Note 428 — CANES VENATICI. Class III.

See Arrian. de Venatione, c. xviii. εὖγε ὦ Κιῤῥὰ, εὖγε ὦ Βόννα, καλῶς γε ὦ Ὁρμή. These we may suppose to have been some of the names of the favourite archetypes of the Celtic kennel; but of the particular scene of their exertions we have no evidence to adduce. Born at Nicomedia, and occupied for the most part with civil and military engagements in the East, at a distance from Celtica, properly so called, (within the boundaries of the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, and the Ocean,) we know not when or where Arrian became acquainted with the Vertragus. Was the hound existing in Asia Minor in the second century, seeing that he is noticed at a later period by the Greek poet of Cilicia, and the Platonic philosopher of Paphlagonia? The Celts themselves are found there, as colonists, at an early date—even in the very district of which Nicomedia was the metropolis. Stephanus of Byzantium mentions the Tolistoboii—ἔθνος Γαλατῶν ἑσπερίων μετοικησάντων ἐκ τῆς Κελτογαλατίας ἐς Βιθυνίαν. (See also Strabo Geogr. L. iv.) And other colonies are recorded by Strabo among the Thracians and Illyrians, Κελτοὺς τοὺς ἀναμεμιγμένους τοῖς τε Θρᾳξὶ καὶ τοῖς Ἰλλυριοῖς—the descendants of whom are perhaps the deer-coursers of Arrian’s 23rd chapter, whom I have there called Celto-Scythians: note 4. sub fine.