Interdum Libyco fucantur sandyce pinnæ,
Lineaque extructis lucent anconibus arma,
Rarum, si qua metus eludat bellua falsos.—Cyneg. 85-88.
It was the business of one of the attendants to watch the nets:
Ego retia servo.—Virg. Buc. iii. 75.
Sometimes there was a watchman at each extremity and one in the middle, as in the Persian lion-hunt[691]. The prevalence of this method of hunting in Persia might be inferred from the circumstance, that one of the chief employments of the inhabitants consisted in making these nets (ἄρκυς, Strabo, xv. 3. § 18). To watch the nets was called ἀρκυωρεῖν (Ælian, H. A. i. 2), and the man who discharged this office ἀρκυωρὸς (Xen., De Ven. ii. 3; vi. 1.).
[691] Oppian, Cyneg. iv. 124, &c.
The paintings discovered in the catacombs of Egypt show, that the ancient inhabitants of that country used nets for hunting in the same manner which has now been shown to have been the practice of the Persians, Greeks and Romans[692].
[692] Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. p. 3-5.
Hunting-nets had much larger meshes than fishing or fowlers’-nets, because in general a fish or a fowl could escape through a much smaller opening than a quadruped. In hunting, the important circumstance was to make the nets so strong that the beasts could not break through them. The large size of the meshes is denoted by the phrases “retia rara[693]” and “raras plagas[694];” and it is exhibited in a bas-relief in the collection of ancient marbles at Ince-Blundell in Lancashire. See [Plate X.] fig. 1. This sculpture presents the following circumstances, which are worthy of notice as illustrative of the passages above collected from ancient authors. Three servants with staves carry a large net on their shoulders. The foremost of them holds by a leash a dog, which is eager to engage in the chase[695]. Then follows another scene in the hunt. A net with very large meshes and five feet high is set up, being supported by three stakes. Two boars and two deer are caught. A watchman, holding a staff, stands at each end of the net. Fig. 2, [Plate X.] is taken from a bas-relief in the same collection, representing a party returning from the chase, with the quadrupeds which they have caught. Two men carry the net, holding in their hands the stakes with forks at the top. These bas-reliefs have been taken from sarcophagi erected in commemoration of hunters, and they are engraved in the Ancient statues, &c. at Ince-Blundell, vol. ii. pl. 89 and 126. An excellent representation of these forked staves is given in a sepulchral bas-relief in Bartoli, Admiranda, tab. 70, which Mr. Dansey has copied at p. 307 of his translation of Arrian on Coursing, and which represents a party of hunters returning from the chase. Another example of the varus, or forked staff, is seen in a sepulchral stone lately found at York (England), and engraved in Mr. Wellbeloved’s Eburacum, pl. 14. fig. 2. The man, who holds the varus in his right hand, and who appears to be a huntsman and a native of the north of England, though partly clothed after the Roman fashion, wears an inner and outer tunic, and over them a fringed sagum. In the Sepolcri de’ Nasoni, published by Bartoli, there is a representation of a lion-hunt, and of another in which deer are caught by means of nets set up so as to inclose a large space. In Montfaucon’s Supplement, tome iii., is an engraving from a bas-relief, in which a net is represented: but none of these are so instructive as the two bas-reliefs at Ince-Blundell.