Note 412 — CANES VENATICI. Class III.

For a beautiful image of the Celtic greyhound the reader is referred to Père Montfaucon, L’Antiquité expliquée. Tom. iii. Liv. iv. pl. 176. A medallion from the arch of Constantine exhibits the Emperor Trajan with his huntsmen, accompanied by a type of this dog, the most elegant which antiquity has transmitted to us. It has been copied on stone for the preceding work by Messrs. Day and Haghe; who have added to our embellishments Chrysis and Aura from an ancient gem—Lælaps from Tempesta—and some spirited outlines from the antique. But I have most pleasure in referring my readers to the genuine Celtic exemplars—the veloces catuli—of the Townley collection of the British Museum, faithfully lithographed by the same artists. This beautiful group of greyhound puppies, in white marble, was found by Mr. Gavin Hamilton in the year 1774, at Monte Cagnolo, part of the villa of Antoninus Pius, near the ancient Lanuvium, beyond the “lucus et ara Dianæ,” of the Via Appia. A second, nearly similar, was discovered at the same place, and purchased by Visconti for the Vatican Museum. Of an earlier date, however, than these most interesting groupes, is the medallion selected as the frontispiece of the present work. For although the triumphal arch, whence it was originally copied, was not erected till about A. D. 300. that arch was a piece of architectural patch-work, made up of the spoils of earlier structures—its medallions and principal ornaments being derived from one 200 years older, commemorative of Trajan’s victories over the Dacians and Parthians,—amongst the former of whom, on the authority of Arrian, deer-coursing was an established sport in the beginning of the second century. About the latter period, or at the very close of the first century, the medallion of the frontispiece was probably wrought; whereas the Monte Cagnolo groupes, if executed expressly for the decoration of Antoninus’s villa, were half a century later.

I know of few other authentic representations of the οὐέρτραγος κύων,—unless the varying type of Dian’s canine attendant, on antiqueMorell. T. xv. 20. 21. &c. gems, lamps, coins, relievos, &c. (the most beautiful of which is on the Sicilian coins of Augustus Cæsar);

Callimach. H. in Delum. vs. 228.

Museo Chiaramonti. T. xvii. T. xviii.

approach, in any instance, near enough to the courser’s hound to be deemed a likeness—sometimes a beagle, sometimes a foxite, at other times a greyhound, let the reader compare the outlines of Beger and La Chausse, seemingly of the Celtic type, with the lop-eared harrier of Visconti and Guattani, (Diana ed Ecate combattono coi Giganti,) and the prick-eared lurcher of the same authors, (Diana ed Apollo,) and then decide on the admissibility of the effigy in this place.

Goltzii Numismata Græciæ. T. xviii. f. 7. 8. 9. 10.

To the medallion of Vaillant, of small dimensions, but of singular beauty, exhibiting a brace of greyhounds in the act of seizing a deer—copied here in outline as a vignette—may be added four impressions of the same hound, in four different attitudes, most elegant and characteristic, on coins or medals of the isle of Cythnus, one of the Cyclades; and a stag pursued by a greyhound, in Recueil d’Antiquités, Tom. i. p. 219.