Note 339 — CANES VENATICI. Class I.

Belin de Ballu appears to consider the Oppianic Κελτοὶ Segusian hounds of scent, and not war-dogs. See his Animadversiones in Oppian. L. i. vs. 373. Did the poet include under the term Κελτοὶ all the various sorts of hounds supposed indigenous of Celtica—the war-dogs, the Vertragi, Segusii, and hybrids of Pliny? No country of antiquity affords such numerous varieties of the canine species as Gaul; and as the inhabitants are by the Greeks called Κελτοὶ, by the Romans Galli, and sometimes synonymously with the latter, Celtæ; so may Oppian, an eastern Greek, include under the term Κελτοὶ the various subdivisions of the canine tribe, throughout the whole territory of Gaul, however distinguished by earlier writers, either as indigenous of peculiar localities, or characterized by dissimilar qualities.