Hunting in the ancient world

The joy of being out with friends in pursuit of quarry is eternal, says Philip Womack

When I’d shot my first hind, and witnessed the gralloch, I dragged it (and another) across the slopes and down a seemingly endless mountain path. There, alone in the snow, I experienced a flash of kinship with our Greek and Roman forebears. This was how Romulus must have felt after he’d despatched a mighty stag with his bare hands. Though, I expect, he probably didn’t have a hangover like mine.

Eventually, I found the gillie and my companions waiting in the jeep. I was both exhausted and exhilarated. We loaded the carcasses into the back, I jumped up beside them and we drove home for a solid supper, with some much-needed cocktails.

No such handy vehicle was available in antiquity — not even, necessarily, horses. The ancients (mostly) hunted on foot and they carried a lot of kit. At the hunt meets — which would, at first, have been pretty disorganised affairs, with youngsters rounding up their friends hugger-mugger — you would have seen nets and snares, sticks, clubs, javelins, bows and arrows. Some well-prepared chaps would even carry tridents.

You hunted for food and you hunted to protect your flocks and herds. Though Ancient Greek mosaics show hunters naked, you would actually have been wearing a tunic. Subsistence farmers, whose tiny acres could hardly hope to sustain them consistently, hunted to fill their bellies; they also controlled predators. But if you didn’t need the grub, or weren’t a farmer, why do it?