Dogs in Ancient Greece & Rome – Dogs in Antiquity III (Ancient Art Podcast 63)

Welcome back to the Ancient Art Podcast. I'm the guard dog to antiquity, Lucas Livingston. This is the third installment of a three-part series on dogs in antiquity. First we explored the ancient hairless breeds of the New World, including the popular ceramic funerary effigy of the Kalima dog from a couple thousand years ago, and we met Sputnik, my awesome little hairless quaintly chihuahua puppy. Okay, confession, he's really six years old now. Then we traveled to ancient China and looked closely at an expressive mastiff figurine from the Han dynasty. We learned a little about the roles of dogs in oracles, sacrifice, and the culinary scene, and read a bit of the Tao Te Ching, talking about straw dogs. Now we're headed home to the classical world to consider the importance of dogs in ancient Greece and Rome. Perhaps the most heartfelt and memorable appearance of a dog coming to us from the Greek world is found in Homer's Odyssey. In book 17, towards the end of the poem, after 20 years away from home, after the epic slaughter at the fields in Citadel of Troy, after the seemingly endless wanderings and adventures on the wine-dark sea, our eponymous hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, disheveled and unrecognized, finally returns home, unrecognized by all but one, his ever-faithful dog Argos. And I quote, As they were talking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Odysseus had bred before setting out for Troy. As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. And Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had seen his master once more after 20 years. Half a millennium later, we find another heartwarming tearjerker in the loss of Peritas, Alexander the Great's favorite dog. While the story is mentioned only by the first-century Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch, he tells us that it is said, too, that when he lost a dog, also named Peritas, which had been reared by him and was loved by him, he founded a city and gave it the dog's name. But life for dogs in ancient Greece wasn't always so rosy. After the tragic death of the young Patroclus, sidekick to Achilles against the Trojan hero Hector, we learn the fate of his hounds at the funeral celebration. Much as we learned last time in ancient China, dogs were favored by the Greeks as sacrificial victims for purification after death and birth. Despite the presence of dogs of the Trojan War, evidence in the Iliad and Odyssey suggests that the Greeks at the time of Homer primarily used dogs for hunting, shepherding, and guarding, not warfare. In fact, there's scanty visual or literary evidence of the Greeks employing war dogs even through the classical era. As today, dogs in classical antiquity appeared in many breeds. Ancient authors and inscriptions give us the names of some of these breeds. Native to Greece, the swift Laconian or Spartan breed was well-regarded for its hunting prowess. Far heavier and ideal as a sturdy guard dog or hunter of large game was the Molossian, possibly an ancestor to the modern Mastiff. And the Cretan was supposedly a crossbreed of the Laconian and Molossian. That's Cretan, not Cretan. Big difference. As for non-Greek breeds that the Greeks enjoyed, the Celtic Vertragus with its lean, sleek features is often cited as an ancestor to the modern Greyhound. Now, I'm not a card-carrying, American Kennel Club certified dog show judge, but when I look at this mosaic in the Art Institute of Chicago, I see many of the features that the Greeks admired in the Vertragus breed. Around A.D. 150 and his Cynogeticus, a treatise on hunting with dogs, the Greek military historian Arrian wrote that Vertragus dogs, in figure, the most highbred, are a prodigy of beauty. Their eyes, their hair, their color and bodily shape throughout. They should be lengthy from head to tail, for in every variety of dog, you will find, on reflection, no one point so indicative of speed and good breeding as length, with light and well-articulated heads. Their eyes should be large, upraised, clear, strikingly bright. The best look fiery and flash like lightning, resembling those of leopards, lions, or lynxes. Let the ears of your Vertragi be large and soft, so as to peer from their size and softness as if broken. The neck should be long, round, and flexible. Tails fine, long, rough with hair, supple, flexible, and more hairy towards the tip. Ancient authors tell us that getting a large guard dog is the first thing a farmer should do. Never, with a dog on guard, says Roman poet Virgil, need you fear for your stalls, a midnight thief, or onslaught of wolves or Iberian brigands at your back. Though some authors are sure to point out that you ought to make sure the dog was trained by a shepherd rather than a hunter, so it'll guard the sheep rather than chase the rabbit. A white dog's best for the shepherd, so you can see it clearly at night, while a black dog's ideal for the farm, to terrify thieves in the day and for stealth in darkness. Arrian wrote the aforementioned Kynogeticus as something of a supplement to an earlier treatise on dogs also entitled Kynogeticus, written by Xenophon in the late 5th or early 4th century BC. Xenophon tells us that we should give the hounds short names so as to be able to call them easily. A few of the names he suggests include Dash, Rover, Sparky, Killer, and Blossom. In order, that's Orme, Polyus, Phlegon, Kynon, and Antheus. If you want to see the whole list, I've published a table of about 50 ancient Greek dog names, mostly from Xenophon's Kynogeticus, written in Greek and Latin scripts as well as their approximate English equivalents. You'll find that list online at ancientartpodcast.org. Sometimes I've taken some interpretive liberties with the English equivalent. When browsing the list, if you have a suggestion for a more accurate English name, please leave a comment at ancientartpodcast.org or shoot me an email at info at ancientartpodcast.org. But not all dogs in the classical world were bred for sport or duty. Supposedly originating from the island of Malta, the Meletian was a small, long-haired, short-legged lap dog. Evidence suggests that small dogs, although not new, came to be favored during the Roman period, particularly in Roman Britain. This might signify a shift in attitude towards ownership of dogs as pets rather than solely the traditions of hunting, herding, and guarding. This shift could also betray the taste for conspicuous consumption among the Roman elite, where one could afford the expense of small, showy, non-utilitarian pets. Perhaps the most famous dog from Greco-Roman antiquity is Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog at the entrance to Hades, the underworld. As we learned in the first episode of our three episodes on dogs in antiquity, when we explored the hairless dogs of the ancient Americas, dogs hold prominent places as emissaries of the dead and guides for the soul, or to use the fancy Greek word, psychopomp. With the ancient funerary effigies of the Kalima culture from West Mexico, the form of the dog would often be altered or enhanced with a double body, turtle shell, human face, or some other transmutation. Did this serve to grant the canine emissary greater spiritual power while also evoking a deliberately supernatural or otherworldly guise? It seems then perhaps not too far-fetched to see a similar rationalization, granting three heads to Cerberus. If you want to read more about dogs in the Greco-Roman world, be sure to browse the footnotes to this episode at ancientartpodcast.org where you'll find a good number of additional resources. One of those good resources is the article Dogs in Ancient Greece and Rome from the Encyclopedia Romana website hosted at the University of Chicago. You'll also find a fair number of references there for additional reading. Also, I slightly abridged this podcast episode. If you want the whole kitten caboodle with more details about dogs in the Greco-Roman world, especially if you want sources for all of those quotes, be sure to head on over to ancientartpodcast.org. Thanks for tuning into the Ancient Art Podcast. Be sure to like us on Facebook at facebook.com slash ancientartpodcast and give us a nice five-star rating on iTunes. You can follow me on Twitter at Lucas Livingston and can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo, where you'll hopefully give us a good rating and leave your comments. You can also email your questions and comments to me at info at ancientartpodcast.org. And if you really dig the podcast and want to see it continue, I encourage you to consider offering a donation. Whatever you think the podcast has been worth to you over the years, whether it's a dollar or more, your donations help pay for web hosting, bandwidth, and keeping it real. So just head on over to ancientartpodcast.org and click on the donate button. And if you can't spare a shilling, which is understandable, then the best way to help the Ancient Art Podcast is to give us a big juicy five-star rating in iTunes, write a nice comment, and give us a big thumbs up on YouTube. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time on the Ancient Art Podcast.