[401] Shakespeare, _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act II. Sc. 5. Weigall, _The Life and Times of Cleopatra_, pp. 245-6, makes the _locus_ the _harbour of Alexandria_, not the Nile, and the _modus_, _Antony’s_ diver affixing fresh fish to his hook. Cleopatra, guessing Antony’s ruse, assembled next day a party of notables to applaud the angler, but instructed a slave to dive from the other side of the vessel and the instant the hook touched the water attach to it a pickled Pontic fish. Cleopatram “ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?” [402] A century or so before Oppian, Demostratus, a Roman Senator, wrote also Ἁλιευτικά—a work on Fishing of twenty books—which, although often quoted by ancient writers, is now not extant. From the extracts given by Ælian (XIII. 21, XV. 4 and 19) we gather that Demostratus, who wrote in Greek, had even more than a Greek love of the marvellous and cared nothing for the sober scientific study of his subject. It is noteworthy that an alternative title of his work was λόγοι ἁλιευτικοί, or, say, Fishing Yarns. [403] Suetonius, _Augustus_, c. 83, classes fishing as one of Octavian’s chief relaxations. [404] W. Christ, _Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur_, ed. 3 (München, 1898), p. 629, decides for Marcus Aurelius. [405] 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. [406] Cf. Prof. E. Browne, _Literary History of Persia_, vol. II., pp. 128-138, and Sir Gore Ouseley’s _Biographies of Persian Poets_, for the various Firdausi versions.