Lucretius (lib. v. 1251, 1252) aptly compares the setting up of the plagæ to the planting of a hedge around the forest:
Nam fovea atque igni prius est venarier ortum,
Quam sæpire plagis saltum, canibusque ciere.
In the same manner plagæ is used in the Hippolytus of Seneca, as above quoted, and in Pliny[681].
[681] H. N. xix. 1. s. 2.
To dispose the nets in the manner which has been described, was called “retia ponere” (Virg. Georg. i. 307) or “retia tendere” (Ovid, Art. Amat. i. 45).
In Homer a hunting-net is called λίνον πάναγρον, literally, “the flax that catches everything[682].” But the proper Greek term for the hunting-net, corresponding to the Latin cassis, was ἄρκυς, which is accordingly employed in the passages of Oppian and Euripides cited above. Also the epigram of Antipater Sidonius, to which a reference has already been made, specifies the hunting-net by the same appellation:
Δᾶμις μὲν θηρῶν ἄρκυν ὀρειονόμων.
The word is used in the same sense by Cratinus[683]; also by Arrian, where he remarks that the Celts dispensed with the use of nets in hunting, because they trusted to the swiftness of their greyhounds[684]. In Euripides[685] it is used metaphorically: the children cry out, when their mother is pursuing them,
Ὡς ἐγγὺς ἤδη γ’ ἐσμέν ἀρκύων ζίφους,