First, then, they should be big. Next, the head should be light, flat1 and muscular; the lower parts of the forehead sinewy; the eyes prominent, black and sparkling; the forehead broad, with a deep dividing line; the ears small and thin with little hair behind; the neck long, loose and round; the chest broad and fairly fleshy; the shoulder-blades slightly outstanding from the shoulders; the forelegs short, straight, round and firm; the elbows straight2; the ribs not low down on the ground,3 but sloping in an oblique line; the loins fleshy, of medium length, and neither too loose nor too hard; the flanks of medium size; the hips round and fleshy at the back, not close at the top, and smooth on the inside4; the under part of the belly itself slim; the tail long, straight and thin; the thighs hard; the shanks5 long, round and solid; the hind-legs much longer than the fore-legs and slightly bent; the feet round.
1 In profile.
2 i.e., not bent inwards or outwards.
3 So Pollux read, for he says μὴ πρὸς τὴν γῆν βαθυνομένας. The sense is then that the ribs are not to be low on the ground when the hound is couchant, but well tucked up behind. ἐπίπαν βαθείας, “deep throughout,” would apply to the depth from wall to wall, and the meaning would be that the ribs are to contract towards the flanks.
4 i.e., without folds in the coat towards the loins.
5 From the elbows to the feet.
Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes, 7. E. C. Marchant, G. W. Bowersock, tr. Constitution of the Athenians. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA; William Heinemann, Ltd., London. 1925.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.