Slender expense for so vast a guerdon! This huge payment for a little poem exceeded the glory of Caesar's recompense; for it was enough for the divine Julius to pension with a township the writer and glorifier of those conquests which he had achieved over the whole world.

But now the spendthrift kindness of the populace squandered a kingdom on a churl.
Nay, not even Africanus, when he rewarded the records of his deed, rose to the munificence of the Danes.

For there the wage of that laborious volume was in mere gold, while here a few callow verses won a sceptre for a peasant.
At the same time Erik, who held the governorship of Sweden, died of disease; and his son Halfdan, who governed in his father's stead, alarmed by the many attacks of twelve brothers of Norwegian birth, and powerless to punish their violence, fled, hoping for reinforcements, to ask aid of Fridleif, then sojourning in Russia.

Approaching him with a suppliant face, he lamented that he was himself shattered and bruised by a foreign foe, and brought a dismal plaint of his wrongs.

From him Fridleif heard the tidings of his father's death, and granting the aid he sought, went to Norway in armed array.