Nevertheless these ancient heroes, though by no means averse as we have seen to pigeons or oysters, delighted chiefly in the chase of the larger animals, in which article of taste they agreed with Plato, who considered all other kinds as unworthy of men. He appears to have entertained an especial aversion for the Isaac Waltons of the ancient world, and in his advice to youth earnestly exhorts them to eschew hooks and fish-traps, which he slily classes with piracy and house-breaking: and so he does fowling. Nor would his generous philosophy countenance poaching with nets and gins and snares. His sportsmen, modelled after the old Homeric type, were to mount their chargers,[706] and accompanied by their dogs come to close quarters with their wild foes in open daylight, and subdue them by dint of personal courage.[707] Precisely similar views prevailed in the heroic age, when the chiefs and principal men were exercised from boyhood in the chase, as appears from the examples of Achilles and Odysseus;[708] of whom the former, according to Pindar, tried his hand at a lion at the age of six years, ἐξέτης τοπρῶτον. Being swift of foot as those Arabs of Northern Africa, who, as Leo[709] says, are a match for any horse, he used without the aid of dogs to overtake and bring down deer with his javelin, and whatever prey he took he carried to his old master Cheiron. This passage Mr. Cary has translated in the following vigorous and elegant manner:— “In Philyra’s house a flaxen boy Achilles oft in rapturous joy His feats of strength essayed. Aloof like wind his little javelin flew, The lion and the brinded boar he slew; Then homeward to old Cheiron drew Their panting carcases. This when six years had fled; And all the after time Of his rejoicing prime It was to Dian and the blue-eyed Maid A wonder how he brought to ground The stag without or toils or hound. So fleet of foot was he.” Footnote 706: Cf. Poll. Onom. v. 17. Footnote 707: De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 71. seq.—In his Republic boys were to be permitted when they could do so with safety to proceed to the field of battle, and there to approach sufficiently near the scene as to be able like young hounds to taste, so to speak, of blood.—t. vi. p. 367. Footnote 708: Pind. Nem. iii. 43. seq. Diss. Odyss. τ. 429. seq. Footnote 709: Descrip. Afric. Similar manners, if we may confide in Virgil,[710] prevailed among the old inhabitants of Latium, and Xenophon[711] in his monarchical Utopia trains the youth in the same habits. Footnote 710: Æneid, ix. 605. Footnote 711: Cyneg. ii. 1.