Part 64

Fervidus tecum puer, et solutis Gratiæ zonis, properentque Nymphæ, Et parùm comis sine te Juventas, Mercuriusque.

Τοὺς ἐπὶ θήρᾳ ἐσπουδακότας οὐ χρὴ ἀμελεῖν τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος τῆς Ἀγροτέρας. Xenophon was equally strict in his religious observances towards the rural deities, bidding the sportsman, before he slip a single hound, to vow a participation of the game to Apollo and Diana Agrotera. See Pitisci Lexicon Antiquit. Roman. and Apul. Met. +vi.+ p. 175. The falconer of Demetrius, in later days, offered his morning adoration to the God of heaven before sun-rise, and then flew his hawk at the quarry: τὸν θεὸν ἐπικαλεσάμενος τῇ θήρᾳ εὐμενῶς συλλήψοιτο, κ. τ. λ.

Following his Classic prototypes, Adrian de Castello makes the cardinal hunter supplicate the Sylvan goddess:

Volans Ascanius levi veredo Precatus Triviæ perenne numen, Invadit jaculo, diuque librans Jecit eminùs, &c.

as a necessary preliminary to the slaughter of a stag, bayed by the hounds.

Ἀπόλλωνος. Apollo shared with Diana the institution of hunting: Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ Ἀρτεμίδος ἄγραι καὶ κύνες. Whence, with his twin-sister, he is seen on antique relievos with dogs and other emblems of the chase. In his character of Venator, Apollo is described by Maximus Tyrius as a youth armed with a bow, his naked side appearing beneath a chlamys, and his feet raised in the act of running:

Qualis ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta Deserit, ac Delum maternam invisit Apollo, Instauratque choros, mixtique altaria circum Cretesque Dryopesque fremunt pictique Agathyrsi; Ipse jugis Cynthi graditur, mollique fluentem Fronde premit crinem fingens, atque implicat auro; Tela sonant humeris.

The reader is of course familiar with the Apollo of the Belvedere—the Venator of Statuaries—“Venator Apollo:” but perhaps not so well acquainted with the Wilton effigy of him, exhibiting in a small compass all the symbols which characterise his presidency over poetry, music, divination, or more probably medicine, and the chase—(προσποιεῖται μὲν πάντα εἰδέναι, καὶ τοξεύειν, καὶ κιθαρίζειν, καὶ ἰατρὸς εἶναι, καὶ μαντεύεσθαι)—in three of which attributes he is cited by our author in the present Chapter. The attitude of the god is easy and graceful; he appears to lean against one of the horns of his lyre, placed on a tripod, around which a serpent twines. Over his right shoulder is seen his quiver, and his head is decorated with a laurel crown—“castâ redimitus tempora lauro:” the chlamys of the Venator is thrown off, exposing the belt beneath, and the former with its gem is placed on some fit receptacle beside the right leg.

Πανός. “Officium Panis nullâ alia re,” says Lord Bacon, “tam ad vivum proponi atque explicari potuerit, quàm quòd Deus Venatorum est,” &c. He was the god of the shepherds as well as hunters, the leader of the Nymphs as Apollo was of the Muses, the patron of rural life, and president of the mountains. Happy the man, exclaims the poet of the Georgics in his eulogy of country life, who numbers the rustic deities, and Pan amongst the rest, in the catalogue of his acquaintance:

deos qui novit agrestes, Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!

The most graphic description of the goatish god I have any where seen is in the 13th book of Silius Italicus:

pendenti similis Pan semper, et uno Vix ulla inscribens terræ vestigia cornu, &c. &c.

But as this has been cited at length by Spence in his Polymetis, a book of easy reference, I decline introducing it here—wishing, as much as possible, to present my readers with passages omitted by this celebrated scholar. Let Lucian’s more brief delineation be substituted: ὁ μὲν κέρατα ἔχων, καὶ ὅσον ἐξ ἡμισείας ἐς τὸ κάτω αἰγὶ ἐοικὼς, καὶ γένειον βαθὺ καθειμένος, ὀλίγον τράγου διαφέρων ἐστίν.

Νυμφῶν. Beger’s list of these ladies does not much exceed one hundred in number, although it is said that Diana had above a thousand in her retinue. We may suppose those principally interested in Cynegetical pursuits to have been the Oreades, nymphs of the mountains; the νύμφαι Ὀρεστιάδες of Homer (Iliad. +vi.+ 421.) the Ὀρείπλαγκτοι of Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusæ); the Napææ, nymphs of the meadows, (of whom Virgil, “faciles venerare Napæas,”) and the Dryades and Hamadryades, nymphs of the woods, the φιλορνίθων Δρυάδων χορὸς of Oppian (Cyneg. +i.+ vs. 78.) see claudian. de laudib. stilic. l. +iii.+ for a description of the “acies formosa Dianæ,” and the Epicedium of Hercules Stroza; in which latter the names of many of these inferior Sylvan deities, “turbæ nemoralis,” are registered in chaste hexameters, addressed to the Duchess of Ferrara. Sometimes the Naiads also accompanied the land-nymphs in their hunting pranks:

pulchro venantes agmine Nymphas, Undarum, nemorumque decus, &c.

Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves.

Ἑρμοῦ Ἐνοδίου καὶ Ἡγεμονίου. “Deum maximè Mercurium colunt,” says Cæsar of the Gauls or Celts: “hujus sunt plurima simulacra; hunc omnium inventorem artium ferunt; hunc viarum atque itinerum ducem; hunc ad quæstus pecuniæ mercaturasque habere vim maximam arbitrantur.” Being the god of every species of gain, and the dog being sacred to him, we have additional reasons for the injunction of the text. He was called Ἐνόδιος or “vialis” according to Pitiscus, “qui viarum præses, in biviis, et compitis ponebatur ad semitas monstrandas:” in which capacity his statues are, what are commonly called Terminal,—that seemingly imperfect, ugly, awkward-looking shape, to which a worthless Roman nobleman, Rubellius Plancus, is assimilated by the satirist of Aquinum;

at tu Nil nisi Cecropides, truncoque simillimus Hermæ. Nullo quippe alio vincis discrimine, quàm quòd Illi marmoreum caput est, tua vivit imago.

A Greek medal is extant of Arrian’s native city, of the reign of Antoninus Pius, bearing the impress of the god Terminus. See Nummophylacium Reginæ Christinæ, Tab. +lvii.+

The old herdsman of Theocritus, with the title εἰνόδιος, affords the reason of its use:

ἔκ τοι ξεῖνε πρόφρων μυθήσομαι ὅσσ’ ἐρεείνεις, Ἑρμέω ἁζόμενος δεινὴν ὄπιν εἰνοδίοιο. τὸν γὰρ φασὶ μέγιστον ἐπουρανίων κεχολῶσθαι, εἴ κεν ὁδοῦ ζαχρεῖον ἀνῄνηταί τις ὁδίτην.

See Eustathius ad Homeri Odyss. +xvi.+ and Ouzelius ad M. Minuc. Felic. Octavium, p. 109.

In his character of guide or conductor, (Ἡγεμόνιος,) amongst many others, the wily god volunteers his services to Cario, in the Plutus of Aristophanes:

ΕΡ. ἀλλ’ ἡγεμόνιον. ΚΑ. ἀλλ’ ὁ θεὸς ἤδη βλέπει. ὥσθ’ ἡγεμόνος οὐδὲν δεησόμεσθ’ ἔτι.

Though the messenger of the gods, and supremely Διὸς ἄγγελος, he seems to have been a willing itinerant on earth (ὁδοιπόρος) in the cause of humanity. See Iliad +xxiv.+

Guard of our life, and partner of our way!

Ὅσοι ἄλλοι ὄρειοι θεοί. Almost every mountain had its tutelar deity; but Arrian probably here means the rural deities hitherto unnamed, as Sylvanus, Silenus, Priapus, Aristæus, the Fauns, Satyrs, Pales, Flora, Feronia, and a host of others. On a due observance of the rites of these gods and goddesses, and demi-deities of “hill and dale, forest and mead,” (to whom might be traced, perhaps, the fairy system of more modern days,) and more particularly on an observance of those of Diana Agrotera, was an abundant supply of game, and avoidance of the ordinary casualties of the chase, entirely dependent:

Tua si gratus numina cultor Tulit in saltus; retia vinctas Tenuere feras; nulli laqueum Rupêre pedes; fertur plaustro Præda gementi: tum rostra canes Sanguine multo rubicunda gerunt; Repetitque casas rustica longo Turba triumpho.