Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/357

22$ THE H 1ST ORY. ^ .: Book'I, Fiift in the fight the whelps of Britain ibine, And fnatch, Epirus, all the palm from thine. Claudian particularly celebrates their activity and courage in the attack of the bull : •.*;*• Magnaque taurorum fra&urae colla Britamrc* — ■ — The Britifh hound^ That wrings the bull's big forehead to the ground M . And Symmachus the cotemporary of Claudian mentions feven lrifli bull-dogs, Septem Scotici canes, as then firft produced in the Circus at Rome to the great admiration of the people, who were fo ftruck with their ferocity and boldnefs that they uni- verfally imagined them to have been brought over in cages of iron ,8 . The greyhound was originally dehominated by thfe Britons either (imply and moft commonly the Grech, Greg* or Dog, which the mode of liquifying the g into y among the Britons and Saxons has now foftened into Grey, or lefs frequently but more particularly the Vertrag, Ver Trachea the eager or fwift dog l9 . This lightly limbed and elegantly molded fpecies of our hounds was as much efteemed by the Romans for its fleetnefs as the former was admired for its bravery, but was not, like the former, peculiar to Britain. It wag a native equally of Britain and of Gaul, and was therefore fometimes denomi- nated by the Romans the Gallic Dog and fometimes ranked by them among the hounds of the Britons ao . Martial extols the honeft difintereftednefs of the dog in the following couplet : Non.fibi, fed domino, venatur Vertagus acer, Illaefum leporem qui tibi dente feret * For thee alone thy greyhound hunts the prey, And brings to thee th* untafted hare away. Nemefianus, who wrote near the clofe of the third century, mentions them by a Roman appellation exa&ly equivalent to the Ver Trache of the Britons, and fhews the fondnefs of the Ro- mans for them : — — Catulos divifa Britannia mittit Fe/ocesy noftrique orbis venatibus aptos ** ; 5 B*