Part 20

And the fame of his tribe, as spread over these countries at large, is celebrated by the chaste poet of Barga in his 5th Cynegeticon, with the same song, decies repetita, of leonine and elephantine quarry:

Quid! tibi si, quarum concursu exhorruit Argo, Cœruleis sparsas adeam Symplegadas undis, Cappadocumque oras, et inhospita Colchidos arva, Atque iter ad duros contendam pergere Iberos: Caspiaque Albanis quondam regnata tyrannis Littora? et extremi prætervehar ostia Sarni: O quales, quantosque canes, quàm fortia bello Pectora, quàm certâ prolem virtute valentem Inde legam? sola illa uros, sola illa leones Invadit, sola aggreditur dignata elephantos.

Opportunity offers, in introducing the dog of Arcadia to the reader’s notice, of speaking of the semiferous race of lupine dogs, the demi-wolves of the ancient Cynegetica. The cross of the wolf and dog is of considerable antiquity; indeed the belief of its existence may be traced very generally through the popular works of the classic ages. Under the Spartan dog, in the second class, I shall again allude to hybrid dogs, and refer to Mr. Hunter’s paper on the subject in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London. At present, it may be stated that the cross of the wolf and domestic dog is an established one, and that the breed, so obtained, has been carried forward for many generations. Aristotle, I believe, first remarked the sexual intercourse of these congeners in Cyrene; and, from the fact as stated by him, Cardan (“a great inquirer after truth, but too greedy a receiver of it,” according to Sir Thomas Brown,) inferred the gradual degeneration of wolves into the canine type. “Ut lupos et canes,” says Brodæus in Oppianum, “mutuò coire fatear, Diodori, Ovidii, (‘Deque lupo concepta Nape,’) ac complurium facit auctoritas.” As the mule is born from the horse and ass, remarks Galen, so a mixed breed may be generated from the wolf and dog. The race of old reported to have been sprung from the latter connexion was that of Arcadia, the Lycaonian; thence called, peradventure, Lycas by Simonides, and Lycisca by Virgil and Ovid—“Mista lupo canis est signatâ voce Lycisca.” That the Lycas of the canine epitaph was of lupine origin, we may conjecture from the name; but the Cean poet specifying other localities as the scenes of his hound’s exploits in life, and Pollux calling her Λυκάδα τὴν Θεττάλην, some other kennel may put forward a claim, instead of that of Arcadia, for the honour of the breed; or the name may be merely an appellative distinction, unconnected with lineage;—still the monumental elegy is deserving of citation:

ἠ σεῦ καὶ φθιμένας, λεῦκ’ ὀστέα τῶδ’ ἐνι τύμβῳ ἴσκω ἔτι τρομέειν θῆρας, ἄγρωσσα Λυκάς. τὰν δ’ ἀρετὰν οἶδεν μέγα Πήλιον, ἅτ’ ἀρίδηλος Ὄσσα Κιθαιρῶνος οἰονόμοι σκοπιαί.

Gratius contrasts the docility of Lycaonian dogs, the Τεγεῆται of Oppian, with the intractability of the Indian,

At contrà faciles magnique Lycaones armis.

The breed of the northern part of Peloponnesus, having been of great note, and the son of Pelasgus (“notus feritate Lycaon”) having been converted into a wolf—the first subject, it may be, of lycanthropy—the dogs indifferently called Arcadian and Lycaonian, were probably, says C. Wase, “heirs of his own body naturally begotten.” Many Arcadian hounds are found in the Ovidian pack, among the mistaken pursuers of the unfortunate son of Aristæus—

(ὃν ὠμοσίτοι σκύλακες, ἃς ἐθρέψατο, διεσπάσαντο κρείσσον’ ἐν κυνηγίαις,)

possessed of great speed and resolution:

Inde ruunt alii rapidâ velociùs aurâ, Pamphagus, et Dorceus, et Oribasus, Arcades omnes, Nebrophonosque valens, et trux cum Lælape Theron, Et pedibus Pterelas, et naribus utilis Agre, Hylæusque fero nuper percussus ab apro, Deque lupo concepta Nape, pecudesque secuta Pœmenis, et natis comitata Harpyia duobus, Et substricta gerens Sicyonius ilia Ladon; Et Dromas, et Canace, Sticteque, et Tigris, et Alce, Et niveis Leucon, et villis Asbolus atris, Prævalidusque Lacon, et cursu fortis Aëllo, Et Thous, et Cyprio velox cum fratre Lycisca.

The poet elsewhere bestows on the hound of Arcadia the local epithet of Mænalian, from Mount Mænalus—

Mænalius lepori det sua terga canis.

Is it not probable that some of the hounds of chase, bestowed by the Arcadian God on the Goddess of hunting, were culled by his goatish majesty from the kennels of the country of Lycaon, where Pan himself gratified his sporting ardour?—the brace of pie-balled—the leash of long-eared—and the spotted hound?

τὶν δ’ ὁ γενειήτης δύο μὲν κύνας ἥμισυ πηγοὺς, τρεῖς δὲ πόρ’ οὐατίους, ἕνα δ’ αἰόλον· οἵ ῥα λέοντας αὐτοὺς αὖ ἐρύοντες, ὅτε δράξαιντο δεράων, εἷλκον ἔτι ζώοντας ἐπ’ αὐλίον.

The other seven which Pan contributed to Dian’s pack, being θάσσονες αὐράων, and destined for more timid quarry, are placed under the Spartan family, of which they were the fleetest members.

Whether all the dogs “of Arcas kinde,” as sings Sir Arthur Golding in his “worke very pleasant and delectable,” were demi-wolves, and “gaunt as any grewnd,” I cannot take on myself to decide; but it is a fair inference, from the evidence adduced, that lupi-canine crosses predominated, in all their ferocity, in the kennels of Arcadia—not indeed to the exclusion of canine indigenæ of pure blood, but enough to give a ferine character to the general type.

The Hyrcanian, savage as he was, is reported to have increased his natural ferocity by engendering with the tiger:

Sed non Hyrcanæ satis est vehementia genti Tanta; suis petiêre ultrò fera semina sylvis. Dat Venus accessus, et blando fœdere jungit. Tunc et mansuetis tutò ferus errat adulter In stabulis, ultròque gravis succedere tigrim Ausa canis, majore tulit de sanguine fœtum.

And to the subsequent generations of this cross Bargæus gives speed in pursuit, and courage in attack:

Sic itaque immanes duxêre è tigride mores Hyrcani, quibus exuti post deinde nepotes Sive ursos, sive illi apros vidêre minaces, Accurrunt celeres, et aperto marte lacessunt.

The breed of Hyrcania, having escaped the notice of Aristotle and his copyist Pliny, is of course omitted by Solinus, (whose work entitled Polyhistor, however “mervaylous delectable” in the opinion of Sir Thomas Elyot, is a mere breviary of the twice-told tales of the too credulous Roman naturalist,) but the same fabulous union with the tiger is recorded by them as the parent stock of the Indian dog. May not the Indian and Hyrcanian, though separated by Athenæus and Pollux, have been deemed identical by the Stagirite?—To the tiger-cross of Irak, the compound epithet λεοντομιγεῖς is applied by the learned grammarian just cited, as if the “fera semina” of the first connexion were leonine. The ferocity of the breed, contrasted with the timidity of the stag, affords an argument to Lucretius against the Pythagorean doctrine of a promiscuous transmigration of souls:

Quod si immortalis foret, et mutare soleret Corpora, permistis animantes moribus essent: Effugeret canis Hyrcano de semine sæpè Cornigeri incursum cervi, &c.

By the archbishop of Thessalonica the Canes Hyrcani are mentioned amongst the ἐπίσημα κυνῶν γένη of his commentary on Homer (ad Iliad. ρʹ.) but they are not found in either of the poems; nor, indeed, do I remember in the Iliad or Odyssey any dogs distinctively marked by their geographical appellations.

The plaintive wailing of the old nurse, Carmé, over her daughter, the nymph Britomartis,

ἐλλοφόνον Βριτόμαρτιν, ἐΰσκοπον· ἧς ποτὲ Μίνως πτοιηθεὶς ὑπ’ ἔρωτι κατέδραμεν οὔρεα Κρήτης,

in one of Virgil’s minor poems, amended by Heyne, refers very pathetically to the companionship of the Hyrcanian dog in the mountainous chase—

to climb the highest promontory top—

though associates from a Cretan kennel would have been more in place—