A wonder how he brought to ground
The stag without or toils or hound.
So fleet of foot was he.”
Similar manners, if we may confide in Virgil,[[710]] prevailed among the old inhabitants of Latium, and Xenophon[[711]] in his monarchical Utopia trains the youth in the same habits.
On hunting,[[712]] as practised in the civilised ages of Greece, we possess more ample details, and it is chiefly by the minuter touches that a picture of this kind can be invested with interest and utility. Xenophon, an aristocratic country gentleman, who living in a corrupt age was, as I have said, wisely partial to the nobler manners of the past, considers the chase as a branch of education.[[713]] He does not, however, entertain upon this subject the heroic views of Plato, but, looking solely to utility, not only describes the physical conditions and mental qualities of the hunter, but the nets, poles, arms, and every implement made use of by the ancients in the chase.
Not to interfere with the discipline of the schools and the gymnasia, the youths were exhorted to betake themselves to field-sports about the age of twenty. Their notions of a sportsman’s costume differed materially from our own, for instead of decking themselves like our fox-hunters in scarlet, they selected the soberest and least brilliant colours both for their cloaks and chitons. The latter were in general extremely short, reaching merely to the hams, as Artemis is usually represented in works of art. But the chlamys was long and ample, that it might be twisted round the left arm in close contest with the larger animals. Their hunting boots reached to the knee, and were bound tight round the leg with thongs. Probably also, as in travelling, they covered their heads with a broad-brimmed hat.
The apparatus of a Greek sportsman would appear somewhat cumbersome, and perhaps a little ludicrous to a modern Nimrod. But understanding their own object they went their own way to work; their arms and implements, varying with the chase in which they were engaged, consisted of short swords, hunting knives[[714]] for the purpose of cutting down brushwood to stop up openings in the forest, axes for felling trees, darts furnished with thongs for drawing them back when they had missed their aim, bows, boar-spears, weapons peculiarly formidable, nets small and large, some for setting up in the plains, some for traversing glades or narrow alleys in the woods, and others shaped like a female head-net, to be placed in small dusky openings, where being unperceived the game sprang into them as into a sack, which closed about it by means of a running cord, net-poles, forked stakes, snares, gins, nooses, and leashes for the dogs.[[715]] The darts used on these occasions had ashen or beechen handles, and the nets were usually manufactured with flax imported from Colchis on the Phasis, Egypt, Carthage, and Sardinia.[[716]] Generally, too, they took along with them the Lagobalon, a short, crooked stick with a knob at one end, with which they sometimes brought down the hare in its flight.[[717]] This practice, common enough among poachers in our country, is by them denominated squailing.
Without the aid of dogs, however, hunting is a poor sport. The ancients, therefore, much addicted to this branch of education, paid great attention to the breed of these animals, of which some were sought to be rendered celebrated by heroic and fabulous associations[associations]. Thus the Castorides, it was said, sprang[[718]] from a breed to which the twin god of Sparta was partial; the Alopecidæ were a cross between a dog and a she-fox; and a third kind[[719]] arose from the mingling of these two races. Among modern sportsmen, there are also good authorities who prefer harriers with a quarter of the fox-strain.[[720]] Other kinds of hounds, as the Menelaides and Harmodian derived their appellation from the persons who reared them.[[721]]
But the whole breeds of certain countries[[722]] were famous, as the Argive, the Locrian, the Arcadian, the Spanish, the Carian, the Eretrian; the Celtic or greyhound (not known[[723]] in more ancient times); the Psyllian, so called from a city of Achaia; the dog of Elymæa, a country lying between Bactria and Hyrcania; the Hyrcanian, which was a cross with the lion; the Laconian, of which the bitch was more generous,[[724]] sometimes crossed with the Cretan, which was itself renowned for its nose, strength and courage,[[725]] those which kept watch in the temple of Artemis Dictynna having been reckoned a match even for bears; the Molossian, less valued for the chase than as a shepherd’s dog, on account of its great fierceness and power to contend with wild beasts;[[726]] the Cyrenaic, a cross with the wolf, and lastly the Indian, on which the chief reliance was placed in the chase of the wild boar. This breed, according to Aristotle, was produced by crossing with the tiger, probably the Cheeta.[[727]] The first and second removes were considered too fierce and unmanageable, and it was not until the third generation that these tiger-mules could be broken in to the use of the sportsman. Some sought in mythology the origin of this noble animal; for, according to Nicander, the hounds of Actæon, recovering their senses after the destruction of their master, fled across the Euphrates and wandered as far as India. Strange stories are related of this breed, of which some it is said would contend with no animal but the lion. Alexander’s dog, which he purchased in India for a hundred minæ, had twice overcome and slain the monarch of the forest.[[728]]
Let us, therefore, now imagine the hounds exactly what they ought to be, and observe under what circumstances they were led afield. As in England, their principal sport was the hare. In winter,[[729]] it was observed that puss, from the length of the nights, took a wider circuit, and therefore afforded the dogs a better chance of detecting her traces.[[730]] But when in the morning the ground was covered with ice or white with hoar-frost, the dogs lost their scent, as also amidst abundant dews or after heavy rains. The sportsman accordingly waited till the sun was some way up the sky, and had begun to quicken the subtile odours communicated to the earth.[[731]] The west wind,[[732]] which covers the heavens with vast clouds and fills the air with moisture, and the south blowing warm and humid, weaken the scent; but the north wind fixes and preserves it.[[733]] By moonlight, too, as the old sportsmen remark, and the warmth it emits, the scent is affected; besides that when the moon shines brightly, in their frolicsome and sportive mood the hares, in the secluded glades of the forest, take long leaps and bounds over the green sward, leaving wide intervals between their traces.[[734]]