowledge of zoology, coupled with absurd fables, which are adduced as grave matters of fact. In the fulness with which he enumerates the various kinds of fish, and methods of fishing, the technique, the weapons, the materials appropriate to each, Oppian stands pre-eminent among our authors. Nor need we wonder at this fullness of treatment. He was wedded heart and soul to all pertaining to fish, or fishing, which he calls the “lovely art.”