Page 28 - The Sloughi Review - Issue 9

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W
Sloughi as a guard dog in Algeria © Mangelsdorf
Arrian and the Vertragus
Lucius Flavius Arrianus (c. 85 to 145/146
AD) (9) came from Nicomedia in the Roman
province of Bithynia. Like Xenophon, he
was Greek, came from the same city as
Xenophon and served as an officer of the
cavalry. He did his military service in
Noricum (present-day Austria, Bavaria, east
of the river Inn and Slovenia), a Celtic
kingdom and in Baetica (also Celtic) in the
south of present-day Spain, but also in
other areas of the Roman Empire.
Like Xenophon, Arrian wrote about hunting
and hunting dogs alongside his works of
historiography; in doing so, he took his cue
from the work of his Greek predecessor
from the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. As we
mentioned above, hunting in the ancient
understanding was a preparation for the
skills needed to be a warrior and leader of
warriors.
2 8
Therefore, it was important enough as a
topic to write a book about it. Arrian
explicitly refers to Xenophon and his work
"Kynegetikos", indeed he names it as well.
The most important game was the hare.
However, there is a serious difference in the
description of the dogs: Xenophon describes
the hunt with nets that have to be set up,
the dogs serve as drivers and trackers for
the game, we would remotely call this a
pointing dog today. In fact, ancient
depictions of hunts, from the Egyptians
onward to the Romans, show the use of nets.
We see hunting in the open field for the first
time in Tutankhamun's era and then only
again in the Roman mosaics, as in the
Ederatus-Mustela scene of Oudna above.
And Arrian says it explicitly: "Xenophon could
not have known the Vertragus!" (10).