Upton, to be even with him, supposes a hart to have been taken at Bagshot near Windsor, with a motto on the collar in the French language, which proves the ancient Romans were familiar therewith long before it existed:
“Julius Cæsar, quant jeo fus petis,
Cest coler suz mon col ad mys.Ӡ
This dictator perpetuo, in fact, seems to have collared every hart he took. The family of Pompei in Italy use two harts for their supporters on whose collars were the letters N. M. T., in memory of one on whose collar were these words: “Nemo Me Tangat, Cæsaris sum.” Anstis, ii. 113.
The original of all these stories is to be found in Pliny, who says: “It is generally held and confessed that the stagge or hind live long; for an hundred yeer after Alexander the great, some were taken with golden collars about their necks, overgrowne now with haire and growne within the skin: which collars the said king had done upon them” (Naturall Historie, by Holland, 1601, B. 8, c. 32). Pausanias, moreover, speaking of one Leocydas, who fought for the Megalopolitans, in conjunction with Lydiades, against the Lacedæmonians (about the year 243 before Christ), says he was reported to be the descendant in the ninth degree of that Arcesilaus, who living in Lycosura saw that stag which is sacred to the goddess Despoine worn out with old age. This stag, he adds, had a collar on its neck with the following inscription:
Caught young, when Agapenor sail’d for Troy.
By which, he concludes, it is evident that a stag lives much longer than an elephant (B. 8, c. 10).
* Histoire de Charles VI.
† Upton de re militari, p. 119.