Part 22

muto legit arva Molosso Venator, videat donec sub frondibus hostem.

On the trail of his game I believe him to have been a mute limier or limehound, (whence Savary’s term echemythus,) and never to have opened until the quarry had started from its lair—being even at that time less noisy in his bark than the purely sagacious breeds. His silence or closeness is clearly indicated by Gratius, where he orders the yelping Etolian dam to be crossed with a Molossian sire,

vanæ tantum Calydonia linguæ Exibit vitium patre emendata Molosso.

Will not the praises of Lydia, of Martial’s well-known epitaph, place her among the savage inmates of a Molossian kennel?

Amphitheatrales inter nutrita magistros Venatrix sylvis aspera, blanda domi: Lydia dicebar domino fidissima dextra, Qui non Erigones mallet habere canem, Nec qui Dictæâ Cephalum de gente secutus Luciferæ pariter venit ad astra Deæ. Non me longa dies, nec inutilis abstulit ætas, Qualia Dulichio fata fuêre cani: Fulmineo spumantis apri sum dente perempta, Quantus erat Calydon, aut, Erymanthe, tuus. Nec queror infernas quamvis citò rapta sub umbras, Non potui fato nobiliore mori.

—her education and her quarry will, at least, assign her to the muster-roll of our first class.

But of the Canis Molossus Venaticus, enough;—matchless as he was for stoutness, before Britain was discovered and its race of Canes bellicosi brought into competition with those of Epirus, he at last was compelled to yield the palm of ferocious hardihood to the British bull-dog, and to succumb to his superior prowess:

At magnum cum venit opus, promendaque virtus, Et vocat extremo præceps discrimine Mavors, Non tunc egregios tantum admirere Molossos.

The second variety of the Epirote noticed by Aristotle, though out of the pale of this epitome, is worth recording from its classical associations, and because it possesses in an eminent degree the canine qualities lauded by Lucian, τὸ φυλακτικὸν, τὸ οἰκουρικὸν, καὶ τὸ φιλοδέσποτον—the “tam fida custodia, tamque amans dominorum adulatio, tantumque odium in externos” of Cicero. To this I give the name of Canis Molossus Villaticus, and include under the title the οἰκουρὸς, οἰκοφύλαξ, πυλαωρὸς, τραπεζεὺς, ostiarius, pastoralis, pecuarius, &c.; names derived from the different uses to which the dog was applied. Let the Villæ Custos of Columella be our type:—“amplissimi corporis, vasti latratûs canorique, ut prius auditu maleficum, deinde etiam aspectu terreat, et tamen nonnunquam, ne visus quidem, horribili fremitu suo fuget insidiantem, &c.”—Here we place the sharp-toothed watch-dog of Hesiod’s agricultural injunctions;

(καὶ κύνα καρχαρόδοντα κομεῖν· μὴ φείδεο σίτου· μή ποτέ σ’ ἡμερόκοιτος ἀνὴρ ἀπὸ χρήματ’ ἕληται,)

—here, the “canes rabidos et immanes, et quibusvis lupis et ursis sæviores, quos ad tutelæ præsidia curiosè coloni fuerant alumnati,” of Apuleius;—here, the pastoral dogs of Varro (Geopon. L. +xix.+ c. +i.+) Fronto (Geopon. L. +xix.+ c. +ii.+) and Varro (De Re R. L. +ii.+ c. +ix.+);—and here too those, in general, of the poet of Syracuse, the canine guards of flocks and herds, so prettily alluded to, in the instance of Lampurus, by the goat-herd boy of the eighth Idyllium,

φείδευ τᾶν ἐρίφων, φείδευ, λύκε, τῶν τοκάδων μευ, μηδ’ ἀδίκει μ’, ὅτι μικκὸς ἐὼν πολλαῖσιν ὁμαρτέω. ὦ Λάμπουρε κύων, οὕτω βαθὺς ὕπνος ἔχει τύ; οὐ χρὴ κοιμᾶσθαι βαθέως σὺν παιδὶ νέμοντα...

and the milk-fattened ban-dog of Claudian,

sic pastor obesum Lacte canem ferroque ligat, pascitque revinctum, Dum validus servare gregem, vigilique rapaces Latratu terrere lupos, &c.

The notices in Homer of these dogs are numerous; (see Iliad. κʹ. 183. μ′. 302. ρʹ. 109.) and their watchfulness, as nightly centinels, is sung in classic hexameters by the poet of Venusium:

Uberior tamen est illis, et fortior inde Laudis causa venit, molli quod tempora somno Pauca terunt, seu flammigero det lumina curru Phœbus, seu niveas agitat Latonia bigas, Somnifero obliquum volvens jubar axe per orbem. Sed vigili domino curâ, raroque cadente Lumine prospiciunt, et herilia murmure circum Claustra fremunt, ne sint nocturno pervia furi, Neve lupo, tutâque greges statione quiescant.

Pitiscus tells us, on the authority of Eustathius, that it was customary with the ancients to have porter-dogs—“moris erat atriensibus fores servari à canibus,”—such were the πυλαώροι and τραπεζῆες of Homer, the attendants at the door of Telemachus, κύνες πόδας ἀργοὶ, (Odyss. υʹ. 144.)—the house-dogs of Patroclus, nine in number—of whom two were slain, and offered on his funeral pile, (Iliad. ψʹ. 173.) and the κύνες ὠμησταὶ of Priam—whose anticipated reckless laceration of his dead body—πολίον τε κάρη, πολιόν τε γένειον—by the πυλαώροι, is pleaded by the aged king to deter his ill-fated son from contending with Achilles. (Iliad. χʹ. 69.)—Such too were the gemini custodes of Evander, which followed their rustic king to the dormitory of his Trojan guest. (Æneid. L. +viii.+ 461.)

As an attribute of the porter-dogs, speed was utterly unnecessary, though given to those of Telemachus, above cited: and that they generally possessed it not is implied, I think, in the question of Ulysses to Eumæus, as to the character of the “unhoused, neglected” Argus;

οὐ σάφα οἶδα εἰ δὴ καὶ ταχὺς ἔσκε θέειν ἐπὶ εἴδεϊ τῷδε, ἢ αὕτως οἷοί τε τραπεζῆες κύνες ἀνδρῶν γίγνοντ’, ἀγλαΐης δ’ ἕνεκεν κομέουσιν ἄνακτες.

Ulysses Aldrovandus, Spelman, and Ducange, have left us the many titles of the watch-dogs of the classic and middle ages, in their respective works. See Aldrovand. de Quad. Digit. Vivip. L. +ii.+ Canis Epitheta; and the Glossaria of Spelman and Ducange. The title οἰκοφύλαξ, derived from the office of the animal,

ὅτι σοῦ προμάχεται καὶ φυλάττει τὴν θύραν,

occurs in a pretty epigram of the Locrian poetess on the picture of a Grecian lady; but is there probably applied to a domestic pet,

σαίνοι κέν σ’ ἐσιδοῖσα καὶ οἱκοφύλαξ σκυλάκαινα δέσποιναν μελάθρων οἰομένα ποθορῆν.

To the “hylax in limine” of Virgil (Ecl. +viii.+)—the “vigilum canum tristes excubiæ” of Horace (L. +iii.+ Od. 16.)—I need not refer; nor indeed to the Catenarius of Seneca (de Irâ, L. +iii.+), nor the δέσμιος of Artemidorus (Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. +xi.+) To say that all these passages afford instances of Molossian Canes custodes, would be going too far. They merely exemplify the use to which trusty, vigilant individuals of the pugnacious canine race were applied, and the functions they performed, in the rural and domestic economy of Greek and Roman households. Horace, however, particularly specifies Epirotes in the capacity of house-dogs—“domus alta Molossis Personuit canibus”—as if they were the usual custodes of patrician houses. For much of the point of his pretty fable rests on the sumptuousness of the town-house, wherein dwelt the city-mouse, joint-tenant with a biped lord, “in locuplete domo,” the appointed place of rendezvous for the rustic friend.

To the same tribe, for want of a more appropriate one, (unless the reader would place them on a Libyan or Egyptian file,) I assign the “exquisitior custodia” of Massinissa, the canine guardians in whose protection he deemed himself more safe than in that of his fellow-men;

Hos Maurusiacus sibi Massinissa paravit Custodes, hominum fidei diffisus, et isto Non sibi conducto sua sceptra satellite cinxit.

“Parum fidei in pectoribus hominum reponens,” says Valerius Maximus, “salutem suam custodiâ canum vallavit.”

But we are going beyond our prescribed bounds, and must return to our text-book, the Cynegeticon of the Faliscian; who next introduces to notice the Canes bellicosi of the British isles, a parent stock of native growth. We have no information of any source from whence these could have been imported into Britain, and, as Strabo states that they were exported from thence into Gaul, it is inferred that they were indigenæ. Whether the Canis bellicosus Anglicus of Aldrovandus, or the Canis Mastivus, omnium maximus, animosus et pugnax of Ray, be alluded to in the following lines of Gratius, is doubtful. Possibly the poet may include both breeds, as the animal combats of the Roman amphitheatre were supplied by the Procurator Cynegii with the finest specimens of our war-dogs, without reference to minute distinctions;