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NETS BY THE ANCIENTS. 443
The term which Xenophon uses of the stakes is, according
to some mamisciipts of his work, cr;(.axwtf. He says, they
should be fixed so as to lean backwards, and thus more effec-
tually to resist the impulse of the animals rushing against
them*. The Latin term answering to ctuXikk was Vart. We
find it thus used by Lucan :
Aut, cum dispositis adtollat retia varis
Venator, tenet ora levis clamosa Molossi.
Pharsalia, iv. 439, 440.
i. e. " The hunter holds the noisy mouth of the light Molosslan dog, when he
lifts up the nets to tlie stakes arranged in order."
Gratius FaUscus, adopting a Greek term, calls them ancones,
on account of the " elbow" or fork at the top :
Hie magis in cervos vahiit metus : ast ubi lents
Interdum Libyco fucantur sandyce pinnce,
Lineaque cxtructis lucent anconibus arma,
Rarum, si qua metus eludat bellua falsos.
—
Cyneg. 85-88.
It was the business of one of the attendants to watch the nets
Ego retia servo.—Virg. Buc. iii. 75.
Sometimes there was a watchman at each extremity and
one in the middle, as in the Persian lion-huntt. The preva-
lence of this method of hunting in Persia might be inferred
firom the circumstance, that one of the chief employments of
the inhabitants consisted in making these nets {a^Kvu Strabo,
XV. 3. h 18). To watch the nets was called d(,Kvu>peXv (^Elian, H.
A. i. 2), and the man who discharged this oflSce dp^vtopot (Xen.,
De Ven. ii. 3 ; vi. 1.).
The paintings discovered in the catacombs of Egypt show,
that the ancient inhabitants of that country used nets for hunt-
ing in the same manner which has now been shown to have
been the practice of the Persians, Greeks and Romans!.
Hunting-nets had much larger meshes than fishing or fowl-
ers'-nets, because in general a fish or a fowl could escape
through a much smaller opening than a quadruped. In hunt-
ing, the important circumstance was to make the nets so strong
* De Venat. vi. 7. t Oppian, Cyneg. iv. 124, &c.
t Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. p. 3-5.
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