by Xenophon
When artists portray gods and heroes on horseback, this is the [8] posture they give the horses,1 and it makes a splendid impression when men can get their horses to adopt it. In fact, the sight of a prancing [9] horse is so fine, or perhaps frightening or wonderful or amazing,* that people of all ages can only stop and stare at it. I mean, no one can tear himself away or gets tired of watching a horse, as long as it is giving such a dazzling display.
If it so happens that the owner of a magnificent horse like this [10] becomes a commander of a tribal regiment or a commander of the whole cavalry, it is far more important for him to ensure that all the troops under his command create an eye-catching spectacle, rather than concentrating on making himself the only smart one.2 So if a [11] cavalry regiment is being led by a horse which perfectly exemplifies all the qualities for which people praise this kind of horse* – that is, a horse with a particularly high and frequent prancing step, which covers hardly any distance at all – obviously all the rest of the horses will follow it at a walking pace as well. Now, would there be anything impressive in such a sight? However, if you urge your horse on and [12] lead at a pace which is neither too fast nor too slow – that is, if you adopt the pace which shows off spirited horses at their liveliest and best – there will be such consistent clopping behind you, and such solid neighing and snorting, that the whole regiment, rather than just you alone, will make a remarkable spectacle.
[13] If you go about buying horses properly, if you bring them up so that they are capable of enduring hard physical work, and if you manage them correctly during their battle-training, when exercising them for parades and during actual warfare, nothing but supernatural intervention3 could stop you increasing the value of your horses beyond what they were worth when you got them, and could prevent you from owning famous horses and becoming a famous expert at horsemanship yourself.
CHAPTER 12
[1] I would like to add some words on what arms and armour you should have if you intend to face danger on horseback.1
In the first place, then, you should, I think, have a breastplate made for your trunk. Now, a well-fitting breastplate can be supported by the whole trunk,* but all the weight of one that is too loose falls on the shoulders, and one that is too tight is a straitjacket rather than a piece of armour.2
[2] Since the neck is one of the vital parts of the body, you should have a covering made for it as well, in my opinion. It should emerge out of the breastplate and conform to the contours of the neck. That way it will not be merely decorative and, if properly made, it will encase the rider’s face all the way round to his nose, should he want it to.
[3] The best kind of helmet, to my mind, is the Boeotian type, because while it too covers the parts above the breastplate – in fact, does so better than any other type – it does not restrict the wearer’s vision.3
The breastplate too should be made in such a way that it does not [4] stop you either sitting down or bending over. The flaps should be large enough and of a suitable material to afford the region of the lower abdomen, genitals and thereabouts* protection against missiles.
[5] A wound even to the left hand will incapacitate a cavalryman, so I recommend the piece of armour which is known as the ‘arm’ and is specially made for the left arm. The value of this piece of armour is that it protects the shoulder, the upper arm, the forearm and as much of the hand as is involved in holding the reins, and it can be stretched and bent. It also covers the gap in the breastplate under the armpit.
The right arm has to be raised in order to throw a javelin and [6] deliver a blow. So the part of the breastplate which impedes this should be removed and replaced by hinged flaps designed to open up when the arm is raised and close when it is lowered. For the arm the [7] kind of armour which is separately fastened on like a greave seems to me preferable to the kind that is attached to another piece of armour.* The part of the body that is exposed when the right arm is raised should be covered near the breastplate by either calf-skin or metal, or else the body will be unprotected at its most vital point.
Since a wound to the horse endangers the rider’s life too, the horse [8] must be protected by armour as well. It should have a head-piece, a chest-piece and side-pieces* (which will also act as thigh-pieces for the rider). But the most important part of the horse’s body to protect is the flank, which is simultaneously the most vital part and the most vulnerable. The horse-cloth can be made to cover the flanks as well, [9] but the design of any blanket that is used in this way should be such that it affords the rider a safer seat and at the same time does not hurt the horse’s back.
So nearly all of both the horse’s and the rider’s bodies will be protected by armour. The rider’s shins and feet, however, will probably [10] stick out beyond the thigh-pieces, but they can be protected too, by buskins made out of the same kind of leather as boots, which can act at one and the same time as protection for the shins and as footwear.
As long as the gods are looking kindly on you, with this armour [11] you should avoid injury. As for offensive weapons, I recommend a sabre rather than a sword, because from the height of a horse’s back the cut of a sabre will serve you better than the thrust of a sword. And instead of a cane-shafted spear (which is weak, and awkward to [12] carry as well), I recommend two cornel-wood javelins, because once you know how to use them it is possible to have hurled one and to use the other against adversaries in front or behind or to either side of you. They are also less fragile than a spear, and easier to carry too.4
[13] It is a good idea, to my mind, to throw your javelin from as far away as possible, because this gives you more time to wheel your horse around and take hold of the other javelin. Here, in a few words, is the best way of throwing a javelin: thrust your left arm forward, draw your right arm back, raise yourself up off the horse’s back from your thighs and then throw the javelin. If you throw it with the point at a slight upward angle it will fly furthest and with the most power, and you will of course achieve the greatest accuracy if you keep the point directed at the target at the moment of release.
[14] The notes, instructions and exercises I have written down here are intended for the use of a non-professional. I have explained in another treatise what information and practices are relevant for a cavalry commander.
Poll
Forelock
Nostril
Neck
Shoulder
Chest
Thigh below the shoulder
Knee
Shank
Cannon bone
Hoof
Fetlock
Belly
Side
Sheath
Hock
Gaskin or thigh below the tail
Tail
Haunch
Flank
Loins
Spine
Seat
Withers
Mane
The points of a horse mentioned by Xenophon
ON HUNTING
(Cynegeticus)
INTRODUCTION
Hunting to many of us today is not a sport, as defenders of ‘bloodsports’ maintain, nor an integral part of a complex modern food-producing regime, but merely an indulgence of unnecessary and unacceptable cruelty to wild creatures, chiefly foxes, deer and rabbits. That judgement would apply also with especial force to the ‘hunting’ of migratory birds with guns that is practised in many parts of southern Europe, including Greece. An alternative, almost metaphysical view (witness William Golding’s Lord of the Flies) holds that at heart we humans are all hunters, a tribute perhaps to the huge percentage of the time span of homo sapiens that depended on his successfully being Man the Hunter. The ancient Greeks were not exercised by moral anxieties of this kind, although Euripides’ Bacchae is a spectacularly vivid illustration of their concern with the metaphysics of the bestial in man. Not that hunting lacked opposition on any grounds, as we shall see; but Xenophon and his fellow devotees were untroubled by saboteurs from any ancient Greek League ag
ainst Cruel Sports. Besides, hunting for them was not only a secular leisure pursuit. It was also an act of religious devotion performed under the sign of Artemis, a huntress herself (1.1, 6.13) and goddess of the wild margins. It was complementary to, not in competition with or opposition against, the Greeks’ fundamental ritual of animal blood-sacrifice, since the animals they typically sacrificed were domestic not wild (even if some aspects of the ritual may perhaps allude to the prehistoric palaeolithic era when humans depended for their livelihood on wild game, not agriculture). The charming autobiographical description in The Persian Expedition (5.3.7–13) of Xenophon’s estate at Scillous near Olympia makes hunting’s religious connotation explicit:
… he [Xenophon] used to take a tenth of the season’s produce from the land and make a sacrifice to the goddess [Artemis]. All the townspeople, and the men and women of the district used to take part in the festival, and the goddess provided those who camped out there with… a share both of the animals sacrificed from the sacred herds and also of the animals caught in hunting. There were plenty of them as Xenophon’s sons and the sons of other townspeople used to go hunting specially for the festival, and anybody else who liked joined them in the hunt. Pigs, antelopes and stags were caught…
On the other hand, the present treatise is by no means politically innocent. In a passably egalitarian age and within a democratic society, hunting, which required extensive wealth and leisure time, attracted the stigma of aristocratic self-indulgence. To that somewhat envious charge the author replied implicitly by urging young men to regard hunting as educational (1.18). Here, the author was able to exploit the imagery of hunting central to the transition-to-manhood myths and rituals that at Athens contributed to the eventual formalization of an ephebic training programme in the 330s (see Chapter 2 note 1). He stressed too, more controversially, that hunting was not only politically correct but even politically beneficial. Huntsmen, as he represented them, made brave, inventive and strong-willed soldiers, ready and able to fight on behalf of the community. Hunters, indeed, being noble, true and bold, were – it is claimed – morally superior to politicians, especially democratic ones, who as a breed were treacherous, cowardly and corrupt. The extended hunting metaphors that one finds in other Xenophontic works (e.g. Memoirs of Socrates 3.11), as in Plato, served therefore not merely to illustrate but also to reinforce an elite style of life and code of morality.
The wild animals that typically found themselves on the wrong end of a hunter’s missile or spear were either hares (though whether the Greeks used their blood as an exfoliant in the manner of the elegant Roman ladies of Ovid’s day, we do not know) or wild boar. The hare formed an essential item in the repertoire of pederastic courtship among the Greek social elite. Its presentation by the would-be lover to his desired beloved symbolized both the element of erotic chase necessarily involved in the transaction and the lover’s prowess as a hunter. The wild boar, however, weighing perhaps 100 kg. and with a hide so thick that today it can be pierced only by high-calibre bullets, was an altogether different proposition, strong meat not only as food but also as a gendered symbol: hunting a wild boar in Xenophon’s Greece carried something like the same masculine (or masculinist) overtones as does bullfighting in Spain (or rather, did – there are now female matadors).
As noted in the introduction to On Horsemanship, a huntsman might ride to the hunting ground on horseback, but the actual hunting would be done on foot. Key to his success was the management of his hounds – the Greek for huntsman was literally a ‘driver of dogs’. If the present treatise is anything to go by, those hounds would normally or always be the females of the species. And indeed subspecies: one of the many marks of the author’s cynegetical expertise is his elaborate attention to breeds and breeding.
I have been careful so far in this introduction to speak vaguely of ‘the author’ – in manner (jerky style, loose grammar, awkward arrangement) On Hunting differs so greatly from works that are certainly Xenophon’s that many modern scholars have found it impossible to believe its attribution to him. (It should be said, however, that Arrian, the ‘new Xenophon’ of the Roman era, accepted the whole work as genuine when composing his own Cynegeticus.) The problem of authenticity is doubly vexed in that the concluding chapter not only is explicitly autobiographical – ‘I am just a layman…’ – but also delivers a sustained and passionate profession of pedagogical faith – ‘… but I know that the best place to look for instruction in goodness is one’s own nature, and that the second best course is to go to people who really know something good rather than to professional deceivers’ (13.4), that is the sophists, whom the author affected to despise no less than did the professional anti-sophists Isocrates and Plato. At least – and at most – we may fairly claim that Xenophon would have endorsed wholeheartedly sentiments of this sort, if not necessarily the manner of their expression.
ON HUNTING
CHAPTER 1
Hunting with hounds was invented by the gods Apollo and Artemis.1[1] They presented it to Cheiron in recognition of his virtue, and he, delighted with the gift, put it to use. Now, his pupils, who came [2] to learn hunting and other noble pursuits from him,2 were Cephalus, Asclepius, Meilanion, Nestor, Amphiaraus, Peleus, Telamon, Meleager, Theseus, Hippolytus, Palamedes, Menestheus, Odysseus, Diomedes, Castor, Polydeuces, Machaon, Podaleirius, Antilochus, Aeneas and Achilles, each of whom was honoured by the gods in his time. It should not occasion surprise that most of them [3] died, despite being favourites of the gods, because that is what it is to be human; in any case, they have become widely celebrated.3 Nor should it be thought odd that they were not all contemporaries: Cheiron’s lifetime covered all of theirs, because he was in fact a half-brother of Zeus, since they had the same father, but different mothers – Rhea for Zeus, the nymph Naïs for Cheiron. And so, [4] although Cheiron was born before any of his pupils, he was the last to die, for he tutored Achilles.
As a result of their devotion to hounds and hunting, and of course [5] of the rest of their education, they gained heroic stature and became admired for their virtue. Cephalus was abducted by a goddess, but [6] Asclepius met with the even greater good fortune of raising the dead and curing the sick, and for this he has undying fame among men as a god.4 Meilanion was so outstanding for his diligent determination [7] that although the best men of the time were his rivals for the prize of the greatest marriage of the time, it was he and he alone who gained Atalanta.5 The excellence of Nestor has been brought to the attention of the Greeks already, so there is no need for me to speak of it.6 [8] Amphiaraus won extraordinary acclaim in his campaign against Thebes,7 and was then honoured by the immortal gods.*
Even the gods were moved by Peleus to desire his marriage to [9] Thetis and to celebrate the wedding in Cheiron’s home. Telamon proved worthy to win from the most important state the woman he had resolved* to marry, Periboea the daughter of Alcathous, and when the foremost of the Greeks, Heracles the son of Zeus, was handing out the prizes for valour after his capture of Troy, he awarded Telamon [10] Hesione.8 Meleager received conspicuous honours, and the misfortune that followed when his aged father forgot the goddess9 was not his fault. Theseus singlehandedly killed the enemies of the whole of Greece, and is still admired even today for having vastly increased the [11] size of his city’s territory.10 Hippolytus was honoured by Artemis and even spoke face to face with her; by the time of his death his self-restraint and piety had earned him general recognition as a blessed man.11 Palamedes, during his lifetime, was by far the most intelligent person of his day,* and after his death – a death he did not deserve – the gods granted him the right to take revenge, to a degree never permitted any other human being. (One version of the story of his death is wrong, because it assigns responsibility to two men, one of whom was almost the greatest hero there has been, while the other was a match for anyone in bravery and virtue. No, the deed was done by bad men.) 12
[12] As a result of his devotion to hunting, Menestheus became so outstanding
for his diligent determination that, by general agreement, none of the leading Greeks came close to him in military prowess, except Nestor, who, however, is said merely to rival him, not to [13] surpass him. Odysseus and Diomedes never failed on any occasion to cover themselves with glory; in short, the fall of Troy may be attributed to them. Castor and Polydeuces became so famous for what they achieved in Greece on the basis of Cheiron’s education that they are [14] now immortal.13 As a result of this same education, Machaon and Podaleirius became skilled craftsmen, speakers and warriors.14 Antilochus is so famous for his splendid death in defence of his father that he is the only one to whom the Greeks have given the name ‘the [15] devoted son’.15 By rescuing not just the gods of his father’s and mother’s families, but his actual father, Aeneas gained such a reputation for piety that his enemies went so far as to allow him alone of all those they conquered in Troy not to be stripped of his armour. Achilles has [16] bequeathed to posterity such admirable and impressive memorials of what he gained from this education that no one tires of telling his tales or hearing them.
Such was the calibre of these men (who* even today are loved by [17] all good men and envied by the bad) as a result of their studies with Cheiron that whenever a state or a king within Greece was threatened with disaster, it was they who removed the threat, and whenever there was conflict or war between Greece as a whole and all foreign peoples, it was they who won victory for the Greeks and so made Greece invincible.16 So I would advise young men not to despise [18] hunting and education in general,17 since they are the way for them to become good at warfare and at everything else which is a sure route to excellence in thought, speech and action.