the wild boar, nine lines went to a strand instead of three (x. 2).
It remains to be noticed, that, when the long range of nets, set up in the manner which has been now represented, was designed to catch the stag (cervus), it was flanked by cords, to which, as well as to the nets themselves, feathers dyed scarlet, and of other bright colors intermixed with their native white, and sometimes probably birds' wings, were tied so as to flare and flutter in the wind[1]. This appendage to the nets was called the metus or formido (Virg. Æn. xii. 750), because it frightened these timid quadrupeds so as to urge them onwards into the toils. Hence Virgil, speaking of the method of taking stags in Scythia, says,
Nor toils their flight impede, nor hounds o'ertake,
Nor plumes of purple dye their fears awake.
Georg. iii. 371, 372.—Sotheby's Translation.
The following passages likewise allude to the use of this contrivance in the stag-hunt:
Nec formidatis cervos includite pennis.—Ovid. Met. xv. 475.
Vagos dumeta per avia cervos
Circumdat maculis et multa indagine pinnæ.
Auson. Epist. iv. 27.
Nemesianus, in the following passage, asserts that the cord (linea) carrying feathers of this description had the effect of terrifying not the stag only, but the bear, the boar, the fox and the wolf:
Linea quinetiam, magnos circumdare saltus
Quæ possit, volucresque metu concludere prædas,
Digerat innexas non una ex alite pinnas.
Namque ursos, magnosque sues, cervosque fugaces
Et vulpes, acresque lupos, ceu fulgura cœli
Terrificant, linique vetant transcendere septum.
Has igitur vario semper fucare veneno
Cura tibi, neveisque alios miscere colores,
Alternosque metus subtemine tendere longo.
Cyneg. 303-311.
The same fact is asserted in a striking passage, which has
- ↑ Dum trepidant alæ.—Virg. Æn. iv. 121.
