Note 374 — CANES VENATICI. Class II.
William Dansey translation
Gratii Cyneg. vs. 259.
We may suppose the far-famed hound of Sparta, the foxite harrier, “vulpinâ specie,” not very unlike the prick-eared, or at least semi-pendulous-eared lurcher of modern days, employed by a poaching shepherd to guard his flock, and too often to catch at force, κατὰ πόδας, his master’s hares, or drive them into the wily laqueus or snare:
Theocriti Idyll. i. vs. 110.
Cowper’s Task. B. v.
ἐπεὶ καὶ μᾶλα νομεύει, καὶ πτῶκας βάλλει, καὶ θηρία τ’ ἄλλα διώκει. Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears, And tail cropp’d short, half lurcher and half cur;
he is too well known by his depredations in the hare-warren to need a fuller delineation.
Janus Vlitius considers the Spartan a long-eared hound, and proposes to read ὦτα μακρὰ instead of μικρὰ in Xenophon’s minute description of the type of excellence in this breed: but Horace’s “aure sublatâ” would rather favour the notion that the ear was small and pricked up in pursuit of game, as we see in lurchers, and such-like poaching tikes:
Hor. Od. L. v. Ode vi.
Nam qualis aut Molossus, aut fulvus Lacon, Amica vis pastoribus, Agam per altas aure sublatâ nives Quæcunque præcedet fera.
on which Dacier observes, “plus les chiens sont courageux, plus ils dressent les oreilles en courant;” a quality for which a prick-eared sharp-scented lurching cur might be praised—which is characteristic of the Molossus, but odious in the genuine well-bred greyhound, with which the “veloces catuli” and “fulvus Lacon” of the contemporary poets of Rome have been ignorantly identified by monkish annotators.