Chapter XI: Part 11

Vestiges of the Celtic ceremonies of Agrotera seem to have been extant, under a peculiar modification, in London, within a period not very remote. That Dian’s worship was not confined to continental Europe, but extended, as already noticed in note 1. (_sub fine_) of this chapter, to the insular Britons, is an historical fact, confirmed, according to the learned and ingenious Mr. Douce, by the remains of such animals as were used in her sacrifices, and also by her own images found on rebuilding St. Paul’s Cathedral—on the site of which, Dr. Woodward very plausibly inferred, a Roman temple of the pagan goddess once stood. “It cannot be controverted,” continues the first-cited able antiquary, “that Diana was reverenced in this country long after the introduction of Christianity, when we find from the testimony of Richard Sporling, a monk of Westminster in 1450, and a diligent collector of ancient materials, that during the persecution of Diocletian the inhabitants of London sacrificed to Diana, whilst those of Thorney, now Westminster, were offering incense to Apollo. Sir W. Dugdale records that a commutation grant was made in the reign of Edward I. by Sir William Le Baud, to the dean and canons of St. Paul, of a doe in winter on the day of the Saint’s conversion, and of a fat buck in summer on that of his commemoration, to be offered at the high altar, and distributed among the canons. To this ceremony Erasmus has alluded in his book _De Ratione Concionandi_, when he describes the custom which the Londoners had of going in procession to St. Paul’s Cathedral with a deer’s head fixed upon a spear, accompanied with men blowing hunting-horns. Mr. Strype, likewise, in his Ecclesiastical Memorials, Vol. +iii.+ p. 378. has preserved a notice of the custom as practised in Queen Mary’s time, with this addition, that the priest of every parish in the city, arrayed in his cope, and the bishop of London in his mitre, assisted on the occasion. Camden had likewise seen it when a boy, and had heard that the canons of the Cathedral attended in their sacred vestments, wearing garlands of flowers on their heads.”

[257] We cannot but admire the fine feelings of piety, and conscious dependence on an over-ruling Providence, which pervade the closing chapters of the Cynegeticus.

[Sidenote: Lucretii L. +i.+ 62.]

[Sidenote: Hist. Natur. L. +ii.+ c. +vii.+]

Many splendid passages might be selected from the classical writings of Greece and Rome, demonstrative of the fact that, however darkened by mythological allusions, the most enlightened heathens supported a conviction of the affairs of this lower world being under the guidance of a Supreme Intelligence, and of man himself being utterly weak and destitute when unsupported by the aid and influence of Heaven. This feeling is strongly manifested in the works of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Orpheus, Phocylides, and a host of others among the Greeks: and notwithstanding the mischievous attempt of the philosophy of Epicurus to eradicate from the Roman mind all sense of dependency on Heaven, (as if the Divine Essence, in relation to human conduct, “nec benè promeritis capitur, nec tangitur irâ,”) the works of Virgil, Horace, and Claudian afford splendid examples of the important truth that the natural aspirations of poetry tend to the honour of the Gods, and that when rightfully employed, the genius of man is ever directed to the advancement of religion and morality. It is unnecessary to refer to the innumerable passages illustrative of the creed of ancient philosophers, contained in their works; let it suffice that Pliny, in speaking of the unity of the Deity, gives the reason why men commonly spoke of more than one God: “Fragilis et laboriosa mortalitas in partes ista digessit, infirmitatis suæ memor; ut portionibus quisque coleret, quo maximè indigeret,” &c. The catalogue of subordinate deities, enumerated by our author as directing the affairs, destinies, and pursuits of mankind, merged with him in the belief of one Supreme Intelligence, of which these subaltern deities were the several attributes and manifestations, in the government of the universe and its constituent parts. According to Hermesianax,

Πλούτων, Περσεφόνη, Δημήτηρ, Κύπρις, Ἔρωτες,
Τρίτωνες, Νηρεὺς, Τηθὺς, καὶ Κυανοχαίτης,
Ἑρμῆς τ’, Ἥφαιστός τε κλυτὸς, Πὰν, Ζεύς τε, καὶ Ἥρη,
Ἄρτεμις, ἠδ’ Ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων, εἷς θεός ἐστι:

an opinion which was general with the superior philosophers of Greece and Rome, in opposition to the polytheistic notions of their inferiors, who, while worshipping the “portiones” of Pliny, violated most grossly the unity of the Εἷς Θεὸς of philosophy;—the understandings of the former being too strong (as Sir W. Jones has remarked in the argument of his Hymn to Surya) to admit the popular belief, but their influence too weak to reform it, and establish in its place, in the public mind at large, the supreme unity of the Deity—

[Sidenote: Hor. Carm. L. +iii.+ od. +iv.+]

Qui terram inertem, qui mare temperat
Ventorum, et urbes, regnaque tristia,
Divosque, mortalesque turmas
Imperio regit unus æquo.

For further notice of this subject, the reader is referred to Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. 17., a Greek philosopher of the second century, contemporary, I believe, with Arrian.

[258]

[Sidenote: Homer. Odyss. L. +iii.+ 48.]

Οὐδὲν ἄνευ θεῶν γιγνόμενον ἀνθρώποις ἐς ἀγαθὸν ἀποτελευτᾷ. To this we may cite many parallel passages: πάντες δὲ θεῶν χατέουσ’ ἄνθρωποι, says the son of Nestor to the divine attendant of Telemachus. Hesiod begins and ends his poem of the Works and Days with inculcating piety towards the Gods; the only way to please whom and to be happy, he says, is to be religious and strictly moral—

[Sidenote: Opera et Dies vs. 706. Vide Dies vs. 826.]

εὖ δ’ ὄπιν ἀθανάτων μακάρων πεφυλαγμένος εἶναι.

Nor are the passages, recommendatory of due reverence of the Gods, less numerous in the lyric and tragic poets of Greece, than in her heroic poets:

[Sidenote: Pindar Pyth. L. +i.+ 79.]

ἐκ θεῶν γὰρ μαχαναὶ πᾶ-
σαι βροτέαις ἀρεταῖς
καὶ σοφοὶ καὶ χερσὶ βια-
ταὶ περίγλωσσοί τ’ ἔφυν.

See also the sublime supplication of Hecuba in the Troades of Euripides, vs. 884.

The hymn of Cleanthes,

οὐδέ τι γίγνεται ἔργον ἐπὶ χθονὶ σοῦ δίχα, δαῖμον,
οὔτε κατ’ αἰθέριον θεῖον πόλον, οὐτ’ ἐνὶ πόντῳ, κ. τ. λ.

is considered the forgery of a later age. Not so, however, the beautiful truths of the Greek poet of the Halieutics:

[Sidenote: Oppian. Halieutic. L. +ii.+ 4.]

τί γὰρ μερόπεσσιν ἀνυστὸν
νόσφι θεῶν; οὐδ’ ὅσσον ὑπ’ ἐκ ποδὸς ἴχνος ἀεῖραι,
οὐδ’ ὅσον ἀμπετάσαι βλεφάρων περιφαέα κύκλα.
ἀλλ’ αὐτοὶ κρατέουσι καὶ ἰθύνουσιν ἕκαστα,
τηλόθεν ἐγγὺς ἐόντες, ἀναγκαίη δ’ ἀτίνακτος
πείθεσθαι, κ. τ. λ.

[259]

[Sidenote: L. +i.+ vs. 359. and vs. 1186.]

[Sidenote: Pope’s Odyss. B. +ii.+ 471.]

Ὅσοι ναυτίλλονται, ἀπὸ θεῶν ἄρχονται. The sea-deities were numerous, and of various gradations. Spence arranges them in six classes. See Milton’s invocation of Sabrina, in his Comus, vs. 867. for the names of many of these _Dii Marini_. Arrian mentions only Neptune, his Queen, and the Nereids—lords of the mediterranean or inland seas: superior to whom were Oceanus, “Pater rerum,” and Tethys. Moreover, it appears from Apollonius Rhodius, that Apollo, for particular reasons, (αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐπαίτιος ἔπλευ ἀέθλων, says Jason, addressing πατρώϊον Ἀπόλλωνα,) was worshipped, under the name of Ἐμβασίος, by the Argonauts at the time of their embarkation, and under that of Ἐκβασίος at disembarking. See also Homer. Odyss. +ii.+ 430. where Telemachus pours forth “the holy goblet to the powers divine,” but principally invokes, for a specific reason, “the blue-eyed progeny of Jove.”

[260] Ἀνασωθέντες χαριστήρια θύουσιν,

[Sidenote: Virg. Georg. L. +i.+ 436.]

Votaque servati solvent in littore nautæ, &c.

and again, Æneid. +xii.+ 766.

Servati ex undis ubi figere dona solebant
Laurenti divo, et votas suspendere vestes.

Several votive monuments are engraven in Père Montfaucon’s Antiq. Expliq. Tom. +ii.+ with inscriptions, SALVOS IRE, SALVOS REDIRE, &c.: and Pitiscus (Lexic. Antiq. Rom. V. +ii.+ p. 164.) has others, NEPTUNO REDUC. SACRUM, &c.

See the indications of the _Dii Marini_ appearing in dreams to sea-faring people, in Artemidorus, L. +ii.+ 38.

[261] Ὅσοι τὴν γῆν ἐργάζονται. Every art and science had, in classic mythology, its divine guardian, from whom it first emanated, and by whose liberal condescension mankind were instructed in the rudiments of their several callings:

[Sidenote: Oppian. Hal. L. +ii.+ 15.]

κεῖνοι καὶ τέχνας πολυκερδέας ἀνθρώποισιν
δῶκαν ἔχειν, καὶ πᾶσαν ἐπιφροσόνην ἐνεήκαν.
ἄλλος δ’ ἀλλοίοισιν ἐπώνυμος ἔπλετο δαίμων
ἔργοις, οἷσιν ἕκαστος ἐπίσκοπον ᾔρατο τιμήν.

The tutelar deities of husbandmen were Ceres, Proserpine, and Bacchus. Hence, in the beginning of the first Georgic, amongst the “agrestum præsentia numina,” Virgil invokes conjointly “Liber et alma Ceres;” and Pindar designates Bacchus,

[Sidenote: Isthm. L. +vii.+ 3.]

χαλκοκρότου πάρεδρον
Δαμάτερος.

[Sidenote: Artemidor. Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. 39.]

Δημήτηρ δὲ καὶ Κόρη, καὶ ὁ λεγόμενος Ἴακχος, says the Ephesian visionary, γεωργοῖς καὶ τοῖς κτήσασθαι γῆν προῃρημένοις ἀγαθαί. The department of rural economy under the tutelage of Ceres is succinctly stated by Oppian in the second book of his Halieutics:

[Sidenote: Oppian. Hal. L. +ii.+ 19.]

Δηὼ μὲν ζεύγλης τε βοῶν, ἀρότοιο τε γαίης
πυρῶν τ’ εὐκάρποιο φέρει γέρας ἀμήτοιο.

The connexion of Proserpine with husbandry is not so clear; but as Nicomedia, our author’s native city, was sacred both to the mother and daughter, and he held the office of priest in the temple of the latter, we may suppose him fully acquainted with all her tutelary distinctions, of which the patronage of agriculture seems to have been one.

[Sidenote: Artemidor. Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. 37.]

[Sidenote: Georgic. L. +i.+ 21.]

Bacchus’s presidency was principally confined, in his character of _Vitisator_, to the culture of vineyards: Διόνυσος τοῖς γεωργοῖς συμφέρει τοῖς τὸν ξυλικὸν καρπὸν γεωργοῦσι, μάλιστα ἀμπέλους. To the three deities of Arrian here mentioned, Virgil subjoins others, “studium quibus arva tueri,” whom the philosophic courser allows to extend their fostering care to venation—at least some of them, as Pan, the Nymphs, &c.

[262]

[Sidenote: c. +xxxvi.+]

[Sidenote: Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. 35.]

[Sidenote: Ejusdem c. 37.]

Οἱ δὲ ἀμφὶ τὰς τέχνας πονούμενοι. The different bodies or colleges of artificers had their particular tutelary deities. Pausanias in Arcadicis mentions a temple of Minerva Machinatrix: ἔστι δὲ Ἀθηνᾶς ἱερὸν ἐπίκλησιν Μαχανίτιδος, ὅτι βουλευμάτων ἐστὶν ἡ θεὸς παντοίων καὶ ἐπιτεχνημάτων εὑρέτις. The connexion of Minerva and Vulcan with handicrafts is noted by Artemidorus: Ἀθηνᾶ χειροτέχναις ἀγαθὴ διὰ τὴν προσηγορίαν, Ἐργάνη καλεῖται γάρ——Ἥφαιστος ... χειρώναξι ἀγαθὸς πᾶσι:—and by Oppian:

[Sidenote: Halieut. L. +ii.+ 21.]

δοῦρα δὲ τεκτῄνασθαι, ἀναστῆσαί τε μέλαθρα,
φάρεά τ’ ἀσκῆσαι μήλων εὐανθέϊ καρπῷ
Παλλὰς ἐπιχθονίους ἐδιδάξατο.
——Ἡφαίστῳ δὲ μέλει ῥαιστήριος ἱδρώς.

[Sidenote: Lucian. Deor. Dial. Juno et Latona.]

Juno tells Latona that Vulcan’s skill as an artificer, is a counterpoise to his claudicant deformity: ἀλλ’ οὗτος μὲν ὁ χωλὸς, ὅμως χρήσιμός γε ἐστὶ, τεχνίτης ὢν ἄριστος, κ. τ. λ.

[263] Οἱ ἀμφὶ παίδευσιν. Instructors—those engaged in education—the μουσοπόλων ἔργων ἐπίσκοποι of the Cilician poet.

[264] Μούσαις. The Muses were thought to preside over the different departments of science, poetry, vocal and instrumental music, and the fine arts generally.

[Sidenote: Hesiod. D. G. 94.]

ἐκ γὰρ Μουσάων καὶ ἐκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος
ἀνδρὲς ἀοιδοὶ ἔασιν ἐπὶ χθόνα καὶ κιθαρισταί.

[265] Ἀπόλλωνι Μουσηγέτῃ. When the gods attended the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis on Mount Pelion, Apollo led “the tuneful choir” in the character of Musagetes:

[Sidenote: Coluthi Rapt. Helen. vs. 23.]

ἐκ δὲ μελισσήεντος ἀπεσσυμένων Ἑλικῶνος
Μουσάων λιγύφωνον ἄγων χορὸν ἦλθεν Ἀπόλλων.

Representations of Apollo in the character of Musagetes or Lyristes, from the Justinian gallery, are given by Père Montfaucon in the first volume of his Antiquities; by Spence, in his Polymetis, Pl. +xiii.+ f. +i.+ +ii.+; and by Visconti, in the Clementine Museum, Vol. +i.+

[Sidenote: Ausonii Musarum Inventa. Idyll. +xx.+]

Mentis Apollineæ vis has movet undique Musas.
In medio residens amplectitur omnia Phœbus.

[Sidenote: Artemidori Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. 35.]

Ἀπόλλων μουσικοῖς ἀγαθὸς, says the Ephesian, λόγων γὰρ εὑρετὴς ὁ θεὸς καὶ μουσικῆς πάσης. In which character the Roman poets of the Augustan age have decked him out to the life. See Ovid’s

[Sidenote: Metam. L. +xi.+ 165.]

Ille caput flavum lauro Parnasside vinctus—
Verrit humum Tyrio saturatâ murice pallâ, &c.

[266] Μνήμοσυνῃ. This goddess is celebrated by Hesiod, in his Theogony, as the mother of the Muses:

[Sidenote: D. G. vs. 915.]

ἐκ ἧς αἱ Μοῦσαι χρυσάμπυκες ἐξεγένοντο
ἐννέα, τῇσιν ἅδον θαλίαι, καὶ τέρψις ἀοιδῆς.

So Akenside, in The Pleasures of Imagination:

[Sidenote: Book +iii.+]

Ye beauteous offspring of Olympian Jove
And Memory divine, Pierian maids.

That this mythology is judicious, has been remarked by Plutarch in his rules for the education of children; since nothing so much cherishes learning as memory. There is a statue of Mnemosyne in the Clementine Museum of Visconti, Vol. +i.+

[267] Ἑρμῇ. Mercury is here introduced in one of his most creditable capacities, as the author of letters, and the god of orators and eloquence:

[Sidenote: Francis’s Horace. B. +i.+ Od. +x.+]

The god of wit, from Atlas sprung,
Who by persuasive power of tongue
And graceful exercise refined
The savage race of human kind!

[Sidenote: Artemidori Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. 37.]

Ἑρμῆς ἀγαθὸς τοῖς ἐπὶ λόγους ὁρμωμένοις, καὶ ἀθληταῖς, καὶ παιδοτρίβαις, κ. τ. λ.

[268] Οἱ δὲ ἀμφὶ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ Ἀφροδίτῃ. In the Rape of Helen, Venus is called Ἁρμονίης βασίλεια, (v. 26.) θαλάμων βασίλεια, (v. 137.) and γάμων βασίλεια, (v. 306.) queen of marriage. And to the same purport is the description of Nemesian:

[Sidenote: Bucol. Eclog. L. +ii.+ 57.]

cui cura jugales
Concubitus hominum totis connectere sêclis.

[Sidenote: Artemidori Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. 37.]

μάλιστα δὲ ἀγαθὴ περὶ γάμους καὶ κοινωνίας, καὶ περὶ τέκνων γονὰς, says the dream-interpreter, of the goddess of love, συνδέσμων γὰρ καὶ ἐπιγόνων ἐστὶν αἰτία. The reader will remember her angry speech (tangit et ira Deos) in the prologue of the Hippolytus,

τοὺς μὲν σέβοντας τἀμὰ πρεσβεύω κράτη,
σφάλλω δ’ ὅσοι φρονοῦσιν εἰς ἡμᾶς μέγα, κ. τ. λ.

and her vengeful and infuriate character, as drawn by Apollonius Rhodius in reference to the Lemnians:

[Sidenote: Argonaut. L. +i.+ 615.]

οὕνεκά μιν γεράων ἐπιδηρὸν ἄτισσαν.

and amplified by Valerius Flaccus, L. +ii.+ vs. 29.

[269] Ἔρωτι. Venus confesses that she has little power without the aid of her favourite son Cupid:

[Sidenote: Æneid. L. +i.+ 668.]

Nate, meæ vires, mea magna potentia, &c.
Ad te confugio, et supplex tua numina posco.

She is accompanied by him and Ἵμερος (whom the Grecian mythologists seem to have distinguished from Ἔρως) in the Theogony of Hesiod.

[Sidenote: D. G. vs. 201.]

τῇ δ’ Ἔρος ὡμάρτησε, καὶ Ἵμερος ἕσπετο καλός.

The Odes of Anacreon afford many graphic sketches of the mischievous little god:

[Sidenote: Od. +iii.+ vs. 17.]

φέροντα τόξον,
πτέρυγάς τε καὶ φαρέτρην.

[270] Πειθοῖ. Suada or Suadela—the goddess of persuasion—_nuptiarum conciliatrix_. In the temple of Jupiter at Olympia, as described by Pausanias, Cupid is seen receiving Venus rising out of the sea, and the goddess Πειθὼ placing a crown on her head: and so in the Rape of Helen, she is the bearer of the bridal chaplet:

[Sidenote: Coluthi R. H. vs. 28.]

καὶ στέφος ἀσκήσασα γαμήλιον ἤλυθε Πειθὼ,
τοξευτῆρος Ἔρωτος ἐλαφρίζουσα φαρέτρην.

[Sidenote: Epod. L. +i.+ Od. +vi.+]

[Sidenote: Oneirocrit. L. +ii.+ c. 37.]

Horace unites Suadela and Venus in the attractions of “the well-bemoney’d swain”—“benè-nummatum decorat Suadela Venusque.” And Artemidorus says her appearance is ominous of good to all persons, and on all occasions; Πειθὼ δὲ καὶ Χάριτες, καὶ Ὧραι, καὶ Νύμφαι πρὸς πάντα καὶ πᾶσιν εἰσὶν ἀγαθαί.

[271] Χάρισιν. The Graces of Heathen mythology were ladies of great influence: simplicity of manners, gracefulness of deportment, gaiety of disposition, liberality, eloquence, and wisdom, were all derived from them:

[Sidenote: Pindar. Olymp. L. +xiv.+ 6.]

σὺν γὰρ ὑμῖν τὰ τερπνὰ καὶ τὰ γλυκέα
γίνεται πάντα βροτοῖς·
εἰ σοφὸς, εἰ καλὸς, εἴ τις ἀγλαὸς
ἀνήρ.

[Sidenote: Hesiodi D. G. vs. 64.]

In the Theogony they “keep their court with the God of Love,” and revel in banquets; and in Horace’s supplicatory Ode to Venus, they are associated with the “Regina Cnidi Paphique,” Cupid, the Nymphs, Hebe, and Mercury:

[Sidenote: Carm. L. +i.+ Od. 31. vs. 5.]

Fervidus tecum puer, et solutis
Gratiæ zonis, properentque Nymphæ,
Et parùm comis sine te Juventas,
Mercuriusque.

[272]

[Sidenote: De Venat. c. +vi.+]

[Sidenote: Ἱερακοσόφιον. p. 21.]

Τοὺς ἐπὶ θήρᾳ ἐσπουδακότας οὐ χρὴ ἀμελεῖν τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος τῆς Ἀγροτέρας. Xenophon was equally strict in his religious observances towards the rural deities, bidding the sportsman, before he slip a single hound, to vow a participation of the game to Apollo and Diana Agrotera. See Pitisci Lexicon Antiquit. Roman. and Apul. Met. +vi.+ p. 175. The falconer of Demetrius, in later days, offered his morning adoration to the God of heaven before sun-rise, and then flew his hawk at the quarry: τὸν θεὸν ἐπικαλεσάμενος τῇ θήρᾳ εὐμενῶς συλλήψοιτο, κ. τ. λ.

Following his Classic prototypes, Adrian de Castello makes the cardinal hunter supplicate the Sylvan goddess:

[Sidenote: Adriani Venatio apud poetas tres Aldi.]

Volans Ascanius levi veredo
Precatus Triviæ perenne numen,
Invadit jaculo, diuque librans
Jecit eminùs, &c.

as a necessary preliminary to the slaughter of a stag, bayed by the hounds.

[273]

[Sidenote: Xenophon. De Venat. c. +i.+]

[Sidenote: See the Museo Chiaramonti of Visconti and Guattani. T. +xviii.+]

Ἀπόλλωνος. Apollo shared with Diana the institution of hunting: Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ Ἀρτεμίδος ἄγραι καὶ κύνες. Whence, with his twin-sister, he is seen on antique relievos with dogs and other emblems of the chase. In his character of Venator, Apollo is described by Maximus Tyrius as a youth armed with a bow, his naked side appearing beneath a chlamys, and his feet raised in the act of running:

[Sidenote: Virgil. Æneid. L. +iv.+ 143.]

Qualis ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta
Deserit, ac Delum maternam invisit Apollo,
Instauratque choros, mixtique altaria circum
Cretesque Dryopesque fremunt pictique Agathyrsi;
Ipse jugis Cynthi graditur, mollique fluentem
Fronde premit crinem fingens, atque implicat auro;
Tela sonant humeris.

[Sidenote: Statii Achil. L. +i.+ 167.]

[Sidenote: Lucian. Deor. Dial. Juno et Latona.]

[Sidenote: Tibull. L. +iii.+ El. +iv.+ 34.]

The reader is of course familiar with the Apollo of the Belvedere—the Venator of Statuaries—“Venator Apollo:” but perhaps not so well acquainted with the Wilton effigy of him, exhibiting in a small compass all the symbols which characterise his presidency over poetry, music, divination, or more probably medicine, and the chase—(προσποιεῖται μὲν πάντα εἰδέναι, καὶ τοξεύειν, καὶ κιθαρίζειν, καὶ ἰατρὸς εἶναι, καὶ μαντεύεσθαι)—in three of which attributes he is cited by our author in the present Chapter. The attitude of the god is easy and graceful; he appears to lean against one of the horns of his lyre, placed on a tripod, around which a serpent twines. Over his right shoulder is seen his quiver, and his head is decorated with a laurel crown—“castâ redimitus tempora lauro:” the chlamys of the Venator is thrown off, exposing the belt beneath, and the former with its gem is placed on some fit receptacle beside the right leg.

[274]

[Sidenote: De Augment. Scient. L. +ii.+]

[Sidenote: Virg. Eclog. L. +ii.+ 33.]

Πανός. “Officium Panis nullâ alia re,” says Lord Bacon, “tam ad vivum proponi atque explicari potuerit, quàm quòd Deus Venatorum est,” &c. He was the god of the shepherds as well as hunters, the leader of the Nymphs as Apollo was of the Muses, the patron of rural life, and president of the mountains. Happy the man, exclaims the poet of the Georgics in his eulogy of country life, who numbers the rustic deities, and Pan amongst the rest, in the catalogue of his acquaintance:

[Sidenote: Virg. Georg. L. +ii.+ 494.]

deos qui novit agrestes,
Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!

The most graphic description of the goatish god I have any where seen is in the 13th book of Silius Italicus:

pendenti similis Pan semper, et uno
Vix ulla inscribens terræ vestigia cornu, &c. &c.

[Sidenote: Deorum Concilium.]

But as this has been cited at length by Spence in his Polymetis, a book of easy reference, I decline introducing it here—wishing, as much as possible, to present my readers with passages omitted by this celebrated scholar. Let Lucian’s more brief delineation be substituted: ὁ μὲν κέρατα ἔχων, καὶ ὅσον ἐξ ἡμισείας ἐς τὸ κάτω αἰγὶ ἐοικὼς, καὶ γένειον βαθὺ καθειμένος, ὀλίγον τράγου διαφέρων ἐστίν.

[275] Νυμφῶν. Beger’s list of these ladies does not much exceed one hundred in number, although it is said that Diana had above a thousand in her retinue. We may suppose those principally interested in Cynegetical pursuits to have been the _Oreades_, nymphs of the mountains; the νύμφαι Ὀρεστιάδες of Homer (Iliad. +vi.+ 421.) the Ὀρείπλαγκτοι of Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusæ); the _Napææ_, nymphs of the meadows, (of whom Virgil, “faciles venerare Napæas,”) and the _Dryades_ and _Hamadryades_, nymphs of the woods, the φιλορνίθων Δρυάδων χορὸς of Oppian (Cyneg. +i.+ vs. 78.) see claudian. de laudib. stilic. l. +iii.+ for a description of the “acies formosa Dianæ,” and the Epicedium of Hercules Stroza; in which latter the names of many of these inferior Sylvan deities, “turbæ nemoralis,” are registered in chaste hexameters, addressed to the Duchess of Ferrara. Sometimes the Naiads also accompanied the land-nymphs in their hunting pranks:

[Sidenote: Valer. Flacci Argon. L. +iii.+ 530.]

pulchro venantes agmine Nymphas,
Undarum, nemorumque decus, &c.

[Sidenote: Tempest, Act +v.+ sc. +i.+]

Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves.

[276]

[Sidenote: De bello Gallico L. +v.+ c. 17.]

[Sidenote: Lexicon Antiq. V. +ii.+ 186.]

Ἑρμοῦ Ἐνοδίου καὶ Ἡγεμονίου. “Deum maximè Mercurium colunt,” says Cæsar of the Gauls or Celts: “hujus sunt plurima simulacra; hunc omnium inventorem artium ferunt; _hunc viarum atque itinerum ducem_; hunc ad quæstus pecuniæ mercaturasque habere vim maximam arbitrantur.” Being the god of every species of gain, and the dog being sacred to him, we have additional reasons for the injunction of the text. He was called Ἐνόδιος or “vialis” according to Pitiscus, “qui viarum præses, in biviis, et compitis ponebatur ad semitas monstrandas:” in which capacity his statues are, what are commonly called Terminal,—that seemingly imperfect, ugly, awkward-looking shape, to which a worthless Roman nobleman, Rubellius Plancus, is assimilated by the satirist of Aquinum;

[Sidenote: Juvenal. Sat. +viii.+ 52.]

at tu
Nil nisi Cecropides, truncoque simillimus Hermæ.
Nullo quippe alio vincis discrimine, quàm quòd
Illi marmoreum caput est, tua vivit imago.

A Greek medal is extant of Arrian’s native city, of the reign of Antoninus Pius, bearing the impress of the god Terminus. See Nummophylacium Reginæ Christinæ, Tab. +lvii.+

The old herdsman of Theocritus, with the title εἰνόδιος, affords the reason of its use:

[Sidenote: Idyll. +xxv.+ 3.]

ἔκ τοι ξεῖνε πρόφρων μυθήσομαι ὅσσ’ ἐρεείνεις,
Ἑρμέω ἁζόμενος δεινὴν ὄπιν εἰνοδίοιο.
τὸν γὰρ φασὶ μέγιστον ἐπουρανίων κεχολῶσθαι,
εἴ κεν ὁδοῦ ζαχρεῖον ἀνῄνηταί τις ὁδίτην.

See Eustathius ad Homeri Odyss. +xvi.+ and Ouzelius ad M. Minuc. Felic. Octavium, p. 109.

In his character of guide or conductor, (Ἡγεμόνιος,) amongst many others, the wily god volunteers his services to Cario, in the Plutus of Aristophanes:

[Sidenote: Act. +v.+ sc. +i.+]

ΕΡ. ἀλλ’ ἡγεμόνιον. ΚΑ. ἀλλ’ ὁ θεὸς ἤδη βλέπει.
ὥσθ’ ἡγεμόνος οὐδὲν δεησόμεσθ’ ἔτι.

Though the messenger of the gods, and supremely Διὸς ἄγγελος, he seems to have been a willing itinerant on earth (ὁδοιπόρος) in the cause of humanity. See Iliad +xxiv.+

Guard of our life, and partner of our way!

[277] Ὅσοι ἄλλοι ὄρειοι θεοί. Almost every mountain had its tutelar deity; but Arrian probably here means the rural deities hitherto unnamed, as Sylvanus, Silenus, Priapus, Aristæus, the Fauns, Satyrs, Pales, Flora, Feronia, and a host of others. On a due observance of the rites of these gods and goddesses, and demi-deities of “hill and dale, forest and mead,” (to whom might be traced, perhaps, the fairy system of more modern days,) and more particularly on an observance of those of Diana Agrotera, was an abundant supply of game, and avoidance of the ordinary casualties of the chase, entirely dependent:

[Sidenote: Senecæ Hippolyt. Prol. vs. 73.]

Tua si gratus numina cultor
Tulit in saltus; retia vinctas
Tenuere feras; nulli laqueum
Rupêre pedes; fertur plaustro
Præda gementi: tum rostra canes
Sanguine multo rubicunda gerunt;
Repetitque casas rustica longo
Turba triumpho.

[278]

[Sidenote: c. +xxxiii.+]

Καὶ γὰρ καὶ οἱ κύνες βλάπτονται, κ. τ. λ. All that Arrian here anticipates as a consequence of neglect of the rural deities, Savary of Caen, in bitterness of heart, invokes on the ill-fated heads of _the brethren of the leash_; whom he designates as enamoured of the savage pugnacity of the bull-dog greyhound—with which alone, the wolf-greyhound of his country, this poet was acquainted. Great as may have been his love of the harrier’s chase, and great his admiration of its followers, whom he calls Dian’s legitimate worshippers, I cannot conceive him conversant with the genuine pastime of his Celtic ancestry, nor with the κύων τῇ ἀληθείᾳ γενναῖος of Arrian, when he wrote the following virulent anathema:

[Sidenote: Album Dianæ Leporicidæ. L. +v.+]

Talia legitimos non infortunia tangant
Cultores, Diana, tuos: inhonora Laconis
Sed quoscunque juvat feritas truculenta Molossi,
Sola quibus cædes, si qua est in cæde voluptas,
Illorum paribus turbentur gaudia causis.
Mulcta suppliciis cor insatiabile prædæ.
Plecte viros, extingue canes, rabiemque ferocem
Instilla, dominus catulis odiosus et ipsis,
Exæquet falsum veris Actæona pœnis.
Et qui participes (pigeat licet ista precari)
Disrumpantur equi, domini plectantur in illis!

[279]

[Sidenote: Ælian. de Naturâ Animal. L. +xi.+ c. 9.]

Ælian tells us there is a temple of Diana in an isle of the Red Sea called Icarus, abounding with goats, roe-deer, and hares, which a sportsman may catch, if the goddess be duly petitioned; but if not, he is not only unsuccessful in his sport, but punished for the transgression—ἐὰν δὲ μὴ αἰτήσῃ, οὔτε αἱρεῖ, καὶ δίδωσι δίκας, ἃς ἄλλοι λεγούσιν.

[280] Ὅμηρος ἐν τῇ ποιήσει. Arrian alludes to the contest for the prize of archery, at the games celebrated by Achilles on the occasion of the funeral of his friend Patroclus. I give Pope’s translation of the passage:

[Sidenote: Iliad B. +xxiii.+ vs. 1020.]

To the tall top a milk-white dove they tie,
The trembling mark at which their arrows fly.
“Whose weapon strikes yon fluttering bird, shall bear
These two-edged axes, terrible in war;
The single he, whose shaft divides the cord.”
He said: experienced Merion took the word;
And skilful Teucer: in the helm they threw
Their lots inscribed, and forth the latter flew.
Swift from the string the sounding arrow flies;
But flies unblest! No grateful sacrifice,
No firstling lambs, unheedful! didst thou vow
To Phœbus, patron of the shaft and bow.
For this, thy well-aim’d arrow, turn’d aside,
Err’d from the dove, yet cut the cord that tied:
Adown the mainmast fell the parted string,
And the free bird to heav’n displays her wing:
Seas, shores, and skies with loud applause resound,
And Merion eager meditates the wound:
He takes the bow, directs the shaft above,
And following with his eye the soaring dove,
Implores the god to speed it through the skies,
With vows of firstling lambs, and grateful sacrifice.
The dove, in airy circles as she wheels
Amid the clouds, the piercing arrow feels:
Quite through and through the point its passage found,
And at his feet fell bloody to the ground.

[281] Ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἐπηύξατο τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι. The God of Archers and Archery.

The poet and the courser would both teach us the same lesson—that without addressing supplication to heaven, we cannot succeed in our undertakings. Merion does not conquer because he is the better archer, but because he is the better man.

[282] Τοὺς ἐκγόνους δὲ τῶν ἐπὶ Θήβας σὺν Πολυνείκῃ. The Homeric line cited by Arrian from the speech of Sthenelus, in the fourth book of the Iliad, alludes to the victors of the second Theban war, wherein the sons of the seven captains subdued the city, before which their fathers had perished:

[Sidenote: Pope’s Iliad. B. +iv.+ 460.]

With fewer troops we storm’d the Theban wall,
And happier saw the sev’n-fold city fall.
In impious acts the guilty fathers died;
The sons subdued, for heav’n was on their side.

Capaneus, the sire of Sthenelus, was thunder-struck, while blaspheming Jupiter—

[Sidenote: Statii Thebaid. L. +x.+ 927.]

Talia dicentem toto Jove fulmen adactum
Corripuit.

[283] Πολυδάμαντι οὐκ ἐῶντι. From Pope’s translation I extract a part of the speech of Polydamas, with the omen referred to:

[Sidenote: B. +xii.+ 253.]

Seek not this day the Grecian ships to gain;
For sure to warn us Jove his omen sent,
And thus my mind explains its clear event:
The victor eagle whose sinister flight
Retards our host, and fills our hearts with fright,
Dismiss’d his conquest in the middle skies,
Allow’d to seize, but not retain the prize, &c.

Pope’s version of Hector’s reply to this speech of Polydamas, is one of the most splendid specimens of his talent to be found in the poem—as the whole incident is perhaps the finest of Flaxman’s beautiful illustrations of the immortal bard.

[284]

[Sidenote: Pyth. +ii.+ vs. 161. and 173.]

[Sidenote: Act. Apost. c. +ix.+]

Οὐκ ἀγαθὸν ἀπειθεῖν τῷ θείῳ. Homer himself draws many similar inferences in the progress of his interesting tales both of the Iliad and the Odyssey—χαλεπόν τοι ἐρισθενέος Κρονίωνος—παισὶν ἐριζέμεναι—and again, θεόθεν δ’ οὐκ ἐστ’ ἀλέασθαι: and Pindar abounds with like injunctions of humble submission to the divine will—χρὴ δὲ πρὸς—θεὸν οὐκ ἐρίζειν, κ. τ. λ.—ποτὶ κέντρον δέ τοι—λακτιζέμεν, τελέθει—ὀλισθηρὸς οἶμος. See also vs. 89. ejusd. Carm. The reader cannot but recollect the memorable counterpart to these words, (with reverence be they cited!) in the Apostolic history of the conversion of St. Paul—σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν.

How beautiful the metaphor that runs through the following lines of the poet of Cilicia!

[Sidenote: Oppian. Hal. L. +ii.+ 12.]

ἀλλ’ αἰεὶ μάκαρες πανυπέρτατοι ἡνία πάντη
κλίνουσ’, ᾗ κ’ ἐθέλωσιν· ὁ δ’ ἕσπεται, ὅς κε σαόφρων,
πρὶν χαλεπῇ μάστιγι καὶ οὐκ ἐθέλων ἐλάηται.

See the sensible remarks of Xenophon on the words ΣΥΝ ΘΕΩ ΠΡΑΤΤΕΙΝ, at the conclusion of his treatise De Offic. Magistr. Equit. c. +ix.+

[285]

[Sidenote: De Legibus.]

Ἄρχεσθαί τε ἀπὸ θεῶν. “A Diis immortalibus,” says Cicero, “sunt nobis agendi capienda primordia:” and Julius Pollux, to whom I have frequently referred in the early part of these annotations, concludes his address to Commodus, at the commencement of his Onomasticon, with the same sentiment—ποιήσομαι δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν, ἀφ’ ὧν μάλιστα προσήκει τοὺς εὐσεβεῖς, ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν.

[286]

[Sidenote: De Expeditione Alexandri L. +vi.+ c. +xxviii.+]

Χαριστήρια θύειν εὖ πράξαντα. So in his Anabasis, Arrian writes, θύσαι Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν Καρμανίᾳ χαριστήρια τῆς κατ’ Ἰνδῶν νίκης, κ. τ. λ. These free-will offerings may be considered in the light of grateful acknowledgments to the gods for blessings received. They were paid by soldiers after victory, by husbandmen after harvest, and by sportsmen after success in the field.

[287]

[Sidenote: Æneid. L. +vi.+ 244.]

Σπένδειν. Wine was generally used in these libations, but not always; for there were νηφάλια ἱερὰ—sober sacrifices, wherein no wine was poured forth. Generally, however, wine was employed, as we learn from Virgil’s “frontique invergit vina sacerdos.”

[288]

[Sidenote: Schol. ad Aristoph. Thesm. Act. +i.+]

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. “Præcones clamantes,” says Festus, “populum sacrificiis favere jubebant. Favere est bona fari.” But Bourdin ad Aristoph. Thesmophor. εὐφημεῖν σημαίνει σιγᾷν καὶ σιωπᾷν δι’ εὐφημίας.

[289] 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.

[290]

[Sidenote: Arrian. de Exped. Alex. L. +iv.+ c. +xi.+]

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. 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.

[291]

[Sidenote: Lexicon Antiq. Roman.]

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 to 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:

[Sidenote: Æneid. L. +ix.+ 406.]

Si qua tuis unquam pro me pater Hyrtacus aris
Doma tulit, si qua ipse meis venatibus auxi,
Suspendive tholo, aut sacra ad fastigia fixi:
Hunc sine me, &c.

[292] 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.

[293]

[Sidenote: De Nugis Curialium L. +i.+ c. +iv.+]

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 reign 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.

[294]

[Sidenote: Hor. Sat. L. +i.+ S. +iii.+ vs. 101.]

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, and “meræ vires” of Ovid:

[Sidenote: Ovid. Art. Am. L. +ii.+]

Tum genus humanum solis errabat in agris;
Hisque meræ vires, et rude corpus erat.

Politian elegantly exemplifies the Faliscian’s meaning in his Silva, entitled Nutricia;

[Sidenote: Carmina V. Illustr. Poet. p. 159.]

Sed longum tamen obscuris immersa tenebris
Gens rudis, atque inculta virûm, sine more, sine ullâ
Lege propagabant ævum, passimque ferino
Degebant homines ritu, visque insita cordi
Mole obsessa gravi, nondùm ullos prompserat usus,
Nil animo, duris agitabant cuncta _lacertis_.

[295] For Perseus’s title to this post of honour Oppian is my only voucher; but his words are decisive:

[Sidenote: Cyneg. L. +ii.+ vs. 8.]

ἐν μερόπεσσι δὲ πρῶτος ὁ Γοργόνος αὐχέν’ ἀμέρσας,
Ζηνὸς χρυσείοιο πάϊς κλυτὸς εὕρατο Περσεύς.

[296]

[Sidenote: J. Sarisberiensis de N. C. L. +i.+ c. +iv.+]

Will the reader admit the explanation of the Policraticus as to the fabulous connexion of these hybrids with the chase: “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.

[297]

[Sidenote: The Times.]

“The light-footed Greek of Chiron’s school,” as Churchill calls him.

[Sidenote: Pind. Nem. Carm. L. +iii.+ 85.]

τὸν ἐθάμβεεν Ἄρτε-
μίς τε καὶ θρασεῖ’ Ἀθάνα,
Κτείνοντ’ ἐλάφους ἄνευ κυ-
νῶν δολίων θ’ ἑρκέων·
ποσσὶ γὰρ κράτεσκεν.

[298]

[Sidenote: Plin. Paneg. Trajan. Dict. 81.]

Nec mediocre pacis decus habebatur submota campis irruptio ferarum, et obsidione quâdam liberatus agrestium labor.

[299] 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:

[Sidenote: Manilii Astronomicon. L. +v.+]

At Procyon oriens, quum jam vicesima Cancri
Septimaque ex undis pars sese emergit in astra,
Venatus non ille quidem, verum arma creatis
Venandi tribuit: catulos nutrire sagaces,
Et genus à proavis, mores numerare per artes,
Retiaque, et validâ venabula cuspide fixa,
Lentaque contextis formare hastilia nodis,
Et quodcumque solet venandi poscere cura
In proprios fabricare dabit venalia quæstus.

[300]

[Sidenote: c. +iii.+ fol. 21.]

[Sidenote: c. +iv.+ fol. 25.]

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: “_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 p^rsuetes 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.—“_Of 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.

[301]

[Sidenote: Certaine Illustrations, &c. p. 24.]

“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.

[302] 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:

[Sidenote: Hor. Sat. L. +i.+ Sat. +iii.+ 101.]

Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ità porrò
Pugnabant armis quæ post fabricaverat usus.

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!

[Sidenote: Theocriti Idyll. L. +xxv.+ 206.]

αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ κέρας ὑγρὸν ἑλὼν, κοίλην τε φαρέτραν,
Ἰῶν ἐμπλείην, νεόμην· ἑτέρῃφι τε βάκτρον
εὐπαγὲς, αὐτόφλοιον, ἐπηρεφέος κοτίνοιο,
εὔμετρον.

[Sidenote: Sir T. Elyot’s. The Governour. B. +i.+ c. +xviii.+]

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 Governour) “with hym his bowe and quiver with arowes, his sword or hach of steele, a little tergat, and two dartes.”

[303] “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.

[304] The _staves_ of the Sicilians are the _ancones_ of Gratius—the στάλικες and σχάλιδες of the Greek hunters.

[305]

[Sidenote: Agamemnon vs. 1386.]

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:

[Sidenote: Senecæ Agamem. Act. +v.+ 886.]

At ille ut altis hispidus sylvis aper,
Cum casse vinctus, tentat egressus tamen,
Arctatque motu vincla, et incassùm furit,
Cupit fluentes undique et cæcos sinus
Disjicere, et hostem quærit implicitus suum.

See the definitions of Pollux in my notes to the first Chapter of Arrian’s Cynegeticus—ἄρκυες, δίκτυα, ἐνόδια.

[306]

[Sidenote: Certaine Illustrations of the Cynegeticall Poem of Gratius. p. 68.]

“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.

[307]

[Sidenote: De Bell. Judaic. L. +vii.+ c. 27.]

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 Alan 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,

[Sidenote: Argonaut. L. +vi.+ 133.]

Doctus et Auchates patulo vaga vincula gyro
Spargere, et extremas laqueis adducere turmas.

[308] 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.

[Sidenote: Preface to the Reader.]

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 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.+

[309] It is remarkable that this inventive genius is noticed by no other writer; high as his character stands with the Faliscian,

[Sidenote: Gratii Cyneg. vs. 103.]

haud illo quisquam se justior egit,
Aut fuit in terris Divôm observantior alter:

[Sidenote: Excursus +ii.+ ad Gratii vs. 103.]

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 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,

[Sidenote: Apollon. Argonaut. L. +ii.+ 508.]

ὃν καλέουσιν
ἀγρέα καὶ νόμιον,

a sort of legendary Sir Tristrem in ancient matters of venery, and rural economy.

[310]

[Sidenote: The Governour.]

The decay of archery in England is feelingly deplored by Sir Thomas Elyot, because “in shotyng is a double utilitee:” it is “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.”

[311] 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:

[Sidenote: Iliad. L. +v.+ 51.]

ἐσθλὸν θηρητῆρα· δίδαξε γὰρ Ἄρτεμις αὐτὴ
βάλλειν ἄγρια πάντα, τά τε τρέφει οὔρεσιν ὕλη.
ἀλλ’ οὔ οἱ τότε γε χραῖσμ’ Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα,
οὐδὲ ἑκηβολίαι, ᾗσιν τὸ πρίν γ’ ἐκέκαστο.

[312]

[Sidenote: Schol. ad Theocrit. Id. +iv.+]

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.+

[313] Additional evidence of the attendance of servants being usual at hunting expeditions, is afforded by the tale of Cephalus,

[Sidenote: Ovid. Metam. L. +vii.+ 805.]

Venatum in silvis juveniliter ire solebam;
Nec mecum _famulos_, nec equos, nec naribus acres
Ire canes, nec lina sequi nodosa sinebam.
Tutus eram jaculo, &c.

[314]

[Sidenote: Preface to the Reader. Gratius Englished, &c. by C. Wase.]

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,

Nam _fuit_ et laqueis _aliquis_ curracibus usus:
Cervino _jussêre_ magis, &c.

He saith likewise for bows and arrows,

Magnum opus et celeres _quondam fecêre_ sagittæ.

[Sidenote: Psalm +cxl.+ 5.]

[Sidenote: Job c. +xviii.+]

[Sidenote: Isaiah c. +xxiv.+]

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, “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. “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.

[315]

[Sidenote: Bochart. Hierozoic. L. +ii.+ c. +lvi.+]

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. The _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.

[316] 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.

[317]

[Sidenote: Hesiod. Theog. vs. 308.]

ἡ δ’ ὑποκυσσαμένη, τέκετο κρατερόφρονα τέκνα.
Ὄρθρον μὲν πρῶτον κύνα γείνατο Γηρυονῆϊ·
δεύτερον αὖτις ἔτικτεν ἀμήχανον, οὔτι φατειὸν,
Κέρβερον ὠμηστὴν, ἀΐδεω κύνα χαλκεόφωνον,
πεντήκοντα κάρηνον, ἀναιδέα τε, κρατερόν τε.

[318]

[Sidenote: Lucian. Deor. Dial. Juno et Latona.]

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: 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.

[319]

[Sidenote: Minshæi Emend. p. 242. Book of St. Alban’s.]

[Sidenote: Holinshed’s Description of Britaine. B. +iii.+ c. 13.]

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.”

[320]

[Sidenote: Antiq. Sept. et Celt. Keysler. s. +ii.+ c. +ii.+ 6.]