Part 38

For the connexion of the Chase with Military Tactics, see Xenophon de Venatione c. +xii.+, the latter part of c. +xiii.+ cyropædia l. +i.+ c. +v.+ διὰ τοῦτο δημοσίᾳ τοῦ θηρᾷν ἐπιμέλονται· ὅτι ἀληθεστάτη δοκεῖ αὕτη ἡ μελέτη τῶν πρὸς τὸν πόλεμον εἶναι. L. +viii.+ c. +xii.+ De Republicâ Lacedæmon. c. +iv.+

See Xenophon de Venat. c. +ii.+ whence the Greek poet of the chase has derived the manners, dress, and weapons of his hunter: Oppian. Cyneget. +i.+ 81. The curious reader will be amused with the illustration of Xenophon’s second chapter; of Gratius’s Cynegeticon, v. 332. and Oppian loc. cit. (all treating on the subject of the hunter’s character, &c.) in Edmund de Langley’s =Mayster of Game=: wherein (c. +xix.+ p. 70.) he tutors the hunter from the age of seven or eight (“for oo craft requireth al a mannys lif or he be parfite therof, &c.”) in all the arcana of kennel management; and particularly enjoins that he be “wel avised of his speche, and of his termys, and ever glad to lerne, and that he be no booster ne jangelere,” &c.; and so Xenophon, ἐπιθυμοῦντα τοῦ ἔργου καὶ τὴν φωνὴν Ἕλληνα, τὴν δὲ ἡλικίαν κ. τ. λ.

Three varieties of nets were employed by Grecian sportsmen, ἀρκύες, δικτύα, and ἐνοδία, corresponding to the Roman casses, retia, and plagæ. See Xenophon de V. c. +ii.+ The first were conical, tunnel-shaped, purse-nets; κεκρυφάλῳ δὲ ἐοίκασι κατὰ τὸ σχῆμα, εἰς ὀξὺ καταλήγουσαι: the second, nets or hayes for open places, for encircling coverts, &c. τὰ ἐν τοῖς ὁμαλοῖς, καὶ ἰσοπέδοις ἱστάμενα: the third, road-nets, for being placed across roads, and tracks frequented by animals of chase, τὰ ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς of Julius Pollux.

Xenophon treats of entrapping deer, &c. de Venat. c. +ix.+; of hares, &c. c. +v.+ and +vi.+; of dogs, &c. c. +iii.+ +iv.+ and +vii.+; of stag-hunting, &c. c. +ix.+; of the boar-chase, c. +x.+; of the bear and lion chases, &c. c. +xi.+; and many of the same subjects are beautifully described in the Cynegetics of the poet of Anazarbus, and delineated in Montfaucon, Tom. +iii.+, and in the rare plates of Joannes Stradanus and P. Galle, under the title of “Venationes Ferarum.”

Τοῦ γένους τῶν κυνῶν τοῦ Κελτικοῦ—the greyhounds of modern days. Coursing having been first practised by the inhabitants of Gallia Celtica, the greyhound was called κυὼν Κελτικὸς, canis Gallicus, (quibus Galli maximè utuntur, and not Grei-hound, q. Grecian hound, quòd primùm fuerit in usu inter Græcos). A splendid representation of this most elegant of the canine race is engraven by Pere Montfaucon, Tom. +iii.+ pl. 56. f. 5. from the Arch of Constantine, from whose work it has been again copied on stone to illustrate this treatise. For an account of the Scythian and African horses, see notes on chap. +xxiii.+ and +xxiv.+

See Biographical Notice of Arrian in the prefatory matter.

Xenophon de Re Equestri, c. +i.+ gives his reason for uniting his own opinions to those of Simon, and filling up the omissions of his predecessor’s work: “because his friends would esteem his own opinions more deserving of confidence from agreeing with those of so able an equestrian;” and moreover he undertakes to supply from his own resources, whatever the dedicator of the brazen horse of the Eleusinium at Athens had omitted to notice.

The two reasons in proof of the elder Xenophon’s ignorance of the Celtic breed of swift-footed hounds are quite satisfactory: the one derived from the limited geographical knowledge of the Greeks, the other from the comparative speed of the hare and hound, as described in his manual; which statement is just the converse of what it would have been, had he been acquainted with the genuine greyhound.

Ἄγνωστα γὰρ ἦν τὰ ἔθνη τῆς Εὐρώπης. The Greeks, in the elder Xenophon’s days, appear to have known very little of the western countries of Europe, and scarce any thing even of Italy itself. It is true that there were, at that time, many Grecian colonies westward, and through them a knowledge of the productions of the more north-western interior might have reached the mother-country. But there was no particular inducement for the Greek merchants to penetrate far inland: and the Celts had not as yet crossed the Alps, nor even arrived at any part of the coast of the Mediterranean—any well-known country. The very distance at which the father of history places the Celts, viz. as “the most remote people in Europe, after the Cynetes,” is an indication of this fact. It is the opinion of Niebuhr that the navigators of Greece rarely visited the unexplored coasts of the occidental seas. Indeed, the interior of Gaul was unknown even to the Romans before the time of Julius Cæsar. Although they were masters of Romana Provincia, a tract on the sea-coast contiguous to Italy, they knew nothing of the multitudinous tribes spread over the country between the Rhine and the Ocean; which latter were not thoroughly known, nor their manners and natural productions ascertained, till the visit of Augustus Cæsar; when probably the Romans first became acquainted with the native hound of the interior.

It is impossible to speak with any degree of certainty of the origin and distribution of the ancient Celtæ, or ătæ, or Galli, as they were variously called by the Greeks and Romans. Whether derived from Ashkenez, the grandson of Noah; or from Celtus, Gallus, and Illyricus, sons of Polyphemus; or from Celtes, a king of Gaul,—matters not. Leaving these knotty points of genealogy to others, let it suffice that the Celts, at an early period, occupied a large portion of Western Europe. Herodotus mentions them in Melpomene s. 49. οἳ ἔσχατοι πρὸς ἡλίου δυσμέων μετὰ Κύνητας οἰκέουσι τῶν ἐν τῇ Εὐρώπῃ: and our author states that Celtic legates came to Alexander from the shores of the Ionian sea, παρὰ Κελτῶν τῶν ἐπὶ τῷ Ἰονίῳ κόλπῳ ᾠκισμένων ἧκον. Extensive as the name must have been at that time, it was subsequently confined to fewer tribes; and, in the days of Julius Cæsar, was appropriated to the inhabitants of Gallia Celtica, a territory between the Loire and Seine, which at a later period borrowed a new denomination from the celebrated colony of Lugdunum, or Lyons. “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres: quarum unam incolunt Belgæ; aliam Aquitani; tertiam, qui ipsorum linguâ Celtæ, nostrâ Galli appellantur.” But I think it probable that Arrian did not intend to use the term Celtic in its limited sense, as having reference exclusively to the district of Gaul so denominated by Cæsar, but as comprehending also the more southern parts of the country. So also Silius Italicus, L. +iii.+

Pyrene celsâ nimbosi verticis arce Divisos Celtis altè prospectat Iberos.

And Oppian, in the conclusion of his third Halieutic:

Ῥοδανοῖο παρὰ στόμα θηρητῆρες Κελτοὶ—

Indeed Strabo, L. +i.+, Plutarch, in Cæsare, in Crasso; Appian, Bell. Civil. 2., and others, call the Gauls in general by the name of Celtæ; and the ancient Greek geographers knew of only two nations in Europe besides themselves, the Celtæ and the Scythæ, the former in the West, the latter in the North.

The specific name of Graius, or Græcus, by which Linnæus, Ray, and others, have designated the greyhound, is unfortunate, as it has led to the erroneous opinion that he was known to ancient Greece; whereas it is satisfactorily proved by the younger Xenophon, that his Athenian namesake was not only not acquainted with the Celtic breed of dogs, but that no dogs of similar qualities were known to his predecessor, when he wrote his celebrated treatise on Hunting. Skinner doubts the truth of Minshew’s assertion, already cited, of the Greeks having first employed the greyhound in the chase; “quod facilè crediderim,” says the former etymologist, “si authorem laudâsset.” I know of no authority for such an assertion, and discredit the fact. Indeed, the belief of the existence of the courser’s hound in ancient Greece may be traced to the misconceptions of the gentlemen “è Societate Jesu,” and others, who have favoured us with their expositions of antiquity; and who have understood every keen-nosed, latrant Spartan to be a genuine greyhound. Scholars, ignorant of natural history, and naturalists ignorant of classical learning, have alike given currency to the opinion, in opposition to the contrary statement of the text. Against which the assumption of Savary of Caen,

Græcia perniciem leporum Lacedæmona pridem Emisit, &c.

and the quaint tale of Holinshed can have no weight. For with all due regard to the laborious Raphael, and his coadjutors in historical research, I think it far more consistent with probability that his “peerlesse hounde” was a Celtic greyhound, (to whom “pleasantnesse of mouth” is incorrectly granted by historic licence,) the associate of a Celtic Scot, proximately from Ireland, remotely from Celtic Gaul, than as “fetched so far as out of Græcia from a citie called Molosse, whence the breed of him first came.”

Contrary to what you would suppose would be the result of a contest of speed between them, on comparing the respective shapes of the two animals. The hare being made for speed, and not so the dog, the former, if caught by the latter, is caught παρὰ φύσιν σώματος: thence the inference of Arrian that Xenophon was unacquainted with greyhounds, who are made for speed, is a fair deduction. The words of the latter are: κατὰ πόδας δὲ οὐ πολλάκις ὑπὸ τῶν κυνῶν διὰ τὸ τάχος κρατεῖται· ὅσοι δὲ ἁλίσκονται, παρὰ φύσιν τοῦ σώματος, τύχῃ δὲ χρώμενοι· οὐδὲν γὰρ τῶν ὄντων ἰσομέγεθες τούτῳ ὅμοιόν ἐστι πρὸς δρόμον· σύγκειται γὰρ ἐκ τοιούτων, κ. τ. λ.

See Xenophon de Venat. c. +vi.+

Εἰ παραδράμοι τὰς ἄρκυς—if she pass by the tunnel or purse-nets without entering their mouths. The ἄρκυες or casses were placed, here and there, in the line of the main hayes, δίκτυα or retia; and as the hare passed along exploring a place of escape, terrified by the formido above, and the meshes below, (continuous except where the purse-nets with the running noose, βρόχος or laqueus, were introduced,) she attempted to pass at the supposed opening, and became by her struggles entangled in the purse, which immediately closed at its slip-knot entrance. Arrian, perhaps, uses the term ἄρκυς generically for every variety of net, and not specifically for the tunnel. See the Venationes Ferarum of Johannes Stradensis and Philippus Galle, tab. +xviii.+ “Sic leporem in laqueos agitant,” &c.

In the 21st chapter Arrian remarks that greyhounds answer every purpose, and supersede the use of nets altogether: he there writes τὰς ἀγαθὰς as synonymous to τὰς ὠκείας; and the latter epithet being more distinctive of the hounds intended to be designated, I have so translated the former epithet in the present instance. Any dog may be good of his kind, but a greyhound alone fleet.

Diana having been particularly worshipped in Crete, on the authority of Ovid’s

Pallada Cecropiæ, Minoïa Creta Dianam Vulcanum tellus Hypsipilæa colit,

we expect to find the inhabitants addicted to hunting; and such was their character according to Ælian: Κύων Κρῆσσα κούφη, καὶ ἁλτικὴ, καὶ ὀρειβασίαις σύντροφος· καὶ μέντοι καὶ αὐτοὶ Κρῆτες τοιούτους αὑτοὺς παραδεικνῦσιν, καὶ ἄδει ἡ φήμη. But it is worthy of notice that although Arrian attributes to Xenophon a description of the hunting practices alone of the Cretans and Carians, there is no mention, in the Cynegeticus of the latter, of these ardent sportsmen or their hounds, save that in his chapter on boar-hunting he orders Indians, Cretans, Locrians, and Spartans to be taken to the field, as a fit pack to contend with such ferocious game, μὴ τὰς ἐπιτυχούσας (picked dogs) ἵνα ἕτοιμοι ὦσι πολεμεῖν τῷ θηρίῳ.

Arrian’s meaning therefore must be that Xenophon’s description, such as it is, (in hare-hunting confined to the Castorian and Foxite hounds,) is applicable to the Carian and Cretan sporting alone, and can have no reference whatever to the peculiar practices of the Celtic coursers. However, I do not believe the difference between the Spartan and Cretan or Carian hounds to have been very marked, and Xenophon, possibly, may have included the two latter with the former in his general classification of καστόριαι and ἀλωπεκίδες.

Τὸ Καρικὸν καὶ Κρητικόν. The Cretan and Carian hounds were amongst the most celebrated of antiquity—powerful, quick-scented, and nimble. For a full account of them see the Appendix.

The Celtic beagle, or Segusian hound, is well known to modern sportsmen, answering exactly to the description here given of him. See the Appendix.

Αὐταὶ ἰχνεύουσαι σὺν κλαγγῇ καὶ ὑλαγμῷ. So Oppian,