Εὐφημεῖν—“favere linguâ, bona verba dicere.” This expression does not seem to mean that the persons present at a sacrifice were to observe profound silence, but rather to abstain only from words of evil omen. Mr. Cowper has preserved its sense correctly in his translation of εὐφημῆσαι, Iliad ix. 171. “That every tongue abstain from speech—Portentous.” Ogilby, Dacier, and Pope, all mistake the signification of εὐφημεῖν.Schol. ad Aristoph. Thesm. Act. i. “Præcones clamantes,” says Festus, “populum sacrificiis favere jubebant. Favere est bona fari.” But Bourdin ad Aristoph. Thesmophor. εὐφημεῖν σημαίνει σιγᾷν καὶ σιωπᾷν δι’ εὐφημίας.
Στεφανοῦν. The sacrificial victims were adorned with garlands and crowns on their horns and necks. The altars were decorated with sacred herbs, and the priests themselves wore crowns upon their heads, composed of the leaves of the tree sacred to the deity to whom they paid their devotions. See Tertullian de Idololatriâ.
Ὑμνεῖν. Hunting-carols, it may be, were chanted to Dian and her sylvan train, by the Celts and other sportsmen of old. It was customary to sing hymns in honour of the Gods, and dance around the altar of sacrifice, on occasion of celebrating the more important religious rites; when the songs, in general, commemorated the exploits of the worshipped, enumerated their virtues, and the benefits conferred upon the worshippers, expressing, at the same time, a wish for their continuance.Arrian. de Exped. Alex. L. iv. c. xi. Ὕμνοι μὲν ἐς τοὺς θεοὺς ποιοῦνται, ἔπαινοι δὲ ἐς ἀνθρώπους, says Callisthenes, in his splendid speech on the line of distinction to be drawn between divine and human honours.
Ἀπαρχὰς τῶν ἁλισκομένων ἀνατιθέναι. The ἀπαρχαὶ, or first-fruits of animal sacrifices, were small pieces of flesh cut from every part of the beast, and offered to the gods, (see Homer, passim): but hunters, according toLexicon Antiq. Roman. Pitiscus, dedicated to the Goddess of the Chase the head, horns, feet, skin, &c. of the slaughtered game; to which custom Nisus alludes in his invocation to Diana:
Ὁ τῇ νίκῃ πολέμου ἀκροθίνια. Before the spoils of victory were distributed among the warriors, they considered themselves obliged to make an offering out of them to the Gods, to whose assistance they were indebted for them all. Those separated to this use were termed, according to the author of the Archæologia Græca, ἀκροθίνια, because taken ἀπ’ ἄκρου τοῦ θινὸς, from the top of the heap.
To Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, and his Origin of the Chase, reference is elsewhere given. Identical with his view of its rise, progress, and demerit, is that of Joannes Sarisberiensis, in his Policraticus, De Venaticâ et autoribus et speciebus ejus, et exercitio licito et illicito. “Et primi quidem Thebani,” says John, (who wrote in the reignDe Nugis Curialium L. i. c. iv. of our second Henry, and from whom later authors have purloined the oft-repeated reprobation,) “si fidem sequamur historiæ, eam communicandam omnibus statuerunt. Et ex quo suspecta sit omnibus gens fœda parricidiis, ipcestibus detestanda, insignis fraude, nota perjuriis, hujus artificii, vel potiùs maleficii, in primis præcepta congessit, quæ postmodum ad gentem mollem imbellemque, levem et impudicam (Phrygios loquor) transmitteret,” &c.
Armis from armi not arma. Wase’s version is wrong. The term is more commonly applied to the shoulder or arm of animals than man: but the sense of the passage requires the interpretation I have put upon it, and is farther illustrated by the “unguibus et pugnis” of Horace,Hor. Sat. L. i. S. iii. vs. 101. and “meræ vires” of Ovid:
Politian elegantly exemplifies the Faliscian’s meaning in his Silva, entitled Nutricia;
For Perseus’s title to this post of honour Oppian is my only voucher; but his words are decisive:
Will the reader admit the explanation of the Policraticus as to the fabulous connexion of these hybrids with the chase:J. Sarisberiensis de N. C. L. i. c. iv. “nempe qui his studiis aut desidiis insistunt, semiferi sunt, et abjectâ potiore humanitatis parte, ratione morum prodigiis conformantur?” and again, “Venatores omnes adhuc institutionem redolent Centaurorum. Rarò invenitur quisquam eorum modestus aut gravis,” &c.
“The light-footed Greek of Chiron’s school,” as Churchill calls him.
Nec mediocre pacis decus habebatur submota campis irruptio ferarum, et obsidione quâdam liberatus agrestium labor.
According to Manilius the power of fashioning implements of hunting, breeding dogs of good pedigrees, breaking them in, &c. is derived from sidereal influence at our nativities:
We have the authority of the most ancient record of British field spoils, called Mayster of Game, (a curious manuscript in the British Museum,) for the general use of much of the classic furniture of the chase in France and England five centuries ago. Let the reader compare the following with the Greek and Latin Cynegetica:c. iii. fol. 21. “Of the Hare, and the methods of taking her. Men slee hares with greyhoundes and with rennynghoundes by strengthe, as in Engelond; but ellis where thei slee hem with smale pocketes and wt prsuetes and wt smale nettis, with hare pipes and with long nettis and with smale cordes that men casten where thei mak here brekyng of the smale twygges whan thei goon to hure pasture,” &c.—“Ofc. iv. fol. 25. the Herte. Men taken hem with houndis, with greyhoundis, with nettis, and with cordes, and with other harnays; with puttes and with shott, and with other gynnes, and with strengthe, as y shal say here after,” &c. Almost all the instruments of this royal armoury, the fruits of De Langley’s extensive experience at home and abroad, and as such recorded in his hunting manual, have their counterparts in the works of Xenophon, Gratius, Oppian, and Nemesian.
“We are not sensible of Gratius’s great care in the choice and ordering of speares,” in the language of his illustrator, “nor of his provision in showing to set engines, and dig pits, which men prize in those countries where beares and lyons, with such ravenous beasts, do abound. We seem to have a different end in our hunting, which hath introduced a different stile of hunting,” &c.
The arts of war and hunting advanced passibus æquis; both at first equally rude, and destitute of ingenuity of contrivance in their respective instruments of assault:
Before the age of Homer, the bow and arrow, “the artillery of ancient heroes,” the ἔγχος or δόρυ, spear or pike, ξίφος the sword, and κορύνη the club, constituted the entire armoury of the warriors and hunters of semi-barbarous Greece. See Iliad xi. and xvii. Odyss. ix. and xix. How scanty was the furniture of Hercules in his attack of the Nemean lion!
The Persian hunting of Cyrus, as described in the Cyropædia, (L. i. c. v.), presents us with warlike weapons alone. “Than tooke every man” (I quote from The GovernourSir T. Elyot’s. The Governour. B. i. c. xviii.) “with hym his bowe and quiver with arowes, his sword or hach of steele, a little tergat, and two dartes.”
“The formido,” Wase admonishes the reader of his Preface to Gratius, “may be in some measure retriv’d by looking into the Sicilian hunting, where it continues in use at this day. When the nobles or gentry are inform’d which way a herd of dear passeth, giving notice to one another, they make a meeting. Every one brings with him a cross-bow or long-bow, and a bundle of staves. These staves have an iron spike at the bottom, and their head is boared with a cord drawn through all of them. Their length is about four foot. Being thus provided, they come to the herd, and there casting themselves about into a large ring, they surround the deer, and then every one of them receives a peculiar stand, and there unbinding his fagot, ties the end of his cord to the other who is set in the next station; then to support it, sticks into the ground each staffe about the distance of ten foot one from another. Then they take out feathers which they bring with them dyed in crimson for this very purpose, and fastned upon a thrid which they tie to the cord, so that with the least breath of wind they are whirl’d round about. Those which keep the severall stands, withdraw, and hide themselves in the next covert. After this the chiefe ranger enters within the line, taking with him only some hounds, which draw after the herd, and coming near with their cry, rouse it. Upon which, the deer fly till they come towards the line, where they turn off to the left, and still gazing upon the shining and shaking feathers, wander about it as if they were kept in with a wall or pale. The chief ranger pursues, and calling to every one by name, as he passeth by their stand, cries to them that they should shoot the first, third, or sixth, as he shall please; and if any of them miss or single out any other then that which was assigned by the ranger, it is counted a disgrace to him: by which means, as they pass by the severall stations, the whole herd is kill’d by diverse hands.... These stakes are of the same use with those ancones[304] mention’d in Gratius, but it might seem that they are farther improv’d.”—“These things,” continues the translator of the Faliscian, “may be of use to have been premitted;” and with the same view they are here introduced by the author of this Appendix.
The staves of the Sicilians are the ancones of Gratius—the στάλικες and σχάλιδες of the Greek hunters.
The complete and helpless entanglement of the victim of the tunnel-net is admirably described by Seneca, in the simile of The Agamemnon, where Cassandra likens the son of Atreus, ensnared in a cassi-form vest (so happily called by Æschylus πημονὴν ἀρκύστατον) by the “semivir” Thyestes and the adulteress queen-consort, to a boar inextricably enveloped in these toils:
See the definitions of Pollux in my notes to the first Chapter of Arrian’s Cynegeticus—ἄρκυες, δίκτυα, ἐνόδια.
“In Poland, when the king hunts,” observes Wase, “his servants are wont to surround a wood, though to the space of a mile or better in compasse, with toiles, which are pitched upon firme stakes: this being done, the whole town, all sexes and ages, promiscuously rush into the inclosure, and with their loud shouts rear all the beasts within that wood, which making forth, are intercepted in the nets. There small and great beasts are together intangled, after the same manner as when amongst us we draw a net over a pond, and after beating it all over with poles, we bring out not only pike and carp, but lesser fry: so they enclose at once, dear, and bores, and roe-bucks, and hares: for so they order their nets, that the space of those meshes which are twisted with greater cords, for the entangling of greater beasts—that space, I say, is made up with smaller whip-cord, for the catching lesser prey.” See Xenophon de Venatione, c. vi., and pausanias in bœoticis, c. xxi. The latter author relates that the Celtic hunters surrounded plains and mountain-thickets with their toils, so as to be certain of catching all the animals within the circumference thereof.
Such were the σειραὶ of the Parthians, applied to the purposes of human warfare: for it is evident from Josephus’s account of Tiridates’s narrow escape from the AlanDe Bell. Judaic. L. vii. c. 27. σειραφόρος—(βρόχον γὰρ αὐτῷ τὶς πόῤῥωθεν περιβαλὼν ἔμελλεν ἐπισπάσειν, εἰ μὴ τῷ ξίφει θᾶττον ἐκεῖνος τὸν τόνον κόψας, ἔφθη διαφυγεῖν,)—that the instrument employed against the king was of the nature of a laqueus. And a farther illustration of the use of the noose-rope in war we find in the lines of Valerius Flaccus,
Some idea of the curraces laquei, and hunting nets duly set, may be formed from the engravings of Strada and Galle (1578.); or those of the Venationes Ferarum &c. of Collært, Mallery, Theodore and Cornelius Galle of later date. The spirited woodcuts of John Adam Lonicer, of Francfort, attached to the Venatus et Aucupium of Sigismund Feyerabendi (1582), are amusing, but far less illustrative than the former.
To Père Montfaucon we are indebted for a few copies from the antique of the larger varieties of nets for hunting, δίκτυα, retia; see his plates of stag-hunting: but we have no representations of other predatory instruments in the latter work. Wase confounds the laquei curraces with the dentatæ pedicæ, where he describes the former Preface to the Reader.as “a round hoop of yeughen wood made of boughs, which stood bent by force, in fashion of a coronet, and all stuck with iron nayles, and wooden pins,” &c. Peradventure, they may have been set together, the gins in a shallow pit beneath the nooses, more superficially placed on the ground. See Xenoph. de Venat. c. ix. Polluc. Onom. L. v. c. iv.
It is remarkable that this inventive genius is noticed by no other writer; high as his character stands with the Faliscian,
unless indeed he be the sly coadjutor of Alebion, who with a thief cleped Dercylus (of a different caste seemingly from the Gratian hero) despoiled Hercules of his bovine booty during its transit through Iberia. See Natal. Comes, Mytholog. L. vii. Perhaps we may with Excursus ii. ad Gratii vs. 103.Wernsdorf consider him the first writer on the science and mechanism of the chase, rather than the actual inventor of its multifarious furniture: or if we cannot thus dispose of his claim to manual dexterity, may we not identify him with Aristæus, the Arcadian nephew of Diana,
a sort of legendary Sir Tristrem in ancient matters of venery, and rural economy.
The decay of archery in England is feelingly deplored by Sir Thomas Elyot, because “in shotyng is a double utilitee:” it is The Governour.“the feate, wherby Englyshmen have been moste dradde and had in estimation with outwarde princes, as wel enemyes as alies,” &c.; and secondly in “kyllynge of deere, wylde foule, and other game, there is both profyte and pleasure above any other artyllery.”
Superior expertness in the chase—“To bend the bow, and aim unerring darts,”—was always attributed to the personal instructions of Diana; so was Scamandrius taught, though his skill availed him nothing before the fatal lance of Menelaus:
The λαγωβόλον of Theocritus Idyll. iv. 49. vii. 128. epigr. ii. 3. (ξύλον, ᾧ διαφεύγοντες οἱ λαγωοὶ βάλλονται,) seems to be the type of Bargæus’s weapon—the lagobolion of Natalis Comes. De Venat. L. i.
Additional evidence of the attendance of servants being usual at hunting expeditions, is afforded by the tale of Cephalus,
The hunting of the ancient Hebrews appears not to have differed materially from that of the Pagan world. “Canaan,” observes Wase, “was hemmed in with deserts: there was the great Lebanon, and there was Mizpeh, and Tabor, and other mountains which abounded with game; and in the royall age, I beleeve, hunting itself was much frequented; for though the sacred history do not ex professo take care to deliver us any thing concerning those lighter recreations, yet the frequent representations made by it throughout the writters of that age, do give some probability that it was a frequent object among them, and taken from the common use. David’s persecutions are sometimes likened to fowling, oftentimes to hunting: his enemies dig a pit for him, they set a snare to catch his feet. No authors of human learning, whose works yet survive, make so much mention of grins as the Psalmes have made: his enemies bend their bow, and make their arrows ready upon the string, to shoot at the righteous. This was Esau’s artillery. So that according to that age, limiting was so instituted; for our author, speaking of these two, intimates that they were courses of an elder date, for Ginns saith he,
He saith likewise for bows and arrows,
David’s enemies hide a net for him. ‘The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the way side; they have set grins for me.’ Neither was it unknown to the Jewish huntsmen the way of driving beasts, by an immission of fear, which is the formido et pinnatum,” &c. The biblical scholar will remember the memorable passage of the book of Job,Job c. xviii. “the steps of his strength shall be straitened, (Gr. hunted,) and his own counsel shall cast him down. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare. The gin shall take him by the heel, and the robber shall prevail against him (the entangling cord or noose holdeth him fast). The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way. Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.” In the prophet Isaiah almost all the methods of capture given in the Classic Cynegetica contribute their metaphorical signification.Isaiah c. xxiv. “Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare.” See also Jeremiah c. xlviii. and Ezekiel c. xix. the παγίδες θανάτου of the lxx. version of proverbs xxi. 1. may be compared to the “mortis laquei” of Horace, L. iii. od. xxiv. vs. 8. and to the “leti plagæ” of Statius Silv. V. i. vs. 155.
It is a curious fact, that in the Hebrew text of the Scriptures there is no allusion whatever to hunting with dogs. Nimrod is called in the Greek version γίγας κυνηγὸς, Genesis x. 9., and Esau ἄνθρωπος εἰδὼς κυνηγεῖν, genesis xxv. 27.; but in the Hebrew, there is no reference to the employment of the dog. TheBochart. Hierozoic. L. ii. c. lvi. canis lumbis tenuibus, quo ad venationem utuntur venatores, introduced by commentators, Proverbs xxx. 31., I believe to be a fanciful rabbinical creation. See a note on the subject in the prefatory matter to my translation of Arrian.
The exceptions to this geographical nomenclature are only four, viz. the Vertragus, otherwise called the Celtic or Gallic hound; the Metagon, a lime-hound; the Agassæus; and Petronius: the origin of which two latter names is uncertain. The sub-varieties of the Cretan, mentioned by Arrian and Julius Pollux, may also constitute exceptions to the general rule; but these, with the Menelaides and Harmodii, Castorii and Alopecides, must be considered as merging in the more general titles of Crete and Lacedæmon: and so likewise the porter and pastoral dogs, and others deriving their names from their vocations, in the topical appellatives of their respective countries.
With the aid of the poet I shall hereafter venture an opinion on the breed of some of the pack of the stag-like huntsman—the most celebrated of the trio—slain by command of Dian:Lucian. Deor. Dial. Juno et Latona. ἐπεὶ ἔμαθε ὀφθεῖσα ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀκταίωνος, φοβηθεῖσα μὴ ὁ νεανίσκος ἐξαγορεύσῃ τὸ αἶσχος αὐτῆς, ἐπαφῆκεν αὐτῷ τοὺς κύνας. See J. Sarisber. Policrat. L. i. c. iv. for the moral of this tale.
The μελιταῖα κυνίδια were so called, “quia ad fœminarum delicias ex Melito insulâ advehebantur:”—the “smalle ladyes popees that here awaye the flees” of Juliana Berners—“Instruments of folly to play and dally withal, in trifling away the treasure of time, to wythdrawe theyr mindes from more commendable exercises, and to content theyr corrupt concupiscences wyth vaine disport, a silly poore shift to shun theyr irkesome ydlenesse.”
A passage which Wase supposes to allude to the canis Gallicus of Arrian; whose impetuosity of course, and entire want of scent, his peculiar characteristics, resemble the heedless, rash, and head-strong ardour of the Gallic character in general, Antiq. Sept. et Celt. Keysler. s. ii. c. ii. 6.(Ælian. V. H. L. xii. c. 23.) and particularly of the Gallic soldiers of Lucan’s Pharsalia:
But an allusion to the war-dogs of Celtica, the “diversi Celtæ” of vs. 156. of the Cynegeticon, seems equally tenable. At the same time, it is not impossible but that both passages may refer to greyhounds, under the names of Galli and Celtæ.
In the muster-roll of Actæon’s pack by Gratius’s contemporary, amidst various sorts of hounds culled from various countries, the same characteristic distinctions predominate: we have a
The same threefold division runs through many of the modern semi-classical Cynegetica—being founded, as of course it is, in the essential qualities of the canine race:
Ulysses Aldrovandus, in the section of his elaborate work which treats of the canine race, uses the very words of Seneca before cited, to mark theDe Quad. Digit. Vivip. L. iii. “tres præcipuæ canibus venaticis proprietates—sagacitas, cursus, audacia.”
Painter’s Palace of Pleasure amusingly works out the points of resemblance in the field-array of an army and a hunt;—“... by the pursuite of Beastes, sleyghts of warre bee observed: The Houndes be the square battell, the Greyhoundes be the flanquarts and Wynges to follow the enimy, the horseman semeth to gieve the Chase, when the Game speedeth to covert, the Hornes be the Trumpets to sounde the Chase, and Retire, and for incouragement of the Dogges to run. To be short, it seemeth a very Campe in battayle, ordayned for the pleasure and passetyme of noble youth.”
This fragment, highly Gratian in its style and subject, but long mis-appropriated to Ovid on the erroneous authority of Pliny, (L. xxxii. c. 2.) is now considered, on the strength of internal evidence, by Vlitius and Wernsdorf to belong to Gratius.
Spirited representations of the different chases are given in Montfaucon’s Antiquities, Tom. iii. Liv. iii. from ancient gems, the Sepulchre of the Nasoni, Arch of Constantine, &c. See also the Venationes Ferarum of a later date by Strada and Galle, already referred to.
κύκλους, the rings of Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments, Book I. i. c. 1.
For further particulars, see Xen. de V. c. x. Oppian. Cyn. iii. vs. 379. Adrian. Venat. vs. 55. (Edit. Ald.) Natalis Comes de Ven. L. iii. v. 342. (Edit. Ald. F.) Cæsar. Borgiæ Ducis Epiced. per H. Strozam. P. A. Bargæi Cyneg. iv. p. 104. and Iac. Savary, Syothera L. i. A capital wood-cut of a boar bayed by ferocious hounds is given by I. A. Lonicer in his Venatus et Aucupium, Tab. Aper. and others in the Venationes Ferarum of Strada and Galle. See also the Mayster of Game; of the wylde boor, c. vii.
The reader will find descriptions of many of the different chases, for which I have no room here, in the Latin Cynegetica of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, cited under the boar-hunt of Calydon. For “the chiefe huntyng of the valiaunt Grekes and noble Romaynes,” see “The boke named The Governour, devised by Sir Thomas Elyot, Knyght.” B. i. c. xviii.
The lines of this animated picture, which describe, in the language of experience, the different degrees of restraint to be imposed on the Limiers, the Molossians, the Cretans, and Spartans, are here omitted: inasmuch as they will be more appropriately cited by us, when we come to speak of the family of limiers, the canes inductores of classical antiquity.
If the appropriation of the Oppianic portrait to the Vertragus of Arrian alone be deemed too scrupulously exclusive,—inasmuch as it leaves the Spartan hound of Xenophon undescribed by the Greek poet,—I will allow that preference of the Celtic type to all others may have influenced my decision; and am willing, with the reader’s approval, to admit the hound of Lacedæmon into a participation of the honour bestowed on the Vertragus.
In addition to this triple view, a farther distinction of the canine race is founded by Oppian on purity and commixture of blood. The mongrel or mixed breed is again divided into two varieties, the one constituted of dogs of different countries crossed with each other; the other of dogs crossed with various wild animals, θηρομιγῆ, as tigers, lions, wolves, and foxes;—whence in the opinion of the ancient cynegetical writers originated many varieties of hybrid races; which later experiments have proved to be founded in fable; with the exception of those produced between the wolf and dog, and the jackal and dog. It is not improbable that the latter hybrid production may have given rise to the fabled progeny of the dog and fox, the ἀλωπεκίδες of Xenophon; as the Canis aureus and common dog readily breed together; but we have no very well authenticated case of a litter from the Canis vulpes and dog—to which assumed cross, the attention of John Hunter, “magnus ille naturæ indagator,” had been directed before his death, but not advanced to actual experiment, as in the other crosses of the wolf and jackal with the domestic dog. Dr. Caius, it is true, speaks of theVenatio Novantiqua. vulpi-canine cross as an established one, “quasi protritum aliquid,” says Vlitius, “quod ego rumore tantùm,” continues the latter, “et vix ita compertum habeo,”—but of this, more anon.
Of these the most important are hereafter mentioned under the same or different names: The Παίονες, are Pannonians—the Αὐσόνιοι probably identical with the Tuscan—and those of the town of Tegea, (where Lucian. adversus Indoctum.Lucian tells us, the inhabitants exhibited the hide of the Calydonian boar—δείκνυσιν Τεγέαται τοῦ Καλυδωνίου τὸ δέρμα,) must of course be considered Arcadian sub-varieties. The rest are of the Molossian character. Instead of Ἐπειοὶ Bodin and Belin de Ballu read Ἀμοργοὶ; but of the hounds of Amorgos, one of the Cyclades, I know nothing.
Under the sanction of antiquity, and scarce inferior to the purest poet of the Augustan age, Ioannes Darcius comprehends under the terms Molossi and Lacones all dogs of chase;
Such was the Pard of Ercole Strozzi;