Part 13

If the reader be interested in the minutiæ of Grecian and Roman net-making, and the methods of fixing the ἄρκυες, δίκτυα, and ἐνόδια, the casses, retia, and plagæ, he is referred for the former to the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and that most extraordinary work of human research, the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux—for the latter, to the Venatio Novantiqua of Janus Vlitius, a scholar of deep erudition, and an experienced sportsman:—a summary view being all that can be rendered by the present writer, professedly epitomising the labours of more experienced workmen.

The ἄρκυες or casses were conical, purse or tunnel-like nets, ending in a point at one end, and having a running noose of entrance at the other, resembling somewhat a hooped calash, or cowl.

The δίκτυα or retia were long sean-like nets for open fields, and for encircling brakes and coverts;——“longoque meantia retia tractu.”

The ἐνόδια or plagæ were nets of much less length, to be placed across roads, game-tracks, paths, and narrow openings between bushes.

The ἄρκυες appear to have been sometimes placed independent of the δίκτυα, but more commonly in the course of the main nets; so that when the animals passed along the linear and reticular barrier, exploring a place of egress, terrified by the formido, (which flanked the hayes, and occasionally was drawn along above the net-rope to scare the game from overleaping,) and the meshes of the δίκτυα, (continuous except where the purse-nets were introduced with their slip-knot entrance), on attempting to pass out at the apparent opening of the ἄρκυς, they became by their struggles entangled therein—the purse either spontaneously, or by the agency of the men placed there to draw the necessary ropes, immediately closing at the mouth.

ἐπεὶ κελάδοντος ἀήτεω ταινίαι τ’ ἐφύπερθε διηέριαι κραδάουσι, κινύμεναι πτέρυγές τε λιγήϊα συρίζουσιν. οὕνεκα παπταίνουσα κατ’ ἄρκυας ἀντίον ἕρπει· ἐν δ’ ἔπεσεν λινέοισι λόχοις.

The whole management of the nets and lines was vested in the watch αἰζηῶν πυλαωρῶν referred to, who were concealed under copse-wood, for the purpose, more particularly, of attending to the ἐπίδρομος and περίδρομος, the ropes (smooth and knotless) which governed the ἄρκυες, and passed through iron rings, along the course of the δίκτυα, up to the watchmen’s hiding-place:

ἐν δὲ δύω κλῖναν δοιαῖς ἑκάτερθε κεραιαῖς ἀνέρας ἀκρολίνους ὑπὸ μειλινέοισι πάγοισιν.

The length of the δίκτυα or retia, properly so called, would astonish a modern disciple of Diana. So great was the extent of ground sometimes enclosed by these toils, that Plutarch mentions, in his life of Alexander, hunting-nets above twelve miles long. With such it was customary to encircle vast tracts of country, and then, by gradually contracting their ambit, to force the animals of the district into a narrower compass;—when at the will of the magister venationis, the work of slaughter commenced. This mode of hunting is very clearly described, with its usual auxiliaries of noise and flame, in a simile of the Achilleid:

sic curva feras indago latentes Claudit, et admotis paulatim cassibus arctat. Illæ ignem sonitumque pavent, diffusaque linquunt Avia, miranturque suum decrescere montem, Donec in angustam ceciderunt undique vallem, Inque vicem stupuêre greges, socioque timore Mansuescunt. Simul hirtus aper, simul ursa, lupusque Cogitur, et captos contemnit cerva leones.

The Faliscian poet, in the early part of his Cynegeticon, specifies the best materials for the composition of nets, with particular instructions for their size and shape:

Prima jubent tenui nascentem jungere filo Limbum, et quadruplici tormento adstringere limbos. Illa operum patiens, illa usûs linea longi. Tunc ipsum medio cassem qui nascitur ore, Per senos circum usque sinus laqueabis, ut omnem Concipiat tergo, si quisquam est plurimus, hostem. Et bis vicenos, spatium prætendere passus Rete velim, plenisque decem consurgere nodis.

On the same subject the Carthaginian summarily touches, distinctly recognizing the three varieties of which we have been just speaking:

Necnon et casses iidem venatibus aptos, Atque plagas, longoque meantia retia tractu Addiscant raris semper contexere nodis, Et servare modum maculis linoque tenaci.

And an earlier poet, in his praise of the brumal pleasures of the countryman’s life, sunders plagæ and retia, applying them to such totally different purposes, that it is probable they sometimes differed as much in the structure of the mesh, its size, &c. as in the magnitude of the whole instrument:

At cum tonantis annus hybernus Jovis Imbres nivesque comparat: Aut trudit acres hinc et hinc multâ cane Apros in obstantes plagas; Aut amite levi rara tendit retia Turdis edacibus dolos, Pavidumve leporem, et advenam laqueo gruem, Jucunda captat præmia.

Whatever honour be attached to these reticular inventions, and that of the running-noose, the βρόχος or laqueus, is due to Hippolytus:

ἄρκυας αὖτε βρόχους τε, καὶ ἀγκύλα δίκτυα πρῶτος Ἱππόλυτος μερόπεσσιν ἐπακτήρεσσιν ἔφηνε.

The βρόχος generally formed a rhomb-shaped entrance to the ἄρκυς, as probably did the laqueus to the cassis:—but as the tunnel was occasionally used separate from the sean-like toil (δίκτυ—rete) and from the road-net (ἐνόδιον—plagæ), so may these slip-knot nooses have been also set independent of the purses, their usual additaments, in narrow passes, or straits frequented by game:

Namque hos aut foveis, aut cæci in limine callis Occultant, &c.

The noose-ropes, being of much ruder manufacture, and more simple structure, than any variety of net with meshes, must have been of earlier institution.

Nam fuit et laqueis aliquis curracibus usus. Cervino jussêre magis contexere nervo; Fraus teget insidias, habitu mentita ferino.

These laquei curraces, seemingly from this passage made of other materials than hemp before the days of Gratius, are yet in use, under the form of springes and wires, with deer and hare-poachers; who, I find in Oppian, are indebted to the giant-hunter Orion—“integræ—tentator Orion Dianæ”—for the first establishment of their nocturnal depredations:

νυκτερίους δὲ λόχους, νυχίην πανεπίκλοπον ἄγρην Ὠρίων πρώτιστος ἐμήσατο κερδαλεόφρων.

We are next introduced by Gratius to dentatæ pedicæ, spiked foot-traps or gins, resembling the ποδοστράβαι of Xenophon and Pollux; and formed, as the following lines indicate, of wood, concealed on the ground;

Quid qui dentatas iligno robore clausit Venator pedicas? cum dissimulantibus armis Sæpè habet imprudens alieni lucra laboris?

It being no small recommendation to them that one poacher might reap the fruits of another’s labours. Their invention is attributed to a virtuous and holy Arcadian, ycleped Dercylus, in high favour with the Sylvan goddess, and by her initiated in the mysteries of hunting, and the formation of sundry destructive implements of predation, which he first employed in the valleys of Mount Mænalus, and the Lacedæmonian Amyclæ:

O felix, tantis quem primum industria rebus Prodidit auctorem! Deus ille, an proxuma Divos Mens fuit, in cæcas aciem quæ magna tenebras Egit, et ignarum perfudit lumine vulgus?