Arrian on coursing

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APPENDIX.

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In introducing to the reader’s notice the Canes Venatici of the following monograph—wherein the embellishment of fable is often admitted as the language of truth, and amusement is paramount to instruction—it must not be expected that I should carry back the history of the chase to the early period of the world’s annals, when

and man’s subject creatures revolted from their revolted lord—

the probable date of its institution—(“cum peccato enim animalium noxa simul et persecutio et fuga subintravit, et artes venationum excogitatæ sunt,”)—nor to the later epoch of its Phenician origin, maintained by Polydore Vergil on the authority of Eusebius; nor its more fabulous Theban birth and distribution, the thrice-told tale of John of Salisbury:⁠[293] but rather consider hunting as an art of acquisition and self-defence of remote and undefined antiquity.

On Venation, as a pastime, too much has already been said in the preface to Arrian: and I will at present confine my remarks to a few classical anecdotes of its primitive furniture, its founders, and progressional improvement; premising, by the way, that when men were unacquainted with the blessings of civilization, and had no idea of pleasure beyond the gratification of their appetites—when, in short, they were in a state of nature—hunting was not the by-work of leisure hours, but the call of continual urgency—not the jocund diversion of a day, but the toilsome and perilous occupation of a life. In such early times, the nonage of a fallen world, commenced the war of men with beasts:

The personal safety of himself and those dependent on his protection, and the daily cravings of hunger, dictated to man the necessity of animal slaughter; so that, in seeking his quotidian meal, he originated the art of hunting:

The first hostile efforts of the barbarian lords of creation against their biped and quadruped subjects, “joint-tenants of the shade” with themselves, were confined, we may suppose, to manifestations of physical strength and brute courage; by which, under the powerful incentives of self-interest, they procured the vital necessaries of food and clothing:

And here at the head of rude pedestrian sportsmen we find the human inventor of the science of the chase, that legendary personage, the Gorgon-killing Ovid. Metam. L. iv. 699.Perseus⁠[295]—“Gorgonis anguicomæ Perseus superator”—(for I would not deprive Latona’s hunting-twins, Apollo and Diana, nor the worshipful raceXen. de Venat. c. i. of Centaurs, φῦλα θηρομιγῆ,⁠[296] of their priority of claim, and patent of precedency, in the apotheosis of the chase,) who,Oppian. Cyneg. L. ii. 5. when he had performed this redoubted act of courage, as we are told by the poet of Anazarbus:

As men in general, however, did not possess the speed of Perseus and Achilles,⁠[297] “To sweep with winged feet along the level plain;” nor the power of catching at force, νόσφι κυνοδρομίης, the fleetest animals of chase, like the goddess Dian; it became necessary to add to their naked powers sundry inartificial implements, auxiliary to the subjugation of some, the destruction and expulsion of other beasts.

Acquiring knowledge by experience, man advanced in the mechanism and variety of his hunting gear, as in other articles of increasing civilization.

Finding, on patient trial, the χάος εὐρὺ περιστεφὲς of Oppian, with its rude accompaniment of fire, &c. insufficient for capturing the more wary creatures—

he had recourse to the various kinds of weapons, snares, and wily inventions of slaughter described by Xenophon, Gratius, Oppian, and Nemesian; and often alluded to by other writers, both sacred and profane:

But “short of due perfection” were all the hunter’s wiles, till the dog was tutored to assist in the sylvan pursuit and massacre, and to contribute the acuteness of his senses, his speed and courage, to the service of mankind; who consummated their superiority over the animals of the forest, when they had directed to their chase the adapted powers of this faithful ally, and begun, in the words of the cited poet of theEjusdem 140. Georgics—“magnos canibus circumdare saltus,”—redeeming thereby their esculent crops and innocuous herds from the ferocious and depredatory aggression of quadruped felons.⁠[298]

The “venandi mille viæ” of the Carthaginian poet have been superseded in the British islands by the superior attraction of the gun:

and of various eminent breeds of fleet and sagacious dogs, adapted to the chase at force. But as these methods were heretofore employed by our less civilized ancestry,⁠[300] are still in vogue in unreclaimed countries, and many of them yet practised on the continent of Europe—whateverCertaine Illustrations, &c. p. 25. be their “incongruity to our present factions,” as Wase expresses himself—a brief description of the “supellex venandi” will not be unacceptable to the modern reader, by way of introduction to the subject of classic hunting with the ancient varieties of the canine race.

With seeming accuracy Gratius has described the whole of the antique poaching gear;⁠[301] but it must be confessed that neither Xenophon’s, nor the Faliscian’s, nor the hunting technicalities of the other Cynegetical writers, can be fully explained to modern comprehension.

The deities and demi-deities of sylvan life are objects of invocation in the exordium of Gratius:

and then, under their tutelary aid, the poet begins to handle the “arma venandi;” which, as recorded in the Cynegetica generally, consisted of the linea or formido, nets of various mesh and size and shape, nooses, springes, and other traps—missile weapons, as darts, arrows, &c.; and those for standing-defence, as the halberd-like boar-spear, &c.: many of these, however, were not of very remote antiquity.⁠[302]

The feathered line or pinnatum was called, from its effect, metus, formido, and δείματα θηρῶν, (Oppian. Cyneg. iv. 389.) “Cum maximos ferarum greges,” says Seneca, “linea pennis distincta contineat, et in insidias agat; ab ipso effectu dicta formido.”

The line of feathers of various hue, impregnated with artificial odour, “was drawn about the woods Wase’s Illustrations, &c. p. 7.(——ὀλίγον γαίης ἐφύπερθεν, Oppian. Cyneg. iv. 386.) in the intermitted spaces where the toyles were pitched, that so the deer (than which no creature is more timorous) might balk them, and be cast upon the net.” The linea thus flanked the δίκτυ or long net, where not extensive enough to enclose the covert; and filled the intervals, between the purse-nets and nooses, when the latter were set independent of the retia.

The Cilician poet has left a graphic description of the formido, as employed in the Armenian bear-hunt—a picture so vividly sketched, Cyneg. iv. 380, that I regret its length prevents transcription. A part of it will be found hereafter under the Eastern “Canis Inductor”—the Armenian limehound. The fourth Halieutic, in an apposite and beautiful simile, describes the startling effect of the feathered line on timid animals of chase:

Many notices of this instrument will occur to the classical reader in the works of the Latin poets, but in none more copiously delineated than in the Cynegeticon of Nemesian; who enumerates the many sources whence the feathers of dissimilar tint are to be culled for decorating the “plumed line:”

If the reader be interested in the minutiæ of Grecian and Roman net-making, and the methods of fixing the ἄρκυες, δίκτυα, and ἐνόδια, the casses, retia, and plagæ, he is referred for the former to the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and that most extraordinary work of human research, the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux—for the latter, to the Venatio Novantiqua of Janus Vlitius, a scholar of deep erudition, and an experienced sportsman:—a summary view being all that can be rendered by the present writer, professedly epitomising the labours of more experienced workmen.

The ἄρκυες or casses were conical, purse or tunnel-like nets, ending in a point at one end, and having a running noose of entrance at the other, resembling somewhat a hooped calash, or cowl.

The δίκτυα or retia were long sean-like nets for open fields, and for encircling brakes and coverts;——“longoque meantia retia tractu.”

The ἐνόδια or plagæ were nets of much less length, to be placed across roads, game-tracks, paths, and narrow openings between bushes.

The ἄρκυες appear to have been sometimes placed independent of the δίκτυα, but more commonly in the course of the main nets; so that when the animals passed along the linear and reticular barrier, exploring a place of egress, terrified by the formido, (which flanked the hayes, and occasionally was drawn along above the net-rope to scare the game from overleaping,) and the meshes of the δίκτυα, (continuous except where the purse-nets were introduced with their slip-knot entrance), on attempting to pass out at the apparent opening of the ἄρκυς, they became by their struggles entangled therein⁠[305]—the purse either spontaneously, or by the agency of the men placed there to draw the necessary ropes, immediately closing at the mouth.

The whole management of the nets and lines was vested in the watch αἰζηῶν πυλαωρῶν referred to, who were concealed under copse-wood, for the purpose, more particularly, of attending to the ἐπίδρομος and περίδρομος, the ropes (smooth and knotless) which governed the ἄρκυες, and passed through iron rings, along the course of the δίκτυα, up to the watchmen’s hiding-place:

The length of the δίκτυα or retia, properly so called, would astonish a modern disciple of Diana. So great was the extent of ground sometimes enclosed by these toils, that Plutarch mentions, in his life of Alexander, hunting-nets above twelve miles long. With such it was customary to encircle vast tracts of country, and then, by gradually contracting their ambit, to force the animals of the district into a narrower compass;—when at the will of the magister venationis, the work of slaughter commenced.⁠[306] This mode of hunting is very clearly described, with its usual auxiliaries of noise and flame, in a simile of the Achilleid:

The Faliscian poet, in the early part of his Cynegeticon, specifies the best materials for the composition of nets, with particular instructions for their size and shape:

On the same subject the Carthaginian summarily touches, distinctly recognizing the three varieties of which we have been just speaking:

And an earlier poet, in his praise of the brumal pleasures of the countryman’s life, sunders plagæ and retia, applying them to such totally different purposes, that it is probable they sometimes differed as much in the structure of the mesh, its size, &c. as in the magnitude of the whole instrument:

Whatever honour be attached to these reticular inventions, and that of the running-noose, the βρόχος or laqueus, is due to Hippolytus:

The βρόχος generally formed a rhomb-shaped entrance to the ἄρκυς, as probably did the laqueus to the cassis:—but as the tunnel was occasionally used separate from the sean-like toil (δίκτυ—rete) and from the road-net (ἐνόδιον—plagæ), so may these slip-knot nooses have been also set independent of the purses, their usual additaments, in narrow passes, or straits frequented by game:

The noose-ropes,⁠[307] being of much ruder manufacture, and more simple structure, than any variety of net with meshes, must have been of earlier institution.

These laquei curraces,⁠[308] seemingly from this passage made of other materials than hemp before the days of Gratius, are yet in use, under the form of springes and wires, with deer and hare-poachers; who, I find in Hor. L. iii. Od. iv. vs. 70.Oppian, are indebted to the giant-hunter Orion—“integræ—tentator Orion Dianæ”—for the first establishment of their nocturnal depredations:

We are next introduced by Gratius to dentatæ pedicæ, spiked foot-traps or gins, resembling the ποδοστράβαι of Xenophon and Pollux; and formed, as the following lines indicate, of wood, concealed on the ground;

It being no small recommendation to them that one poacher might reap the fruits of another’s labours. Their invention is attributed to a virtuous and holy Arcadian, ycleped Dercylus,⁠[309] in high favour with the Sylvan goddess, and by her initiated in the mysteries of hunting, and the formation of sundry destructive implements of predation, which he first employed in the valleys of Mount Mænalus, and the Lacedæmonian Amyclæ:

And again:

But it must not be forgotten that a competitor for the glory of these, and other like discoveries, is mentioned by Plutarch, in Amatorio, and by Nonnus, in Dionysiacis, in the person of Plutarch. in Amatorio.Aristæus—εὔχονται δ’ Ἀρισταίῳ δολοῦντες ὀρύγμασι καὶ βρόχοις λύκους καὶ ἄρκτους, ὃς πρῶτος θήρεσσιν ἔπηξε ποδάγρας:—indeed, if we may credit the Christian poet of Panopolis, the sire of the hapless Actæon is entitled to the invention of almost every article of hunting-gear, the dresses of sportsmen, initiation of hounds of chase, &c.—of many of which he has been deprived by less rightful claimants:

To the first-mentioned Arcadian worthy Gratius attributes the earliest fashioning of hunting-spears with moræ or guards. Virgil sings of “lato venabula ferro,” for close conflict; and Gratius more particularly adds, to the honour of Dercylus’s armoury, the introduction of bifid spears:

But although the Arcadian formed the spear for pedestrian assault, and Meleager was conspicuous in the use of it,—ἐν σταδίοισιν ὀρειοτέροισι μόθοισιν,—a more celebrated hero first wielded it in distant jaculation on horseback:

—a style of hunting, which we may suppose to have been much practised in the Roman empire by persons of noble rank, as Montfaucon gives several representations of it from the sepulchre of the Nasoni:—in exact accordance with which, the ἱππελάτης of Oppian is decked out for the equestrian chase.

The reader’s recollection will readily supply, from authors in every one’s hands, the use of bows and arrows,⁠[310] and small darts—“excussâ lancea torta manu,”—in the early annals of field-sports:

The far-famed female ally of Meleager in the attack on the Calydonian boar,

claims the merit of first employing archery; having been instructed⁠[311] both in κυνηλασίη and εὐστοχίη by Dian herself, (see Callim. H. in Dian. vs. 217.)

We are unacquainted with the form and use of many of the weapons, with which Oppian accoutres his able-bodied rustics for the covert-side,

and Natalis Comes, with his brief scholiast Ruscellius, throws no light on them, in the borrowed armoury of his first cynegetic. The Oppianic catalogue runs through eight lines, in which we recognize, in addition to the former implements of predatory hunting, others particularly devoted to the capture of the hare, the ἁρπάλαγον and λαγωοφόνος τρίαινα, the hare-pole, and three-pronged hare-fork—belonging probably to the class of murderous instruments mentioned by the poet of Barga:

Among the more simple modes of following wild animals for capture, I should have earlier mentioned that of tracking—from its simplicity, probably, coeval with the rudest species of pursuit. It is alluded to in the 32nd Epigram of Callimachus,