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 elementof 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
(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 elementof 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
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