FOOTNOTES:
The editors of the Greek libellus confine their remarks almost exclusively to critical annotations on the text. Indeed Holstein’s edition has no notes; Blancard’s, only a few marginal emendations; and Zeune’s and Schneider’s, very few parallel passages. Such classical citations, therefore, as are adduced by the translator, are for the most part of novel application.
The quotations from the Cynegeticus of Xenophon the elder refer to the chase-practices and kennel-discipline of Greece, antecedent to the institution of coursing.
This statement is limited to classical authors alone; the Biblical scholar might possibly arraign its accuracy, if made more general; though it scarce needs qualification to suit the doubtful interpretation of the Hebrew text of Proverbs ch. xxx. ver. 31. No allusion occurring elsewhere in the sacred volume to dogs of the chase, though many to the earlier varieties of Venation with predatory instruments, it is improbable that the words of Agur to his pupils Ithiel and Ucal should refer to the most uncommon of the canine tribe, the canis Leporarius, Gallicus, or Vertragus. The Hebrew expression, however, for Bocharti Hierozoic. L. ii. c. lvi.“accinctus lumbis,” “girt in the loins,” as explained in the margin of the English version, is understood by Jewish lexicographers to designate the greyhound, and is so rendered in the English text. But with the learned Bochart (Præfat. ad Lectorem—wherein he corrects a few errors of the body of his work, and gives his latest and most mature opinions on certain Scriptural difficulties—a part of his writings apparently overlooked by modern annotators, to the farther propagation of error) I should rather understand the horse to be the animal alluded to—Ejusdem Præfat. ad Lectorem.“equum intelligi malim, qui non solùm expeditè, sed et superbè, et cura pompâ quâdam incedit: et lumbos habet cingulâ vel zonâ verè succinctos. Quod an de cane dici possit valdè ambigo.” After all, perhaps, no particular animal may have been intended by the son of Jakeh. The term may have a general reference to any animal of the frame alluded to—Ovid. Metam. L. iii.“substricta gerens—ilia—”. The chapter containing the passage in question is not found in the Septuagint; indeed the Greek version of the LXX. terminates with the 29th chapter.
In the 27th oration of Themistius, the eclectic philosopher of Paphlagonia, a passage occurs, which, as far as merely mentioning Celtic dogs by name, may be said to prolong the notice to the fourth century. The whole passage, as illustrative of the author’s subject, “non loca attendenda sed homines,” is curious and worthy of citation—Themistii Orat. xxvii.ὅστις δὲ ἀγαπᾷ κύνας, τούτῳ προσφιλὲς μὲν κτῆμα, καὶ Κέλται, καὶ Λάκαιναι σκύλακες· δάκνει δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ τὸ Καστορίδων φύλον, καὶ τὸ Ἀρκαδικὸν αὐτὸ, καὶ τὸ Κρητικὸν, αἷς φύσις τῶν θηρίων ἐλέγχειν τὰς εὐνὰς κατὰ τὴν ὁδὸν ἐπισπομέναις. οὐ παρόψεται δὲ οὐδὲ τὰς οἴκοι σκυλακευθείσας, εἰ μήτε κάλλους ἐκείνων μήτε ὠκύτητος λείποιντο. In favour of the greyhound being here cited, it may be remarked that the Bithynian courser calls the Celtic dog μέγα κτῆμα (cap. xxxii.) and his shape καλόν τι χρῆμα, and derives his name ἀπὸ τῆς ὠκύτητος, as the characteristic distinction of the race. See some remarks on the “Canes Scotici” of Symmachus hereafter.
The Cynosophium alone, a Greek work “de Curâ Canum,” breaks the silence of many centuries. It is supposed to have been compiled, about the year 1270, by Demetrius of Constantinople, author of the first treatise “de Re Accipitrariâ,” and physician to the Emperor Michael Palæologus. To what is borrowed from the two Xenophons, nothing is added of novelty or interest, save in the department of canine pathology; indeed it is almost entirely confined to kennel-management and therapeutics. No notice is taken of any variety of dog by name. The reader, who may wish to consult its medical nostrums, will find the treatise attached to the “Rei Accipitrariæ Scriptores” of Rigaltius (Lutetiæ mdcxii.) and to the “Poetæ Venatici” of Johnson (Londini mdcxcix.).
The Crafte of Hontyng is supposed to be a version by Gyfford from a more ancient work by Twety or Twici—“Le art de Venerie le quel Maistre Guillaiue Twici Venour le Roy d’Angleterre fist en son temps per aprandre autres.” The greyhound is mentioned fol. 4. of blowing. Warton’s Engl. Poetry, V. ii. 221.“Whañ a mañ hath set up archerys and greyhoundes, and the beest be founde and passe out the boundys, and myne houndes aftir,” &c.
These instructions were written for Henry Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V.
The “Morte Arthur” tells us, that “Tristrem laboured ever in hunting and hawking, so that we never read of no gentleman more that so used himself therein,” &c. and in the rich poetry of Spenser, the knight informs Sir Calidore,
The Biographia Britannica is amusingly severe in its strictures on the renowned Mrs. Barnes, and her incongruous occupations in the field and cloister. “There appears such a motley masquerade—Biograph. Brit. note, Caxton, p. 367.such an indistinctness of petticoat and breeches,—such a problem and concorporation of sexes, according to the image that arises out of the several representations of this religious sportswoman or virago, that one can scarcely consider it, without thinking Sir Tristram, the old monkish forester, and Juliana, the matron of the nuns, had united to confirm John Cleveland’s ‘Canonical Hermaphrodite.’”
Should the reader meet with any extracts from the Compendium in the subsequent annotations, they are to be received on the authority of Conrad Gesner, from whose “Historia Quadrupedum” they are selected. The same learned work has afforded the few parallel passages adduced from Albertus Magnus, Belisarius, and Tardif. For all others the translator is himself answerable, having culled them from the original sources, and generally from the most approved editions.
The date of the greyhound’s introduction into these islands is with difficulty ascertained. If the “septem Scoticorum canum oblatio” of Flavian, wherewith he graced the Quæstor’s spectacle of his brother Symmachus at Rome, be really coarse varieties of the Celtic type, as supposed by Christopher Wase, this hound must have been found here as early as the reign of Theodosius. Indeed Hector Boethius and Holinshed place him amongst us at an earlier period: nor is it improbable that he originally accompanied theSee the Appendix Class iii. Scoto-Celts from the continent of Europe at their primary irruption into Ireland and Scotland. We have evidence of his being an inmate of the Anglo-Saxon kennels in the days ofCotton. Mss. Tiber. B. v. Elfric, Duke of Mercia; and manuscriptal paintings have descended to us of a Saxon chieftain and his huntsman, attended by a brace of greyhounds, of the date of the 9th century—the earliest representation which I have seen of this hound as connected with British field-sports.
Contained in his work entitled “Countrey Contentments.” In addition to which, “The Countrey Farme,” by the same author, a compilation from the French, will be read with amusement.
Coursing has ever been held an honourable and gentlemanly amusement in Great Britain, from its earliest annals to the present time. Nor can I discover any authority for the truth of Vlitius’s opinion, as given in his note on the Veltraha of Gratius. Vlitii Venatio Novantiqua.“Ne ideò Vertragis suis sagaces posthabeat ille Xenophon: nam hodiè in Angliâ sagaces nobilissimi quique exercent; Vertrago autem leporem conficere, indignum benè nato parum abest quin habeatur.” Such never was the opinion entertained of “greyhound hunting,” in King James’s phrase:—indeed the farther we go back into the history of the leash, the higher it ranked in the scale of British field-sports. See the “Constitutiones Canuti Regis de forestâ”—and Blount’s Ancient Tenures passim, for instances of the high repute in which the courser’s hound has ever been held in Great Britain.
The reader will be amused with Simon Latham’s epilogue to the third edition of his “Faulconry,” wherein he combats (for he wrote in ticklish times, 1658) with his usual quaintness of style and illustration, the notion of the sinfulness of rural sports: inferring that they may “be lawfully and conscientiously used with moderation by a magistrate or minister, or lawyer or student, or any other seriously employed, which in any function heat their brains, waste their bodies, weaken their strength, weary their spirits; that as a means (and blessing from God) by it their decayed strength may be restored, their vital and animal spirits quickened, refreshed, and revived, their health preserved, and they better enabled (as a bow unbended for shooting) to the discharging of their weighty charges imposed upon them.”
Aristot. de Polit. L. i. c. v. plato de legibus l. vii. Xenophon. Cyropæd. L. i. c. v. l. viii. c. xii. respub. lacedæm. c. iii. cyneget. c. i. xii. xiii. Polybius Hist. L. xxxi. jul. pollux onomast. l. v. Præfat. Commodo.—Cicero de Nat. D. L. ii. de officiis l. i. horat. l. i. epist. xviii. virgil. æneid. l. vii. ix. Seneca de Provid. c. ii. plinii panegyr. traj. d.—justin. hist. epit. l. xxxvii. Symmach. Epist. L. v. Ep. 66.
It will be readily ceded that the amatory expostulation of Sulpitia to her dear Cherinthus,
and the epistle of Ausonius to the ruralist Theon,
are too jocular to place Tibullus and the poet of Bourdeaux on the side of the Catilinarian historian.
The plaintive poet of “The Task,” B. iii. has seemingly borrowed from Agrippa’s page the memorable crimination of the hunter’s pursuit:
I purposely omit all notice of the “Venatio Amphitheatralis,” or “V. in arenâ” of ancient Rome; of which Tertullian, Augustin, Chrysostom, and the Christian Cicero, Lactantius, have written with merited reprobation. J. Lipsii Saturnal. Sermon. L. i. c. 7.“Cum viderent pietatis damno, addictum devinctumque populum his ludis; passim invecti in eos, ut libidinis, sævitiæque fontes; et bene illi.” Not a word can be advanced in palliation of these brutal outrages of humanity,
wherein man was “butcher’d to make a Roman holiday”—“Homo occiditur ad hominis voluptatem.” With this monstrous variety of Venatio, so called κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, and recorded as such with horror, we have nothing to do; with its abettors under any qualified form, the modern frequenters of the cock-pit or bear-garden, the heroes of a bull-bait, and patrons of mercenary pugilists, the rivals of the “municipalis arenæ perpetui comites” of Juvenal’s days, we have no sentiments in common. We have hailed with exultation the victory already effectuated, or in course of gradual achievement, over the ferocious barbarities of the amphitheatre, and the semi-pagan cruelties of more modern spectacles—a victory that is attempering the pastimes of the English people to the religion and morality of the age; and we sincerely deplore the existence of the θεάτρον κυνηγετικὸν of Dio, under any modification, in any part of the civilized world.
Let Christianity transfuse its lenient spirit into all our sports, and instead of the amphitheatrical entertainments, and barbarian amusements of infidels, let us have such as are congenial to the humanity of Christians. Let us be the champions of rational recreation, not of brutal gratification;—the friends of man, and not unnecessarily the enemies of inferior animals;—spectators in our temperate and innocent diversions of the dog’s innate faculties and prowess for the seizure of the destined animals of the chase—K. Henry VI. Pt. ii. act ii. sc. 1.“to see how God in all his creatures works,” and witnesses of “the curious search or conquest of one beast over another, persued by a naturall instinct of enmitie;—” how
but not hostile instigators of canine ferocity to the heartless maiming and slaying an unnatural prey—a species of animal conflict never intended by creative wisdom; and wherein violence is done to natural instinct to minister to man’s unhallowed sport.
Cui dum nimium insistunt, ipsi abjectâ humanitate feræ efficiuntur, morumque prodigiosâ perversitate, tanquam Actæon mutantur in naturam belluarum.
“In using either of these games observe that moderation,” says King James to Prince Henry, “that ye slip not therewith the houres appointed for your affaires, which ye ought ever precisely to keepe; remembering that these games are but ordained for you, in enabling you for your office, for the which ye are ordained,” &c.
According to the decisions of judicial astrology in casting nativities, Julius Firmicus remarks that the following personages, “equorum nutritores, accipitrum, falconum, cæterarumque avium, quæ ad aucupia pertinent, similiter et Molossorum, Vertagrorum, et qui sunt ad venationes accomodati,” being born when the planet Venus is in Aquarius, are incapable of application to any more laudable pursuit than hunting and hawking.
The chasseurs of Agrippa’s days, laical and clerical, were equally reprehensible. From the Thebans, this literary Timonist tells us, the worst of men, Venation passed to the Trojans, not much better, and thence to Greece and Rome, brutalizing the inhabitants of the earth in its progress—De Incert. et Vanit. &c. c. lxxvii.“Tandem hæc exercitia in se reverâ servilia et mechanica eo usque evecta sunt, ut positis quibusque liberalibus studiis, hodie prima nobilitatis elementa atque progressus sint, illis ducibus ad summum gradum perveniatur: hodieque ipsa regum et principum vita, ipsa etiam (proh dolor!) abbatum, episcoporum, cæterorumque ecclesiæ præfectorum religio, tota inquam venatio est,” &c.
The disastrous casualties that have befallen divers of the worshipful but rash disciples of Chiron and his compeers are recorded in terrorem by a Sicilian amateur of falconry. Will the timid courser venture to mount his “smart hack or Zetland shelty,” after reading the following summary of these fatalities? La Fauconnerie de Messire Arthelouche de Alagona.“Meleager en perdit la vie, pour la victoire rapportée sur le sanglier de Calidoine. Le bel Adonis fut tiré par un sanglier. Actéon fut dévoré de ses propres chiens. Cephale y tua sa chère Procris, et Acaste en fut interdict, ayant occis le fils du Roy qui luy avoit esté donné en charge, comme fut Brutus pour avoir tué son père Sylvius par mesgarde. Un Empereur fut occis par la beste qu’il poursuivoit. Un Roy en courant à la chasse se cassa le col en tombant de cheval.” The legitimacy of the inference drawn by Le Conseiller et Chambellan du Roy de Sicile is doubtful—“Que qui craindra ces dangereux effectz qu’il s’adonne à la vollerie, où il trouvera sans doubte plus grand plaisir.” The superior pleasure of the latter is as equivocal as its inferior danger; and pursued to excess, I should think, must share equality of peril and of blame.
Of Mr. Barnard, who was accustomed to enliven the sedentary pleasures of his intellectual pursuits with the active and salutary recreation of coursing, and to shake off, in Horatian language, “inhumanæ senium ... Camœnæ,” in the company of his greyhounds, on the wolds of Yorkshire, the reader must pardon me, if I speak with the deepest regret. He was indeed, like Maximus the friend and correspondent of Symmachus, Symmachi Epist. Lib. ix. Ep. 28.“inter sodales Apollinis ac Dianæ, utriusque sectator,” or in the apposite words of Ercole Strozzi,
But alas! gifted as he was, far beyond the ordinary worshippers of the sylvan goddess, he hath “begun the travel of eternity,”
The periodical publications of the day have given to the world the mournful tribute of a scholar to his memory: and when the voice of affection hath sung “the deathless praise” of a departed son, that of friendship may be silent. But let it not be supposed that the learning and genius of this accomplished man were confined to the inferior and perishable subjects of the courser’s pursuit. The powers of his talented mind were directed also to the high and heavenly callings of his profession; and among other subjects, to the commemoration in verse and prose, of the saints and martyrs of the Protestant Church. In the words of the Nutricia of Politiano, he was indeed
His poetical version of the poems of the younger Flaminio, a celebrated Latinist of the sixteenth century, on which he was engaged till his fatal illness, and the publication of which he fondly anticipated, will add, I trust, to his posthumous fame.
As the originator of the Courser’s Stud Book, and the indefatigable compiler of its genealogical tables, (an attempt “multâ deducere virgâ,” to derive “by trees of pedigrees,” as Dryden says, the speed and shape of each celebrated descendant, in the greyhound kennel, from the recorded genealogies and performances of a far-famed ancestry,—Platonis Menexenus.ἀγαθοὶ δὲ ἐγένοντο διὰ τὸ φῦναι ἐξ ἀγαθῶν,) the name of Mr. Barnard must be recorded in the annals of coursing with lasting gratitude; notwithstanding the prolegomena of a vicarious editor have occasioned the substitution of a second name on the title-page of the work, after the unexpected death of the original projector:
But let us cease this querulous display of individual feeling. Many did not know him; and those who did—his relatives—his friends and correspondents—have felt too much already. And the preface to so trivial a work as a Courser’s Vade-Mecum is not a fit occasion for descanting on the high merits of a Christian scholar; nor is lamentation over the dead a suitable prelude to the entertainment of the living.
Many of the Greek and Latin classics having been edited by English Divines, the latter fell under the lash of Young in the memorable lines,
These terms are also misapplied in the Cynegeticon of the poet of Barga, and in the Album Dianæ Leporicidæ of Savary of Caen. The latter, speaking of Spain and Italy, says—
and of the Italians and their chase he writes,
Arrian invariably calls himself Xenophon; and his predecessor of the same name he designates, for distinction’s sake, τὸν πάλαι, τὸν πρεσβύτερον. In the Cynegeticus he refers to him as τῷ Γρύλλου, τῷ ἐμαυτοῦ ὁμωνύμῳ, ἐκείνῳ τῷ Ξενοφῶντι.
With the citizenship of Rome, bestowed upon him by the Emperor, when in Greece, as it is supposed, A.D. 124, he assumed the Roman name of Flavius: and subsequent to his return from the prefecture of Cappadocia, he was probably raised to the consulate.
Aulus Gellius particularly authenticates his literary connexion with Epictetus, where he alludes (Noct. Attic. L. xix. c. i.) to the latter’s διαλέξεις “ab Arriano digestas,” &c.
These instructions are written, as military orders, in the imperative mood. Ὁ δὲ ἡγεμὼν τῆς πάσης στρατιᾶς Ξενοφῶν, τὸ πολὺ μὲν πρὸ τῶν σημείων τῶν πεζικῶν ἡγείσθω, ἐπιφοιτάτω δὲ τάσῃ τῇ τάξει, κ. τ. λ. Such were some of the duties which he enjoined on himself as commander-in-chief.
The practical courser will not deny to Hormé the merit, which on his lord’s voucher, he is entitled to; few greyhounds, even in their prime, in modern days, could vie with their redoubted prototype and master four hares per diem.
In addition to the authors already cited, or referred to, he is also mentioned by Arnobius, towards the close of his second book.
It is a truth worth recording, that, from Photius to Saint-Croix and Chaussard, the last translator of Alexander’s Anabasis, no writer has impugned his veracity and honesty as an historian, nor his literary style as a scholar.
The vanity which La Mothe Le Vayer discovers, so glaring in his history, and more particularly in what he says of himself in the 12th chapter of the first book of the Anabasis of Alexander, before quoted, and from which Gronovius and Raphelius satisfactorily exculpate him, I confess I do not see. The pride of the historian is not beyond the dignity of his subject.
Chiron, the son of Saturn and the nymph Philyra, is fabled to have received his knowledge of hunting from Apollo and Diana; and to have instructed the numerous disciples, recorded by Xenophon in the first chapter of his Cynegeticus, in the science and practice of the chase.
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, Xenophon de Venat. c. ii.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; Jul. Pollucis Onomast. L. v. c. iv. 26. 27.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 Minshæi Emendatio in voce Grei-hound.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;” περὶ Ἱππικῆς, c. i.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 Geography of Herodotus.“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, Expedit. Alexandri, L. i. c. iv.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. Cæsar. de Bell. Gall. L. i. c. i.“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.
And Oppian, in the conclusion of his third Halieutic:
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, Skinner, Etymologicon.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,
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.”