Grattius

Gratius Faliscus or Grattius was a Roman poet of the age of Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD). He is known as the author of a Cynegeticon, a poem on hunting.

The only reference to Grattius in any extant ancient writer is a passing reference in Ovid, Ex Ponto:

Some lines by Manilius have been supposed to allude to Grattius, but the terms in which they are expressed are too vague to warrant such a conclusion. According to Wernsdorf, who argued from the name, he must have been a slave or a freedman. The cognomen, or epithet, Faliscus, from which it has been inferred that he was a native of Falerii was first introduced by Barth, on the authority of a manuscript which no one else ever saw, and probably originated in a forced interpretation of one of the lines in the poem, "At contra nostris imbellia lina Faliscis" (5.40). William Ramsay argued that in the context, "nostris" here denotes merely "Italian", in contradistinction to the various foreign tribes spoken of in the preceding verses.

541 hexameter lines of Grattius's poem about hunting are preserved in a manuscript of c. 800 AD. The work describes various kinds of game, methods of hunting, and the best breeds of horses and dogs, using a fairly regular hexameter to do so. Grattius stresses the role of ratio (reason) in hunting, seeing it as a civilising endeavour in the tradition of Hercules, as opposed to indulgence in luxuria.

The poem, entitled Cynegeticon Liber, professes to set forth the apparatus (arma) necessary for the sportsman, and the manner in which the various requisites for the pursuit of game are to be procured, prepared, and preserved (artes armorum.) Among the arma of the hunter are included not only nets, gins, snares (retia, pedicae, laquei), darts and spears (jacula, venabula), but also horses and dogs, and a large portion of the undertaking (verses 150–430) is devoted to a systematic account of the different kinds of hounds and horses.

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