Part 12

And here at the head of rude pedestrian sportsmen we find the human inventor of the science of the chase, that legendary personage, the Gorgon-killing Perseus—“Gorgonis anguicomæ Perseus superator”—(for I would not deprive Latona’s hunting-twins, Apollo and Diana, nor the worshipful race of Centaurs, φῦλα θηρομιγῆ, of their priority of claim, and patent of precedency, in the apotheosis of the chase,) who, when he had performed this redoubted act of courage, as we are told by the poet of Anazarbus:

ποδῶν κραιπνοῖσιν ἀειρόμενος πτερύγεσσι καὶ πτῶκας, καὶ θῶας ἐλάζυτο, καὶ γένος αἰγῶν ἀγροτέρων, δόρκους τε θοοὺς, ὀρύγων τε γένεθλα, ἠδ’ αὐτῶν ἐλάφων στικτῶν αἰπεινὰ κάρηνα.

As men in general, however, did not possess the speed of Perseus and Achilles, “To sweep with winged feet along the level plain;” nor the power of catching at force, νόσφι κυνοδρομίης, the fleetest animals of chase, like the goddess Dian; it became necessary to add to their naked powers sundry inartificial implements, auxiliary to the subjugation of some, the destruction and expulsion of other beasts.

Et manuum mirâ freti virtute pedumque Consectabantur sylvestria sæcla ferarum Missilibus saxis, et magno pondere clavæ: Multaque vincebant, vitabant pauca latebris.

New and unpolish’d was the huntsman’s art; No stated rule, his wanton will his guide. With clubs and stones, rude implements of war, He arm’d his savage bands, a multitude Untrain’d; of twining osiers form’d, they pitch Their artless toils, then range the desert hills, And scow’r the plains below: the trembling herd Start at th’ unusual sound, and clam’rous shout Unheard before; surpriz’d, alas! to find Man now their foe, whom erst they deem’d their lord, But mild and gentle, and by whom as yet Secure they graz’d.

Acquiring knowledge by experience, man advanced in the mechanism and variety of his hunting gear, as in other articles of increasing civilization.

Post aliâ propiore viâ, meliùsque profecti, Te sociam, ratio, rebus sumpsêre gerendis. Hinc omne auxilium vitæ, rectusque reluxit Ordo: et continuas didicêre ex artibus artes Proserere; hinc demens cecidit violentia retro.

Finding, on patient trial, the χάος εὐρὺ περιστεφὲς of Oppian, with its rude accompaniment of fire, &c. insufficient for capturing the more wary creatures—

Nam foveâ atque igni prius est venarier ortum Quàm sepire plagis saltum, canibusque ciere;

he had recourse to the various kinds of weapons, snares, and wily inventions of slaughter described by Xenophon, Gratius, Oppian, and Nemesian; and often alluded to by other writers, both sacred and profane:

Tum laqueis captare feras, et fallere visco Inventum.

But “short of due perfection” were all the hunter’s wiles, till the dog was tutored to assist in the sylvan pursuit and massacre, and to contribute the acuteness of his senses, his speed and courage, to the service of mankind; who consummated their superiority over the animals of the forest, when they had directed to their chase the adapted powers of this faithful ally, and begun, in the words of the cited poet of the Georgics—“magnos canibus circumdare saltus,”—redeeming thereby their esculent crops and innocuous herds from the ferocious and depredatory aggression of quadruped felons.

Κουφονέων τε φῦλον ὀρ- νίθων ἀμφιβαλὼν ἄγει, θηρίων τ’ ἀγρίων ἔθνη πόντου τ’ εἰναλίαν φύσιν σπείραισι δικτυοκλώστοις περιφραδὴς ἀνήρ· κρατεῖ δὲ μηχαναῖς ἀγραύλου θηρὸς ὀρεσσιβάτα.

The “venandi mille viæ” of the Carthaginian poet have been superseded in the British islands by the superior attraction of the gun:

machinæ, Mirandæ, horrificæ, minacis, atræ, Qualem nec Steropes, nec ipse fertur Pater Lemnius inferis cavernis Informâsse Jovi, nec ulla in orbe Per tot secula cogitavit ætas;

and of various eminent breeds of fleet and sagacious dogs, adapted to the chase at force. But as these methods were heretofore employed by our less civilized ancestry, are still in vogue in unreclaimed countries, and many of them yet practised on the continent of Europe—whatever be their “incongruity to our present factions,” as Wase expresses himself—a brief description of the “supellex venandi” will not be unacceptable to the modern reader, by way of introduction to the subject of classic hunting with the ancient varieties of the canine race.

With seeming accuracy Gratius has described the whole of the antique poaching gear; but it must be confessed that neither Xenophon’s, nor the Faliscian’s, nor the hunting technicalities of the other Cynegetical writers, can be fully explained to modern comprehension.

The deities and demi-deities of sylvan life are objects of invocation in the exordium of Gratius:

His ego præsidibus nostram defendere sortem Contra mille feras, et non sine carmine, nisus Carmine, et arma dabo venandi, et persequar artem Armorum, cassesque, plagarumque ordiar astus.

and then, under their tutelary aid, the poet begins to handle the “arma venandi;” which, as recorded in the Cynegetica generally, consisted of the linea or formido, nets of various mesh and size and shape, nooses, springes, and other traps—missile weapons, as darts, arrows, &c.; and those for standing-defence, as the halberd-like boar-spear, &c.: many of these, however, were not of very remote antiquity.

The feathered line or pinnatum was called, from its effect, metus, formido, and δείματα θηρῶν, (Oppian. Cyneg. +iv.+ 389.) “Cum maximos ferarum greges,” says Seneca, “linea pennis distincta contineat, et in insidias agat; ab ipso effectu dicta formido.”

Sunt quibus immundo decerptæ vulture plumæ Instrumentum operis fuit, et non parva facultas. Tantum inter nivei jungantur vellera cygni: Et satis armorum est. Hæc clarâ luce coruscaut, Terribiles species: ab vulture dirus avaro Turbat odor silvas, meliusque alterna valet res.

The line of feathers of various hue, impregnated with artificial odour, “was drawn about the woods (——ὀλίγον γαίης ἐφύπερθεν, Oppian. Cyneg. +iv.+ 386.) in the intermitted spaces where the toyles were pitched, that so the deer (than which no creature is more timorous) might balk them, and be cast upon the net.” The linea thus flanked the δίκτυ or long net, where not extensive enough to enclose the covert; and filled the intervals, between the purse-nets and nooses, when the latter were set independent of the retia.

Hic magis in cervos valuit metus. Ast ubi lentæ Interdum Libyco fucantur sandice pinnæ, Lineaque extructis lucent anconibus arma: Rarum si qua metus eludat bellua falsos.

The Cilician poet has left a graphic description of the formido, as employed in the Armenian bear-hunt—a picture so vividly sketched, Cyneg. +iv.+ 380, that I regret its length prevents transcription. A part of it will be found hereafter under the Eastern “Canis Inductor”—the Armenian limehound. The fourth Halieutic, in an apposite and beautiful simile, describes the startling effect of the feathered line on timid animals of chase:

ὧδε καὶ ἐν ξυλόχοισιν ὀρέστεροι ἀγρευτῆρες εἷλον ἀναλκείην ἐλάφων εὐαγρέϊ τέχνῃ, μηρίνθῳ στέψαντες ἅπαν δρίος· ἀμφὶ δὲ κούφων ὀρνίθων δήσαντο θοὰ πτερά· ταὶ δ’ ἐσορῶσαι ἠλέματα πτώσσουσι κενὸν φόβον, οὐδὲ πελάσσαι μαψιδίαις πτερύγεσσιν ἀτυζόμεναι μεμάασιν εἰσόκε θηρητῆρες ἐπαΐξαντες ἕλωσι.

Many notices of this instrument will occur to the classical reader in the works of the Latin poets, but in none more copiously delineated than in the Cynegeticon of Nemesian; who enumerates the many sources whence the feathers of dissimilar tint are to be culled for decorating the “plumed line:”

Dat tibi pinnarum terrentia millia vultur; Dat Libye magnarum avium fœcunda creatrix, Dantque grues, cygnique senes, et candidus anser; Dant quæ fluminibus crassisque paludibus errant, Pellitosque pedes stagnanti gurgite tingunt: Hinc magè Puniceas nativo munere sumes: Namque illic sine fine greges florentibus alis Invenies avium, suavique rubescere luto, Et sparsos passim tergo vernare colores.