[Sidenote: Cowper’s Task. B. +vi.+]
harmony, and family accord, Were driven from Paradise;
and man’s subject creatures revolted from their revolted lord—
[Sidenote: Phil. de Animal. Propriet. vs. 8.]
καὶ θῆρες αἰδοῦς ἀγνοήσαντες νόμους, ὡς δυσμενῆ φεύγουσι τὸν πρὶν δεσπότην—
[Sidenote: Agrippa de Incert. et Van. Sc. et Art. c. +lxxii.+]
[Sidenote: De Invent. Rerum. L. +iii.+ c. +v.+]
[Sidenote: Euseb. de Præp. Evang. L. +i.+]
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:
[Sidenote: P. A. Bargæi de Aucupio L. +i.+ p. 13.]
Cœpêre in pecudes avidi sævire ferasque, Et nil tale priùs meritas captare volantes.
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:
[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +ii.+ 7.]
ἐπιδόρπιον εὕρατο θήρην.
[Sidenote: Tickell’s Miscellanies.]
Rude arts at first, but witty want refined The huntsman’s wiles, and famine form’d the mind.
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:
[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneget. vs. 2.]
priùs omnis in armis[294] Spes fuit, et nudâ silvas virtute movebant Inconsulti homines.
[Sidenote: Ovid. Metam. L. +iv.+ 699.]
[Sidenote: Xen. de Venat. c. +i.+]
[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +ii.+ 5.]
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 Perseus[295]—“Gorgonis anguicomæ Perseus superator”—(for I would not deprive Latona’s hunting-twins, Apollo and Diana, nor the worshipful race of Centaurs, φῦλα θηρομιγῆ,[296] of their priority of claim, and patent of precedency, in the apotheosis of the chase,) who, when he had performed this redoubted act of courage, as we are told by the poet of Anazarbus:
[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +ii.+ 10.]
ποδῶν κραιπνοῖσιν ἀειρόμενος πτερύγεσσι καὶ πτῶκας, καὶ θῶας ἐλάζυτο, καὶ γένος αἰγῶν ἀγροτέρων, δόρκους τε θοοὺς, ὀρύγων τε γένεθλα, ἠδ’ αὐτῶν ἐλάφων στικτῶν αἰπεινὰ κάρηνα.
[Sidenote: Bedingfield’s Education of Achilles.]
[Sidenote: Callimach. H. in Dian. 105.]
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.
[Sidenote: Lucretii L. +v.+ 964.]
Et manuum mirâ freti virtute pedumque Consectabantur sylvestria sæcla ferarum Missilibus saxis, et magno pondere clavæ: Multaque vincebant, vitabant pauca latebris.
[Sidenote: Somerville’s Chace. B. +i.+]
New and unpolish’d was the huntsman’s art; No stated rule, his wanton will his guide. With clubs and stones, rude implements of war, He arm’d his savage bands, a multitude Untrain’d; of twining osiers form’d, they pitch Their artless toils, then range the desert hills, And scow’r the plains below: the trembling herd Start at th’ unusual sound, and clam’rous shout Unheard before; surpriz’d, alas! to find Man now their foe, whom erst they deem’d their lord, But mild and gentle, and by whom as yet Secure they graz’d.
Acquiring knowledge by experience, man advanced in the mechanism and variety of his hunting gear, as in other articles of increasing civilization.
[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 5.]
Post aliâ propiore viâ, meliùsque profecti, Te sociam, ratio, rebus sumpsêre gerendis. Hinc omne auxilium vitæ, rectusque reluxit Ordo: et continuas didicêre ex artibus artes Proserere; hinc demens cecidit violentia retro.
[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. L. +iv.+ 100.]
Finding, on patient trial, the χάος εὐρὺ περιστεφὲς of Oppian, with its rude accompaniment of fire, &c. insufficient for capturing the more wary creatures—
[Sidenote: Lucretii L. +v.+ 1249.]
Nam foveâ atque igni prius est venarier ortum Quàm sepire plagis saltum, canibusque ciere;
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:
[Sidenote: Virgil. Georg. L. +i.+ 139.]
Tum laqueis captare feras, et fallere visco Inventum.
[Sidenote: Ejusdem 140.]
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 the Georgics—“magnos canibus circumdare saltus,”—redeeming thereby their esculent crops and innocuous herds from the ferocious and depredatory aggression of quadruped felons.[298]
[Sidenote: Sophoclis Antigone, 350.]
Κουφονέων τε φῦλον ὀρ- νίθων ἀμφιβαλὼν ἄγει, θηρίων τ’ ἀγρίων ἔθνη πόντου τ’ εἰναλίαν φύσιν σπείραισι δικτυοκλώστοις περιφραδὴς ἀνήρ· κρατεῖ δὲ μηχαναῖς ἀγραύλου θηρὸς ὀρεσσιβάτα.[299]
The “venandi mille viæ” of the Carthaginian poet have been superseded in the British islands by the superior attraction of the gun:
[Sidenote: Adriani Cardinalis Venatio.]
machinæ, Mirandæ, horrificæ, minacis, atræ, Qualem nec Steropes, nec ipse fertur Pater Lemnius inferis cavernis Informâsse Jovi, nec ulla in orbe Per tot secula cogitavit ætas;
[Sidenote: Certaine Illustrations, &c. p. 25.]
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—whatever 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:
[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 21.]
His ego præsidibus nostram defendere sortem Contra mille feras, et non sine carmine, nisus Carmine, et arma dabo venandi, et persequar artem Armorum, cassesque, plagarumque ordiar astus.
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]
[Sidenote: De Irâ L. +ii.+ c. +xii.+]
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_.”