[693] Virg. Æn. iv. 131; Hor. Epod. ii. 33.
[694] Seneca, Hippol. l. c.
[695] See Lucan, as quoted in the last page.
Gratius Faliscus recommends that a net should be forty paces long, and full ten knots high:
Et bis vicenos spatium prætendere passus
Rete velim, plenisque decem consurgere nodis.—Cyneg. 31, 32.
The necessity of making the nets so high that the animals could not leap over them, is alluded to in the expression Ὕψος κρεῖσσον ἐκπηδήματος, i. e. “a height too great for the animals to leap out[696].”
[696] Æschyli Agamemnon, 1347.
Xenophon, in his treatise on Hunting, gives various directions respecting the making and setting of nets; and Schneider has added to that treatise a dissertation concerning the ἄρκυς. It is evident that this kind of net was made with a bag (κεκρύφαλος, vi. 7), being the same which is now called the purse-net, or the tunnel-net, and that the aim of the hunter was to drive the animal into the bag; that the watchman (ἀρκυωρὸς) waited to see it caught there; that branches of trees were placed in the bag to keep it expanded, to render it invisible, and thus to decoy quadrupeds into it; that a rope ran round the mouth of the bag (περίδρομος, vi. 9), and was drawn tight by the impulse of the animal rushing in so as to prevent its escape[697]. To this rope was attached another, called ἐπίδρομος, which was used as follows. In fig. 1. of [Plate X.] we observe, that the upper border of the net consists of a very strong rope. Xenophon calls this σαρδὼν (vi. 9). In the purse-net it was furnished with rings. The ἀρκυωρὸς, or watchman, lay in ambush, holding one end of the ἐπίδρομος, which ran through the rings, and was fastened at the other end to the περίδρομος, so that by pulling it he drew the mouth of the bag still more firm and close. He then went to the bag and despatched the quadruped which it inclosed, or carried it off alive, informing his companions of the capture by shouting[698].
[697] This effect of the περίδρομος is well expressed by Seneca, “Arctatque motu vincla:” also the circumstance of the branches used to distend the bag and to make it invisible; “Fluentes undique et cæcos sinus.”