Hunting Lore #1: Grattius' Cynegeticon

In no particular order, certainly not a chronological one, the "Hunting Lore" series will go over the ancient Greek and Latin writers on hunting - classically subdivided into hunting proper, fishing, and fowling -, collecting and discussing what they have to say about gods, rituals and mythology.

The first writer I am discussing, neither the earliest or the last, neither the most or the least important, is Grattius (1st cents. BCE and CE), author of the Latin poem Cynegeticon, available to read in Duff and Duff's English translation at LacusCurtius, from which I will be citing. Cynegetice is the the art of the hunter, literally the dog-leader, prototypically an aristocrat on horseback, so that Grattius discusses both dog and horse breeds. A list of game is lacking, and probably not due to text loss (although the final portion of the poem is indeed lost).

Although the catalogues have their own inherent interest, it is the mention of the "Glympic hound" that leads Grattius to tell us something about the mythical origins of hunting:

But, Glympic hound, you were the first to wear leash on high-poised neck and he that followed you in the forest was the Boeotian Hagnon, Hagnon son of Astylos, Hagnon, to whom our abundant gratitude shall bear witness as pre-eminent in our practice of the chase. He saw where the easier road lay to a calling as yet nervously timorous and owing to its newness scarce established: he brought together no band of followers or implements in long array: his single metagon [i.e. dog, but precise meaning unknown] was taken as his guard, as the high promise of the longed-for spoil;

A description of a dog's role in hunting follows, until Grattius returns to Hagnon:

Such was the mighty benefit, such the surpassing prize of triumph granted to thee, great Hagnon, by favour of the gods: so shalt thou live for ever, as long as my songs shall last, as long as the woods keep their treasures and Diana's weapons abide on earth. 'Twas he too who developed a species with a wild strain from the blood of the thoes [jackal? wolf?].

This Hagnon is a truly obscure figure, but the general idea is not: any significant practice, like the use of dogs in hunting, must have had an inventor favored by the gods - in particular, the deity under whose dominion the practice fell, meaning Diana in the case of hunting. But while Hagnon is clearly important to Grattius, the inventor of hunting itself is said to be Dercylos, another highly obscure character:

Fortunate the man whose industry made him first inventor of arts so great! Was he a god or was that mind close kin to the gods which mightily sped its clear gaze into blind darkness and flooded the uninstructed crowd with light? Come speak, Diana, for 'tis heaven's will, unto a servant of the Muses. The story stands secure that it was an old Arcadian whom you, Maenalus, his witness, and you, Lacedaemonian Amyclae, first saw laying out hunting-nets in unaccustomed vales — Dercylos his name. Never did man bear himself more justly than he: on earth there was no other more regardful of the gods. He then it was whom the goddess fashioned in primeval fields, and deigning to inscribe him as author of a mighty work, she enjoined him to go and unfold her own arts to the nations. 

So the favor of the goddess does not come at random, but to the pious, and the most important art to the most most pious. In the opening lines of the poem, Grattius unfolds a picture of hunting as a central feature of civilized human life, progressively unfolded through human reasoning and divine help - not just that of Diana but also of other goddesses and gods:

Under thine auspices, Diana, do I chant the gifts of the gods — the skill that has made the hunters glad. Erstwhile their sole hope lay in their weapons: men untrained stirred the woods with prowess unaided by skill: mistakes beset life everywhere. Afterwards, by another and a more fitting way, with better schooling they took thee, Reason, to aid their enterprises. From Reason came all their help in life: the true order of things shone forth: men learned out of arts to produce kindred arts: from Reason came the undoing of mad violence. But 'twas a divinity who gave the first favouring impulse to the arts, putting around them their deep-set props: then did every man work out the portions of his choice, and industry attained its goal. The life that was imperilled by warfare against wild beasts, where most it needed help, thou, Diana, didst deign to shield with aids of thy discovery, and to free the world from harm so great. Under thy name the goddesses joined to them a hundred comrades: all the nymphs of the groves, all the Naiads dripping from the springs, and Latium's satyrs and the Faun-god came in support; Pan, too, the youth of the Arcadian mount, and the Idaean Mother, Cybele, who tames the lions, and Silvanus rejoicing in the wilding bough. I by these guardians ordained — and not without song — to defend our human lot against a thousand beasts, with song too will furnish weapons and pursue the arts of the chase.

(Although this list of gods makes sense - the nymphs and Naiads are Diana's companions; Cybele's power over wild beasts could obviously benefit the hunter; Fauni, Pan and Silvanus are gods of the forest -, I believe that it is original to Grattius, and does not represent a shared consensus about these being the gods of hunting.)

With some playful hyperbole, Grattius presents the state of the art of hunting in his own day, and of what he teaches, as an advance even over the prowess of the figures of mythology: 

The chase is a mighty task, unfit to be handled, save it is mastered by pains. Do you not see the demigods whom old mythic lore records (they dared on proud-piled mountains to essay the way to heaven and assault the mothers of the gods) — at what mighty cost they hunted the woodlands without the boon of my teaching? Venus, baffled, still weeps and long will weep Adonis: Ancaeus fell, arms in hand (yet was he right skilful and imposing with the double axe). The god himself, he of Tiryns, who civilised a barbarous world, to whom sea and earth and the sheer gateway of Pluto yielded as he essayed all things where glory's path lay open, even he (Hercules) won from the chase the chiefest ornament and honour of his fame. Consider, then, what benefit, derived from the arts I treat, can trick the strong beasts when matched against them.

(Both Adonis and Ancaeus were slain by boars; the reference to piled-up mountains assimilates the named heroes to the infamous giants Otus and Ephialtes, who piled three great mountains on top of each other to assault the gods.)

Apart from the gods of hunting and of hunting grounds mentioned before, there are other deities with whom the hunter must concern themself:

[E]specially is it your concern to care for the martial wounds suffered in fight, the maladies which stray along so many different paths, their causes and the symptoms shown by your dogs. Above stands Fate: the insatiable Death-god [lat. Orcus] devours everything and echoes round the world on sable wings. Clearly for a great task still greater care must be employed, nor will the deity play the experienced false: for this our care too there is another divinity [namely, Paean] easy to be entreated who can guarantee the work of healing. 

Some general advice on how to treat dogs' wounds follows, but the poet makes clear that the veterinary methods as well as entreaties of the gods have their limits:

It is a serious plague, too deep for the treatments mentioned, when hidden causes have sped the malady through all the bodies of the pack and the damage is only discovered in its final consummation. Then has pestilence been let loose, and by contagion deaths have come upon the pack at large, and the great host alike perishes beneath an infection that falls on all: neither is there indulgence granted for any strength or service, nor is there hope of escape in answer to prayer. But whether it be that Proserpina has brought death forth from Stygian darkness, satisfying her wrath for some offence entrusted to the Furies to avenge, whether the infection is from on high and ether breathes with contagious vapours, or whether earth is devastating her own fair products, remove the source of the evil. I warn you to lead the dogs over the high mountain-paths: you are to cross the broad river in your flight. This is your first escape from destruction: thereafter the aids we have devised will avail and some service is secured from our lore. 

One thing to note especially, even if it is mentioned only in passing, is that your hunting dogs may suffer punishment for your offence against sacred or moral law - a person's success in hunting is inextricable from their piety. It only makes sense, then, that Grattius sees amulets and incantations as pious practices that produce "peace with the gods" (pax deorum), rather than illicit in any sense:

What need to record primitive devices and the inventions of an unsophisticated age? Of no groundless fear were those the consolations: so lasting a confidence have they prolonged. Thus there are some whose prescription has been to fasten cock's combs upon the dog-collars made from the light-shunning badger, or they twine necklets around, strung of sacred shells, and the stone of living fire and red coral from Malta and herbs aided by magic incantations (magicis cantibus). And so the peace of the gods won by the protective amulet (tutela) is found to vanquish baleful influences and the venom of the evil eye (oculi maligni). 

("Venom" had a rather wider sense in Latin, and could also mean harmful magic and the like.)

One would like to have more detailed explanations of this kind of "primitive devices", but instead he expands upon a more medical procedure. He then comes back to the god of healing, however:

Besides [Paean], kindly disposed to our skill, fails not to regard favourably and to aid him who dips his whelps in the tide of the foaming beach. O Experience, foreseeing in affairs, how much material benefit hast thou lavished on the mass of men, if they make it their care to overcome sloth and by vigorous action to get a grip of fair ideals!

What exactly the explanation for dipping a dog in water is - medical or "religious" - is left open; and I think the language makes it clear that, conceptually, Grattius does not make a hard distinction anyway, or only between simpler and more technically developed practices - the latter of which, however, have not necessarily replaced the former. Indeed, the most effective cures are not discovered by art, reason or experience, but directly revealed by the gods:

There is in Sicily a grotto enormous in its rocky mass — with hollow windings which return upon themselves; high ramparts of black woodland enclose it around and streams bursting from volcanic jaws — Vulcan's acknowledged haunt. As one passes beneath, the pools lie motionless oozing in veins of natural bituminous oil. I have often seen dogs dragged hither fordone from mischievous wasting, and their custodians overcome by still heavier suffering. 

"Thee first, O Vulcan, and thy peace, holy dweller in this place, do we entreat: grant final aid to our wearied fortunes, and, if no guilt is here deserving penalty so great, pity these many lives and suffer them, holy one, to attain to thy fountains" — thrice does each one call, thrice they offer rich incense on the fire, and the altar is piled with fruitful branches. Hereat (wondrous to tell and a portent elsewhere unknown) from the confronting caves and the mountain's riven breast there has come, exultant in southern gales and darting forth 'mid a full flood of flame, the God himself: his priest, waving in pallid hand the olive branch, proclaims aloud: "In the presence of the God, in the presence of the altars, I ordain that all go out of the land far from here, who have put their hands to crime or contemplated it in their heart": forthwith droop their spirits and their nervous limbs. 

Oh! whoso has ever impaired heaven's law in the case of a wretched suppliant, whoso for a price has dared to aim at the life of brothers or of faithful friend or to outrage ancestral gods — if such a man be impelled hither by audacity, the comrade of unutterable sin, he will learn how mighty is the power of God who followeth after as the avenger in wrath for crime committed. 

But he whose mind is good at heart and is reverent to the God, has his altar-gift gently caressed by the Fire-god, who himself, when the flame has reached the sacrifices offered in his honour, retreats from the holy ritual and again conceals himself in his cave. For such a one 'tis right to attain relief and Vulcan's kindliness. 

Let there be no delay: if the malady has gnawed right into the fibres, bathe with the remedies specified and soothe the suffering bodies: so will you expel the tyrannous disease. The God lends support, and nature herself nourishes her own skilful remedy. What plague is sharper than "robur" or what path nearer to death? But still for it there comes here assistance more active than the powerful anger of the ailment.

But it is not necessary for everyone to go to Sicily to receive divine help:

A thousand plagues hold their victims, and their power transcends our care. Come, dismiss such cares (our confidence is not so great in our own resources) — dismiss them, my mind: the deity must be summoned from high Olympus and the protection of the gods invoked by suppliant ritual. 

For that reason we construct cross-road shrines in groves of soaring trees and set our sharp-pointed torches hard by the woodland precinct of Diana, and the whelps are decked with the wonted wreath, and at the centre of the cross-roads in the grove the hunters fling down among the flowers the very weapons which now keep holiday in the festal peace of the sacred rites. 

Then the wine-cask and cakes steaming on a green-wood tray lead the procession, with a young goat thrusting horns forth from tender brow, and fruit even now clinging to the branches, after the fashion of a lustral ritual at which all the youth both purify themselves in honour of the Goddess and render sacrifice for the bounty of the year. Therefore, when her grace is won, the Goddess answers generously in those directions where you sue for help: whether your greater anxiety is to master the forest or to elude the plagues and threats of destiny, the Maiden is your mighty affiance and protection.

In summary, although only 542 lines of poetry are extant from Grattius, he gives a surprisingly full and complete account of what he understands hunting and piety to be, and of how they relate. Beside the attractive descriptions of rituals for Vulcan and Diana, the most interesting point is probably his use of "pax deorum", which conceptually ties together practices moderns like to distinguish as superstitious magic and proper religion.