Natural Hi/lory of the Ancients. 1 47 



with patriarchal mane appears on the road and 

 quickly puts them to flight, eager as they are, fo," 

 etc. Once more: "But they ru/hed forth and 

 fought before the gates, like wild fwine which 

 have awaited in the mountains the advancing 

 uproar of men and dogs, and ruming fideways, 

 break up the thicket around them, cutting it up 

 by the roots, and from beneath rifes a gnafhing 

 of tufks, until fome one is fmitten and lofes his 

 life." 1 



The moft lifelike of all Homer's hunting-pieces, 

 however, is found in the "Odyfley." It feems to 

 have been ftudied from an aclual occurrence, fo 

 frefh and animated are the verfes which embalm 

 it. They relate how, in his youth, the hero re- 

 ceived the wound on the leg by which, on his 

 return from his twenty years' wandering, his old 

 nurfe Euryclea difcovered him. " They fared up 

 the fteep hill of wood-clad ParnafTus, and quickly 

 they came to the windy hollows. Now the fun 

 was but juft ftriking on the fields, and was come 

 forth from the foft flowing ftream of deep Oceanus. 

 Then the beaters reached a glade of woodland, 

 and before them the hounds ran tracking a fcent, 

 but behind came the fons of Autolycus, and 

 among them goodly Odyfleus followed clofe on 

 the hounds, fwaying a long fpear. Thereby in a 



1 "Iliad," xii. 14.6. Xenophon in his " Treatife on Hunt- 

 ing" fpealcs but little of hunting ferocious animals. Hare- 

 hunting is his delight. He defcribes all the knots, flips, fnares, 

 etc., neceflary for it, with all the detail of accomplifhments and 

 tools fuited to the mediaeval angler. (See Muir's "Literature 

 of Ancient Greece," vol. v., p. 477, etc.) 



