Book 1

1. To you, blessed one, I sing, the earth's renowned support, the much-loved light of the warlike sons of Aeneas, sweet scion of Ausonian Zeus, Antoninus; whom great Domna bore to great Severus, bedded in blessedness and in blessedness brought to birth, a bride of the noblest husband, a mother of fairest children, an Assyrian Cytherea and a Selene that never wanes, in no way feebler than the offspring of Zeus the son of Cronus; may Titan Phaethon and Phoebus Apollo look upon you with favour. To him the father, toiling with his mighty hands, gave to hold all the dry land and all the watery deep. For you the teeming all-bountiful soil conceives and bears, and again the sea in calm weather feeds its famous tribes; for you all the streams flow down from Ocean, and the bright glad Dawn, the early-born, runs on her course. Therefore I long to sing the glorious lore of the hunt. This Calliope bids me, this Artemis herself. I heard, as is right, I heard the divine voice, and I answered the goddess; and first she spoke to me thus: A. Awake, and let us tread the rugged path that no mortal yet has trodden in his songs. O. Be gracious, holy lady, and what you purpose in your heart, I will utter in our mortal human voice. A. I do not wish you now to sing of the triennial mountain-Bacchus, nor of the dance beside the deeps of Aonian Asopus. O. I will leave, as you command, the nightly Sabazian rites; often I have danced the round for Thyonean Dionysus. A. Do not speak of the race of heroes, nor of seafaring Argo, nor of the battles of men, nor sing to me of the Slayer of Mortals. O. I will not tell of wars, nor of the most wretched works of Ares; I have set my mind on the woes of the Parthians and on Ctesiphon. A. Be silent about deadly desires, and leave aside the love-charms; I hate the playthings of which they speak, the gifts of the Sea-born. O. We hear that you, blessed one, are uninitiated in marriage. A. Sing of the battles of beasts and of hunting men; sing of the breeds of hounds and the varied tribes of horses, their swift-witted counsels, the deeds of profitable tracking; the hatreds among beasts are mine to tell, their loves to sing, and the bridal chambers in the mountains of tearless Cythera, and the births among beasts of unmidwifed travail. Such are the commands of the daughter of great Zeus. I have heard, I sing; may I cast a voice that strikes the mark. But you, who reign from the East to the Ocean, glad beneath your ambrosial brows in fair weather, extend your right hand, all-gracious, the giver of wealth, to the land and to the cities and to songs of good hunting.

A threefold hunting the god granted to men, the hunting of the air, of the land, and the lovely hunting of the sea; but the contest is not equal. For how can it be matched, to draw a gasping fish up from the depths, and to pull the long-winged birds down from the air, or to wrestle with murderous beasts in the mountains? Yet not even for the fisherman, and not in vain for the fowler, is there a catch without toil; only delight attends the toil, that and no killing; for they remain unstained by blood. The one, seated on the rocks beside the sea with curving rods and with deadly hooks, the fearless angler binds fast the cunning fish; and his is the pleasure, when, having pierced it through the jaws with bronze, he carries through the air the sea-born dancer leaping high above the depths and gasping. Yes, and to the fowler the toil is sweet; for to the hunt he carries no sword, no sickle, no bronze spears, but with him as a companion to the thickets goes the hawk, and the long cords and the soft honey-coloured birdlime, and the reeds that tread the airy path. Who could dare to sing that these are of equal weight? Or who would set the eagle against the lion king? With the poison of leopards who would compare the moray, or jackals with hawks, or rhinoceroses with sea-urchins, or the gull with wild goats, or all the sea-monsters with the elephant? Hunters have slain wolves, fishermen tunny; trappers have taken sheep, fowlers doves; pursuers the bear, and anglers the mormyr; horsemen the tiger, and harpooners the red mullet; trackers the boar, and birdlimers nightingales. But you, Nereus, and you spirits of Amphitrite, and you choir of bird-loving Dryads, be gracious; for now the songs I love call me eagerly back, and I turn to sing of the beast-slaying spirits.

First, let the hunters not be too fat for me; for there is great need to leap a towering horse over the crags, need too to vault the trench. And often in the thickets one must drive the beast, nimble of foot and light of limb. So let them not go fat to the toil of the hunt, nor yet too lean; for sometimes the much-hunting man must do battle with the warlike beasts. Therefore let them carry a body blended thus, both swift to run and strong to fight. And in the right hand let them brandish javelins, a pair of long ones, and a curved blade at the middle of the belt; for both let them prepare a bitter death for the beasts, and let them carry defences against evil men. In the left, the man on foot leads the hounds, the horseman guides the bridle that steers his horses. Let him fasten his tunic neatly up to the thigh and draw it in, girt tight with crossing belts. On either side of the neck let the cloak hang loose from the hands back behind over the strong shoulders, for easier labour; and let those go on bare feet who care for the hard-to-see tracks of beasts, so that the noise of sandals rubbed beneath oiled feet may not steal sleep from the eyes of the beasts. And let him not wear too ample a cloak; for a garment often stirred by the breath of a sounding wind has startled the beasts, and they have sprung up to flee. Thus let the hunters array their swift bodies well; for such Leto's daughter, the Archer, loves.

Let them go against the beasts at different hours, at the rising of the day, and at the day's decline, and at midday, and sometimes at evening; sometimes too in the dark they have subdued beasts beneath the rays of the moon. For the hunter the dawn is favourable on every side, all serene through the whole day's running, in leaf-bearing spring and in leaf-shedding autumn; for above all the temperate seasons are best for horses and men and ravening hounds to run in, in golden spring, the driver-away of chilly clouds, when the sea is passable for seafarers who sail it, who spread the white gear of the sail-winged ships; when the earth rejoices for men who tend their plants; when she loosens the bonds of buds and blossoms; or again at the last turning-points of autumn, when the house of the fruit-gathering farmer flourishes, when Athena's fruit fills the gleaming oil-jar and the cluster of the vines, pressed, gladdens the wine-vats, when the lily honeycombs weigh down the bee-hives. In midwinter let them hunt at the middle of the day, when in the thickets someone, withdrawn beneath a cave, having gathered dry sticks and kindled a quick-dying flame, the herdsman, leaning near the fire, has made ready his meal. In summer one must flee the flaming threat and the parching of the sun; and I bid them come to the contest at the first twilight, when at dawn the farmers beneath the well-made ploughtail, below the plough-beam, drive the earth-cleaving plough with their oxen; or again in the evening when the sun lowers the yoke, when the herdsmen give the signal to their flocks, when they go back again toward their own folds, heavy with milk and churning their udders; and the young, darting eagerly from the stony stalls, all frisk around their own dear mothers, the grim-eyed calves about the bright-eyed cows, the lambs about the well-horned ewes that bleat, the kids about the bleating goats, and the foals about the swift mares. And let the strong toilers carry to the slopes and the woods so many weapons of the glorious hunt, gear that breathes great slaughter of good hunting: well-twisted nets and withes and the long all-catching seine, nets and forked stakes and the much-groaning bonds of snares, the three-pronged spear, the broad-headed hunting-lance, the noose and the poles and the swift well-feathered arrow, swords and ox-axes and the hare-killing trident, crooked hooks and lead-weighted curved barbs, the cord bound with esparto and the well-plaited foot-snare, the meshes and the stakes and the many-eyed dragnet.

Let them lead to the hunt horses of great renown, the males; not only because the females are weaker in foot for running the long course in the woods, but because one must avoid the bed-loving heart of swift-footed horses, and keep the mare far off, so that they may not neigh in longing for love, and the fawns and swift gazelles and the timid hare, hearing it, run off in cold rout. Of horses there are gleaming tribes, as many as the countless races of men, all the breeds that, parcelled out among mortals, eat bread; but nevertheless I will tell which among all are strong, and which excel among the bands of horses: Tyrrhenians, Sicilians, Cretans, Mazices, Achaeans, Cappadocians, Moors, Scythians, Magnesians, Epeians, Ionians, Armenians, Libyans, Thracians, Erembi. A horse pre-eminent among all they have marked, those skilled in race-courses and the keepers of herds, one whose whole body is crowned with such features as these: let him lift a little above the neck his head held high aloft, though he himself is large, with rounded limbs; his head held high, his lower jaw inclined toward the neck; let his brow be broad and bright between the eyes; and from the temple about the forehead let thick clusters of hair shake; the eye keen, fiery, fierce beneath the brows; wide nostrils, a sufficient mouth, small ears; let the neck of the shaggy-maned horse be curved, as when the maned helmet bends its crest; let his chest be broad, his body long, his back wide, and a double spine fattening the haunches in the middle; and let a thick long-haired tail stream out behind; the thighs well-knit, muscular; but below straight and long and rounded are the cannons of the legs and very slender; the limbs lean of flesh, like those of long-horned, storm-footed deer; let the pastern slope, and let the round hoof run high off the ground, dense, horny, strong. Such a horse let me ride into the strong war of beasts, spirited, my fellow-toiler, warlike, mighty. Such are the Tyrrhenian and the Armenian and the Achaean, and the famous Cappadocian and those who dwell before the Taurus. A great marvel I have seen in the swift-footed Cappadocians: as long as they bear the new tooth in their mouths and a milk-fed body, they are weak; but they grow swifter the more they age. Arm those for great-hearted war and against the fiery beasts; for, very bold, they meet weapons, break the close phalanx, and fight face to face with the warlike beasts. For how, in battles, has the warlike horse endured the war-rousing din of the long trumpets? Or how with unblinking eyes has he looked straight at warriors, an ambush packed with men-at-arms, and the gleaming bronze, and the flashing iron, and learned when he must stand fast and when again to charge, and learned to heed the watchword of the strong captains? Often too he has charged at the towers of fighting men, calm beneath the winged roof of shields, when for mortals shield against shield is set crosswise above the head, when they long to sack the city of their enemies, and make a high plain of seven ox-hides, intricate, dense, many-bossed, and against the gleam of bronze the sunlit flash leaps back, and at once behind the brightness, as the ray slants away, the wide sky lightens. For to horses cunning Nature gave beyond all the heart of mortal creatures and a quick-changing spirit in their breasts: they always know their own dear charioteer and neigh when they see their glorious leader, and greatly lament a comrade fallen in battle. A horse once in the fray broke the bonds of silence and overran the laws of nature and took a human voice and a tongue like that of men. The horse of the warlike Macedonian king, Bucephalas, fought face to face against the weapons. A horse once ran on the ears of corn with light feet, another over the sea, and did not wet his fetlock-band. A horse carried above the clouds the slayer of the Chimaera, and a neighing colt once, through the tricks of its groom, made the Persian, the Asian-born, a king. Above all too they honour their nature; and it is utterly unheard-of for them to come to a love that is not lawful; but they remain unstained by defilement, and desire only pure Cythera. I have heard how once one of the wealthy lords kept on his plains a fair herd of horses; and afterwards a horse-plague, subduing them all root and branch, left but two, the mother alone and her dear mother's still suckling foal. But when he was grown, the cruel man tried to lay the mother in the embrace of her own son. And when he saw them refusing love and marriage abhorred by both, then straightway, plotting dread things, he wove a crafty scheme, hoping to call back the breed again to his horses. First he covered both, brooding mischief, with other hides; then he anointed their whole bodies with sweet-smelling, fragrant oil; for he hoped to blot out the scent, the guide to love; and he succeeded, O blessed gods, in working evil; and it was accomplished, a strange bed, abominable, most hateful to horses, such as was wed among men of old, the dread Cadmean marriage of wandering Oedipus. But when, uncovered, they saw their ruin, and looked at each other in anguish with sidelong eyes, she, wretched, at the unborn offspring, and he straightway, ill-wed, ill-bedded, at his pitiable motherless mother, they reared high aloft, snorting savagely, and breaking their bonds they went, neighing loud, as if calling the blessed gods to witness their misery, and praying curses upon the bringer of so much woe; and at last, weeping and rushing wildly, driving their heads against the rocks opposite, they crushed their bones together and put out their own light, self-slain, leaning their heads upon each other. So report sings great glory of the horses of old. Of all the breeds of horses that the boundless earth has reared, the swiftest are the Sicilians who dwell about Lilybaeum and the three-headed mountain where, the covering of Enceladus, belching with fiery flashes of the thunderbolt, the everlasting fire of Sicilian Etna boils up. Swifter than the Sicilians, beside the streams of the Euphrates, are the Armenians and the deep-haired Parthians. But the Iberians far surpass even the Parthians, striking the plain with swifter feet. With them perhaps only the eagle could match itself, the eagle driving through the hollows of the air, or the hawk shaken on long wings, or the dolphin gliding through the grey surge. So swift of foot, so windlike, are the Iberians; but they are few and small in strength and weak of heart, and proved wanting in a course of but a few stades; their forms are clothed in splendid beauty and a glorious body, but their hoof is not strong, clay-bred, broad-soled. The gleaming tribes of the Moors far surpass all in long courses and in painful labours. And the Libyans next to them run the long course, all those who dwell about Cyrene rich in pebbles. The forms of both are alike, except that the Libyans are larger to look upon and grow up strong, but long in body; for about their flanks they have, more than the others, a broad rib-cage; and therefore they are thicker to look upon and better at charging straight, and good at bearing the fiery rush of the sun and the sharp midday threat of thirst. The Tyrrhenian horses and the boundless Cretan tribes are both swift to run and long of body. Swifter than the Moors are the Sicilians, and than the Sicilians the Parthians, and they are bright-eyed and exceedingly gleaming, and they alone endure the great roar of the lion. For indeed against different beasts different breeds of horses are fitted, as their colours show you. Against the dappled-footed deer arm yourself with dark-eyed horses, grey ones against bears, and tawny against leopards, fiery, flame-bright horses against boars, but bright-eyed grey ones against grey-eyed lions. In beauty above all is the horse pre-eminent, the Nesaean, which wealthy kings bring; fair to see, gentle to carry on an obedient rein; small of head, but full in his deep-haired neck, glorying on either side with honey-golden mane. Yes, and you may behold another lovely breed, dappled, conspicuous, which they call the Orynges, either because they grow up in the fair-tressed mountains, or because they are wholly eager to leap upon the females. A twofold many-flowered beauty belongs to the Orynges: for some have neck and fair-haired wide backs inscribed close with long stripes, like swift tigers, the offspring of swift Zephyr; others are wrought with rounded spots all about, with close seal-marks like leopards; these, while they were still young, skilled men marked, searing the long hair with burning bronze. Often men have devised another all-cunning thing, to mark the colt even while it was in the mother's womb. Oh how great is the heart, how great the mind in men! They did as they wished; they made horses of many colours while still wrapped in the milky flanks of the mother. For when a longing for love seizes the female horse and she awaits a famous high-spirited stallion coming near, then they adorn the fair mate; and all about his whole body they paint with well-dappled colours, and lead him to the bed, proud in his splendour. And as some young man, by the bridal-tending women crowned with white garments and purple flowers, and breathing of Palestinian perfume, enters the chamber singing the bridal-song; so the horse, hastening and neighing the marriage-strain, the famous mate foaming before his bride, they long restrain, eager for the beloved bed; and late at last they release him to the lovely union; and she, conceiving, bears a many-coloured foal, having taken in her womb the fruitful seed of the male, but received the colour with her eyes, many-hued. Such things too those men, who have care of the reeds, the fowlers, contrived with subtle thoughts, when they adorn the nestlings of the ring-doves; for when the swift wood-pigeons go to love, mingling with their deep-voiced mates, then the bird-keeper weaves his famous scheme, and beside the females he sets many embroidered things, purple garments; and they, casting their eyes aside in desire, warmed in their hearts, bring forth sea-purple young. Yes, and thus the Laconians devised a clever thing for their own dear wives, when they swell in the womb: painting on tablets they set near them splendid beauties, those who once flashed bright among men as youths, Nireus and Narcissus and Hyacinthus of the good ash-spear, Castor of the fair helm and Polydeuces slayer of Amycus, and the young men who are admired among the blessed gods, laurel-haired Phoebus and ivy-bearing Dionysus; and the women delight to see the much-loved form, and bear fair children, gazing upon beauty.

So much about horses; but come down, dear heart, to the path of the hounds. So many among all dogs are pre-eminently splendid and dear to hunters: Paeonians, Ausonians, Carians, Thracians, Iberians, Arcadians, Argives, Lacedaemonians, Tegeans, Sauromatians, Celts, Cretans, Magnesians, Amorgians, and all who upon the sandy banks of Egypt are keepers of herds, Locrians, and grey-eyed Molossians. And if it is your pleasure to blend two breeds, in spring first prepare the bed for hounds; for in spring more than at other times the works of love are the care of beasts and hounds and deadly serpents and birds of the air and the swimming creatures of the sea. In spring the viper, smeared with angry venom, came to the shore to the bed of his sea-dwelling mate; in spring the whole sea resounds for Cytherea, and the swimming creatures, mating, shudder the calm with ripples; in spring too the wood-pigeons pair with the doves, and horses are armed for the field-haunting mares, and bulls rush upon the wild heifers, and the curl-horned rams in spring mount the sheep, and the fiery boars rage among the sows, and the shaggy he-goats ride the she-goats; and to men themselves in spring loves come more strongly; for in spring Cytherea, who belongs to all, presses upon them.

Let the tribes of dogs be your care, you who tend the bridal, breeds fitted to each other and the surpassing kinds. Mix Arcadians with Eleans, Cretans with Paeonians, Carians with Thracians, Tyrrhenian breeds with Laconians, and you may bring a Sarmatian mate to an Iberian bride. Thus you would blend them well; but far the best of all are the breeds that remain unmixed, which the huntsmen have judged supreme; and the tribes are countless, of whatever origin; and let their shapes and forms be such as this. A long, strong, sturdy body, and a head light, bright-eyed; let the dark eyes glitter; let the jagged mouth be wide; let the small ears above be wrapped in thin membranes; the neck long, and the chest beneath strong, broad; and let the forelegs be the shorter pair; straight and long and tall be the masts of the limbs; broad the shoulder-blades, the ribs slanting crosswise; the loins fleshy, not fat; but behind let the tail be firm and long, casting a long shadow. Such hounds let be armed for the long courses, against gazelles and deer and the storm-footed hare. Others again are fierce, in whom is staunch courage, which have set upon well-bearded bulls and rushing on insolent boars have slain them; which do not even dread lions, their own kings, well-fed, like jutting hilltops; they are flatter in the face, and dreadfully above the brow droops between the eyes, and fiery eyes glitter beneath grey-glancing lids; the whole hide is shaggy; the body strong; the back broad; they are not swift, but the strength within them is great, and their power unspeakable, pure, and their spirit shameless. For the hunt then arm yourself with such breeds of warrior hounds, which pursue all beasts. Colours both white and very dark are bad; for they can endure neither the swift force of the sun nor the force of the snow-stricken, wintry season. Those excel among all hounds whose forms are most like the ravening beasts, the sheep-slaying wolves or the windswift tigers, or the swift foxes and the leopards, or all those that have a form altogether like Demeter, corn-coloured; for they are very swift and strong. And if you have a wise care for the rearing of hounds, never let the whelps be suckled at the fresh-flowing teat of goats or sheep, nor by house-dogs; for so they would be sluggish and worthless and heavy; but at the teat of a deer, or perhaps a tamed lioness, or perhaps of gazelles, or of the night-roaming she-wolf; for so you would make them especially strong and swift, like the very milk-giving nurses themselves. And to the young whelps give names that are short, all quick, so that they may hear the quick call. Let them from puppyhood be companions of the strong hunting horses, and to all men familiar and friendly, hostile only to the beasts. Let them not wish to bark; for to hunters silence is the rule, and above all for the trackers.

Two kinds there are of the hard-to-see tracking, of men and of hounds; men of shifting counsel have judged by their eyes and marked out the paths; but hounds with their nostrils have noted every track. Yes, and for men the winter season is favourable, and they track with effortless eyes, because in the snow all things are seen marked together, and in the mud they remain stamped like footprints. But spring is hateful to hounds, and autumn is dear; for in spring the grass-feeding earth, full of herbage, abounds with flowers and is full of scents, and all about the well-crowned meadows grow purple unploughed, and the fields, with their dominant odour, blot out for the keen-scented hounds the trail upon the trackways; but in fruitful autumn with its sweet clusters the grasses and the herbs and the flowers grow old, and the scent of the beast remains bare for the hounds.

There is a brave breed of tracking hounds, small, but worthy of a great song; the wild tribes of the Britons with their painted backs reared them, and by surname they called them Agassaei. Their size indeed is like that of the worthless greedy little table-dogs of the house, crooked, most fleshless, shaggy-haired, dull of eye, but armed in the feet with grievous claws and furnished with close-set venomous fangs; but in the nostrils above all the Agassaeus is supreme and best at tracking; for both, when they go on the ground, he is very skilled to find the track, and skilled too to mark even the airy scent itself. And when one of the hunters, longing to test his hound, before the steep gates carries in his hands a hare, dead or alive, he creeps forward sideways along the path, first straight, then driving it crooked, to the left, to the right, winding the twisting road about; but when he has come very far from the city and the gates, then digging a pit he buries it; and returning back to the city, at once he leads near the path the cunning hound; and it straightway is stirred, and snorts at the hare's scent; it seeks the tracks along the ground, and longing to find them cannot at all; and greatly vexed it wanders about. And as when a girl, in the tenth month of the moon, a first-time mother stricken by the pangs of childbirth, has loosed her braids and loosed the ornaments from her breasts, and tunicless, wretched, with no veil upon her head, wanders everywhere through the house, and in her labour now goes to the forecourt, now again makes straight for the bed, now flung in the dust wails, rubbing her rosy cheeks; so he, vexed with heart-devouring pains, darts this way and that and in turn searches every stone and every hill and every path, the trees and the vines and the walls and the threshing-floors. But when at last he chances upon the airy track, he laughs and whines for joy, just as the little calves frisk about the udder-rich cows; so his heart too rejoices, and rushing on he wheels about, set upon the winding plains; nor could you turn him aside, not even if you drove him far off; he makes straight, clinging fast to the sweet scent, until he passes to the end of the toil and to the starting-line. And if you arm him against unhunted hares, he draws near secretly, and presses track upon track, small, hidden among vines or stalks, like a thief who steals kids, who, when the herdsman sleeps nearby, watching, creeps up quietly. But when he has drawn near the lairs of the hares, swiftly he springs, like a bow or a hissing serpent, which the reaper or some ploughman has roused, as it lay quiet before in its arrow-holding hole. So he, exulting, sprang swiftly; and if he succeeds, easily, having mastered it with his sharper claws and seized it in his jaws, he would meet you with the great burden; swiftly he carries it, toiling and weighed down, and draws near. And as from the cornfield the wagon brings the harvest of reaping, laden with wheat, and goes toward the farmstead, and the farmers, seeing it, rush all together, and meeting it in front, one props the wheels, another the body of the cart, another helps the axle for the oxen; and coming to the farmstead they loose the plough-beam, and the oxen, sweating, take breath from their toil, and the heart of the weary herdsman greatly rejoices; so he comes, bringing the burden in his jaws. And the swift hunter meets him, rejoicing, and lifting both high off the ground from the mother, sets in his bosom the prey and the beast-slayer himself.