Arrian on Coursing

Part 1

=Arrian on Coursing.=

THE CYNEGETICUS. OF THE YOUNGER XENOPHON, TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK, WITH CLASSICAL AND PRACTICAL ANNOTATIONS, AND A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE AUTHOR.

TO WHICH IS ADDED AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CANES VENATICI OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY.

BY A GRADUATE OF MEDICINE.

=With Embellishments from the Antique.=

LONDON: J. BOHN, 17, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

MDCCCXXXI.

=Two Hundred and Fifty Copies of this Work are Printed.=

EX ÆDIBUS VALPIANIS.

=TO Literary Amateurs of the Leash=,

The following Work

is respectfully dedicated by THE AUTHOR.

“Dat mihi præterea, tanquam se parva dedisset Dona, canem munus, quem cum sua traderet illi Cynthia, currendo superabit dixerat omnes Dat simul et jaculum, manibus quod (cernis) habemus.”

Ovid Metam. L VII ]

PREFACE.

Nec desinat unquam Tecum Graia loqui tecum Romana vetustas.—+Claudian.+

The following version does not aim at pleasing the mere literary man. It was not undertaken with the ambitious expectation of being generally acceptable. It is addressed to the coursing public alone—to the amateurs of the leash; for whom the original was written, seventeen centuries ago, by their representative of old, a courser of Nicomedia in Asia Minor; and for whose amusement and instruction the same now assumes an English garb.

The general reader will find little in it to interest him. He will perhaps consider it altogether unworthy of his notice. The sportsman, fond of

the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction,

will read it with indifference, as treating of a branch of rural sport, not congenial to his taste; and wonder that an attempt should be made to bring under public notice so ancient a treatise on a subject of such partial interest. But the courser, it is humbly conceived, the active patron of the κύνες Κελτικαὶ proud of his greyhounds, that

are as swift As breathed stags, aye fleeter than the roe,

will peruse it con amore, and find in its pages much that is entertaining and practically useful, and that utility enhanced in the department of annotation.

The literary courser, whose attention it more particularly solicits, will reap the additional benefit of the light which is thrown on Arrian’s text by the ancient authors of Greece and Rome; and be ready to yield to the translator the humble merit of having collected in one point of view the classical elucidations of the Cynegeticus, and the pertinent observations of writers of a later period.

Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli!

The original manual is conversant with coursing, as practised in the age of Hadrian and the Antonini, at which period the Celtic hound was well known, and highly prized: but the annotations of the translator have a more extensive range, being selected from various Cynegetica in print and manuscript, from the first institution of coursing to the present time.

The imperfect poem of Gratius, the Faliscian, on hunting, and the often-cited simile of his contemporary Ovid, afford the earliest notice of the canis Gallicus—for he was unknown to ancient Greece. The description of a single-handed course by the poet of the Metamorphoses, as it is the first attempt of the kind by any classic author, so is it unrivalled in the accuracy of its technical phraseology, and the beauty of its poetry. Intermediate in point of time between the vivid Ovidian sketch, and the full and perfect picture of Arrian, are the faint outlines of the epigrammatist Martial: and subsequent to the Bithynian’s, the somewhat doubtful portrait of the philologist Julius Pollux, presented to the Emperor Commodus; and yet later, that of Oppian, the Greek poet of Anazarbus, of the reigns of Severus and Caracalla.—In these authors alone do we find any allusion to the courser’s hound, till towards the close of the third century, when he again appears in the Cynegeticon of Nemesian; who has cleverly struck out in a few lines the elegant symmetry of his shape, and added thereto some peculiar remarks on the selection, feeding, and entrance of puppies. With the scanty portraiture of the Carthaginian poet we are brought down to the reigns of Carus, his sons, “Divi fortissima pignora Cari,” and Diocletian: at which epoch, memorable alike in the annals of the world and its literature, the classical history of the leash may be said to terminate, and therewith all notice of the Celtic hound.

We have no ancient records of the chase to succeed the Greek and Latin Cynegetica; for though it be true that the barbarian codes of law, the Salic, Burgundian, and German, extended their protection to our variety of Canis Venaticus, about the year 500, under the title of Veltris and its synonyms; and some of the Cynegetical writers appear to have been well known in the dark ages, and so highly valued in the eighth century, as to be read among the higher Greek and Roman classics, in the time of Charlemagne; and we believe coursing and other sports were as attractive in the field, as the writers upon such subjects were in the schools, (for the court of this prince had its Veltrarii, officers of the greyhound-kennel, “qui veltres custodiebant,”) still, instead of any formal treatise of this date upon the pastime of the leash, we find for several centuries, only incidental allusions to the greyhound, and his high repute, principally as distinctive of the gentility of his possessor, until the publication of “The Booke of Hawkyng, Huntyng, &c.” by Dame Juliana Berners, in the fifteenth century.

The didactic discourse of hunting, contained in this volume, commonly known by its territorial appellation of “The Book of St. Albans,” may be an amplified versification of the prosaic “Venery of Mayster John Gyfford and Will^m Twety, that were with Kyng Edward the Secunde;” or possibly a compilation and translation by the sister of Lord Berners, or the “one sumtyme schole mayster of Seynt Albons” from earlier Latin and French writers: but such authorities are as yet, I believe, unknown to Antiquaries. Excepting, therefore, the few lines, before alluded to, in the latest of the Latin Cynegetica, and the earlier portrait of Oppian, which I consider referable to the hound in question, it may be said that we do not possess in print any full description of “the propritees of a good Grehounde” ἐκ τῶν ποδῶν ἐς τὴν κεφαλὴν, from the time of the learned Courser of Nicomedia, till that of the sporting prioress of Sopewell.

Part 2

Not that I am ignorant of the curious early treatise of Gaston Phœbus, the celebrated Comte de Foix, written in the middle of the fourteenth century, entitled “Des Deduitz de la Chasse de Bestes Sauvaiges et des Oyseaux de Proye;” nor of a more rare work in manuscript, =The Mayster of Game=, composed by Edmund Duke of York, “Edmund Langley, Edward the Third’s fifth son,” in the latter part of the fourteenth century; and therefore, in point of date, claiming a priority to the book of St. Albans, as do, of course, the lucubrations of the Second Edward’s attendants before mentioned. But these enchiridia of field sports preceded the Sopewell collection only a few years; and in the Count de Foix’s manual, as given by Fouilloux under the title of “La Chasse du Roy Phebus,” there is nothing on our subject worth noticing.

In =The Crafte of Hontyng= by Gyfford and Twety, the greyhound is mentioned only once; and hare-coursing is not recorded at all.

The unpublished labours of the Duke of York, “Edmonde, hyght of Langley,” contain much original and valuable information: and it is to be regretted that it is not rendered more available to coursers by being committed to the press. With copious general descriptions of our ancient field-sports, and animals obnoxious to the chase, =The Mayster of Game= unites specific delineations of the shape of each variety of canis venaticus, employed by British sportsmen of past days, with occasional references to the chace practices of foreign countries “by yonde the see.” The chapter of =greyhoundes and of here nature=, as cited hereafter in illustration of Arrian, will be read with pleasure. Indeed the Duke’s portrait of the Celtic hound is even more minutely accurate and precise than its Grecian prototype, and =her manners= as they are quaintly termed, and briefly sketched in the royal Cynegeticus, establish many of the remarks of the younger Xenophon περὶ τῆς γνώμης τῶν κυνῶν.

Still Dame Julyan’s compilation being, at least, the first of the kind that issued from the English press, and the type of our modern works of Venery, may be viewed as the earliest attempt, since the revival of letters, to certify by intelligible canons, the corporeal characteristics of a good greyhound. With the traditionary dogmata of Sir Tristrem de Liones, who was the reputed “begynner of all the termes of huntynge and hawkynge,” it incorporates the accumulated knowledge of many centuries. And the Dame being no ordinary personage—“Illustris fœmina, corporis et animi dotibus abundans, ac formæ elegantiâ spectabilis—heroica mulier, ingeniosa virago”—“a second Minerva in her studies, and another Diana in her diversions”—her contemporaries would doubtless receive a cynegetical treatise from her cloister at Sopewell, with gratitude and admiration.

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