The present version was completed before I was aware of any prior attempt to translate the Cynegeticus into English: the first notice of which, in the partial labours of Mr. Blane, was derived from Schneider’s annotations. I do not believe any other to exist in the English language, with the exception of such fragments of the treatise as may have been occasionally made to speak English, on the emergency of a periodical publication needing an article on Coursing; or a literary sportsman wishing to enliven his communications by a reference to the manual, and quoting it in his vernacular tongue.
Mr. Blane’s attempt did not extend apparently to the whole treatise. It is in parts inaccurately executed, and omits numerous sentences, where he professes to translate; and whole chapters in sequence, where we can see no reason for omission. The fourth, and ten following chapters to the fourteenth inclusive, and the twenty-third and twelve following chapters to the thirty-fifth inclusive, are entirely omitted by this capricious translator. Since, then, in a work consisting of only thirty-five chapters, he has, without assigning any cause, passed over twenty-four unnoticed, nearly all of them important to practical coursers, some evincing the kindly feelings of their author, (as for instance, the one containing the affectionate history of his beloved dog Hormé,) and others most honourable to his humanity, and confirmative of the purity of his religious faith, operative in a heathen breast, (as the two closing chapters, showing, amidst much fabulous allusion, his unreserved acknowledgment of human dependence on divine aid, and the certainty of evil and misfortune being consequent on irreligion and moral transgression,) I hope a complete translation of this ancient courser’s enchiridion will not be considered an useless undertaking.
[Illustration: ΚΥΘΝΙΩΝ]
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ARRIAN.
[Sidenote: Luciani Alexander seu Pseudomantis.]
Ἀνὴρ Ῥωμαίων ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις, καὶ παιδείᾳ παρ’ ὄλον τὸν βίον συγγενόμενος.
Mr. Addison has remarked, that “a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married, or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.” If, however, the satisfaction of perusing the Cynegeticus of Arrian be dependent on a previous acquaintance with these personal particulars of their author, I fear the modern reader will regret the insufficiency of the following biographical notice. Scanty as it is, it contains all the information I have been able to collect relative to the younger Xenophon.[27]
[Sidenote: Arriani Bithynica et Parthica apud Photii Eclogas.]
Flavius Arrianus[28] was a citizen both of Athens and Rome, of Grecian extraction, and born probably in the reign of Domitian, at Nicomedia, a celebrated city of Bithynia; where, according to Photius on the authority of our author’s “Bithynica,” a lost work on the subject of his native country, he was priest of Ceres and Proserpine, to whom the city of Nicomedia was sacred. His fondness for polite literature, and celebrity for philosophical knowledge, acquired him the honour of the twofold citizenship. But, though a friend and disciple of Epictetus, and the first recorder of his Stoical Apophthegms—φιλόσοφος μὲν ἐπιστήμην, εἷς τῶν ὁμιλητῶν Ἐπικτήτου, he appears, like the elder Xenophon, to have been much engaged in military affairs; and as Roman prefect of Cappadocia, in the reign of Hadrian, to have taken an active part in the war against the Alani and Massagetæ, a people bred to eternal warfare—
[Sidenote: Lucan. Pharsal. L. +viii.+]
duros æterni Martis Alanos.
[Sidenote: Dion. Cassii Hist. Roman. L. +lxix.+]
It is related by Dion Cassius, and the epitomizer Xiphilin, that the Scythian barbarians under Pharasmanes having committed great havock and spoil in Media, (A.D. 136.) had begun to threaten Armenia and Cappadocia; but finding Flavius Arrianus, the prefect of the latter province, better prepared for their reception than they had anticipated, they were induced, partly by the bribes of Vologæsus, and partly through fear of the governor, to retire from the territory under his jurisdiction.
Suidas, on the authority of Heliconius, states that Arrian was advanced to the senatorial and consular dignities, and that he was denominated “the second Xenophon” from the sweetness of his literary style. And Photius also, in his “Eclogæ,” speaking of our author’s “Parthica” observes, ἐπωνόμαζον αὐτὸν Ξενοφῶντα νέον· διὰ δὲ τὸ παιδείας ἐπίσημον, ἄλλας τε πολιτικὰς ἀρχὰς ἐπιστεύθη, καὶ εἰς τὸ τῶν ὑπάτων ἀνέβη τέλος: and again he adds, δῆλον δὲ ὡς οὐδὲ ῥητορικῆς σοφίας τε καὶ δυνάμεως ἀπελείπετο.
Like his namesake, as I have remarked, he united the character of a man of letters with that of a warrior, dedicating a great portion of his time to philosophical and historical research. But it is not my intention to enlarge on his literary character in general, nor to enter in detail into the merits of his several compositions.
His principal historical work, “The Anabasis of Alexander, though composed,” says Dr. Robertson, “long after Greece had lost its liberty, and in an age when genius and taste were on the decline, is not unworthy the purest times of Attic literature.” And his “Indian history is one of the most curious treatises transmitted to us from antiquity.” The latter may be considered an episode to the former. It is partly historical and partly geographical, and will be found to contain a fund of entertainment.
On the model of the Socratic Xenophon, he committed to writing the dictates of Epictetus, during the philosopher’s lifetime, and published them as his dissertations:—[29]subsequently compiling his Enchiridion or manual—a brief compendium of all the principles of his master, and acknowledged to be one of the most valuable and beautiful pieces of morality extant.
His Periplus of the Euxine, in the form of a letter from its author to the Emperor, contains an accurate topographical survey of the coast of that sea,
[Sidenote: Oppian. Halieut. +i.+ vs. 600.]
πάσης γλυκερώτερος ἀμφιτρίτης κόλπος,
[Sidenote: Eutropii L. +viii.+]
from the commencement of his voyage at Trapezus, within his own prefecture of Cappadocia, to its completion at Byzantium; and was written probably while he held his office of command in the province, a short time before the breaking out of the war against the Alani. Many learned men, as Ramusius, Ortelius, and others, have doubted whether he wrote the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, which sometimes passes under his name; indeed the late Dean of Westminster says positively “it is not the work of Arrian of Nicomedia:” but his claim to the Circumnavigation of the Euxine has never been disputed. It was compiled expressly for the Emperor; who, according to Spartian and Dion Cassius, was particularly attached to geographical research, and had visited in person a large portion of his extensive dominions—“orbem Romanorum circumivit.” The elder Xenophon is spoken of, sub initio, by our scientific geographer, in the same relative terms, as in the Cynegeticus, ὡς λέγει ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἐκεῖνος, and it is fair to infer that the Periplus and Cynegeticus are the works of the same individual.
[Sidenote: Arriani Tactica. Sub fine.]
In his Tactics, written, as he states himself, in the 20th year of the reign of Hadrian, there is a brief account of former writers on this subject, and a description of the order and arrangement of an army in general: but in the “Acies contra Alanos,” a short and imperfect fragment annexed thereto, the particular instructions,[30] which were delivered by him as general, for the march of the Roman army against the northern barbarians, are minutely given.
[Sidenote: Photii Eclogæ de Rebus post Alexandr. gestis.]
Fragments of other historical works, supposed to have been written by him, are preserved by the learned and indefatigable patriarch of Constantinople—“The History of Events subsequent to Alexander’s Death, in 10 books,” “The Parthica, in 17 books,” and “Bithynica, in 8 books.” Under the review of the first of which works, the Byzantine has left us his opinion of Arrian as an historiographer, and of the style of his compositions: ἀνὴρ οὐδενὸς τῶν ἄριστα συνταξαμένων ἱστορίας δεύτερος, κ. τ. λ.
[Sidenote: Eutropii L. +viii.+]
Of the Libellus de Venatione, the treatise on Coursing, I have already made mention; and shall merely add, what is in some degree pertinent to the subject, that there seems to have been a strong similarity of taste between Hadrian and our author. The Emperor, like his prefect, was not only intimately conversant with Greek and Latin literature, “facundissimus Latino sermone, Græco eruditissimus,” but also passionately fond of the chase. While living in his native town of Italica in Spain, Spartian tells us, he bore the title of Græculus, and was, at the same time, “venandi usque ad reprehensionem studiosus—equos et canes sic amavit, ut eis sepulchra constitueret.” To such a height did he carry this regard, that, according to Xiphilin, he graced a monument to the memory of his beloved hunter Borysthenes, with an inscription written by his own pen: