Part 4

[Sidenote: Callimach. H. in Dian.]

————σπαρνὸν γὰρ ὅτ’ Ἄρτεμις ἄστυ κάτεισιν. οὔρεσιν οἰκήσω.

Wherever the different sporting dogs of antiquity are alluded to, or mentioned by name in the Cynegeticus of Arrian, or the classical works to which I have had occasion to refer in illustration of it, I have endeavoured to clear up some of the obscurity, in which they were enveloped; by classifying varieties, and in a few cases even individuals, and comparing ancient types with modern representatives. This I have attempted more especially in relation to the ancient British dogs, and the Celtic greyhound (the subject of Arrian’s Treatise), as being of paramount interest to the British courser.

[Sidenote: Theocriti Idyll. +xxv.+ vs. 78.]

ὦ πόποι, οἷον τοῦτο θεοὶ ποίησαν ἄνακτες θηρίον ἀνθρώποισι μετέμμεναι ὡς ἐπιμηθές.

The observations and extracts on these points, more trite probably than recondite, have been thrown together in an appendix, which I hope may be found amusing to any literary sportsman who may condescend to peruse them.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE CYNEGETICUS, OR WORK ON COURSING.

The Cynegeticus was originally written by Arrian, in imitation of Xenophon’s Treatise de Venatione, to supply the lacunæ of that work in the particular department of Coursing.

The manuscript seems to have been neglected in the Vatican library for several years after it had been first discovered, in consequence of its bearing the name of Xenophon: for the persons who accidentally met with it, not being aware of Arrian’s assumption of that title, took no pains to examine it, under an impression that it was the edited Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and not a new and unknown treatise on a different branch of the same subject, by an author of the same assumed name, a pseudo-Xenophon.

We are told by Mausacus that Rigaltius intended to have edited it with the Scriptores de Re Accipitrariâ et de Curâ Canum, (the first edition of which he published in 1612, with a forged epistle in Castilian and Latin from Aquila Symmachus and Theodotion to a Ptolemy, King of Egypt,) but the printers refused their consent, unless he added a Latin translation; a desideratum which was afterwards supplied by Holstein in the first edition. Henry Stephens, however, had previously perused the unpublished treatise, and given to the world, in his Schediasmata, some observations on different passages.

Holstein, the first editor, was a celebrated scholar of his day, and is commemorated in the Sept. Illustr. Vir. Poemata as—

[Sidenote: Poem. Ferdin. Lib. Baron de Furstenberg.]

Graiæ Latiæque Minervæ Artibus, Eois notus et Hesperiis.

His edition issued from the Paris press of Sebastian and Gabriel Cramoisy in the year 1644. The Greek text, and version attached to it, were amended by Blancard in his Amsterdam edition of 1683; which contains also the minor works of Arrian, and the pertinent schediasmata of Henry Stephens above mentioned. My library affords no editions but the above two, and the accurate reprint of Schneider by the University of Oxford in 1817. The last is certainly the best edition of the Cynegeticus of Arrian which I have seen. The Clarendon press also published in the same volume the Cynegeticus of the elder Xenophon, and his Opuscula Politica; the same collection of the minor works as Zeune comprehended in one volume, printed at Leipsic, 1778.

M. Gail is reported to have published a French translation of the work, with critical notes and dissertations, at Paris, in 1801: but, notwithstanding repeated applications to the Parisian booksellers, I have not been able to procure a copy. Equally unsuccessful have been my endeavours to obtain from the same source Defermat’s version, published by Hortemels of Paris, in 1690. The latter, however, in consequence of the literary character given of its author by Belin de Ballu, in his prolegomena to Oppian, I do not much regret. It accompanied a French version of the two last books of the Cynegetics of the Cilician poet, which are stated to abound in errors of translation, and to be performed in a tedious and barbarous style by Defermat, eminent as a mathematician, but of moderate attainment in Greek literature.

The present version was completed before I was aware of any prior attempt to translate the Cynegeticus into English: the first notice of which, in the partial labours of Mr. Blane, was derived from Schneider’s annotations. I do not believe any other to exist in the English language, with the exception of such fragments of the treatise as may have been occasionally made to speak English, on the emergency of a periodical publication needing an article on Coursing; or a literary sportsman wishing to enliven his communications by a reference to the manual, and quoting it in his vernacular tongue.

Mr. Blane’s attempt did not extend apparently to the whole treatise. It is in parts inaccurately executed, and omits numerous sentences, where he professes to translate; and whole chapters in sequence, where we can see no reason for omission. The fourth, and ten following chapters to the fourteenth inclusive, and the twenty-third and twelve following chapters to the thirty-fifth inclusive, are entirely omitted by this capricious translator. Since, then, in a work consisting of only thirty-five chapters, he has, without assigning any cause, passed over twenty-four unnoticed, nearly all of them important to practical coursers, some evincing the kindly feelings of their author, (as for instance, the one containing the affectionate history of his beloved dog Hormé,) and others most honourable to his humanity, and confirmative of the purity of his religious faith, operative in a heathen breast, (as the two closing chapters, showing, amidst much fabulous allusion, his unreserved acknowledgment of human dependence on divine aid, and the certainty of evil and misfortune being consequent on irreligion and moral transgression,) I hope a complete translation of this ancient courser’s enchiridion will not be considered an useless undertaking.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ARRIAN.

[Sidenote: Luciani Alexander seu Pseudomantis.]

Ἀνὴρ Ῥωμαίων ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις, καὶ παιδείᾳ παρ’ ὄλον τὸν βίον συγγενόμενος.

Mr. Addison has remarked, that “a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married, or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.” If, however, the satisfaction of perusing the Cynegeticus of Arrian be dependent on a previous acquaintance with these personal particulars of their author, I fear the modern reader will regret the insufficiency of the following biographical notice. Scanty as it is, it contains all the information I have been able to collect relative to the younger Xenophon.

[Sidenote: Arriani Bithynica et Parthica apud Photii Eclogas.]

Flavius Arrianus was a citizen both of Athens and Rome, of Grecian extraction, and born probably in the reign of Domitian, at Nicomedia, a celebrated city of Bithynia; where, according to Photius on the authority of our author’s “Bithynica,” a lost work on the subject of his native country, he was priest of Ceres and Proserpine, to whom the city of Nicomedia was sacred. His fondness for polite literature, and celebrity for philosophical knowledge, acquired him the honour of the twofold citizenship. But, though a friend and disciple of Epictetus, and the first recorder of his Stoical Apophthegms—φιλόσοφος μὲν ἐπιστήμην, εἷς τῶν ὁμιλητῶν Ἐπικτήτου, he appears, like the elder Xenophon, to have been much engaged in military affairs; and as Roman prefect of Cappadocia, in the reign of Hadrian, to have taken an active part in the war against the Alani and Massagetæ, a people bred to eternal warfare—

[Sidenote: Lucan. Pharsal. L. +viii.+]

duros æterni Martis Alanos.

[Sidenote: Dion. Cassii Hist. Roman. L. +lxix.+]

It is related by Dion Cassius, and the epitomizer Xiphilin, that the Scythian barbarians under Pharasmanes having committed great havock and spoil in Media, (A.D. 136.) had begun to threaten Armenia and Cappadocia; but finding Flavius Arrianus, the prefect of the latter province, better prepared for their reception than they had anticipated, they were induced, partly by the bribes of Vologæsus, and partly through fear of the governor, to retire from the territory under his jurisdiction.

Suidas, on the authority of Heliconius, states that Arrian was advanced to the senatorial and consular dignities, and that he was denominated “the second Xenophon” from the sweetness of his literary style. And Photius also, in his “Eclogæ,” speaking of our author’s “Parthica” observes, ἐπωνόμαζον αὐτὸν Ξενοφῶντα νέον διὰ δὲ τὸ παιδείας ἐπίσημον, ἄλλας τε πολιτικὰς ἀρχὰς ἐπιστεύθη, καὶ εἰς τὸ τῶν ὑπάτων ἀνέβη τέλος: and again he adds, δῆλον δὲ ὡς οὐδὲ ῥητορικῆς σοφίας τε καὶ δυνάμεως ἀπελείπετο.

Like his namesake, as I have remarked, he united the character of a man of letters with that of a warrior, dedicating a great portion of his time to philosophical and historical research. But it is not my intention to enlarge on his literary character in general, nor to enter in detail into the merits of his several compositions.

His principal historical work, “The Anabasis of Alexander, though composed,” says Dr. Robertson, “long after Greece had lost its liberty, and in an age when genius and taste were on the decline, is not unworthy the purest times of Attic literature.” And his “Indian history is one of the most curious treatises transmitted to us from antiquity.” The latter may be considered an episode to the former. It is partly historical and partly geographical, and will be found to contain a fund of entertainment.

On the model of the Socratic Xenophon, he committed to writing the dictates of Epictetus, during the philosopher’s lifetime, and published them as his dissertations:—subsequently compiling his Enchiridion or manual—a brief compendium of all the principles of his master, and acknowledged to be one of the most valuable and beautiful pieces of morality extant.

His Periplus of the Euxine, in the form of a letter from its author to the Emperor, contains an accurate topographical survey of the coast of that sea,

[Sidenote: Oppian. Halieut. +i.+ vs. 600.]

πάσης γλυκερώτερος ἀμφιτρίτης κόλπος,

[Sidenote: Eutropii L. +viii.+]

from the commencement of his voyage at Trapezus, within his own prefecture of Cappadocia, to its completion at Byzantium; and was written probably while he held his office of command in the province, a short time before the breaking out of the war against the Alani. Many learned men, as Ramusius, Ortelius, and others, have doubted whether he wrote the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, which sometimes passes under his name; indeed the late Dean of Westminster says positively “it is not the work of Arrian of Nicomedia:” but his claim to the Circumnavigation of the Euxine has never been disputed. It was compiled expressly for the Emperor; who, according to Spartian and Dion Cassius, was particularly attached to geographical research, and had visited in person a large portion of his extensive dominions—“orbem Romanorum circumivit.” The elder Xenophon is spoken of, sub initio, by our scientific geographer, in the same relative terms, as in the Cynegeticus, ὡς λέγει ὁ Ξενοφῶν ἐκεῖνος, and it is fair to infer that the Periplus and Cynegeticus are the works of the same individual.

[Sidenote: Arriani Tactica. Sub fine.]

In his Tactics, written, as he states himself, in the 20th year of the reign of Hadrian, there is a brief account of former writers on this subject, and a description of the order and arrangement of an army in general: but in the “Acies contra Alanos,” a short and imperfect fragment annexed thereto, the particular instructions, which were delivered by him as general, for the march of the Roman army against the northern barbarians, are minutely given.

[Sidenote: Photii Eclogæ de Rebus post Alexandr. gestis.]

Fragments of other historical works, supposed to have been written by him, are preserved by the learned and indefatigable patriarch of Constantinople—“The History of Events subsequent to Alexander’s Death, in 10 books,” “The Parthica, in 17 books,” and “Bithynica, in 8 books.” Under the review of the first of which works, the Byzantine has left us his opinion of Arrian as an historiographer, and of the style of his compositions: ἀνὴρ οὐδενὸς τῶν ἄριστα συνταξαμένων ἱστορίας δεύτερος, κ. τ. λ.

[Sidenote: Eutropii L. +viii.+]

Of the Libellus de Venatione, the treatise on Coursing, I have already made mention; and shall merely add, what is in some degree pertinent to the subject, that there seems to have been a strong similarity of taste between Hadrian and our author. The Emperor, like his prefect, was not only intimately conversant with Greek and Latin literature, “facundissimus Latino sermone, Græco eruditissimus,” but also passionately fond of the chase. While living in his native town of Italica in Spain, Spartian tells us, he bore the title of Græculus, and was, at the same time, “venandi usque ad reprehensionem studiosus—equos et canes sic amavit, ut eis sepulchra constitueret.” To such a height did he carry this regard, that, according to Xiphilin, he graced a monument to the memory of his beloved hunter Borysthenes, with an inscription written by his own pen:

Borysthenes Alanus Cæsareus Veredus, &c.

[Sidenote: De Remediis U. F. L. +i+. D. +xxxii.+]

For all which unbounded affection for the brute creation, the reader may remember, he incurs the severity of Petrarch’s satire in the dialogue “de Venatu et Aucupio.”

Whether the similarity of Arrian’s rural diversions to those of Hadrian in early life, co-operated with other causes to his elevation by so capricious and eccentric a patron, must ever remain doubtful. He is not mentioned by name in the biography of Hadrian by Spartian: where it is stated, in general terms only, of this singular Emperor, that he was on terms of familiar intimacy with Epictetus, Heliodorus, and all grammarians, rhetoricians, &c. Of his acquaintance with the eminent men of his capital there can be no doubt, and his roving disposition must have introduced such to his notice in the colonies and more distant parts of the empire. One, therefore, who had been following the same pursuits with himself from his youth upwards, a sportsman, a military tactician, and a joint friend of Epictetus, was not likely to escape him. Besides, we are assured that he was, on all occasions, sociable in his field amusements, “venationem semper cum amicis participavit;” and therefore we may suppose that the literary founder of Adrianotheræ would gladly avail himself of the earliest opportunity of adding to his personal friends and sporting associates the most accomplished writer and courser of his day. We know how much the pleasure of intercourse is enhanced by identity of pursuit; and how strong the hold which innocent amusements, shared with congenial friends, have on our affections!

[Sidenote: Oppian. Cyneg. +ii.+ vs. 32.]

οὐ γάρ τις κέντροισι δαμεὶς ἄγρης ἐρατεινῆς αὖτις ἑκὼν λείψειεν, ἔχει δέ μιν ἄσπετα δεσμά.

[Sidenote: De Venat. c. +i.+]

[Sidenote: Ejusdem c. +v.+]

As to the period of his life at which Arrian may be supposed to have written the Cynegeticus, the inference to be drawn from the meagre paragraph of autobiography in the first chapter, wherein he states his fitness to supply the deficiencies of the elder Xenophon’s work, from having been ἀμφὶ ταὐτὰ ἀπὸ νέου ἐσπουδακὼς, κυνηγέσια καὶ στρατηγίαν καὶ σοφίαν, although it establishes the fact of his early predilection for field sports, yet it rather militates against the idea of the Cynegeticus having been written at a very early period of the author’s life. However, be this as it may, his patronage of “the long dogs” continued at the time of his writing this libellus; and his beloved Ὁρμὴ, ὠκυτάτη, καὶ σοφωτάτη, καὶ ἱεροτάτη, was then in his possession, living seemingly in the closest intimacy with his attached and philosophic master, and sharing with Megillus his society at home and abroad, the well-earned recompense in declining years of the excellence he had manifested in the vigour of his youthful days on the coursing plain; where, in Arrian’s own words of eulogy, τέτταρσιν ἤδη ποτὲ λαγωοῖς ἐφ’ ἡλικίας ἀντήρκησεν.

[Sidenote: Arrian. de Exped. Alexand. L. +i.+ c. +xii.+ Vide Raphelii annotat. in loc.]

Antiquity is almost silent relative to the personal history of the younger Xenophon; and as an autobiographer, he seems to have been desirous that nothing should be known of himself or family; but rather that his personal history should be darkened under the doubtful celebrity of anonymous authorship, or merged in the somewhat arrogant assumption of a fictitious and equivocal title. In the conclusion of the 12th chapter of the 1st book of his History of Alexander’s Anabasis, he says that the number and magnitude of the exploits of the son of Philip, were his inducement to record them, not deeming himself altogether unworthy to transmit them to posterity. “But who I am,” he continues, “that thus characterise myself, and what my name, (though far from obscure,) it concerns the reader but little to know. Neither would an account of my family, my city, nor such offices as I have there borne, be of any use to him. Be it sufficient for him to know, that an ardent love of literature, in which I have constantly indulged myself from youth, has been with me instead of family connexion, and civic and magisterial honours. Wherefore I may perhaps be little less worthy of a place among the most celebrated authors of Greece, than Alexander among her most illustrious heroes.”

[Sidenote: Phot. Eclog. Arrian. Parthica.]

After the brief sketch which I have given of the writings of the younger Xenophon, it must strike every one that he was influenced in the choice of his subjects as an author, by a recollection of what had engaged the literary attention of his celebrated namesake; and that while writing under the same personal appellative, he probably proposed to imitate the matter and style of composition of his prototype—ἰσχνὸς τὴν φράσιν, καὶ μιμητὴς ὡς ἀληθῶς Ξενοφῶντος.

Under this view of his works we have the dissertations of Epictetus from the pen of his most renowned follower, the Bithynian Xenophon, and the Memorabilia of Socrates from that of the son of Gryllus, the most eminent disciple of the Socratic school: the Anabasis of Alexander for that of Cyrus, with the same distribution of the work into seven books, and the same title. The Hellenica of Xenophon gave birth to the Parthica and Bithynica of Arrian: and in imitation of the Essay on Hunting, our pseudo-Xenophon has left us his Observations on Coursing.

Upon their general similarity of character in active life I have already remarked, and shall only observe farther, that, as far as we can judge from the scanty personal anecdotes which have survived of the younger, for comparison with those of the elder philosopher, this similarity appears to have extended to the frame and composition of their minds. Many of the same excellencies, and respectable weaknesses of character, co-existed in both; the same patient and unerring virtue—the same kind and generous feeling—the same credulous and enthusiastic regard to celestial admonitions—πειθομένους τεράεσσι θεῶν—with a proportionate degree of the purest heathen piety.

[Sidenote: De Expedit. Alexandri L. +vii.+ c. +xxx.+]

If it be stigmatised with the title of superstitious credulity in the priest of Ceres, that he supposed himself led by divine inspiration to write the history of a man, οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ ἀνθρώπων ἐοικὼς, I would plead his enthusiastic admiration of his hero in palliation of the fond supposition, qualified as it is, with equal good sense and piety, in the concluding sentences of the Anabasis; where he states that as so extraordinary a person as Alexander could not have risen up in the world without divine interference—οὐδ’ ἔξω τοῦ θείου; so, with admiration of his good qualities, and reprobation of his bad ones, with a strict regard to truth, and public utility, he professes himself his historian, writing, as he verily believes, under the same divine influence that first gave being to the subject of his memoir.

Surely such a belief in heavenly interference, exciting its professor to what is just and honourable, and deterring him from every breach of propriety, as an historian of truth, must be applauded by every fair and impartial judge of human character; and more particularly so, when in the person of a Stoic, unenlightened by any philosophy but that of Epictetus, it could have no other foundation than innate rectitude of mind.

Under the conviction that Arrian’s expectation of posthumous fame has been realized in general, and that my brethren of the leash will award him particular honour as the first writer of a Courser’s Manual, I conclude this brief sketch of his life and literary labours; which might have been more full, if his biography by Dion Cassius had come down to us.

As the compiler of the Stoical philosophy of “the Phrygian Slave,” the historian of the son of Philip, the hydrographer of the Euxine, a military tactician, a warrior-prefect, and a classic courser, he has left works behind him which will endure as long as literature itself;—he has done all in his power to benefit and instruct mankind in various departments of human learning;—has contributed his mite to the advancement of rational science and healthful recreation, and proved himself worthy of the immortality he so fondly anticipated.