Note 432 — CANES VENATICI. Class III.

It was Xenophon’s want of acquaintance with these African barbs, along with the Scythian galloways, and Celtic greyhounds, which led to the omission of them all, in hisArrian. de Venat. c. i. Cynegeticus: and to the lacunæ, thereby occasioned, in the older hunting-treatise, is to be attributed the supplementary one, written by the younger Athenian. But it is quite problematical whether hounds were employed at all in the Celto-Scythian and Libyan chases—indeed, it is my opinion, they were not:—for, though it be true, that Arrian recommends picked dogs, of high courage, for the stag-course, at the commencement of chapter 23, we hear nothing of hounds in the stag-chase, immediately following, on the πεδία εὐήλατα of Mœsia, Dacia, Scythia, &c.; where long-winded, and scrubby nags supply their place. And again, in the onager-chase of the Nomadic tribes of Libya, barbs alone are the pursuers, with boys upon their naked backs, continuing at full speed till the game be run down. So that οὕτω τοι θηρῶσιν, ὅσοις κύνες τε ἀγαθαὶ καὶ ἵπποι, κ. τ. λ. with which the author commences the period immediately following the description of the vanquished onager, must in part have a more remote reference than to the hunters spoken of in the same and preceding chapters—ὅσοις κύνες τε ἀγαθαὶ referring to the Celts of Western Europe, perhaps, and ἵπποι to the equestrians just before mentioned—the former class of sportsmen using swift-footed hounds, the latter horses alone. This interpretation harmonizes with Oppian’s description of the horses and hunters of Libya and Mauritania, and their chases, as already cited c. xxiv. note 8.

Oppian. Cyneg. L. iv. 51.