Among the sports and pastimes of the Greeks, which may be considered as a kind of supplement to gymnastics, we must class first the chase, which Xenophon vainly hoped might be made to operate as a check on the luxurious and effeminate habits of his contemporaries.[[679]] But each age having its own distinctive characteristic, it profits very little to aim at engrafting the customs of one period of civilisation upon another. The world will go its own gait. Chuckfarthing and Pricking the Loop might as well be recommended to young gentlemen and ladies dying for love, as hunting to the population of a vain and foppish city, to whom wild boars and wolves must seem certain death. However, the country gentlemen, and the agricultural population generally, long in their own defence continued the practice of the chase, though in Attica the absence of wild animals, consequent upon a high and careful cultivation, had reduced it at a very early period to a matter of mere amusement.
But in remoter times, and in those parts of the country where game always continued to abound, there were never wanting persons who delighted in the excitement of the chase. Herdsmen, particularly, and shepherds, considered it part of their occupation.[[680]] Thus we find Anchises a young Trojan chief, who inhabited the hill country, making his lair of bears and lion-skins, the spoils of his own lance.[[681]] Sport, of course, it would furnish to bold and reckless young men, as lion and tiger hunting still does to our countrymen in Northern India; but from this recreation proceeded in some measure their safety, since where wild beasts are numerous they not only devastate the country,[[682]] trampling down the corn-fields and devouring herds and flocks, but occasionally, if they chance to find them unarmed, dine also upon their hunters. Thus the chase of the Calydonian boar, the tally-ho’s and view-halloes of which still sound fresh in song, was undertaken by the Ætolians and Curetes, for the purpose of delivering the rustic population from a pest;[[683]] and precisely the same motive urged Alcmena’s boy into the famous conflict with the Nemean lion,[[684]] which he brought down with his invincible bow and finished with his wild olive club. In like manner Theseus, his rival in glory, slew the Marathonian bull; and delivered the Cretans from another monster of the same kind.[[685]] He engaged, too, with a sow of great size at Crommyon on the confines of Corinthia, and slaughtered the pig, an achievement of much utility and no little glory.
The arms and accoutrements of these primitive sportsmen corresponded with the rough service in which they were engaged. Sometimes, to the attack of the wild bull or the boar, they went forth with formidable battle-axes.[[686]] But when their game was fleet and innocuous a handful of light javelins and the bow sufficed, as when Odysseus and his companions beat the country in search of wild goats.[[687]] In the Æneid, too, we find the hero doing great execution among a herd of deer with his bow. Boar-spears also were in use ere the period of the Trojan war, as Odysseus, who appears to have been excessively addicted to the chase, is represented going thus armed to the field with the sons of Autolycos when he was wounded by the hog.[[688]] With the same weapon we find Adrastos engaged in the same sport, killing the son of Crœsos.[[689]] The chase of the lion, which in Xenophon’s time could no longer be enjoyed in Greece Proper, required the most daring courage and the most formidable weapons, spears, javelins, clubs, and burning torches, with which at last they repelled him at night from the cattle stalls. Homer, as usual, represents the contest to the life:[[690]]
“He turned to go, as slow retreats the lion from the stalls,
Whom men and dogs assault while round a shower of javelins falls.
They all night watch about their herds, lest he intent on prey
Should bear the flower of all their fields, the fattest bull away.
Onward impetuously he bounds—the hissing javelins fly
From daring hands, while torches send their blaze far up the sky.
He dreads, though fierce, the dazzling flames thick flashing on his sight,