Hiero the Tyrant and Other Treatises (Penguin Classics)

by Xenophon

  CHAPTER 2

  Hunting, then, is the first activity a young man just out of childhood1 [1] should take up, before turning also to other subjects which will enhance his reputation.* He should consider his means and pursue it, if he can afford to, in a manner commensurate with the benefit** he will gain from it; if he is less well off, he can at least commit his enthusiasm to the pursuit and so not fall short of his own capacity.

  I shall now describe what and what kind of equipment he needs in [2] order to take up hunting. As well as listing each item, I will also explain it, to enable a potential hunter to understand the business before setting his hand to it. I would not have anyone belittle these details: they are the prerequisites of achievement.

  The net-keeper must be wholehearted about his job and speak [3] Greek.2 He should be about twenty years old, physically light but strong, and mentally competent, so that he can use these qualities to master the physically demanding aspects of his job and to enjoy it.

  [4] Short nets should be made out of fine Phasian or Carthaginian flax,3 and so should road-nets and game-nets. A short net should be nine-threaded, in three strands, with each strand consisting of three threads; its total length ought to be five hand-spans, with its meshes two palms wide; the surround of a short net must be free of knots, to avoid snags.4

  [5] Road-nets should be twelve-threaded, and game-nets sixteen-threaded. The length of a road-net should be two, three, four or five fathoms, and of a game-net ten, twenty or thirty fathoms – no more, or it becomes unwieldy. Both road-nets and game-nets should be [6] thirty-knotted, with the same size mesh as that of a short net. At the corners, a road-net should have eyelets and a game-net rings; the surround of both kinds is best made out of twisted cord.

  [7] The stakes for a short net should be ten palms long, but there should also be some shorter ones. Stakes of different lengths are to be used on sloping ground, to keep the net an even height off the ground, while stakes of the same length are to be used on level terrain. Stakes must be smoothed down at their tips so that they are easy to disengage from the net. The stakes for a road-net must be double the height of those for short nets,* while those for game-nets should be five hand-spans long, with short tines (i.e. shallow notches). The stakes for every kind of net should be sturdy, of a thickness that is commensurate with [8] their height. A greater or lesser number of stakes may be used with a game-net; if the net has been set up at a very tight stretch, fewer stakes [9] are needed than if it is slack. Another important piece of equipment is a calfskin sack in which to keep the short nets, road-nets and game-nets for the hunt,* and also the sickles which will be needed so that undergrowth can be cut down and used to block up gaps where necessary.

  CHAPTER 3

  [1] There are two kinds of hounds,1 the Castorian and the Vulpine. Castorian hounds are so called because it was Castor, a keen hunter, who kept the breed pure.* Vulpine hounds are named after the fact that they are a cross between dogs and foxes; in the course of time the nature of these two parent species has become completely intermingled.

  Here is how to recognize inferior specimens, which are in the [2] majority: they are undersized, with noses turned downwards, dull-eyed, squinting, graceless, stiff-jointed, weak, thin-coated, long-limbed, badly proportioned, listless, insensitive to scents and with unsound feet. The problem with undersized hounds is that they [3] often fail to keep up with the work because of their small size; a downward-turning nose impedes the mouth, and stops such dogs holding the hare; dull-eyed and squinting dogs are less keen-sighted; graceless dogs also look ugly; stiff-jointed dogs end a hunt in bad shape; weak and thin-coated dogs are incapable of the necessary effort; long-limbed and badly proportioned dogs, with their physical irregularities, move heavily; listless dogs abandon their work, and even lie down in shady spots to avoid the sunlight;* those with insensitive noses find it hard to scent a hare with a high rate of success; and those with unsound feet cannot endure hard work even if they have the temperament to do so, but give up because they get footsore.

  Moreover, hounds of the same breed go about their tracking in a [4] wide variety of ways. When they pick up the scent, they may go on without giving any sign, so that there is no way of knowing that they are tracking; or move only their ears, but keep their tails still, or keep their ears still, but wag the tips of their tails. Some prick up their ears [5] and run along the path of the scent with furrowed brows, their tails drooping and tucked safely away; plenty of hounds, however, do nothing of the kind, but rush madly around in the area of the hare’s traces, barking their heads off, and when their path coincides with the traces, they stupidly trample out the scent.* Then there are others [6] which are constantly circling around, making detours and picking up false traces way out ahead, with the result that they leave the hare behind; if they ever do run across the traces, they guess the direction they have to take, and if they catch sight of the hare they tremble and do not make a move for it until they see it bolt off.

  Hounds which constantly interrupt their casting and sniffing about [7] to run up and examine what the rest of the pack has discovered have no confidence in themselves; on the other hand, those which stop their more expert colleagues forging ahead, by causing a disturbance and impeding their progress, are over-confident. Some hounds find false trails attractive and get terribly excited by anything they come across, and so take the lead even though they know perfectly well that they are misleading the rest; others do exactly the same without even knowing that they are misleading the others. Those which never leave the beaten paths and fail to recognize a true trail are no good, [8] and those which ignore the trace of a hare that is making for its form and which overshoot the trace of a running hare are unsound.

  Some hounds set out eagerly in pursuit at first but are too feeble to keep it up, others race ahead and then lose their way, and others foolishly get put off their mark by meeting a road, and more or less [9] refuse to come when summoned. Quite a number of hounds give up the chase and return because they detest hunting, and quite a number do so because they are fond of people. Some do their best to mislead by baying when they are off the scent, and so make false trails out to [10] be true ones. Conversely there are others which, even though they may be busy following a course, leave their own work and in an undisciplined fashion make for anywhere they have heard a shout coming from. Some set off in pursuit without any certainty about what they are doing, while others pick up a lot of false trails but their judgement is poor. Of those which spend their time sniffing about alongside the trail and circling around together, some are merely pretending to hunt, while others are acting out of malice.

  [11] Most of these faults are innate, but there are also cases of hounds becoming unmanageable as a result of unscientific training. Hounds with these defects may well put a person off hunting, however enthusiastic he was, but I will now go on to explain what hounds of the same species should be like physically and otherwise.

  CHAPTER 4

  [1] In the first place, a good hound ought to be large, and then her head should be light, flat-nosed and well defined. She should have a sinewy lower forehead, with prominent, black, bright eyes; the forehead ought to be broad, with a deep dividing line; she should have small, thin ears,1 with little hair behind them, a long, supple, rounded neck and a broad chest with some padding of flesh. The shoulder-blades should project a little way from the shoulders,* the forelegs should be short, straight, round and firm, and the elbows straight. Her ribs should not have vertical depth, but should extend horizontally. It is best for the loins to be fleshy, neither long nor short, and not too supple or too stiff. Her sides should be medium-sized, the haunches rounded, well covered with flesh at the back, not compact at the top and tightly drawn in on the inside. The lower parts of the flanks should be hollow, as should the main flanks too; the tail should be long, straight and whippy, the thighs firm, the lower legs long, rounded and solid. Her hind legs ought to be considerably longer than her forelegs, and wiry, and her feet shou
ld be rounded. A hound with [2] these points will be physically strong, light, well proportioned and fast on her feet, and will have eager features and a good mouth.

  When trying to pick up a scent, it is best for them to leave the [3] beaten paths quickly, with their heads held obliquely down to the ground, and when they come across a scent to smile and lower their ears. After circling around for a while,* the whole pack should advance towards the form along the hare’s traces, with their eyes constantly moving and tails wagging. When they get close to the actual hare, [4] they should run about more quickly than usual to show its whereabouts to the hunter, and should increase the level of their communication by their eagerness, by moving their heads and eyes, by changing their stance, by looking back at the hunter and then staring into the undergrowth, by returning to the hare’s lair, by sniffing about in front, behind and to the sides of the spot, and by their genuine excitement and delight at being at last near the hare.

  They should give chase strongly, baying and barking loudly all the [5] time, and following the hare over whatever ground it takes. They should be fast and flamboyant in pursuit, capable of frequent changes of direction, and they should give tongue again and again, whenever it is right to do so. They ought not to abandon the trail and return to the hunter.

  So much for a hound’s physique and how she should go about her [6] work. In addition, she should also have a good temperament, a good sense of smell, sound feet and a good coat. The sign of a good temperament is that the hound does not abandon the chase in the heat of the day; the sign of a good sense of smell is that she can catch the scent of a hare even when the ground is as bare, dry and sun-baked as it can be at the approach of the dog-star; the sign of sound feet is that her pads do not get torn to pieces by a run in the mountains at the same time of year; the sign of a good coat is light, thick and soft hair.

  [7] It is best for a hound not to be entirely tan, black or white in colouring, because that indicates a poor pedigree – a wild dog with [8] no cross-breeding. So tan and black hounds should have white hair sprouting on their foreheads, while white ones should have a patch of tan hair there. At the top of the thighs, on the loins and on the underside of the tail, the hair should be straight and thick, but on the upper part of the tail it should be only moderately thick.

  [9] It is a good idea to take the hounds to the mountains more often than the fields, because it is possible for them to track and follow a hare without distractions in the mountains, whereas that is impossible in both cases in areas of cultivated land because of the beaten paths [10] there. It is also a good idea to take them out to rough terrain even if they fail to find a hare, because this sort of terrain strengthens their [11] feet and it does them good to exercise thoroughly there. In the summer-time they should be taken out only in the morning, in the winter at any time of the day, in the autumn at any time except the middle of the day and in spring at any time before the late afternoon, because the temperature is not excessive at these times.

  CHAPTER 5

  [1] A hare’s traces are long in the winter-time because of the length of the nights, and short in the summer for the opposite reason. In the winter no smell arises from their traces early in the morning when there is frost or ice on the ground, because frost sucks up the warmth of the traces with its strength and holds it within itself, and ice puts a freezing layer down on top of the warmth. Also, in these conditions, [2] the hounds’ noses become numb with the cold, which ruins their sense of smell. It is only once the sun or the advancing day has released the traces that the hounds can smell and the traces return to the surface and emit a scent.

  A heavy dew also obliterates a hare’s traces by carrying the scent [3] down into the earth, and occasional storms draw scents out of the ground* and make it a poor medium for carrying scents until it has dried. South winds also make scents deteriorate, because the moisture they carry disperses them. North winds, on the other hand, concentrate and preserve scents if they have not already been dissolved. Rain and [4] showers overwhelm scents, and the heat of the moon – especially of a full moon – obscures them.1 Traces are particularly broken at the time of a full moon, because hares enjoy the light of the moon and frolic with one another by hurling themselves up into the air and leaping considerable distances. Traces can also become confused when foxes cross them before the hounds get there.

  Spring with its temperate weather is good at making scents stand [5] out, except when the ground has a sprinkling of flowers and hinders the hounds by muddling up the scent of the flowers and that of the hare. In summer scents are tenuous and unclear, because the heat of the ground obliterates the delicate warmth of the hare’s traces; besides, the hounds do not detect scents so well at that time of year, because their bodies are relaxed.2 In autumn scents are clear, because cultivated crops have been harvested and wild plants have grown old and died back, so that there is none of the earth’s produce left to emit smells which might get muddled up with the hare’s scent and so confuse the hounds.

  In winter, summer and autumn a hare’s traces usually follow a [6] straight line, but in spring they are complex, because although the creature mates throughout the year, it does so especially during this season. The upshot is that they cannot help roaming around together, and so complicate their traces.

  The smell arising from the traces of a hare making for its form lasts [7] longer than the smell arising from the traces of a running hare, because a hare halts on the way to its form,* but makes rapid progress when it is on the run. So the ground is thickly covered with scents in the first case, but not in the second. There is more smell in places with undergrowth than on bare ground, because as the hare runs through the undergrowth and sits up there it makes contact with a large number of objects.

  [8] Everything growing or covering the earth provides hares with their resting-places; they lie underneath, on top, inside, next to, near, at some distance from or between things. Sometimes they even leap as far as they can into the sea or a stretch of water, if there is anything sticking out of the surface or growing there.

  [9] A couching hare usually makes its form in a sheltered place in cold weather and in a shady spot when it is hot, but in the spring and autumn it chooses a sunny location. When a hare is on the run, however, its behaviour is different because it is so frightened by the [10] hounds. When a hare rests it places its lower legs under its sides, and invariably puts its forelegs together, stretched out in front of its body, with its chin resting on the tips of its feet, and its ears spread over its shoulders. This position enables it to protect its tender parts. Since its [11] coat is thick and soft, this too serves as a protection. Hares blink during their waking hours, but when they are asleep their eyelids are wide open and motionless, and their eyes stay perfectly still. While asleep, their nostrils twitch constantly, but less often when they are awake. [12] When the ground is thick with vegetation, they keep to the fields rather than the mountains. A hare stays in its form, wherever that may be, while it is being hunted, unless it becomes frightened for its young,* in which case it bolts off.

  [13] The species is so prolific that a female hare may have given birth to one litter, be in labour with another and be pregnant with a third. The scent of young leverets is stronger than that of older ones, because while they are still soft and tender their whole body trails on the [14] ground. Extremely young leverets are ignored by hunters and left in the goddess’s care,3 but yearlings set off at a very fast run, until after their first pause, when they slow down. They are light on their feet, but weak.

  [15] To pick up the traces of a hare a hunter must gradually lead his hounds beyond the fields and up to wherever they eagerly follow the traces – that is, on to uncultivated hillsides,* into meadows, glens and stream-beds, and among rocks and shrubs. If a hare bolts off, the hunter must not shout, or else the dogs will go crazy and find it hard to recognize the traces. Sometimes, when a hare has been uncovered [16] by hounds and is being chased, it crosses streams and doubles back and takes re
fuge in cracks and holes, because it is not just dogs they are afraid of, but eagles as well, since young ones, up to a year old, tend to get snatched up by eagles as they are crossing hillsides and bare stretches of ground, and the older ones are run down and killed by hounds.

  Mountain-dwelling hares are the fastest runners, then the ones that [17] live on the plain, and the slowest are those which live in marshy ground. The ones that roam over every kind of terrain are hard to chase,* because they know all the short cuts, in the sense that they usually run uphill or over even ground, tend to avoid uneven ground, and keep off downhill slopes altogether.

  When being chased, the fact that their bodies reflect the sun means [18] that hares are particularly easy to see, if they have some red in their coat, as they are crossing ploughed fields and running through stubble. They are also easy to see on beaten paths and on roads (as long as they are level), because the bright parts of their coat reflect the light. But they are hard to see when they run for cover among rocks, on hillsides or on stony or wooded ground, because they are the same colour as their surroundings.

  When a hare is out in front of the pack of hounds, it may stop, [19] raise itself into a squatting position, listen for any baying or noises indicating the presence of hounds near by and then set off in the opposite direction from any noise it does hear. Sometimes, even [20] though there is nothing for it to hear, it imagines or convinces itself of some threat, and runs for cover, doubling back past the same objects and over the same ground, leaping this way and that, and confusing its traces with further traces. The longest runners are those which are [21] discovered on bare ground, because they can see where they are going, whereas the shortest runners are those discovered on wooded ground, because the darkness frustrates them.