ABSTRACT
There is a story that Severus was insulted by a philosopher named Agesilaus, who had failed to join a group that assembled to greet him when he arrived at Anazarbus in Cilicia (southern Turkey). Severus responded by exiling the philosopher to the island of Meleda in the Adriatic, where he lived in the company of his son, Oppian, a young man of poetical bent who had elected to join him. Oppian wrote poems on hunting and fishing and some time after the death of Severus ventured to Rome to recite them before Caracalla.1 He gained a hearing, and an admirer. Caracalla asked him what he would like as a reward, and Oppian responded that his only desire was to return to Anazarbus with his father. He obtained his request, and an additional fortune; Caracalla is said to have given him one aureus for every verse of his poem.
