Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity 9783110544169, 9783110545623, 9783110544510

Table of contents :
Preface
Table of Contents
Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Introduction
A Lifetime Together? Temporal Perspectives on Animal-Human Interactions
Greek and Latin Words for Human-Animal Bonds: Metaphors and Taboos
Pet and Image in the Greek World: The Use of Domesticated Animals in Human Interaction
Lives in Interaction: Animal ‘Biographies’ in Graeco-Roman Literature?
Philosophers’ Pets: Porphyry’s Partridge and Augustine’s Dog
Psychological, Cognitive and Philosophical Aspects of Animal ‘Envy’ Towards Humans in Theophrastus and Beyond
“Animal Literacy” and the Greeks: Philoctetes the Hedgehog and Dolon the Weasel Kenneth F. Kitchell “Animal Literacy”
Cultured Animals and Wild Humans? Talking with the Animals in Aristophanes’ Wasps
Human-Animal Interactions in Plutarch as Commentary on Human Moral Failings
Fish or Man, Babylonian or Greek? Oannes between Cultures
Fighting Animals: An Analysis of the Intersections between Human Self and Animal Otherness on Attic Vases
Keeping and Displaying Royal Tribute Animals in Ancient Persia and the Near East
Urban Geographies of Human-Animal Relations in Classical Antiquity
‘Wild Men’ and Animal Skins in Archaic Greek Imagery
Galen on the Relationship between Human Beings and Fish
Why Avoid a Monkey: The Refusal of Interaction in Galen’s Epideixis
Animals in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: A Select Bibliography
Contributors
Indices

Citation preview

Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity

Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity ||

Edited by Thorsten Fögen and Edmund Thomas

ISBN 978-3-11-054416-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-054562-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-054451-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Attic red-figure cup, c. 525–475 B.C.; New York, ex-Hirschmann Collection G64 (© Sotheby’s, London) Data conversion: jürgen ullrich typosatz, 86720 Nördlingen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Preface | V

Preface

Preface Preface

This volume goes back to a series of guest lectures given in the context of the departmental research seminar (running from January until May 2015) and to a conference held at Durham University (20‒21 June 2015). Claudia Beier, Kenneth Kitchell, Jeremy McInerney, and Stephen T. Newmyer, who were unable to attend the guest lecture series or the conference, were kind enough to send us their articles for this collection. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generous financial support provided by Durham University and the Institute of Classical Studies London for the organisation of the guest lecture series and the conference. In addition, we would like to thank Katharina Legutke and her team at De Gruyter for accepting this book into their programme and for their efficient support; Katja Brockmann deserves special recognition for her hard work on the final production of the volume. Thorsten Fögen would like express his deep gratitude to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), where he held a Senior Research Fellowship during the academic year of 2015/16 and carried out most of the editorial work for this volume. Special thanks are due to the NIAS librarians, Dindy van Maanen and Erwin Nolet, but also to the other members of the wonderful NIAS team. Edmund Thomas is extremely grateful to the British School at Rome for the award of the Balsdon Fellowship for 2015/16, which allowed him to carry out the final stages of editing from April to June 2016.

Thorsten Fögen & Edmund Thomas June 2016

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Table of Contents | VII

Table of Contents Table of Contents Table of Contents Thorsten Fögen & Edmund Thomas Introduction | 1 Sian Lewis A lifetime together? Temporal perspectives on animal-human interactions | 19 Cristiana Franco Greek and Latin words for human-animal bonds: Metaphors and taboos | 39 Louise Calder Pet and image in the Greek world: The use of domesticated animals in human interaction | 61 Thorsten Fögen Lives in interaction: Animal ‘biographies’ in Graeco-Roman literature? | 89 Gillian Clark Philosophers’ pets: Porphyry’s partridge and Augustine’s dog | 139 Arnaud Zucker Psychological, cognitive and philosophical aspects of animal ‘envy’ towards humans in Theophrastus and beyond | 159 Kenneth F. Kitchell “Animal literacy” and the Greeks: Philoctetes the hedgehog and Dolon the weasel | 183 Sarah Miles Cultured animals and wild humans? Talking with the animals in Aristophanes’ Wasps | 205 Stephen T. Newmyer Human-animal interactions in Plutarch as commentary on human moral failings | 233

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Jeremy McInerney Fish or man, Babylonian or Greek? Oannes between cultures | 253 Claudia Beier Fighting animals: An analysis of the intersections between human self and animal otherness on Attic vases | 275 Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Keeping and displaying royal tribute animals in Ancient Persia and the Near East | 305 Edmund Thomas Urban geographies of human-animal relations in classical antiquity | 339 Alastair Harden ‘Wild men’ and animal skins in Archaic Greek imagery | 369 John Wilkins Galen on the relationship between human beings and fish | 389 Marco Vespa Why avoid a monkey: The refusal of interaction in Galen’s Epideixis | 409 Thorsten Fögen Animals in Graeco-Roman antiquity: A select bibliography | 435 Contributors | 475 Indices Index rerum | 479 Index animalium | 483 Index nominum (personarum sive animalium) | 486 Index locorum | 489

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Interactions between Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Introduction Thorsten Fögen & Edmund Thomas Interactions beetween Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity

“To dear Peter, most faithful of friends and dearest of companions, a dog in a thousand” Agatha Christie, Dumb Witness (dedication)

“In der Geschichte ist viel zu wenig von Tieren die Rede.” Elias Canetti (1943), quoted from Über Tiere (München & Wien 2002, 13)

To introduce this volume, several randomly selected textual excerpts may help to illustrate different types of interaction between animals and humans both in the ancient and in the modern world. The first snippet comes from the Geoponica, the Byzantine compilation of agricultural lore in twenty books, assembled in the tenth century A.D. for the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus.1 In addition to astronomy, a calendar of the farmer’s duties, viticulture, the making of oil and horticulture, a large part of this collection (Books 13‒20) focuses on the significance of animals in the context of agriculture. The excerpt in question is taken from Book 13 (Geop. 13.9.5; ed. Heinrich Beckh, Leipzig 1895; our translation): DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-001 Ἀπουλήϊος δέ φησι τὸν πληγέντα ὑπὸ σκορπίου ὑπὲρ ὄνου καθίσαι πρὸς τὴν οὐρὰν ἐστραμμένον, καὶ τὸν ὄνον ἀλγεῖν ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ καὶ πέρδεσθαι. “Apuleius says that anyone who is stung by a scorpion should sit on a donkey, facing backwards towards its tail, and that this transfers the pain to the donkey and makes it fart.”

_____ 1 On the Geoponica, see now Dalby (2011). DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-001

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Notwithstanding the actual origin of this advice or its usefulness, it is clear that the passage recommends the use of an animal to remedy an affliction caused to a human by another animal. The pain experienced by a human is supposed to be transferred to the animal which is attributed the function of some kind of absorber. This essentially utilitarian approach to animals is widespread in ancient medical and pharmacological literature.2 The second excerpt is taken from Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel Mémoires d’Hadrien (first published in 1951), which is quoted here in the authorised English translation by Grace Frick, Yourcenar’s American life partner (Memoirs of Hadrian, repr. London 2000, 17‒18): “To give up riding is a greater sacrifice still: a wild beast is first of all an adversary, but my horse was a friend. If the choice of my condition had been left to me I would have decided for that of centaur. Between Borysthenes and me relations were of almost mathematical precision; he obeyed me as if I were his own brain, not his master. Have I ever obtained as much from a man? (…) My horse knew me not by the thousand approximate notions of title, function, and name which complicate human friendship, but solely by my just weight as a man. He shared my every impetus; he knew perfectly, and perhaps better than I, the point where my strength faltered under my will.”

Here as in the rest of the book, the Roman Emperor Hadrian addresses his future successor Marcus Aurelius in the form of an extensive letter and reflects on his life. With a great deal of affection, Yourcenar’s Hadrian emphasises the friendship and even congeniality that he had with his horse. In his view, the animal perceived him as an individual, not as the most powerful ruler of the Roman Empire; this gave the relationship between human and animal a much more straightforward and transparent character. Although the French author’s text can easily be classified as fictional, it is nonetheless based upon a very meticulous study of the ancient evidence. It is therefore unsurprising that Hadrian’s fondness for Borysthenes is in fact accentuated by Greek and Roman sources. From Cassius Dio, we learn the following (Hist. 69.10.2; ed. & tr. Earnest Cary & Herbert B. Foster, Loeb Classical Library): τῆς δὲ περὶ τὰς θήρας σπουδῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ ὁ Βορυσθένης ὁ ἵππος, ᾧ μάλιστα θηρῶν ἠρέσκετο, σημεῖόν ἐστιν· ἀποθανόντι γὰρ αὐτῷ καὶ τάφον κατεσκεύασε καὶ στήλην ἔστησε καὶ ἐπιγράμματα ἐπέγραψεν.

_____ 2 See e.g. Fögen (2009: 248–251) for some examples in Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia.

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“Some light is thrown upon his passion for hunting by what he did for his steed Borysthenes, which was his favourite horse for the chase; when the animal died, he prepared a tomb for him, set up a slab and placed an inscription upon it.”

It is interesting to note that this inscription has in fact been preserved, though perhaps as a copy or pastiche of the original epitaph.3 Another text, a section in the Life of Hadrian in the Historia Augusta, is less explicit as far as the animal’s name is concerned, but it goes further by including another species (Hadr. 20.12; our translation): equos et canes sic amavit, ut iis sepulchra constitueret. “He loved his horses and dogs so much that he provided burial-places for them.”

Yourcenar’s account thus carefully mirrors Hadrian’s actual sympathy or even love for certain animals, illustrated in particular by commemorative monuments erected in their honour. In the texts considered here, it is evident that most of the interactions between the emperor and these animals took place in the sphere of warfare and hunting. However, neither the ancient documents nor Yourcenar’s novel suggest that these dealings are purely instrumental or utilitarian. On the contrary, a deeply felt emotional component is accentuated throughout. These excerpts represent two different instances of the relationship between animals and humans in Graeco-Roman antiquity: predominantly utilitarian on the one hand, primarily affectionate on the other. However, the picture is in fact much more complex and encompasses a great deal of nuances even within the same categories. There is hardly any area in the ancient world where animal and human lives are separated from each other. As in contemporary society, animals played a variety of different roles for humans in the ancient world: they were loved as pets, represented an attraction in public shows, were used for all kinds of work (in particular in an agricultural context), and served as a medium of transporta-

_____ 3 See CIL XII 1122 (= CLE II 1522 Bücheler), found in Apta in the province of Gallia Narbonensis: BORYSTHENES ALANVS | CAESAREVS VEREDUS | PER AEQVOR ET PALVDES | ET TVMVLOS ETRVSCOS | VOLARE QVI SOLEBAT | PANNONICOS IN APROS | NEC VLLVS INSEQVENTEM | DENTe aper albicanti | ausus fuit nocere | vel extimam salivam | sparsit ab ore caudam | ut solet evenire: | sed integer iuventa | inviolatus artus | die sua peremptus | hoC SITVS EST IN AGRO. See further Geist (21976: 153–154); for an English translation, see Duff & Duff (1934: 446–447).

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tion. Animals sometimes embodied divine power or were sacrificed to the gods; they were bred or hunted and then consumed as food; they were killed because of the danger they posed for humans. They were also the objects of philosophical and anthropological theories concerning the status of humans vs. animals. Ancient authors typically refer to the criterion of language to substantiate the hypothesis that human beings, but not animals, are endowed with reason: it is humans’ differentiated communicative capability that enables them to achieve a high degree of cultural refinement, the development of a social consciousness and well-considered political engagement.4 Visual material can illustrate the same relationships. To give just one example, an analogous epitaph from Edessa in Macedonia (second/third century A.D.) recounts how a pig died in a traffic accident, crushed under the wheels of a chariot. The text consists of six hexameters, with one foot missing in the fifth (SEG 25.711, see Figure 1; our translation):5 χοῖρος ὁ πᾶσι φίλος, τετράπους νέος, ἐνθάδε κεῖμαι | Δαλματίης δάπεδον προλιπὼν δῶρον προσενεχθείς· | καὶ Δυρρά-

_____ 4 See also Ingold (1988: 1): “All human societies, past and present, have co-existed with populations of animals of one or many species. Throughout history, people have variously killed and eaten animals, or on rarer occasions been killed and eaten by them; incorporated animals into their social groups, whether as domestic familiars or captive slaves; and drawn upon their observations of animal morphology and behaviour in the construction of their own designs for living. People’s ideas about animals, and attitudes towards them, are correspondingly every bit as variable as their ways of relating to one another, in both cases reflecting that astonishing diversity of cultural tradition that is widely thought to be the hallmark of humanity.” Further Ullrich, Weltzien & Fuhlbrügge (2008: 11): “Die Welt wird nicht nur von Menschen bewohnt. Tiere nehmen mit Menschen Kontakt auf und Menschen mit Tieren. Hieraus ergeben sich Kommunikationsprozesse zwischen den Spezies, tiefe Freundschaften, symbiotische Gemeinschaften, leidenschaftliche Liebesbeziehungen, wissenschaftliche Annäherungen, grausame Ausbeutungs- und Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse, körperliche Hybridisierungen – alles Formen der Kontaktaufnahme, wie wir sie auch mit Menschen pflegen. (…)” Similarly, Brantz & Mauch (2010: 7) and Marvin & McHugh (2014: 1–2). 5 On the constitution and content of this text, see Daux (1970: esp. 609–618), who rightly draws attention to the uniqueness of this document (1970: 612): “Ce qui est sûr, c’est que le document – inscription et relief – est unique en son genre. Nous n’avions ni pour la Grèce ni pour Rome aucune épitaphe de porc ou de porcelet.”

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χιν δὲ ἐπάτησα Ἀπολλωνίαν τε ποθήσας | καὶ πᾶσαν γαίην διέβην ποσὶ μοῦνος ἄλιπτος· | νῦν δὲ τροχοῖο βίῃ τὸ φάος προλέλοιπα· | Ἠμαθίην δὲ ποθῶν κατιδεῖν φαλλοῖο δὲ ἅρμα | ἐνθάδε νῦν κεῖμαι τῷ θανάτῳ μηκέτ’ ὀφειλόμενος. “A pig, loved by all, a young quadruped, here I lie, having left behind the soil of Dalmatia after being offered as a gift. I walked Dyrrhachium and longing for Apollonia I traversed the whole land on foot, alone, unfailingly. But by the force of a wheel I have now lost the light longing to see Emathia and the chariot of the phallus. Here now I lie, owing nothing more to death.”

The obviously human sentiments ascribed to this pig and a scepticism that a young pig could travel alone all the way from Dalmatia to Macedonia without getting eaten by wild animals have led some to argue that the deceased was a human, a young slave (χοῖρος). But here the epitaph is also accompanied by a relief. The pig is clearly pictured at the bottom left, below the chariot wheels. This young Dalmatian pig, on its way to a religious festival, was walking before or beside its master, either travelling on its own or possibly detached from fellow pigs straggling behind. The four asses rear up in their excitement at the impact. The driver tries to keep control of the team and perhaps seems to let go of the reins. But on the right the pig is shown again. The two images show the animal in the two stages of its life, before and after the accident: on the right, at the front of the convoy; on the left, after the wheel has passed over its body, its coat visibly ruffled by frissons of pain and its feet demonstrating spasms of agony. This volume investigates more closely several questions that illuminate the ways in which humans and animals came together in the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. What are the concrete categories of interaction between animals and humans that can be identified? In what contexts do they occur? What types of evidence can be productively used to examine the concept of interactions? This also entails a more detailed consideration of how literary genres and their conventions influence the presentation of the relationship between animals and humans in ancient literature. Furthermore, what can be deduced from visual evidence, and to what extent can a link be established between visual, literary and other types of evidence? Emphasis is put not so much on boundaries between animals and humans as on their actual interactions.6 This approach

_____ 6 The most recent contribution dealing with boundaries between animals and humans is the collection of articles edited by Alexandridis, Wild & Winkler-Horaček (2008).

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will help to view familiar as well as less well-known ancient documents in a different light and to establish a connection with the increasing number of contributions from modern studies on animals and humans in disciplines other than Classics.7 How the term “interactions” may be understood with regard to animals and humans can be gathered from the preface to a recent volume on human-animal studies (Spannring, Schachinger, Kompatscher & Boucabeille 2015: 17): “Zentral in den HAS (i.e. Human-animal studies) ist das Erforschen und kritische Hinterfragen unserer Beziehungen mit anderen Tieren, des Zusammenspiels und der Wechselwirkung von Menschen und anderen Tieren. Nichtmenschliche Tiere werden dabei nicht

_____ 7 See, for example, Meyer (1975), Midgley (1978), Müller-Karpe (1983), Svilar (1985), Noske (1989), Becker & Bimmer (1991), Dekkers (1992), Manning & Serpell (1994), Rheinz (1994), Serpell (1996), Shepard (1996), Myers (1998), Münch & Walz (1998), Franklin (1999), Dinzelbacher (2000), Podberscek, Paul & Serpell (2000), Schneider (2001), Agamben (2002), Wiedenmann (2002), Henninger-Voss (2002), Rothfels (2002), Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (2002), Wolfe (2003), Knight (2005), Beetz & Podberscek (2005), de Jonge & van den Bos (2005), Macho (2006), Kaplan (2006), Kalof (2007), Bekoff (2007), Philo & Wilbert (2007), Simmons & Armstrong (2007), Armstrong (2008), Flynn (2008), Haraway (2008), Wiedenmann (2009), Pollack (2009), Pöppinghege (2009), Arluke & Sanders (2009), Ach & Stephany (2009), Otterstedt & Rosenberger (2009), Kazez (2010), King (2010), Brantz (2010), Brantz & Mauch (2010), DeMello (2010), Freeman, Leane & Watt (2011), Taylor & Signal (2011), Chimaira Arbeitskreis für HumanAnimal Studies (2011), Hurn (2012), DeMello (2012), Bodenburg (2012), Wolf (2012), Birke & Hockenhull (2012), Taylor (2013), Marvin & McHugh (2014), Fehlmann, Michel & Niederhauser (2014), Bühler-Dietrich & Weingarten (2015), Spannring, Schachinger, Kompatscher & Boucabeille (2015), Spannring, Heuberger, Kompatscher, Oberprantacher, Schachinger & Boucabeille (2015), Ferrari & Petrus (2015), Brucker, Bujok, Mütherich, Seeliger & Thieme (2015), Calarco (2015), and Borgards (2016). That the significant increase of scholarly publications in the area of human-animal studies is a relatively recent phenomenon is pointed out by Kotrschal (2015: 11–12): “Die Anthrozoologie, also die naturwissenschaftlich geprägte Wissenschaft der MenschTier-Beziehung mit den Disziplinen Anthropologie, Ethologie, Medizin, Psychologie, Veterinärmedizin sowie Zoologie und Biologie, entwickelte sich erst in den letzten paar Jahren rasant (…). Noch weniger sichtbar waren in der Vergangenheit die Human-Animal Studies (HAS), die sich im Wesentlichen mit der Perzeption der anderen Tiere und der Mensch-Tier-Beziehung in den Geistes-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften befassen. Auch das änderte sich in den letzten paar Jahren rasant. An den Universitäten weltweit sprießen sehr rasch immer mehr Projekte und Institute, die sich mit diesen HAS befassen.” See also Brantz & Mauch (2010: 10–11), Chimaira Arbeitskreis für Human-Animal Studies (2011: 20–28), Roscher (2012), DeMello (2012: 7– 9), Buschka, Gutjahr & Sebastian (2012), Birke & Hockenhull (2012a: 1–2), Marvin & McHugh (2014: 2–6), Spannring, Schachinger, Kompatscher & Boucabeille (2015: 15–16), Roscher (2015: 76–78, 94–95), Petrus (2015), and Kompatscher (2015: passim), each with further references. Instead of ‘Human-animal studies’, the term ‘anthrozoology’ is also used by some scholars; see e.g. Podberscek, Paul & Serpell (2000: 1–2).

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als kulturelle Gegenstände, Symbole oder Muster betrachtet, sondern als Lebewesen mit eigenen Erfahrungen, Empfindungen, Perspektiven und Interessen, als gesellschaftliche Akteur_innen (sic) und als Individuen mit einem intrinsischen Wert wahrgenommen (…). Es gilt, den Raum, den nichtmenschliche Tiere in menschlicher Kultur und Gesellschaft einnehmen, zu erforschen und zu betrachten, wie sich die Interaktionen zwischen Mensch und Tier gestalten, wie sich die Lebensformen von Tieren und Menschen miteinander verflechten und so Gesellschaft immer wieder neu hervorbringen.”8

Alternatively, one may quote from an article on the investigation of humananimal bonds, written by the editors of a collection of papers dealing with human-animal relationships from a primarily sociological perspective (Birke & Hockenhull 2012b: 23): “To trace relationships means trying to understand how, together, all actors – human and nonhuman build and maintain relationships (or fail to do so). It also means seeing relationships as embedded in specific social and cultural contexts, whether that is (say) on the farm, or human coexistence with (and support of) local groups of feral animals within the local community. All our attachments are enmeshed in layers of social networks and other actors – pet food manufacturers, veterinary specialists, breeders, other animal handlers, other animals, and so forth; in that sense, the relationships are multiple and manylayered.”

The contributions to this volume pursue such considerations for the period of classical antiquity. In particular, they set out to show that animals and humans are interconnected on a variety of different levels and that their encounters and interactions often result from their belonging to the same structures, ‘networks’ and communities or at least from finding themselves together in a certain setting, context or environment – wittingly or unwittingly. Although it may not be common among classicists to view animals as mere cultural objects or symbols, such perceptions are constantly found in ancient Greek and Roman sources. It is the object of the present collection to analyse and contextualise these ancient views in a scholarly fashion, and so to uncover their deeper socio-cultural sig-

_____ 8 Translation: “Central to HAS (i.e. Human-animal studies) is the exploration and critical scrutiny of our relations with other animals, of the interaction and interplay between humans and other animals. Non-human animals are thus seen not as cultural objects, symbols or models, but as living beings with their own experiences, perceptions, perspectives and interests, as social actors and actresses and as individuals with an intrinsic value (…). What is at stake is exploring the space occupied by non-human animals in human culture and society, how the interactions between man and animal take shape, how the life-forms of animals and humans are intertwined with one another and thus constantly regenerate society.”

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nificance for the Graeco-Roman world.9 Naturally, any such approach relying upon sources from remote periods has its limits, as the material from which conclusions are drawn is necessarily incomplete.10 But this is a methodological problem with which every classicist (and this includes the linguist, literary scholar, ancient historian and archaeologist) has to cope, and it certainly does not make research on interactions between animals and humans in GraecoRoman antiquity impossible. The range of animal species that appear in this volume as closely intertwined with human lives in antiquity is immense: domestic animals such as cats and dogs; beasts of instrumental value such as donkeys and horses, the latter also status symbols; animals providing food for the table, including cows, pigs and fish; objects of amusement or scientific examination, such as monkeys; birds, from parrots to pigeons; dolphins; hedgehogs; weasels; rats and other vermin; and creatures of more exotic origin, including tigers, giraffes, and even an okapi. For ease of reference, in this volume we use the simpler form ‘animal’ to refer to non-human animals. The close proximity of the lives of animals and humans in antiquity lies at the heart of this collection and is the specific focus of a number of individual chapters. Sian Lewis reconsiders the parallelism of the lives of human and nonhuman animals in the light of recent archaeological research, which indicates that, by contrast with the modern world, the life expectancies of humans and animals followed a similar pattern in antiquity, implying their essential interdependence. This biological and environmental circumstance is fundamental to

_____ 9 See also Marvin (2010: 378): “Wenn wir an Tieren und Geschichte tatsächlich interessiert sind, dann scheint es, dass wir uns unweigerlich auf die Tiere in unserer menschlichen Geschichte konzentrieren müssen. Und diese Geschichte sollte davon handeln, wie bestimmte Völker über bestimmte Tiergruppen oder auch über einzelne Tiere dachten, wie sie sich diese Tiere vorstellen und welche Erfahrungen sie mit ihnen machten und wie beide gegenseitig aufeinander einwirkten. Eine Geschichte der Tiere muss erklären, wie diese unser und wie wir ihr Leben beeinflusst haben.” While such an approach seems to be perfectly acceptable within the Humanities, certain groups of scholars might disagree with it. See, for example, Chimaira Arbeitskreis für Human-Animal Studies (2011: 29): “Eine neutral, rein deskriptive Wissenschaft (über Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse) zu proklamieren, verschleiert die diskurspolitische Herkunft der Forschenden und macht die eigenen Verwicklungen in anthropozentrische Denkweisen unsichtbar. Eine solche Wissenschaft schreibt die hegemoniale Geschichte der Gesellschaftlichen Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse affirmativ fort.” However, not everyone will subscribe to such a diagnosis; in particular the final sentence of this statement is rather problematic. 10 See e.g. Roscher (2015: 80): “Außerdem ist die historische Betrachtung von Tieren selbst davon beeinflusst, wie viele Quellen hinterlassen wurden, aus denen ihre Präsenz extrahierbar ist.”

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the ensuing studies of the volume, as it helps in part to explain why humans in antiquity were able to identify so easily with their animal fellows, and sometimes to an even greater extent than in the present day, by which time human lives have become disproportionately lengthened at the cost of their animal fellows. The basic interdependence of humans and animals for subsistence and survival is thus reflected in the terminology used for animal-human relationships, which, as Cristiana Franco explores in detail, is frequently based on feeding. Yet the language employed for the relationships between humans and animals goes well beyond this basic need, ranging from pleasure and enjoyment to friendship, passion and desire. At an extreme level, the closeness of humans to other animals results in bestiality, of which the ancient world is notorious for offering several instances, both mythological and historical. More commonly, animals found a role in human lives that can be considered analogous to modern pets, even if such a concept is sometimes regarded as anachronistic when applied to the ancient world.11 Louise Calder and Gillian Clark consider here different aspects of this special bond between humans and animals. Calder shows how animals provided outlets for human feelings and could be regarded in some way as extensions of their owner. That raises the question of how far their lives, incorporated into the lives of their associated humans, are sufficient to constitute separate “animal biographies” of their own. Thorsten Fögen looks closely at some of those animals that were particularly individualised by ancient writers and considers how far they can be considered similar to accounts of individual human lives. He highlights how literary descriptions of particular animals disregard their outward physical appearance and focus on their emotional attributes and personalities. Such animals are defined by their relationship and attachment to particular individual humans, but the emotional nature of their animal responses to certain situations is brought into focus. Yet, even with the ass Lucius of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, for whom banal everyday human situations are seen from an animal perspective, the individual is not easily differentiated from assumptions about the generic behaviour of the species. Given this proximity between animals and humans, the question arises of how far humans and non-human animals could ever understand each other. Gillian Clark’s chapter considers the potential for humans and animals to communicate with each other and the varying ancient interpretations of animal rationality. The pair of papers by Arnaud Zucker and Kenneth Kitchell explore the cognitive dimension of human-animal mutual understanding. Zucker considers

_____ 11 Thus Gilhus (2006: 29) prefers the term “personal animals”.

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in detail the case of “animal envy” and the preoccupation of ancient scientific writers with the possibility that animals could begrudge humans the use of their bodies. He shows that, while it was recognised that non-human animals lacked actual knowledge of human medicine or technical activities, it was accepted that they had both a psychological awareness of human behaviour and, beyond that, also a moral consciousness. Such notions contributed to the emergence of a small section of ancient literature in which writers go beyond the idea of generic discussion of animal species, with the presumption that all animals of a certain species behave in the same way, to focus on individualised accounts of particular animals. Kitchell raises the issue of “animal literacy” and asks how far humans in the Greek and Roman worlds could properly understand animal behaviour based on common knowledge and observation. As he shows, such close awareness of the properties of particular species also contributed to the attribution in literary texts of particular animal behaviour to individual humans. This potential interchangeability of the human and animal perspectives is the focus of Sarah Miles’s chapter. In exploring the co-existence of animals and humans in the staged world of Aristophanic comedy, Miles observes how humans and non-human animals each adopt characteristics of the other, with some hilarious results. Yet this waspish observation has a serious point, not only as satire against the political culture of the time, but also in bringing out the animality of human behaviour in general. The possession of human and animal qualities is explored in more detail by Stephen T. Newmyer. Here again we see the potential interchangeability in status, with animals considered as humans and humans as animals. But it goes even further. For Plutarch, the possibility that animals can share in powers of reason is the basis for an argument that they not only have the same sense of belonging as members of the human species, but moreover have positive moral qualities which humans themselves lack. By imagining animals in familiar human situations ancient writers were able to reflect on the positive and negative aspects of human behaviour. This was very likely the context of the fable which the third-century rhetorician Hermogenes reports in a summary and an extended version about the city built by monkeys (Progymn. p. 2 Rabe; translation by Kennedy 2003: 74–75): ‘οἱ πίθηκοι συνελθόντες ἐβουλεύοντο περὶ τοῦ χρῆναι πόλιν οἰκίζειν· καὶ ἐπειδὴ ἔδοξεν αὐτοῖς, ἤμελλον ἅπτεσθαι τοῦ ἔργου. γέρων οὖν πίθηκος ἐπέσχεν αὐτοὺς εἰπών, ὅτι ῥᾷον ἁλώσονται περιβόλων ἐντὸς ἀποληφθέντες.’ οὕτως ἂν συντέμοις. εἰ δὲ ἐκτείνειν βούλοιο, ταύτῃ πρόαγε· ‘οἱ πίθηκοι συνελθόντες ἐβουλεύοντο περὶ πόλεως οἰκισμοῦ. καὶ δή τις παρελθὼν ἐδημηγόρησεν, ὅτι χρὴ καὶ αὐτοὺς πόλιν ἔχειν· ὁρᾶτε γάρ, φησίν, ὡς εὐδαίμονες διὰ τοῦτο οἱ ἄνθρωποι· καὶ οἶκον ἔχει ἕκαστος αὐτῶν καὶ εἰς ἐκκλησίαν οἱ σύμπαντες καὶ εἰς θέατρον ἀναβαίνοντες τέρπουσι τὰς ψυχὰς αὐτῶν θεάμασί τε καὶ

Interactions beetween Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity | 11

ἀκούσμασι παντοδαποῖς’, καὶ οὕτω πρόαγε διατρίβων καὶ λέγων, ὅτι καὶ τὸ ψήφισμα ἐγέγραπτο, καὶ λόγον πλάττε καὶ παρὰ τοῦ γέροντος πιθήκου. Καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ταύτῃ. “‘The apes gathered to deliberate about the need to found a city. Since it seemed best to do so, they were about to begin work. An old ape restrained them, saying that they will be more easily caught if hemmed in by walls.’ This is how you would tell the fable concisely, but if you wanted to expand it, proceed as follows: ‘The apes gathered to deliberate about building a city. One stepped forward and delivered a speech to the effect that they had need of a city: “For you see,” he says, “how happy men are by living in a city. Each of them has his house, and by coming together to an assembly and a theatre all collectively delight their minds with all sights and sounds,”’ and continue in this way, dwelling on each point and saying that the decree was passed; then fashion a speech also for the old ape. So much for this.”

The interest of such stories for ancient readers was not just that it allowed them to imagine animals with cognitive and moral properties like humans. They were also interested in the physical appearance of such “mixed beings”. One curiosity that emerges from Newmyer’s study is the predisposition in antiquity for hybrid entities with part-human and part-animal features, combining human capacity for rationality with animal characteristics. Such hybrid beings are examined more closely by Jeremy McInerney and Claudia Beier. In the Babylonian text of Berossus the hybrid fish-man Oannes is not a terrifying oppositional construct like the hybrid forms on the vases of the Edinburgh Painter, but an intermediary figure, whose amphibious qualities and possession of both human and animal characteristics allows him to reconcile these different kinds of being as an intellectually superior figure, a wise lawgiver comparable to the centaur Chiron in Greek mythology. By contrast, the scenes of combat depicted by the Edinburgh Painter, as Beier’s chapter illustrates, show the bodies of animals and hybrid human-animal creatures as more lacking in “boundary integrity” and thus more “objectified” than those of humans. This objectification of animals, presented always on the losing side of the combats, stands in opposition to the more positive responses found in literature. On some vases the painter even depicts the “instrumentality” of animals, who are used not as combatants in their own right, but simply as a tool in fights with others. Such objectification is plainest in the uses of animals of exotic origin in the Persian court. As Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones argues, the Achaemenid monarchs are presented in the celebratory texts and images of Persepolis as guardians of the animal world in general, but the Apadana reliefs show how particularly exotic animals, such as tigers, giraffes, and even an okapi from sub-Saharan Africa, were brought as tribute. This provides an interesting comparandum to the situation in imperial Rome, where, as discussed by Edmund Thomas in his chapter,

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the location of exotic animals for gladiatorial games and other shows in outer spaces of the city presents a marginality comparable to modern cities. That is not to say that animals lack agency altogether. The possibility for identification with animals, even those of instrumental value, is stronger in the more central areas of the city, while in the suburban areas and rural places along the roads between cities even animals such as horses which are otherwise treated with individualisation and sympathy become alienated. Yet, like the pig of the epitaph from Edessa, they can have a significant agency in human lives. The opposition between the perception of rural and urban localities in their treatment of animals is evident from the early Classical period in Greece, by contrast with the presentation in the Archaic period, where the wearing of animal skins is a feature of both high- and low-status figures and an image of the continuing presence and interaction of humans and animals. As Alastair Harden shows in his essay, the depiction of human figures wearing animal skins on Greek vases of the Archaic period, both high-status hunters and low-status shepherds, presents vestiges of a bucolic world in which animals and humans lived together and animal skins were not evidence of exploitation and abuse, but of cohabitation and interdependence. John Wilkins takes further the implications of this viewpoint for animals as food. He explores the ecological consequences which arise today and in antiquity from the lifetime bond between humans and animals. Fish are a commodity regarded as lacking in justice and full of error; yet Galen’s interest is in the quality of the water they come from and the impact on human bodies when they are consumed. The basic need of Graeco-Roman society for co-existence of humans and animals as a precursor for the survival of both recalls the lessons of Lewis’ essay, but also goes further. The argument has ecological and environmental consequences even for us today with the awareness, already at this early date, that human well-being is best achieved from feeding off locally sourced species, rather than those contaminated by waste. Galen is not so sanguine when it comes to one particular species of more exotic origin, the Barbary apes from coastal North Africa. Despite their capacity for being considered as surrogate humans in the city-building fable, monkeys had an ambivalent status in antiquity, as Marco Vespa illustrates in his chapter. Known by the somewhat ironic name καλλίας (‘beautiful creature’) which belies their notoriously ugly appearance, they were thought of as creatures to be avoided because of their perceived ill omen. Here the objectification of animals takes an extreme form: although Galen defines them at the outset by their potential instrumentality as objects to be used for developing human knowledge in the scientific laboratory, ultimately he denies them even such instrumentality. Thus this creature that physically comes closest to human beings in terms of

Interactions beetween Animals and Humans in Graeco-Roman Antiquity | 13

anatomical form and social behaviour was thus paradoxically defined by the avoidance of interaction altogether. The volume concludes with a research bibliography on animals in the Graeco-Roman world, put together by Thorsten Fögen. Though selective by necessity, it not only lists more general studies on animals in the ancient world, but also publications dealing with animals as food, vegetarianism, hunting, spectacles (games), sacrifice, veterinary medicine, and ‘monsters’ in antiquity.

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Brucker, Renate, Melanie Bujok, Birgit Mütherich, Martin Seeliger & Frank Thieme (eds.) (2015): Das Mensch-Tier-Verhältnis. Eine sozialwissenschaftliche Einführung, Wiesbaden. Bühler-Dietrich, Annette & Michael Weingarten (eds.) (2015): Topos Tier. Neue Gestaltungen des Tier-Mensch-Verhältnisses, Bielefeld. Buschka, Sonja, Julia Gutjahr & Marcel Sebastian (2012): Gesellschaft und Tiere. Grundlagen und Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies. In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 62.8–9, 20–27. Calarco, Matthew (2015): Thinking Through Animals. Identity, Difference, Indistinction, Stanford. Chimaira Arbeitskreis für Human-Animal Studies (2011): Eine Einführung in Gesellschaftliche Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse und Human-Animal Studies. In: Chimaira Arbeitskreis für Human-Animal Studies (ed.), Human-Animal Studies. Über die gesellschaftliche Natur von Mensch-Tier-Verhältnissen, Bielefeld, 7–42. Chimaira Arbeitskreis für Human-Animal Studies (ed.) (2011): Human-Animal Studies. Über die gesellschaftliche Natur von Mensch-Tier-Verhältnissen, Bielefeld. Dalby, Andrew (2011): Geoponika – Farm Work. A Modern Translation of the Roman and Byzantine Farming Handbook, Totnes. Daux, Georges (1970): Notes de lecture. In: Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 94, 595– 623. De Jonge, Francien & Ruud van den Bos (eds.) (2005): The Human-Animal Relationship. Forever and a Day, Assen. Dekkers, Midas (1992): Lief dier. Over bestialiteit, Amsterdam (German translation: Geliebtes Tier. Die Geschichte einer innigen Beziehung, München & Wien 1994). DeMello, Margo (2012): Animals and Society. An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies, New York. DeMello, Margo (ed.) (2010): Teaching the Animal. Human-Animal Studies across the Disciplines, New York. Dinzelbacher, Peter (ed.) (2000): Mensch und Tier in der Geschichte Europas, Stuttgart. Duff, J. Wight & Arnold M. Duff (eds.) (1934): Minor Latin Poets. Vol. 2 (Loeb Classical Library 434), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Fehlmann, Meret, Margot Michel & Rebecca Niederhauser (eds.) (2014): Tierisch! Das Tier und die Wissenschaft. Ein Streifzug durch die Disziplinen, Zürich. Ferrari, Arianna & Klaus Petrus (eds.) (2015): Lexikon der Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen, Bielefeld. Flynn, Clifton P. (ed.) (2008): Social Creatures. A Human and Animal Studies Reader, New York. Fögen, Thorsten (2009): Wissen, Kommunikation und Selbstdarstellung. Zur Struktur und Charakteristik römischer Fachtexte der frühen Kaiserzeit, München. Franklin, Adrian (1999): Animals and Modern Cultures. A Sociology of Human-Animal Relations in Modernity, London. Freeman, Carol, Elizabeth Leane & Yvette Watt (eds.) (2011): Considering Animals. Contemporary Studies in Human-Animal Relations, Farnham. Geist, Hieronymus (21976): Römische Grabinschriften. Gesammelt und ins Deutsche übertragen von Hieronymus Geist, betreut von Gerhard Pfohl, München. Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid (2006): Animals, Gods and Humans. Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas, London & New York. Haraway, Donna J. (2008): When Species Meet, Minneapolis. Henninger-Voss, Mary J. (ed.) (2002): Animals in Human Histories. The Mirror of Nature and Culture, Rochester.

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Hurn, Samantha (2012): Humans and Other Animals. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on HumanAnimal Interactions, London. Ingold, Tim (1988): Introduction. In: Tim Ingold (ed.), What is an Animal?, London, 1–16. Kalof, Linda (2007): Looking at Animals in Human History, London. Kaplan, Astrid (2006): Die Mensch-Tier-Beziehung. Eine irrationale Angelegenheit, Saarbrücken. Kazez, Jean (2010): Animalkind. What We Owe to Animals, Malden, Mass. & Oxford. Kennedy, George A. (2003): Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric. Translated with introductions and notes, Leiden & Boston. King, Barbara J. (2010): Being With Animals. Why We Are Obsessed with the Furry, Scaly, Feathered Creatures Who Populate Our World, New York. Knight, John (ed.) (2005): Animals in Person. Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacy, Oxford & New York. Kompatscher, Gabriela (2015): Literaturwissenschaft. Die Befreiung ästhetischer Tiere. In: Reingard Spannring, Karin Schachinger, Gabriela Kompatscher & Alejandro Boucabeille (eds.), Disziplinierte Tiere? Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies für die wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, Bielefeld, 137–159. Kotrschal, Kurt (2015): Vorwort. In: Reingard Spannring, Karin Schachinger, Gabriela Kompatscher & Alejandro Boucabeille (eds.), Disziplinierte Tiere? Perspektiven der HumanAnimal Studies für die wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, Bielefeld, 9–12. Macho, Thomas (2006): Tiere – Menschen – Maschinen. Zur Kritik der Anthropologie, Frankfurt am Main. Manning, Aubrey & James Serpell (eds.) (1994): Animals and Human Society. Changing Perspectives, London & New York. Marvin, Garry (2010): Wölfe im Schafspelz. Eine anthropologische Sicht auf die Beziehungen zwischen Menschen und Wölfen in Albanien und Norwegen. In: Dorothee Brantz & Christof Mauch (eds.), Tierische Geschichte. Die Beziehung von Mensch und Tier in der Kultur der Moderne, Paderborn, 364–378. Marvin, Garry & Susan McHugh (2014): In it together. An introduction to human-animal studies. In: Garry Marvin & Susan McHugh (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies, London & New York, 1–9. Marvin, Garry & Susan McHugh (eds.) (2014): Routledge Handbook of Human-Animal Studies, London & New York. Meyer, Heinz (1975): Der Mensch und das Tier. Anthropologische und kultursoziologische Aspekte, München. Midgley, Mary (1978): Beast and Man. The Roots of Human Nature, Ithaca, New York. Müller-Karpe, Hermann (ed.) (1983): Zur frühen Mensch-Tier-Symbiose, München. Münch, Paul & Rainer Walz (eds.) (1998): Tiere und Menschen. Geschichte und Aktualität eines prekären Verhältnisses, Paderborn. Myers, Gene (1998): Children and Animals. Social Development and Our Connections to Other Species, Boulder, Colorado. Noske, Barbara (1989): Humans and Other Animals. Beyond the Boundaries of Anthropology, London. Otterstedt, Carola & Michael Rosenberger (eds.) (2009): Gefährten – Konkurrenten – Verwandte. Die Mensch-Tier-Beziehung im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs, Göttingen. Petrus, Klaus (2015): Human-Animal studies. In: Arianna Ferrari & Klaus Petrus (eds.), Lexikon der Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen, Bielefeld, 156–160.

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Philo, Chris & Chris Wilbert (eds.) (2007): Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, London & New York. Podberscek, Anthony L., Elizabeth S. Paul & James A. Serpell (2000): Introduction. In: Anthony L. Podberscek, Elizabeth S. Paul & James A. Serpell (eds.), Companion Animals and Us. Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, Cambridge, 1–4. Podberscek, Anthony L., Elizabeth S. Paul & James A. Serpell (eds.) (2000): Companion Animals and Us. Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, Cambridge. Pöppinghege, Rainer (ed.) (2009): Tiere im Krieg. Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Paderborn. Pollack, Ulrike (2009): Die städtische Mensch-Tier-Beziehung. Ambivalenzen, Chancen und Risiken, Berlin. Rheinz, Hanna (1994): Eine tierische Liebe. Zur Psychologie der Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Tier, München. Roscher, Mieke (2012): Human-Animal Studies. In: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte 25 (online: https://docupedia.de/zg/Human-Animal_Studies). Roscher, Mieke (2015): Geschichtswissenschaft. Von einer Geschichte mit Tieren zu einer Tiergeschichte. In: Reingard Spannring, Karin Schachinger, Gabriela Kompatscher & Alejandro Boucabeille (eds.), Disziplinierte Tiere? Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies für die wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, Bielefeld, 75–100. Rothfels, Nigel (ed.) (2002): Representing Animals, Bloomington. Schneider, Manuel (ed.) (2001): Den Tieren gerecht werden. Zur Ethik und Kultur der MenschTier-Beziehung, Witzenhausen. Serpell, James (1996): In the Company of Animals. A Study of Human-Animal Relationships, Cambridge (orig. Oxford 1986). Shepard, Paul (1996): The Others. How Animals Made Us Human, Washington, D.C. Simmons, Laurence & Philip Armstrong (eds.) (2007): Knowing Animals, Leiden & Boston. Spannring, Reingard, Karin Schachinger, Gabriela Kompatscher & Alejandro Boucabeille (2015): Einleitung. Disziplinierte Tiere? In: Reingard Spannring, Karin Schachinger, Gabriela Kompatscher & Alejandro Boucabeille (eds.), Disziplinierte Tiere? Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies für die wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, Bielefeld, 13–28. Spannring, Reingard, Karin Schachinger, Gabriela Kompatscher & Alejandro Boucabeille (eds.) (2015): Disziplinierte Tiere? Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies für die wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, Bielefeld. Spannring, Reingard, Reinhard Heuberger, Gabriela Kompatscher, Andreas Oberprantacher, Karin Schachinger & Alejandro Boucabeille (eds.) (2015): Tiere – Texte – Transformationen. Kritische Perspektiven der Human-Animal Studies, Bielefeld. Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (ed.) (2002): Mensch und Tier: Eine paradoxe Beziehung. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung (22. November 2002 bis 10. August 2003), Ostfildern-Ruit. Svilar, Maja (ed.) (1985): Mensch und Tier, Bern. Taylor, Nik (2013): Humans, Animals, and Society. An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies, New York. Taylor, Nik & Tania Signal (eds.) (2011): Theorizing Animals. Re-Thinking Humanimal Relations, Leiden & Boston. Ullrich, Jessica, Friedrich Weltzien & Heike Fuhlbrügge (2008): Das Selbst des Tieres und die Identität des Menschen. Vorwort. In: Jessica Ullrich, Friedrich Weltzien & Heike Fuhlbrügge (eds.), Ich, das Tier. Tiere als Persönlichkeiten in der Kulturgeschichte, Berlin, 9–13. Wiedenmann, Rainer E. (2002): Die Tiere der Gesellschaft. Studien zur Soziologie und Semantik von Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen, Konstanz.

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Wiedenmann, Rainer E. (2009): Tiere, Moral und Gesellschaft. Elemente und Ebenen humanimalischer Sozialität, Wiesbaden. Wolf, Ursula (2012): Ethik der Mensch-Tier-Beziehung, Frankfurt am Main. Wolfe, Cary (ed.) (2003): Zoontologies. The Question of the Animal, Minneapolis. Yourcenar, Marguerite (2000): Memoirs of Hadrian, London.

Figure 1: Pig epitaph from Edessa in Macedonia (second/third century A.D.) Archaeological Museum of Pella © Wikimedia (public domain)

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neue rechte Seite

A Lifetime Together? Temporal Perspectives on Animal-Human Interactions | 19

Sian Lewis

A Lifetime Together? Temporal Perspectives on Animal-Human Interactions Sian Lewis A Lifetime Together? Temporal Perspectives on Animal-Human Interactions Abstract: It is a truism for any pet-owner that animal lives are shorter than human ones: we love our pets, but we have to accept that they will grow old and die before us. Even large animals such as horses will not be as long-lived as a human; only tortoises can reliably outlive us. But is this modern perspective a helpful one for understanding animal-human interactions in antiquity? Taking as a model the work of Naomi Sykes in her recently-published Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues (2014), this chapter considers the evidence for comparative animal and human lifespans in antiquity, including the working animals which shared the farmer’s life, the prized warhorses and hunting dogs of the aristocracy, and pet animals. The evidence suggests that the disparity between animal and human lifespans was far less marked than in the modern West, meaning that both working animals and pets could develop an enduring, sometimes lifelong, relationship with their owner. Such relationships were not the preserve of the wealthy and leisured upper classes; in fact they tended to be stronger among the labouring poor. Placing such relationships in their ancient context allows us to gain new insights into the meaningfulness of the animal-human relationship on both sides. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-002

1 Introduction Animal-human interactions are one of the few direct points of contact which we have with the ancient world. When we train a dog, suffer the depredations of mice or watch birds fly across the sky, we experience the same as an inhabitant of classical Greece or Rome, part of a continuum of lived experience which connects us with the past. At the same time, however, many aspects of modern Western life make the animal-human relationship very different: among the most immediate are the experience of encountering wild animals while having easy methods to subdue or kill a predator (very different from the experience of a traveller in antiquity), and the chemical warfare upon insects which characterises our present-day interactions with them.1 At a more personal level, with domestic animals, the parallels appear to be closer, but some internalised perspectives which we bring to our interactions with animals can be equally significant. Part of our understanding of the human-pet relationship, for instance, is the

_____ 1 The discussion current at the time of writing as to whether it would be morally acceptable to eradicate the mosquito in the face of the threat from the Zika virus offers a fine illustration. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-002

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Post-medieval

Medieval

Anglo-saxon

Roman

Iron age

Bronze age

Neolithic

Mesolithic

conviction that animal lives are shorter than human ones: we love our pets but have to accept that they will grow old and die before us. In antiquity, however, the assumption of human superiority in lifespan was not present, and the temporal aspect of animal-human interactions very different. A striking perspective is offered by Naomi Sykes in her study Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues (2014). This bold and important study is part of a recent movement among zooarchaeologists to develop the application of their discipline: while traditionally zooarchaeology has concentrated on documenting data and understanding the exploitation of animals for food and labour by human communities, a number of recent studies have begun to apply this evidence on a macro-scale to address new kinds of questions about the interactions between animals and humans (see also Russell 2011). In Sykes’ concluding chapter she demonstrates the potential of analysing such data to reveal long-term trends over time, presenting a series of syntheses based on zooarchaeological reports from excavations of English sites from the Mesolithic period to the post-medieval.2 She includes data on the percentage of wild animals found on human sites, the changing size of cattle, and vertebrate extinctions and introductions. Two more of her graphs, reproduced here, represent data on average human life expectancy at birth over the period, and average age at death of cattle in the same period (Sykes 2014: 171, fig. 9.1):

Age stage

h) Median dental age stage (cattle)

Years

40 g) Average life expectancy at birth (human)

30 20 10 10

C. 6–8 years C. 3–6 years C. 2–3 years

5 0

C. 2–3 years C. 3–6 years C. 6–12 months

C. 1–2 years

_____ 2 Sykes is fully aware of the broad-brush nature of her conclusions; indeed, she notes some colleagues’ strong reservations about the presentation of information in this form (Sykes 2014: 170, 173). The experience of researching on Greek ceramics, however, has convinced me that refusing to analyse data which actually exists from the ancient world, on the grounds that it is not sufficiently representative or robust, is a dereliction of scholarly duty.

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The graph of cattle life expectancy has some notable features: the drop in age at death in the Neolithic, which reflects the introduction of dairying, and the rise in Roman times which Sykes herself (2014: 175–176) highlights, with the suggestion that this indicates the importance of oxen for haulage, and perhaps a more general cultural valuation of cattle. But the factor to which she calls attention as most striking is the way in which human and cattle average life expectancies tend to vary in proportion: as cattle life expectancy declines in the Neolithic period, so does human life expectancy, and as it rises again, peaking in the Roman period, human life expectancy follows broadly the same pattern. This means that the average lifespan of an ox or cow, expressed as a percentage of an average human lifespan, varies within a relatively small range, between 10 and 25%, over the longue durée. When humans lived longer, so did their cattle, and Sykes (2014: 177) suggests that this indicates “a level of human-cattle partnership”. Only in the post-medieval period do the two figures begin to diverge; at this stage human life expectancy begins to climb, reaching thirty-seven years on average, contrasting with a declining cattle life expectancy of less than one year (3%). This trend has today reached an extreme in the modern West, when an average human life expectancy of about eighty years compares with an average age at slaughter for beef cattle of less than a year, a situation which Sykes (2014: 178) rightly describes as shocking. Data of this kind offers an unusual but very valuable perspective on the classical period, and I take it as a starting-point for thinking about the temporal perspective in animal-human relationships in the classical world. In Sykes’ study Roman Britain stands out as a period in which the relationship between cattle and people was particularly important: cattle grew to a greater size and lived for longer, and Sykes suggests that this happened not only for practical reasons (the use of oxen for motive power), but might indicate a ‘cattle culture’, in which particular status attached to the ownership of cattle (see also Howe 2008 and McInerney 2010). More specifically, an ox or cow at this period would be living for a significant part of a human lifetime, with the result that people and cows had time to forge meaningful relationships, even if the cow was ultimately slaughtered for food. This should, I think, lead us to question our own assumptions about both the length and the meaningfulness of animal-human relationships, and I propose to reflect on some examples of different species in Greek and Roman life, examining how comparative lifespans affected the quality of relationships.

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2 Lifespans, animal and human When focusing on a single period (the classical past) in more detail, it is obviously necessary to quantify both human and animal lifespans as precisely as possible. For humans, this is a traditionally difficult topic; Scheidel (2001) has demonstrated how problematic our evidence for ancient demography can be, and conclusions inevitably tend to be broad-brush. Nevertheless, it is possible to outline some parameters of population patterns and expected lifespan in Greece and Rome. The consensus among those studying ancient demography is that for antiquity the Coale-Demeny model life table West Level 3 is broadly applicable, with a life expectancy at birth of 22.5 years, and at age ten (a more representative value in an era of very high child mortality) of thirty-five years.3 Modelling survival rates, the life tables suggest that half of each age cohort would be dead by the age of fifteen, and three-quarters by the age of fifty. Thus a human lifespan was considerably shorter than in the modern West, and few could expect to live into old age. Animal lifespans, paradoxically, are somewhat easier to assess, as we have both archaeological and literary evidence which we can bring to bear. For domestic animals, one of the datasets regularly collected by zooarchaeologists for bone assemblages from sites of human habitation is the age of the animal at death, giving us a clear idea of how long an individual horse, cow, sheep or dog would have lived. While there are variations across the Mediterranean depending on different forms of agriculture, in general it is evident that working animals were not only living into adulthood, but long enough to develop chronic pathological conditions such as arthritis (see MacKinnon 2004, MacKinnon 2010, and Clegg 2015). This evidence is supported by the ancient scientific writers, primarily Aristotle, on whose Historia animalium most later natural history writers are dependent. Aristotle gives details of domestic animals’ expected lifespans as he describes their breeding: cows and castrated bulls live normally for about fifteen years, and bulls for twenty years or more if sound (Hist. anim. VI 21 575a31–33); stallions live for eighteen or twenty years, with a maximum for most of thirty, and mares for about twenty-five years, though some have reached forty (VI 22 576a26–31). Asses live for over thirty years (VI 23 577b3–4).4 Dogs, we are told, live for fourteen or fifteen years, and some to twenty, though Laconian hounds live only ten to twelve years (VI 20 574b29–33). Sows live between fifteen and

_____ 3 See Frier (2001) and Scheidel (2007). Hin (2013: ch. 4) discusses the models further. 4 On mules, Aristotle says only that they live “for many years” (Hist. anim. VI 24 577b29). See further below.

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twenty years (VI 18 573b15–17). The implication in all of these cases is that the animals are living out a normal lifespan; a distinction can be seen between these and the account of sheep and goats, where Aristotle says that they can live for ten and eight years respectively, but most do not live that long (VI 19 573b22–25). This seems to be because sheep and goats were kept for milk and meat, while oxen, horses and dogs were working or breeding animals. Finally, the lifespans of animals in the wild, free from human intervention, have not changed significantly in 2,500 years, and can be judged from contemporary evidence.

3 Working animals: cattle Against this background, let us return first to cattle, which (perhaps reflecting Sykes’ argument) are a good place to begin. Oxen (castrated bulls) provided motive power for agriculture and heavy transport, and cattle were more commonly raised for this than for milk production.5 Zooarchaeological evidence demonstrates that most cattle in the Roman empire lived into adulthood, and skeletal analysis shows that their working lives were long enough for pathologies such as arthritic fusing and splaying to form (see Clegg 2015). The Roman agricultural writers give detailed accounts of the training and care of draft oxen, and according to Columella (De re rust. 6.2.1) and Pliny (Nat. hist. 8.180), cattle for haulage needed to be three years old before they could begin training. When cattle began to work, then, they would be four, and would have a working life of ten years or more; according to Hesiod (Erga 436–438), draft oxen were in their prime at nine. Thus a farmer or haulier would realistically only work with two or three yokes of oxen in a lifetime. Scholars have written before on the ox as part of the family, living alongside people and essential for the life of the family, but the temporal aspect enhances this: a plough ox which lives for fifteen years fills a significant part of an adult life (see Calder 2011: 39). As the breaking and training of oxen represented such a large investment, great care was taken over the maintenance of their health and condition; oxen attracted the second largest number of discussions of veterinary treatment in antiquity, after the horse.6 So care was taken that the ox lived as long as possible.

_____ 5 Cattle were also in theory the sacrificial animal par excellence, though as van Straten (1995: 170–181) has demonstrated, this represented an ideal rather than reality. 6 Columella, De re rust. 6.4–19. Vegetius repeats the material as Book 3 of his Mulomedicina. On the roles and functions of animals in Columella, see in particular Fögen (2016).

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Working oxen, furthermore, need responsive care: they become attached to familiar yokemates, and that they were not treated simply as animate tools but were individualised and considered to have distinct personalities can be demonstrated from the agricultural writers. Columella discusses the different types of behaviour which oxen can show (the lazy, the excitable, the nervous), and pastoral literature emphasises the importance to a herdsman of familiarity with the foibles and characteristics of each particular animal.7 Working oxen were also named: a draft ox needs to have an individual name which it can recognise, so that it can be given instructions verbally, and we have evidence of named oxen from as far back as Minoan times; the tablets from Knossos record pairs of oxen with names such as Kelainos (‘Black’), Aiolos (‘Spotted’) and Podargos (‘Whitefoot’).8 These names are based on physical characteristics, and there has been some debate as to whether they should be interpreted as descriptors rather than names as such, but they are similar to contemporary horse names; moreover, the similarity with modern naming practices for animals indicates that this is a false distinction: an animal may be named for its appearance (‘Midnight’, ‘Ginger’, or ‘Fluffy’), but the description nevertheless functions as an individualising name. Of course, this is not to say that the relationship between farmer or haulier and ox was necessarily sentimentalised. Although the idea of the happy retirement for a working animal which has served well begins to appear in Hellenistic poetry, with the image of the elderly ox spared from slaughter to live out its days grazing in the meadow, this seems largely artificial.9 An animal at the end of its useful life would be exploited for products such as hide, horn and tallow, but that does not devalue the close relationship between animal and owner during its life.

4 Working animals: mules and donkeys Oxen were the primary motive power for ploughing and heavy haulage, but for lighter draft and pack work, mules and donkeys were normal, animals which

_____ 7 Columella, De re rust. 6.2.9–14; see Fögen (2016). Cf. Longus, Daphnis & Chloe 1.8, 4.26, and 4.38. 8 See Calder (2011: 39), Killen (1995), Kajava (2011), and Kajava (2012). 9 Anth. Pal. 6.228: Αὔλακι καὶ γήρᾳ τετρυμένον ἐργατίνην βοῦν / Ἄλκων οὐ φονίην ἤγαγε πρὸς κοπίδα, / αἰδεσθεὶς ἔργων· ὁ δέ που βαθέῃ ἐνὶ ποίῃ / μυκηθμοῖς ἀρότρου τέρπετ᾽ ἐλευθερίῃ. Transl. William R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library): “Alcon did not lead to the bloody axe his labouring ox worn out by the furrows and old age, for he reverenced it for its service; and now somewhere in the deep meadow grass it lows rejoicing in its release from the plough.”

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are in general longer-lived than cattle: both donkeys and mules can live for thirty or forty years, and still be working in their thirties (see Griffith 2006: 222, 231). Aristotle does not note the exact lifespan of the mule, presumably reflecting its low status in classical Greece, but does include the famous tale of the eighty-year-old mule which hauled stones for the Parthenon in Athens, an obvious exaggeration but one which attests to expectations of long working lives (Hist. anim. VI 24 577b29–578a1; repeated in Plutarch, De soll. anim. 13 970a–b and Cato Maior 5.3–4). A mule or donkey and its owner would thus potentially have a very long working life together, and two fables involving mules’ relationships with their owners show us some specific aspects of that relationship. The first is the tale of the old man who wished to visit the city (Life of Aesop 140 [381 Perry]; my translation): γεωργός τις ἐπ᾽ ἀγροῦ γεγηρακώς, ἐπεὶ μηδέποτε εἰσῆλθεν εἰς ἄστυ, παρεκάλει τοὺς οἰκείους τοῦτο θεάσασθαι. οἳ δὲ ζεύξαντες ὀνάρια καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς ἀπήνης αὐτὸν ἀναβιβασάμενοι, μόνον ἐκέλευσαν ἐλαύνειν. ὁδεύοντι δὲ χειμῶνος καὶ θυέλλης τὸν ἀέρα καταλαβόντων καὶ ζόφου γενομένου, τὰ ὀνάρια τῆς ὁδοῦ πλανηθέντα, εἴς τινα κρημνὸν ἐξετόπισαν τὸν πρεσβύτην. ὃ δὲ μέλλων ἤδη κατακρημνίζεσθαι, ʻὦ Ζεῦ’ εἷπε, ʻτί ποτέ σε ἠδίκησα, ὅτι οὕτω παρὰ λόγον ἀπόλλυμαι, καὶ ταῦτα οὔθ᾽ ὑφ᾽ ἵππων γενναίων οὔθ᾽ ἡμιόνων ἀγαθῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ὀναρίων εὐτελεστάτων;’ “There was once a farmer who had grown old in the countryside, who had never seen the city. So he asked his sons to arrange for him to go and see the city before he died. His sons yoked the donkey-cart for him and told him, ‘Just drive, and the donkeys will take you to the city.’ But a storm came on as they journeyed, and darkness fell, and the donkeys strayed from the road and carried the old man off to the edge of a precipice. He, seeing the danger he was in, cried out: ‘What wrong have I done, Zeus, to deserve such a death, and not even because of horses, but because of these contemptible donkeys?’”

The fable relies on the idea that the donkeys, from years of experience, know the route to take to the city as well as the sons, and gives an insight into the partnership between owner and animal. The donkeys are not will-less objects to be commanded, but active partners in the work of the farm, and the sons rely on their knowledge as working animals, even if, in this tale, they are seen as lowstatus, and can be flummoxed by a storm. Even more interesting is the tale of the donkey carrying salt, one of a number of fables on the theme of the working donkey trying (and failing) to use trickery to avoid labour (Aesop, Fab. 180 Perry; my translation):10

_____ 10 Further examples are Aesop, Fab. 185, 279, 237 and 476 Perry.

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Ὄνος ἅλας βαστάζων. Μικρέμπορός τις ὄνον ἔχων εὐώνους ἅλας ἠγόρασε καὶ σφοδρῶς τὸν ὄνον ἐφόρτωσεν. Ὁ δὲ ὄνος ἄκων ὀλισθήσας εἰς ὕδωρ ἔπεσε, καὶ, λυθέντων τῶν ἁλῶν, ἠλαφρύνθη, εὐκόλως δὲ ἠγέρθη καὶ περιεπάτει ἀκόπως. Ὁ δὲ ἔμπορος πάλιν ἑτέρους ἦλθεν ἀγοράσων καὶ πλεῖον ἢ πρότερον τὸν ὄνον φορτώσας ἦγεν. Ὁ δὲ πάλιν ἑκὼν εἰς τὸ ῥεῖθρον πεσὼν ἠλαφρύνθη. Ὁ δὲ ἔμπορος τέχνην ἑτέραν νοήσας σπόγγους ὠνησάμενος πεφορτώκεν τὸν ὄνον. Ὁ δὲ ὄνος, ὡς προσῆλθε τῷ ῥείθρῳ, ἑκὼν κατέπεσε· τῶν δὲ σπόγγων διαβραχέντων, βάρος διπλοῦν ἦγε βαστάζων. Ὅτι πολλάκις ἐν ᾧ τις εὐτύχησεν, ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ πίπτει. “The ass carrying salt. A pedlar who owned an ass heard that salt was selling cheaply, and immediately bought a great amount, which he loaded onto his ass. The ass, going along reluctantly, fell into a stream; the salt dissolved, lightening his burden, and the ass was able to get up and go along easily. The pedlar, however, turned back and bought another load of salt, bigger than the last, and once more loaded up the ass. When the ass once again came to the stream, he deliberately slipped and fell in, and his burden was washed away. At this, the pedlar formed a plan to outwit the ass; he bought a quantity of sponges, and loaded the ass with these. On the way home the ass purposefully fell into the river as before, but the sponges immediately soaked full of water, and gave the ass a double burden to carry.”

This is of course an anthropomorphising story, but the attribution of agency to the ass is significant. On one level, the fable depicts human intelligence triumphing over animal cunning and reinstating the hierarchy of relationships: a mule cannot outwit a human. But from another perspective, what we see is not a simple human-animal hierarchy, but a more complex interplay between animal and owner: the ass is loaded, loses its load, is reloaded, devises a trick to lose the load again, and is then loaded for a third time. The ass and the owner are locked together in a continuing contest for mastery: the owner does not simply prevent the ass from falling into the water, but joins in the contest of wits. The reason for this interplay is the implicit parallel which it draws with the lot of the peasant himself: like the ass, he is fated to work and struggle, subject to the will of his superiors, and always seeking ways to ameliorate the labour. Man and ass together experience the daily toil, and while they may compete over their tasks, it is only the relative burden that changes.11 Underlying this idea is the fact that the working relationship of man and mule will be lifelong. The recognition of domestic animals’ long lives also helps to cast new light on the Roman festivals which included working animals. While animals figured

_____ 11 See Gilhus (2006: 14, 85) and Bradley (2000) on the indeterminate boundary between human and animal in ancient thought.

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in many rites as sacrifices or entertainments (which were often bloody or cruel), festivals in which working animals participated were also part of the annual cycle, such as the Vestalia on the ninth of June, at which the mules which turned the bakery mills were given a day’s respite from work, and paraded garlanded with flowers and loaves.12 Agricultural writers similarly refer to holidays for working animals on the farm: all public feriae required a holiday for ploughing oxen and Cato the Elder describes the private ritual offering to Jupiter Dapalis before beginning the ploughing, which included a holiday for the oxen and their drivers (De agr. 132). Columella (quoting Vergil, Georg. 1.268–275) included a discussion of activities permitted or forbidden on feriae, and says no animals can be yoked, although the use of pack-mules is allowed (De re rust. 2.21); Cato the Elder typically took a more severe view, saying that oxen may not plough, but may haul wood or grain for storage, and that equids have no holidays at all (De agr. 138). But according to both, mules were included in private family festivals such as the feriae denicales (festivals of purification after a death). These practices can of course be read simply as a suspension of the work on the farm or in the mill for human benefit, but it is noteworthy that the animals participate in the rituals: the parade of donkeys at the Vestalia, the holiday which includes the oxen, their drovers and the celebrants in Cato, and the counting of mules and donkeys as part of the familia at the private festivals. A temporal perspective emphasises the animals’ point of view: one day a year is not very meaningful in terms of respite from work, but considered over a fifteenyear lifetime, the regularity of the festivals becomes relevant: a working mule would walk in many Vestalia, and an ox live through many feasts of Jupiter Dapalis, and would experience the festival in the same way that humans did, as part of a recurring annual cycle.

5 Working animals: horses The long-term relationships of draft animals with humans stand in contrast to those of the higher-status horse, a claim which may at first sight seem paradoxical. A horse could of course have a natural lifespan of twenty-five to thirty

_____ 12 Animals as sacrifices: foxes at the Cerealia (Ovid, Fast. 4.681–712), the rite of the October Horse (Festus 190 Lindsay), and the annual crucifixion of dogs described by Pliny the Elder (Nat. hist. 29.57); the Vestalia: Ovid, Fast. 6.311–318, 6.347–348; a wall painting once in the macellum at Pompeii depicts two donkeys at this festival with cupids (see King 2001: fig. 348).

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years, and some stories from antiquity show a close and long-lasting relationship between horse and owner: Alexander the Great’s Bucephalas is perhaps the best example (see Griffith 2006: 196; further Fögen, in this volume). Bucephalas became Alexander’s warhorse when the king was still a teenager and accompanied him on his campaigns; according to Plutarch, Alexander always rode him into battle, but made sure as he aged to free him from everyday service to preserve his strength (Plutarch, Alex. 32.7; transl. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library): ἐχρῆτο δὲ καὶ τούτῳ πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας. ἄχρι μὲν οὖν συντάττων τι τῆς φάλαγγος ἢ παρακελευόμενος ἢ διδάσκων ἢ ἐφορῶν παρεξήλαυνεν, ἄλλον ἵππον εἶχε, τοῦ Βουκεφάλα φειδόμενος, ἤδη παρήλικος ὄντος· χωροῦντι δὲ πρὸς ἔργον ἐκεῖνος προσήγετο, καὶ μεταβὰς εὐθὺς ἦρχεν ἐφόδου. “As long, then, as he was riding about and marshalling some part of his phalanx, or exhorting or instructing or reviewing his men, he spared Bucephalas, who was now past his prime, and used another horse; but whenever he was going into action, Bucephalas would be led up, and he would mount him and at once begin the attack.”

Bucephalas died of old age (at about thirty years) at the river Hydaspes in 326 B.C., and Alexander demonstrated his affection by naming a newly-founded city in his honour (Arrian, Anab. 5.19.4–6; see Fögen, in this volume). The story is particularly relevant because Alexander himself lived only to his early thirties, and thus Bucephalas was his favoured horse throughout the whole of his adult life. The tale, however, illustrates the ideal – the initial story of Bucephalas’ taming is in itself of very dubious historicity – and more mundane evidence points in a different direction.13 The purposes for which horses were kept, for instance, explicitly militated against a long life: those ridden in war or trained to race were in regular danger of life-threatening injury. Evidence from the Roman cavalry indicates a high turnover of horses in battle, and the extensive discussion of injuries in Vegetius’ Mulomedicina attests to the dangers of racing.14

_____ 13 Apart from the role played by Alexander himself, the idea that the renowned Thessalian horse-breeders could not tame one of their stallions, and that they would then present him to the King of Macedon unbroken, is fanciful. 14 See Dixon & Southern (1992: 153–155). An example which may seem to stand as a counter to this idea is the racing mares of Cimon: according to Herodotus (Hist. 6.103.2–4), Cimon won the chariot race at Olympia at three successive games with the same team of four racing mares, thus retaining the same horses over at least ten years including training. Yet Herodotus notes both the rarity of the feat, saying that the triple victory by a single team had only once before been achieved, by a Spartan team, and more tellingly for our purposes, that when Cimon died

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Long-lived war or circus horses were the exception; in fable the brief glory of a racing career contrasts with the lengthy mundane toil of the ass (see Fab. 565 Perry). Furthermore, a horse did not have to be killed in battle to reach the end of its usefulness as a prestige steed, as the evidence of the Athenian cavalry archive suggests. The Cavalry Archive, discovered in the 1960s and 1970s, seems to represent a civic insurance system for members of the Athenian cavalry: at the start of each year each cavalryman would register his principal horse, including a description of the animal (name, colour and brand) and its value, so that he could be reimbursed by the state should the horse be lost in battle (see Braun 1970 and Kroll 1977). We have more than 700 such records covering a decade or so, which allows us to track horses and owners from year to year, and this reveals that far from owning one favourite horse which continued to serve until death or retirement, cavalrymen regularly changed their official mount, far more often than can be accounted for by loss in battle. This was presumably because the function of the horse was as much social as practical: owning horses was a means of demonstrating one’s wealth, and as such, keeping one horse for its working lifetime was not as prestigious as changing one’s mount for the sake of novelty or as one bought a more impressive animal.15 That a horse represented tradable value is directly illustrated in Xenophon’s account of his journey back around the Black Sea in the Anabasis: on arriving at Lampsacus for the final stage of the journey, Xenophon found himself without sufficient funds to support himself, and so sold his horse for fifty darics, corresponding to c. 1000 drachmai (Anab. 7.8.2 and 7.8.6). This is a very high price – the cavalry horses in the Athenian archive are more usually valued around 500 drachmai – and demonstrates a ready market for horses among the wealthy. When commanders from Sparta arrived to take over leadership of the Ten Thousand they bought Xenophon’s horse back for him as a gesture of goodwill, because “they had heard that he was fond of the horse” (Anab. 7.8.6). Affection, however, had not prevented Xenophon from selling the horse in the face of financial need.16 This suggests that relationships between aristocrats and their horses were considerably less personally invested than those between peasant and working mule: a horse could be bought easily and sold (or gambled away) easily, and

_____ soon after his third victory the mares were buried opposite his grave, presumably killed so that the burial could reflect his status. 15 See Kroll (1977: 94) and Griffith (2006: 191), noting the modern parallel with the car. 16 One may contrast Ovid, Fast. 5.495–518 for the extreme act of sacrificing one’s ox.

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while horses were still individualised with names and recognised as having distinct personalities, the relationship was more straightforwardly instrumental. This was undoubtedly one consequence of the expense of keeping horses: a farmer would care for his ox or donkey himself, and a drover get to know his animals, but the wealthy delegated the day-to-day care of their horses to grooms: Xenophon’s On Horsemanship, for instance, includes instructions on choosing and training a horse, but the owner’s involvement with feeding and stabling extends only as far as instructing the grooms; Moore’s study (2004) of the imagery of horse care in Greek vase painting demonstrates the ubiquity of slave grooms.17 Similar evidence exists for the Roman upper classes, while inscriptions demonstrate that the star horses of the Roman circus enjoyed a whole infrastructure of grooms and veterinarians.18 The evidence thus suggests that the tendency to form relationships with working animals was stronger at the lower levels of society, where there was more direct contact, more reason to care for them, and a greater potential for identification of the owner with the animal. Only among the wealthy do we see a more ‘commoditised’ relationship, where interactions with animals were more limited and the status value higher.

6 Pet animals Working animals, then, shared human lives as a dominant, and sometimes lifelong, presence. Was the same true of pet animals? The concept of the ‘pet’ itself is complex when thinking about the ancient world: the term is used to cover a wide variety of animal-human relationships, from ‘companion animals’ of the type with which we are most familiar to domestic animals such as goats or geese with which children played, animals kept for sport such as fighting cocks, and wild animals which were temporarily captured. Animals identified as pets include domestic animals such as dogs (and more rarely cats), hares, fish, birds (wild and domestic), exotic animals such as monkeys, and some smaller animals including reptiles and insects. Several surveys of ancient pets exist, but the question of the lifespans of pet animals, and their relation to human lifespans, has not often been considered, perhaps because we are rather prone to

_____ 17 Xenophon, De re equ. 4–6; cf. Aristophanes, Clouds 32. 18 E.g. Horace, Sat. 1.6.103; Appian, Bell. civ. 2.21. On the circus, see Bell (2014: 495). Cavalrymen in the Roman army may have been responsible for the care of their own mounts; see Dixon & Southern (1992: 203–204).

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project onto antiquity the modern perspective, that pets as small animals are inevitably short-lived compared to humans, even though this was not necessarily the case.19 In fact, comparing the lifespan of different pets is one way of making sense of human interactions with different animals in Greece and Rome. What can ancient sources tell us about expectations of how long one would spend with a pet? Dogs are by far the best-documented pets and seem to have been expected to be relatively long-lived. An epitaph from Salerno for a lapdog called Patrike, for example, says that she had lived with her master for fifteen years (CIL X 659 [= CLE 1176]), and another from Oderzo for a dog named Fuscus says that he lived to eighteen and was stiff in his old age (Année Épigraphique 1994 [1997], no. 699; transl. Peter Kruschwitz): 20 Hac in sede iacet post reddita fata catellus, corpus et eiusdem dulcia mella tegunt. nomine Fuscus erat, ter senos apstulit annos. membraque vix poterat iam sua ferre senex. [- – -]exerit a[- – -] “In this place lies a little dog after an accomplished life, and sweet honey covers his body. His name was Fuscus, and he was eighteen years old. Barely could he move his limbs in his old age (…).”

Arrian, in his treatise on hunting, takes time to describe his favourite dog, Horme (‘Dash’); while he does not give her exact age at the time of writing, he says that she has been retired from hunting through age, to assume the status of a pet, and includes reminiscences both from when she was a puppy and when she was in her prime, implying that she was ten or more.21 Archaeological evidence similarly tends to bear out the idea of dogs living into old age: MacKinnon, in a study of osteological evidence from the Roman Mediterranean, concludes that dogs (together with cattle and equids) tend to display the greatest frequency of skeletal pathologies, indicating that they were living to greater

_____ 19 On pets in the ancient world, see Lazenby (1949), Bodson (2000), Calder (2011), Calder (in this volume), and Fögen (2016: 342 n. 77) for detailed references to further secondary literature. 20 Both epitaphs are from the imperial period. Of course the longest-lived dog in classical antiquity is Odysseus’ Argus, who was fully-grown and hunting when Odysseus left for Troy, and still alive twenty years later (Homer, Od. 17.290–327), but this is obviously literary effect. On Argus, see Fögen (in this volume). 21 See Arrian, Cyn. 5.1–2. On Arrian’s Cynegeticus, see Fögen (in this volume). Pliny the Elder (Nat. hist. 8.147) says that hounds can be brought by huntsmen to scent prey even when they are “blind and feeble” through age.

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ages, and he gives some examples of dogs which had developed arthritic conditions or suffered chronic dental problems, indicating human intervention to facilitate their survival (see MacKinnon 2010: 302–304). Two other epitaphs of the imperial period commemorate dogs which died in adulthood, one for a Gallic hunting hound named Margarita who died in whelping (CIL VI 29896), and Martial’s epigram 11.69 for a hunting hound, Lydia, who was killed by a boar. In both cases the epitaph emphasises that the dog did not have the chance to grow old; these were lives cut short.22 Here is the text of the Martial epigram (11.69; transl. Henry Bohn): Amphitheatrales inter nutrita magistros Venatrix, silvis aspera, blanda domi, Lydia dicebar, domino fidissima Dextro, Qui non Erigones mallet habere canem, Nec qui Dictaea Cephalum de gente secutus Luciferae pariter venit ad astra deae. Non me longa dies nec inutilis abstulit aetas, Qualia Dulichio fata fuere cani: Fulmineo spumantis apri sum dente perempta, Quantus erat, Calydon, aut, Erymanthe, tuus. Nec queror infernas quamvis cito rapta sub umbras: Non potui fato nobiliore mori. “Nurtured among the trainers of the amphitheatre, bred up for the chase, fierce in the forest, gentle in the house, I was called Lydia, a most faithful attendant upon my master Dexter, who would not have preferred to me the hound of Erigone, or the dog which followed Cephalus from the land of Crete, and was translated with him to the stars of the lightbringing goddess. I died, not of length of years, nor of useless old age, as was the fate of the hound of Ulysses; I was killed by the fiery tooth of a foaming boar, as huge as that of Calydon or that of Erymanthus. Nor do I complain, though thus prematurely hurried to the shades below; I could not have died a nobler death.”

Relationships between dogs and humans were thus meaningful because they could be expected to be long: a dog could live for half a human lifetime or more and represented a significant emotional investment on both sides, which was celebrated in many sources (see e.g. Pliny, Nat. hist. 8.142–145; see also Plutarch, Mor. 480a–b). Our evidence for the lifespans of other animals is more limited: Pliny comments that pet fish (popular among the elite of his day) could be very long-lived (Nat. hist. 9.167), and exotic birds such as parrots can have

_____ 22 On the ‘rapta motif’, see further Granino Cecere (1994).

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lifespans up to forty years (see Statius, Silv. 2.4, and Ovid, Am. 2.6),23 though it is more difficult to know whether this could be achieved by Roman pets whose owners were largely ignorant of their habits and needs. On the whole, however, adults seem to have expected an enduring relationship as part of pet ownership. Given the nature of our evidence, it is obvious that the pets of adults will be the best documented, and we might expect to find stronger claims about the quality of relationship between adult owner and pet. Nevertheless, childhood in antiquity does not appear to have offered the same opportunities for attachment to animals. Certain animals were particular to children as pets in the ancient world, including birds (songbirds and doves as well as fighting-cocks), hares (often leverets captured during a hunt), lizards and insects such as cicadas (see Neils 2003: 280–282, 285–286; further Bradley 1988). All these tend to be shortlived, either by nature or by circumstance. Leverets taken when their dam was killed, for instance, would be unlikely to receive the care they needed (Anth. Pal. 7.207; my translation): Τὸν ταχύπουν, ἔτι παῖδα συναρπασθέντα τεκούσης ἄρτι μ᾽ ἀπὸ στέρνων, οὐατόεντα λαγὼν ἐν κόλποις στέργουσα διέτρεφεν ἁ γλυκερόχρως Φανίον, εἰαρινοῖς ἄνθεσι βοσκόμενον. οὐδέ με μητρὸς ἔτ᾽ εἶχε πόθος, θνῄσκω δ᾽ ὑπὸ θοίνης ἀπλήστου πολλῇ δαιτὶ παχυνόμενος. καί μου πρὸς κλισίαις κρύψεν νέκυν, ὡς ἐν ὀνείροις αἰὲν ὁρᾶν κοίτης γειτονέοντα τάφον. “A swift-footed, long-eared leveret, newly snatched from my mother’s breast, fair-skinned Phanion cherished me in her bosom and fed me with spring flowers. I no longer pined for my mother, but grew fat from so many dainties and died from (too) much feasting. She buried me next to her bed so that even in her dreams she would always see my tomb close at hand.”

Several studies have commented on this in relation to particular animals: Bradley, for instance, in his discussion of the development of pet-keeping among Roman children and its cultural role, notes the unexpected (to a modern viewer) approval of cockfighting (a bloody and violent competition often fought to the death) as a pastime for children. He argues that the keeping of fighting-cocks in fact served to prepare children for the large-scale shedding of blood which

_____ 23 On these poems, see Fögen (2007: 62–65). Specifically on Ovid, Am. 2.6, see Fögen (in this volume).

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characterised Roman society (Bradley 1988: 555–556). Similarly, Sorabella’s study of Roman funerary monuments for children discusses the meaning of the lizard which frequently appears as decoration on ‘sleeping Eros’ statues, suggesting a deliberate connection between the animal and the child. She argues that the lizard was not a wholly symbolic attribute, but was included on the statues of sleeping children both because they were familiar captured pets, and because the short-lived darting lizard acted as a symbol for the brief life of the child (see Sorabella 2007: 364–365, with figs. 11–13). I suggest that both of these associations may form part of a wider belief. In a culture in which child mortality was so high (as much as 50% according to model life tables), short-lived pets appear to have been considered more appropriate for children; the pet-adult relationship premised on an expectation that the pet’s life would encompass a significant part of the owner’s span could not be replicated in childhood. Instead, animals with a more limited lifespan lessened the likelihood of pet outliving child. Some of the few stories in our sources about children and pet dogs seem to fit well in this context: Plutarch, for instance, presents a story in his Life of Aemilius Paullus about Paullus’ daughter grieving for a puppy which had died (Aem. 10.6–8), while Pliny the Younger, describing the funeral of the teenage son of Regulus, notes that the boy’s pets (Gallic ponies, birds, and dogs of all sizes) were killed at his funeral pyre (Epist. 4.2). Only once past the dangerous years of childhood would one be ready to engage in an enduring pet relationship.

7 Conclusion Temporal perspectives, then, can help to explain several kinds of interaction between animals and humans in antiquity. It is a truism to say that in the ancient world animals played a far larger cultural role than in the present; nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that for the Greeks and Romans animals were more dangerous, more present, and less easy to bend to the human will. But as I hope to have shown, the differences were deeper than the purely practical. The disparity between human and animal lifespans was far less marked than in the modern West, so both working animals and pets could develop an enduring, sometimes lifelong, relationship with their owner. Such relationships were not, as is sometimes suggested, a product of growing prosperity, and the preserve of the wealthy and leisured upper classes; in fact, they tended to be stronger among the labouring poor (see e.g. Bradley 1988: 537–538).

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There is perhaps evidence for an even more fundamental divergence of perspectives between past and present: a persistent belief is found in classical folk wisdom that certain animals lived extremely long lives, far in excess of humans. A fragment of Hesiod preserves the traditional formula (fr. 304 Merkelbach & West [= Plutarch, Mor. 415c–d]; transl. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Classical Library): ἐννέα τοι ζώει γενεὰς λακέρυζα κορώνη ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων· ἔλαφος δέ τε τετρακόρωνος· τρεῖς δ᾽ ἐλάφους ὁ κόραξ γηράσκεται· αὐτὰρ ὁ φοῖνιξ ἐννέα τοὺς κόρακας· δέκα δ᾽ ἡμεῖς τοὺς φοίνικας νύμφαι ἐυπλόκαμοι, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο. “A chattering crow lives out nine generations of aged men, but a stag’s life is four times a crow’s, and a raven’s life makes three stags old, while the phoenix outlives nine ravens, but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.”

The idea recurs throughout antiquity. Pausanias, for instance, relates the tale of an Arcadian general whose ancestor was said to have seen the sacred deer of Artemis at Lycosura in Arcadia, which wore a collar declaring that it had been captured as a fawn at the time of the Trojan War (Pausanias, Per. 8.10.10; cf. Ovid, Met. 7.271–274). Aristotle had commented in the fourth century B.C. that such claims were inaccurate (Hist. anim. VI 29 578b23–26), but scientific knowledge did not influence popular beliefs, and as new animals were discovered, they too attracted similar claims. According to Aristotle (Hist. anim. VII 9 596a11–12), some believed that elephants lived for two hundred years, and some for three hundred, while Philostratus includes in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana a tale of an elephant more than three hundred and fifty years old (Ap. 2.12; cf. Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.31 and 17.7; Strabo, Geogr. 15.43). There was thus no assumption that humans led the longest lives; rather, humans were seen as evanescent compared with many animals. The human view of the natural world thus did not involve an assertion of innate superiority, and understanding this perspective should allow us both to better understand the experience of antiquity, and to see what is strange in some of our own relationships with animals.24

_____ 24 My thanks to Ralph Anderson, Thorsten Fögen, Robin MacKenzie and Edmund Thomas for their comments and suggestions, and to Naomi Sykes for her kind permission to reproduce the graphs in fig. 1.

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Bibliography Bell, Sinclair (2014): Roman chariot racing. Charioteers, factions, spectators. In: Paul Christesen & Donald G. Kyle (eds.), A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Chichester, 492–504. Bodson, Liliane (2000): Motivations for pet-keeping in Ancient Greece and Rome. A preliminary survey. In: Anthony Podberscek, Elizabeth S. Paul & James A. Serpell (eds.), Companion Animals and Us. Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, Cambridge, 27– 41. Bradley, Keith (1998): The sentimental education of the Roman child. The role of pet-keeping. In: Latomus 57, 523–557. Bradley, Keith (2000): Animalising the slave. The truth of fiction. In: Journal of Roman Studies 90, 110–125. Braun, Karin (1970): Der Dipylon-Brunnen B. Die Funde. In: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Athenische Abteilung 85, 129–269. Calder, Louise (2011): Cruelty and Sentimentality. Greek Attitudes to Animals, 600–300 BC, Oxford. Clegg, Cameron B. (2015): The Bones at Binchester. A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Cattle from a Late Roman Military Fort and Civilian Settlement in Northern England, Diss. University of Durham. Dixon, Karen R. & Pat Southern (1992): The Roman Cavalry. From the First to the Third Century AD, London. Fögen, Thorsten (2007): Antike Zeugnisse zu Kommunikationsformen von Tieren. In: Antike & Abendland 53, 39–75. Fögen, Thorsten (2016): All Creatures Great and Small. On the roles and functions of animals in Columella’s De re rustica. In: Hermes 144, 321–351. Frier, Bruce W. (2001): More is worse. Some observations on the population of the Roman empire. In: Walter Scheidel (ed.), Debating Roman Demography, Leiden, 139–159. Gilhus, Ingvild S. (2006): Animals, Gods and Humans. Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas, London & New York. Granino Cecere, Maria Grazia (1994): Il sepolcro della catella Aeolis. In: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 100, 413–421. Griffith, Mark (2006): Horsepower and donkeywork. Equids and the ancient Greek imagination. In: Classical Philology 101, 185–246 and 307–358. Hin, Saskia (2013): The Demography of Roman Italy. Population Dynamics in an Ancient Conquest Society 201 BCE–14 CE, Cambridge. Howe, Timothy (2008): Pastoral Politics. Animals, Agriculture and Society in Ancient Greece, Claremont, California. Kajava, Mika (2011): ]pa-ko-qe (KN Ch 5728). A new ox name from Knossos? In: Arctos 45, 59– 70. Kajava, Mika (2012): wa-no (KN Ch 5724). In: Arctos 46, 59–64. Killen, John T. (1995): The oxen’s names on the Knossos Ch tablets. In: Minos 27/28, 101–107. King, Anthony (2001): Mammals. Evidence from wall paintings, sculpture, mosaics, faunal remains and ancient literary sources. In: Wilhelmina F. Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 401–450. Kroll, John H. (1977): An archive of the Athenian cavalry. In: Hesperia 46, 83–140.

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Lazenby, Francis D. (1949): Greek and Roman household pets. In: Classical Journal 44, 245– 252 and 299–307. MacKinnon, Michael (2004): Production and Consumption of Animals in Roman Italy. Integrating the Zooarchaeological and Textual Evidence, Portsmouth, Rhode Island. MacKinnon, Michael (2010): Sick as a dog. Zooarchaeological evidence for pet dog health and welfare in the Roman world. In: World Archaeology 42, 290–309. McInerney, Jeremy (2010): The Cattle of the Sun. Cows and Culture in the World of the Ancient Greeks, Princeton. Moore, Mary B. (2004): Horse care as depicted in Greek vases before 400 B.C. In: Metropolitan Museum Journal 39, 35–68. Neils, Jenifer & John H. Oakley (eds.) (2003): Coming of Age in Ancient Greece. Images of Childhood from the Classical Past, New Haven & London. Russell, Nerissa (2011): Social Zooarchaeology. Humans and Animals in Prehistory, Cambridge. Scheidel, Walter (2001): Progress and problems in Roman demography. In: Walter Scheidel (ed.), Debating Roman Demography, Leiden, 1–81. Scheidel, Walter (2007): Demography. In: Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris & Richard P. Saller (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, Cambridge, 38–86. Sorabella, Jean (2007): Children, animals and Roman funerary sculpture. In: Ada Cohen & Jeremy B. Rutter (eds.), Constructions of Childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy, Princeton, 353–370. Sykes, Naomi (2014): Beastly Questions. Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues, London. van Straten, Folkert T. (1995): Hierà kalá. Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece, Leiden.

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Greek and Latin Words for Human-Animal Bonds: Metaphors and Taboos | 39

Cristiana Franco

Greek and Latin Words for Human-Animal Bonds: Metaphors and Taboos Cristiana Franco Greek and Latin Words for Human-Animal Bonds: Metaphors and Taboos Abstract: Traditional classical studies do not take stories of interspecies relationships very seriously, confining them to the realm of anecdotes, paradoxography, myth, or ‘literary sentimentalism’ unworthy of consideration. An investigation into the vocabulary of human-animal bonds seems to be a necessary step towards balancing the historical reconstruction of the ancient experience with other animals. Greek and Roman linguistic usage and traditional stories present us with some surprising aspects – such as the preference for metaphors and tales of erotic attraction (animals as ‘lovers’) instead of kinship (animals as ‘babies’ and the owner as their ‘mum’ or ‘dad’) – which question our understanding of that experience and call for a reflexive approach to the sources. Moreover, this paper suggests that interspecies love stories from Greece and Rome – myths and legends of animals in love with human beings as well as iconographic representations of human-animal intercourse – should be interpreted in light of the linguistic metaphors that shaped the conceptual domain of the human-animal bond in ancient peoples’ lives. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-003

1 Introduction As with any kind of private relationship, we do not have many first-hand descriptions of real human-animal bonds in ancient times. The majority of the literary texts that represent such a bond – mainly ethical reflections by philosophers – were written, in fact, in an attempt to deny or downplay any closeness. The few authors that indulge in describing the relationship show embarrassment or take a step away from it through humorous detachment. Even authors who celebrate animals’ cleverness and sensibility and advocate the humane treatment of non-human creatures, like Plutarch and Porphyry, do not focus on biographical accounts of personal experience with interspecies relationships.1 And yet iconographical and epigraphical evidence clearly show that many ancient people – especially women and children, but also adult males – entertained close relations with dogs, birds, horses, monkeys, rabbits, and even pigs and fish. Furthermore, there are myths, fables, legends and folktales that represent close and even intimate relationships between humans and members of

_____ 1 On the unlikely reality of the ‘philosophers’ pets’, see Gillian Clark’s article in this volume. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-003

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other species that cannot be dismissed as meaningless, because their narratives contain interesting data in terms both of discourse analysis and conceptual metaphors.

2 Towards a vocabulary of interspecies interactions To the best of my knowledge there is no work specifically devoted to the Greek and Latin vocabulary for this bond and, more generally, for interspecies interactions. Therefore, the material presented in this article constitutes a first step towards a study which will consider whether Latin and Greek had technical terms for interspecies relationships and, if this was not the case, which metaphors were used and what they can tell us about the real relationships to which they were applied. A brief survey of the evidence I have gathered so far reveals that Greek and Latin terms which defined the interspecies bond (and related feelings) were mainly non-specialised, i.e. they were used also for human-to-human interactions. Some of them (such as φιλία, ξενία, συμμαχία, εὔνοια, amicitia, and societas) are clearly borrowed from the sphere of human relationships and institutions; in other cases (such as χειροήθης, σαίνω, mansuescere, and adulare), the borrowing goes the opposite way, from interspecies to intraspecies interactions. The majority of the terms can be easily sorted into groups based on their semantic affinity. One category is related to food. Both domestication as a historical process and the establishment of a bond between an animal and its human companion are based on feeding.2 It therefore comes as no surprise that food played a pivotal role in the ancient vocabulary of interspecies relationships: it may refer to the nurturing/raising of an animal by human beings (e.g. τρέφειν, τρόφιμος, τροφεῖα, σύντροφος, ὁμότροφος, τροφεύς; nutrire, alere, alumnus, pascere), or to the sharing of food/table with an animal (e.g. τραπεζεύς, conviva, mensas attingere). Amusement and play were also at the centre of the relationship. Words such as ἄθυρμα, ἀθύρειν, συναθύρειν, (ad-)ludo, conlusor, and iocari show that some animals were involved in ludic activities meant to entertain and produce

_____ 2 On the pivotal role of food in human-canine relationships, see Franco (2014: 23–67).

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“pleasure” and “enjoyment” (e.g. ἁνδάνω, [ἀπ]ονίναμαι, ἰαίνω, τέρπειν, τερπολή, τερπνόν; deliciae, laetari, oblectamentum, voluptas). Other key terms were related to appeasement (e.g. πραύνω, blandire, mitigare, mollire, mulcere) and luring/flattering (e.g. σαίνω, adulare, allicere). Exchange and reciprocation (e.g. χάρις, beneficium) are rarely mentioned, but I suspect that I will come across further examples of this as I proceed in my research.3 The semantic domain of Latin tractare – encompassing compounds such as pertrecto, attrecto, contrecto – seems to have a special connection to humananimal relationships,4 although further research will be necessary in order to determine to what extent this statement holds true. As regards terms for the relationship itself and for the feelings it triggers, a first remark is that they appear very rarely and are borrowed from the vocabulary of human relationships. Some of them are generic: terms such as φιλία, στοργή and amor could be applied to love and attachment between friends, relatives, and lovers. However, there are cases where the chosen words may sound awkward to a modern ear: ἔρως, πόθος, ἐπιθυμία, amor and desiderium in the ‘venereal’ sense (i.e. coupled with verbs like ardeo or flagro) seem to represent the interspecies relationship in quite erotic terms. It may seem even more striking that in Hellenistic and Roman times there was a popular type of narrative – almost a genre in itself, which may be called ‘interspecies love stories’ – where wondrous erotic relationships between members of different species were reported as true facts. They are to be found mainly in Aelian, Pliny (both the Elder and the Younger), Plutarch, Athenaeus and Gellius. Although they are probably not representative of ordinary language use (they certainly aim at sensation and the extraordinary), these narratives do deserve consideration: their great popularity in ancient times shows that the stories they tell and the themes they explore somehow produced pleasant and/or stimulating resonances in the audience. In other words, the ways these texts describe interspecies relations – as well as the terms they employ – were perceived as perfectly ‘acceptable’ and even desirable by a broad audience. Even if one assumes that all these terms were used metaphorically, it would be a great mistake to overlook or even underplay this ‘erotic’ tone in the ancient vocabulary of human-animal relations: instead, the oddity should be consid-

_____ 3 Thus far I have found only one piece of evidence for χάρις (IG XII 2.459) and one for beneficium (Gellius, Noct. Att. 5.14.28, reporting the popular anecdote of Androcles and the lion). 4 See e.g. Cicero, De off. 2.17; Seneca, De ira 2.26 (ars tractandi) and 2.31; Seneca, Epist. 41.6–7; Pliny, Epist. 9.33.6; Columella, De re rust. 6.2.

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ered as a mark of a cultural difference that deserves careful consideration. Moreover, this evidence seems to acquire a broader significance if we consider that, contrary to our expectations, the Greeks and the Romans did not represent their relationships with animals in terms of kinship. Words such as ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ or ‘father’, ‘mother’, and ‘parent’ were never employed to designate the pet and its owner: the closest terms to parent-child relationship to be found are τρόφιμος, alumnus (both meaning ‘nursling’, ‘[foster-]child’) and τροφεύς (‘rearer’, ‘breeder’, ‘foster-father’). We also find σύντροφος (‘foster-brother’) to describe a kid and an animal who have been raised together (Aelian, De nat. anim. 2.6, 6.63). Texts that expand on the feelings arising from an interspecies bond are extremely rare in Greek and Latin literature. It seems therefore significant that the few detailed descriptions of such a bond represent it in terms of pleasure, physical attachment and even sexual arousal, rather than parental and filial love. This fact clashes strikingly with the habit in our own culture, where companion animals are rather conceived of as ‘babies’ of their human partners, whereas sexual attraction felt by or for an animal cannot even be alluded to in public discourse and zooerasty has been relegated to the private sphere of debased pornography.5

3 Interspecies love stories Interspecies love stories were very popular in Greek and Roman literature. They have been recently studied by Craig Williams (2013), who has catalogued and classified them. Typical features of these stories are as follows: 1. They are presented as true stories of events having occurred in specific times and places (in the past or recently), sometimes supported by eyewitness reports.

_____ 5 I use the term ‘zooerasty’ to designate erotic desire and sex with non-human animals while I understand ‘zoophilia’ as any kind of positive attitude towards animals. However, current terminology for human-animal relationships is complex and more nuanced: ‘zoophilia’ sometimes refers to sexual attraction, otherwise known as ‘zoosex’; but among animal lovers we also find ‘therians’, ‘plushies’, and ‘furries’ (see Cassidy 2009). In recent times zoosexuals have tried to ‘come out’ on the web, claiming that their orientation is but one among many human sexualities: they have faced fierce opposition from both conservatives and animal rights activists (Cassidy 2009: 92–95). Sex with animals is still a deep-seated taboo in our societies (see Singer 2001).

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2.

The ‘vector of desire’ almost always goes from the animal towards the human. However, there are some hints at reciprocation on the human part, and a few narratives are to be found where it is a human male who falls in love with an animal (e.g. Aelian, De nat. anim. 6.2, 6.29). 3. The animal’s desire is described as physical and real, not as metaphorical. 4. The act of copulation is almost never described. A noteworthy exception is the story about a female seal in love with an ugly old man (Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.56) and perhaps – if the manuscript reading μίξεως is correct – the tale about the dolphin and the boy in Poroselene (Aelian, De nat. anim. 2.6). 5. They are not shameful stories told as cautionary tales. On the contrary, they mean to celebrate the power of love that crosses the species barrier. The list could be expanded by adding that these stories also seem to constitute reflections on the intelligence of non-human animals, beings who prove capable of acknowledging superior human beauty and wisdom: Socles’ horse falls in love with the man because he is the smartest of horses (Aelian, De nat. anim. 6.44); the he-goat in Mendes (Egypt) was expected to appreciate the most beautiful women offered to him (Plutarch, Brut. anim. 5 988f–989a; see also Aelian, De nat. anim. 7.19). The more ‘philanthropoi’ animals prove to be, the better is the evaluation they get.6 On the other hand, the stories with the ‘vector of desire’ pointing the other way around (i.e. humans desiring non-human animals) bear negative or ambiguous connotations: queen Semiramis who was in love with a stallion and had sex with him is not presented as a positive example in Pliny the Elder (Nat. hist. 8.155); the man who has sexual intercourse with his mare in the Anthologia Latina (149 Riese) is possessed by a prodigiosa Venus and commits a crimen.7 The unusual emphasis on copulation itself shows that these last two stories do not belong to the same genre as the ones classified by Williams. It seems worth comparing this body of narratives with myths where gods turn themselves into animals in order to rape a female or a boy. Zeus was particularly keen on assuming animal form in order to seduce or kidnap the objects of his desire: Nemesis, Leda, Europa, Io and Ganymede are among the victims of

_____ 6 It must be added that animals’ attraction towards human beings tends to be positively evaluated, as long as it abides by human social norms, i.e. a male actor pursuing a female passive object (see Hindermann 2011: 13). 7 See also Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.8 (a man in love with a mare) and 6.42 (Crathis in love with one of his goats). See further Hindermann (2011: 8–11).

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his divine courtship strategy. But also Apollo turned himself into a turtle and a snake in order to seduce and rape the nymph Dryope, whereas Poseidon and Kronos chose to become bulls and horses.8 These stories are actually representations of another kind of uncanny intercourse, i.e. sex between a god and a mortal: the animals involved are in fact gods in animal disguise. Nevertheless, as Annetta Alexandridis (2008) has noted, iconographical evidence from post-classical times shows an increasing tendency to emphasise the animal element in the story (with representations of the intercourse between Leda and the swan or Ganymede and the eagle) that leave little doubt about the pleasure that such a display produced in the viewers. This ‘trend towards the beast’ in Hellenistic and Roman iconography matches the increasing popularity of the ‘interspecies love stories’ – a sort of bestial Ἐρωτικὰ παθήματα – as a literary genre. Besides investigating the historical reasons for this trend in art and literature, it seems worth asking why the gods should take on an animal aspect in order to approach and have sexual intercourse with their beloved in the first place. I suspect there are at least two reasons. The first is to be found in the titillating potential of the image or story: the transgression of boundaries between species as well as the violation of ordinary sexual norms are likely to have been ingredients of the erotic appeal in these narratives (see also Robson 1997: 66– 67). Moreover, the animal form probably conveyed an idea of divine sexual potency. But a third factor, as suggested below, might be related to the intention of representing a real physical (if not sexual) intimacy between animals and their human companions. This does not mean refuting the argument that in these narratives the vocabulary of ἔρως could be employed to refer to “an ardent admiration and attachment” without entailing sex (Korhonen 2012: 70).9 Of course it could. However, I am not interested in ascertaining the reality of zooerastia in the ancient world. What I intend to investigate instead is the use of erotic imagery and of erotic metaphors as a way to conceptualise interspecies attraction and love.

_____ 8 The list of Greek myths with a “pursuing god ravaging the pursued maiden” in Robson (1997: 74–75) includes the following victims: Antiope, Canace, Dryope, Europa, Leda, Melantho, Persephone, Philyra, Metis, Thetis, Psamathe, Taygete, Asterie, Nemesis, and Theophane. 9 On ἔρως as “the body’s insistent desire”, see Sissa (2008: 60).

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4 Laughable or sexy? It has been claimed that in Greek iconography and literary evidence pure bestiality – i.e. sexual intercourse with a real animal – only occurs in exotic contexts: foreign mythology (e.g. Pasiphae), foreign cultures, and ‘Dionysian’ orgies (see Alexandridis 2008). The story of the copulation between a woman and a he-goat in Mendes is reported by Herodotus as an exceptional event (Hist. 2.46; my translation): Καλέεται δὲ ὅ τε τράγος καὶ ὁ Πὰν αἰγυπτιστὶ Μένδης. Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ νομῷ τούτῳ ἐπ᾽ ἐμέο τοῦτο τὸ τέρας· γυναικὶ τράγος ἐμίσγετο ἀναφανδόν· τοῦτο ἐς ἐπίδεξιν ἀνθρώπων ἀπίκετο. “In the Egyptian language Mendes is the name both for the he-goat and for Pan. In my lifetime a monstrous thing (τέρας) happened in this province, a woman having open intercourse with a he-goat. This came to be publicly known”.

However, other sources such as Strabo (Geogr. 17.1.19, quoting Pindar), Aelian (De nat. anim. 7.19) and Plutarch (Brut. anim. 5 989a) have this as a recurring ritual. The story shows the unmistakable mark of the roughest ethnocentric exoticism. But what can be said about the kantharos by Epictetus in Naples (Museo Archeologico di Napoli, Gabinetto Segreto, RP 27669) where a naked lady, wearing a sakkos, is lying down, holding a kylix and a thyrsos with her legs slightly open as if she is inviting the excited donkey in front of her to make love? The woman has been variously labelled as a hetaira in a symposium scene10 or as a maenad.11 However, the question to be asked is whether a donkey sexually approaching a woman was a suitable motif to be displayed at a symposium, as it was in the case of a satyr pursuing a nymph or a maenad. And, if so, what is the reason? Even admitting that the donkey stands for a satyr, how can this substitution be interpreted?

_____ 10 According to Keuls (1986: 134), the sakkos worn by the woman is not significant: it was worn by free and respectable women as well as hetairai and slaves. See also Lee (2015: 159). 11 See Davies (1990), who does not focus on the ‘reality’ of the scene, being interested rather in the ‘asinine’ nature of the satyrs in general.

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Figure 1: Kantharos by Epictetus in Naples Museo Archeologico di Napoli, Gabinetto Segreto, RP 27669 © Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo

François Lissarrague (1990) is certainly right in saying that the sexuality of satyrs is ‘bestial’ and totally unacceptable as a model for the Athenian citizen. But can we be sure that the scene depicting an aroused ass approaching an inviting naked woman was simply ‘laughable’? And that to the Athenian male viewers all this looked plainly surreal, just as the doctor’s love for the sheep Daisy in Woody Allen’s film Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask is to our eyes? Or were such scenes – including the notorious sculpture of ‘Pan copulating with a goat’ from Pompeii – rather meant to excite the viewer’s sexual imagination? Responding to Lissarrague on the sexuality of satyrs, Hedreen (2006: 284) wonders whether “the painters or users of the vases ever [saw] anything of themselves or each other in the silens depicted on the vessels (…) was it partially sympathetic laughter, the kind of laughter with which one responds to the sight of a person in an embarrassing situation, but a situation in which one could imagine himself?” In other words, were those figures of satyrs and maenads meant to arouse only the viewer’s laughter or also his sexual excitement? And how should we comment upon the ‘maenadic’ sexuality implied in the image of a woman arousing a donkey’s desire? Did men fancy that, when out for Dionysian orgies and made shameless by wine, women would not refrain from experiencing the wonderful sexual power of ‘supermales’ such as horses and donkeys? The episode of the sexual encounter between Lucius in the form of an ass and the foreign lady in Lucian’s Onos (50–52) is a case in point. Two details may mitigate the impact of the scene: first, the lady falls in love with the donkey when she sees him behaving like a man, i.e. there is a stress on the humanity of

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the ass; second, the lady is a foreigner, and this puts the entire encounter under the sign of a reassuring ‘exoticism’ (see Haskins 2014). However, the satisfaction of the foreign lady with the sexual performance of the ass is significant, as is the fact that she does not want him back in his human form, after discovering that his genitals too have resumed their human, i.e. disappointing, size (Lucian, Onos 56). Roman evidence, both literary and visual, is much more explicit, and texts as well as images do not seem so preoccupied with distancing themselves from the subject matter. Apuleius revises the episode of the ass and the lady by expanding it into something more detailed – provided that the socalled spurcum additamentum (Apuleius, Met. 10.21–22) is original – and far less ‘exotic’, given that the woman involved is a rich Roman matrona.12 Also the theme of the prospective supplicium of the scelerosa mulier (Apuleius, Met. 10.29–35) in the arena receives a closer treatment than in Lucian’s novel. It seems likely that a sexual act between a woman and a donkey was a thought that Roman men would consider both scandalous and titillating. A clear example is the following passage from Juvenal’s sixth Satire which describes what a man could imagine when picturing a secret female ritual like the one for Bona dea (Sat. 6.314–334; transl. Susanna Morton Braund): nota bonae secreta deae, cum tibia lumbos incitat et cornu pariter uinoque feruntur attonitae crinemque rotant ululantque Priapi maenades. o quantus tunc illis mentibus ardor concubitus, quae vox saltante libidine, quantus ille meri veteris per crura madentia torrens! lenonum ancillas posita Saufeia corona provocat et tollit pendentis praemia coxae, ipsa Medullinae fluctum crisantis adorat: palma inter dominas, virtus natalibus aequa. nil ibi per ludum simulabitur, omnia fient ad verum, quibus incendi iam frigidus aevo Laomedontiades et Nestoris hirnea possit. tunc prurigo morae inpatiens, tum femina simplex,

_____ 12 See Hindermann (2011: 26): “Zoophilie erscheint in Apuleius’ Geschichte über den Esel Lucius und die matrona ohne moralische Wertung als mögliche Form der Lustbefriedigung und dient mit der detaillierten Beschreibung der nackten Körper und des Liebesakts der Erotisierung der Lesers. (…) die Unterordnung des Mannes unter den Willen der Frau, also die Umkehrung der traditionellen Geschlechterrollen in einer Art servitium amoris, (ist) für den Protagonisten mit erotischem Gewinn verbunden.”

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ac pariter toto repetitus clamor ab antro ʻiam fas est, admitte viros.’ dormitat adulter, illa iubet sumpto iuvenem properare cucullo; si nihil est, servis incurritur; abstuleris spem servorum, venit et conductus aquarius; hic si quaeritur et desunt homines, mora nulla per ipsam quo minus inposito clunem summittat asello. “Everyone knows the secret rites of the Good Goddess, when the pipe excites the loins and, crazed by horn and wine alike, the maenads of Priapus are carried away, whirling their hair and howling. How their minds are all on fire to get laid then, how they squeal to the dance of their desire, how abundant a torrent of undiluted lust runs over their dripping thighs! Saufeia takes off her garland and issues a challenge to the brothel-keepers’ slave girls. She wins the prize for swinging her arse, then she in turn worships Medullina’s undulating surges. The contest is between the ladies: their expertise matches their birth. Nothing there will be pretend or imitation. It’ll all be done for real. It could create a spark in the son of Laomedon, already chill with age, or in Nestor’s swollen scrotum. That’s the itch of impatience, that’s the moment of pure Woman. The shout’s repeated in unison from the entire grotto: ‘Now’s the time! Send in the man!’ If her lover’s asleep, she’ll tell his son to put on his hood and hurry along. If that’s no good, there’s an assault on the slaves. If there’s no prospect of slaves available, they’ll pay the water delivery man to come in. If they can’t find him and there’s a deficit of humans, not a moment passes before she voluntarily offers her arse to be tupped by a donkey.”

According to Bruneau (1965: 354), Juvenal’s passage should be read as metaphorically referring to copulation between women and a young man, for ὄνος and asellus were names for a man endowed with a large penis and great sexual potency.13 However, the Roman poet stresses the fact that what he is reporting are neither simulations nor ‘jokes’ (Sat. 6.324–325) and that the women would resort to an asellus precisely for lack of human partners (Sat. 6.332–333). It seems therefore more likely that what we are here presented with is a male’s erotic fantasy about what women could really do when left alone and let free to drink wine. And that this imagery was titillating is explicitly said in the above lines (Sat. 6.325–326): the spectacle of those ‘unleashed’ women would arouse even impotent old men such as Priam. Further evidence is provided by Roman clay lamps showing male monkeys and donkeys having sex with women. Bruneau (1965: 356–357) argues that

_____ 13 For example, Juvenal, Sat. 9.92 (bipedem … asellum), Petronius, Sat. 24 (referring to Giton); Vita Commodi 10 (habuit et hominem pene prominente ultra modum animalium, quem Onon appellabat, sibi carissimum). Bruneau (1965) holds that it was this metaphor which provided a basis for literary imagination such as the episodes in Lucian’s Ass and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.

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lamps showing a woman with an ass – none of which predate the first century A.D. – are iconic renderings of the zooerastic scene in the piece of literature that served as the source of both Lucian’s and Apuleius’ novels.14 But if this is true for the ‘ass scenes’, how should we interpret those with a woman and a monkey? Were they representations of erotic narratives as well? Or should we assume that they depicted an event that really happened – if only as a performance on a stage or in the arena?15 It is also worth pointing out that the myth about Pasiphae’s love for the bull was certainly a negative example of ‘bestial’ lust (imposed by the gods on the Cretan queen), but it nonetheless triggered a flourishing zooerastic imagery. In his Liber de spectaculis Martial recounts a performance – a grotesque form of execution – where the woman was “attached to the bull” (De spect. 5.1).16 In the passage the word iunctam, ambiguous as such, receives its erotic connotation precisely from the reference to Pasiphae (De spect. 5; my translation): Iunctam Pasiphaen Dictaeo credite tauro: vidimus, accepit fabula prisca fidem. Nec se miretur, Caesar, longaeva vetustas: quidquid fama canit, praestat harena tibi. “That Pasiphae was attached to the Dictaean bull believe: we have seen it, the old time myth has won its warrant. And let not hoary antiquity, Caesar, plume itself: whatever fame sings of, the arena makes available for you.”

The same story served as the mythical background for the lust of the rich matrona in Apuleius and for an anonymous poem where a young man has a sexual

_____ 14 Bruneau (1965) follows convention in referring to this source of Lucian and Apuleius as Lucius of Patras, supposed author of the original Onos. The chronology of these lamps would prove that Lucius’ novel was published not earlier than the first century A.D. 15 See Coleman (1990: 64, with n. 173) and Wiedemann (1992: 89). Mazurek (2015) wonders whether any of these erotic artifacts may portray stage scenes, as seems to be the case with some lamps showing pairs of dwarfs having sex. Could it be the same for scenes of bestiality? It is worth noting that on one lamp the monkey having sex with the woman is leashed. Zimmerman (2000: 265) mentions these lamps in commenting on the passage about the sex encounter between the ass and the matrona in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. 16 See Coleman (1990). For a dancing performance supposed to represent Pasiphae being mounted by a bull, see Suetonius, Nero 12.1–2: Exhibuit et naumachiam marina aqua innantibus beluis; item pyrrichas quasdam e numero epheborum (…). Inter pyrricharum argumenta taurus Pasiphaam ligneo iuvencae simulacro abditam iniit, ut multi spectantium crediderunt; (…).

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encounter with a mare.17 By the same token, the lustful matrona in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is called an asinaria Pasiphae (Met. 10.19.3). Moreover, mock bestiality is recorded as a form of sexual roleplay in imperial Rome. Nero is said to have enjoyed a form of bondage, with male and female partners, in which he dressed in animal skins to attack their genitals, just as condemned prisoners were bound and attacked by wild animals in the arena (Suetonius, Nero 29; transl. John C. Rolfe): Suam quidem pudicitiam usque adeo prostituit, ut contaminatis paene omnibus membris novissime quasi genus lusus excogitaret, quo ferae pelle contectus emitteretur e cavea virorumque ac feminarum ad stipitem deligatorum inguina invaderet et, cum affatim desaevisset, conficeretur a Doryphoro liberto; cui etiam, sicut ipsi Sporus, ita ipse denupsit, voces quoque et heiulatus vim patientium virginum imitatus. “He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered.”

Cassius Dio (76.8.2) narrates how a prostitute pretended to be a leopard for the gratification of a senator, and the popular actor Bathyllus was known for an erotic dance in which he performed as Leda (presumably having sex with the swan or trying to escape from his assault). According to Juvenal, the women present at the spectacle were variously aroused by this view (Juvenal, Sat. 6.60– 66; transl. Susanna Morton Braund): porticibusne tibi monstratur femina voto digna tuo? cuneis an habent spectacula totis quod securus ames quodque inde excerpere possis? chironomon Ledam molli saltante Bathyllo Tuccia vesicae non imperat, Apula gannit, [sicut in amplexu, subito et miserabile longum.] attendit Thymele: Thymele tunc rustica discit.

_____ 17 See Apuleius, Met. 10.19 and Anthologia Latina 148–149 Riese: Invasit iuvenem prodigiosa Venus. / (…) Concubitus Cressa legitur quaesisse iuvenci, / Quam gravis ira deae iussit amare pecus. / Par crimen flammae nostris fors intulit annis: / Pasiphae tauro, Philager arsit equa.

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“Can our colonnades show you any woman who matches your wishes? Do our shows with all their tiers contain an object that you could pick out from there and love without anxiety? When sinuous Bathyllus is dancing his pantomimic Leda, Tuccia loses control of her bladder, Apula yelps, and Thymele is all attention. It’s then that clodhopping Thymele learns something.”

The fascination with the animal thus included this type of erotic fantasy. Most likely, however, this imagery was far away from stories of dolphins, geese, dogs, and elephants in love with a human being mentioned earlier. Those loves were either described in terms of ‘paederastic courtship’ (a male animal being the ἐραστής and a boy the ἐρώμενος),18 or of ‘platonic’ encounters with beautiful citharists: not only did the ‘vector of desire’ go almost exclusively from the nonhuman animal towards the human being, but they were, most importantly, nonreproductive encounters. It seems that interspecies attraction could only be positively ‘eroticised’ as long as it did not mess up the blood heritage.19 Of course, the case of a god in animal disguise is different: this type of hybridisation was thought of as ‘progressive’ and acceptable, giving birth to semi-divine offspring such as Helen, the Dioscuri, Epaphus, and so on. Those swans, bulls and snakes that raped Leda/Nemesis, Io and Dryope were not animals: they were gods, and of the first rank, too. Otherwise, with the turbatio sanguinis being one of the major concerns in ancient times, any hybridisations of human genetic lineages with another mortal species would have been a particularly regressive type of contamination (adulterium). In fact, cases of proper fertile zooerastia, such as Pasiphae and Polyphonte, resulted in a bloody wild offspring (the Minotaur, Agrius and Oreius respectively). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the ancient vocabulary for interspecies relations avoided employing terms of kinship. Despite the importance of nurturing and breeding in domestication and in every single process of interspecies adoption, we never find an animal (not even a ‘pet’) labelled as υι͑ ός, τέκνον or filius, nor a human companion as πατήρ, μήτηρ, pater or mater. Certainly, the semantic field of φιλία, στοργή, εὔνοια, amor and desiderium (fairly common terms in contexts of interspecies relationships) encompassed many types of affection and longing, including those towards parents, children and

_____ 18 See also Korhonen (2012: 71) on the word ἀντέρως in Aelian’s rendering of the love story between a boy and a dolphin (De nat. anim. 2.6). 19 See Hindermann (2011: 11): “Ein Grund für die Kritik der Zoophilie könnte die Furcht vor dem Entstehen von Mischwesen sein, die als Verstoss gegen die Natur und als schlechte Omina gedeutet werden.”

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relatives. But the paucity of parental and filial terms, when contrasted with (a) the frequency of terms belonging to the sphere of sensual desire, (b) the popularity of the ‘interspecies love stories’, and (c) the pervasive erotic fascination with the beast in sexual fantasies, suggests that in the ancient imagination about interspecies relations the idea of ‘erotic’ partnership was somehow (and under certain conditions) acceptable, whereas kinship was taboo. A passage from Plutarch makes it clear that pet animals raised in the house, like concubines and prostitutes, remained strangers and should not receive the same type of affection that one feels for a relative, a brother in this case (De frat. amic. 482c; transl. William C. Helmbold): νυνὶ δὲ τί ἂν λέγοις, εἰ ξένων ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἀλλοτρίων ἐκ πότου τινὸς ἢ παιδιᾶς ἢ παλαίστρας προσφθαρέντων ἁμαρτήματα ῥᾳδίως ἔνιοι φέροντες καὶ ἡδόμενοι, δύσκολοι καὶ ἀπαραίτητοι πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς εἰσιν; ὅπου καὶ κύνας χαλεποὺς καὶ ἵππους, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ λύγκας αἰλούρους πιθήκους λέοντας τρέφοντες καὶ ἀγαπῶντες, ἀδελφῶν οὐχ ὑπομένουσιν ὀργὰς ἢ ἀγνοίας ἢ φιλοτιμίας; ἕτεροι δὲ παλλακίσι καὶ πόρναις οἰκίας καὶ ἀγροὺς καταγράφοντες ὑπὲρ οἰκοπέδου καὶ γωνίας πρὸς ἀδελφοὺς διαμονομαχοῦσιν; “But as it is, what would you say of those who sometimes readily put up with the wrongdoings of strangers and men of no kin to themselves, men picked up at some drinkingbout or playground or wrestling-floor, and take pleasure in their company, yet are peevish and inexorable toward their own brothers? Why some even breed and grow fond of savage dogs and horses, and many people do so with lynxes and cats, monkeys and lions, yet cannot endure their brothers’ rages or stupidities or ambitions; still others make over their houses and property to concubines and harlots, yet fight it out in a duel with their brothers over a site for a building or a corner of property?”

Therefore, it looks like treating animals as ‘substitute relatives’ was perceived as a perverted behaviour, much more so than letting them play the role of ‘substitute lover’ in one’s lap or bed. It is perhaps meaningful that tales about animal ancestors, so frequent in native American and many other cultural traditions, are almost totally absent from Graeco-Roman folklore and mythology. The only exception I know of is the story of Odysseus’ grandfather Arceisius, who was said to be the son of Cephalus and a she-bear (Etymologicum Magnum 144.23–32, s.v. Ἀρκείσιος; transl. Thorsten Fögen): (…). Ἀριστοτέλης δὲ ἐν τῇ Ἰθακησίων πολιτείᾳ, τὸν Κέφαλον οἰκοῦντα ἐν ταῖς ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ κληθείσαις Κεφαληνίαις νήσοις, ἄπαιδα ἐπιπολὺ ὄντα, ἐρόμενον τὸν θεὸν, κελευσθῆναι ᾧ ἂν ἐντύχῃ θήλεϊ συγγενέσθαι· παραγενόμενον δὲ εἰς τὴν πατρίδα, καὶ δὴ ἐντυχόντα ἄρκτῳ, κατὰ χρησμὸν συγγενέσθαι· τὴν δὲ ἐγκύμονα γενομένην, μεταβαλεῖν εἰς γυναῖκα, καὶ τεκεῖν παῖδα Ἀρκείσιον, ἀπὸ ἄρκτου.

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“(…). Aristotle in his work The State of the Ithacans [fr. 504 Rose] reports that Cephalus, who lived on the Cephallenian isles named after him and who had been childless for a long time, asked a god (for advice) and was instructed to mate with the first female being he should encounter. He returned home, encountered a she-bear, and, following the oracular response, mated with her. The she-bear became pregnant, turned into a (human) woman, and bore (him) his son Arceisius, (named) after ‘bear’ (ἄρκτος).”

One may also think of the legend of the ‘snake-born’ people (Ὀφιογενεῖς), the offspring of Halia, daughter of Sybaris, and a giant snake in the groove of Artemis in Phrygia (Aelian, De nat. anim. 12.36; see also Strabo, Geogr. 13.1.14). Stories like those about the Myrmidons, the Spartoi and the like are of a different type, as they concern themselves with animals (or parts of animals) transformed into human beings.

5 What to do with all this? Does this evidence tell us anything about the depth of the interspecies bond? Do these metaphors and stories point to real close, intimate relationships with individuals of other species? It is Plutarch who informs us that a bond between a human and an animal may be so tight as to look like ἔρως (De soll. anim. 36 984e). This is especially interesting when women and children are involved. We know that they both had close relationships with animals: Penelope’s geese are often cited in this regard, but there are many other examples. Iconographical evidence shows that children’s favourite playmates were pet animals – especially dogs and birds. As regards the gaze of men upon children’s emotional lives, it seems that adult males did not entirely approve of children’s fondness for pet animals: Petronius portrays a cruel father who kills all of his son’s pet birds and then blames the crime on the weasel (Sat. 46.3). Male writers were not interested in representing such ‘private’ situations and literary evidence is thus elusive. There is, however, a meaningful passage in Pliny the Younger who recounts that the Roman senator M. Aquilius Regulus, grieving for the loss of his child, slaughtered around the pyre all his beloved pets, among which were many ponies, dogs, nightingales, parrots, and blackbirds (Epist. 4.2.1). Women’s intimacy with animals as well is likely to have been looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion by men, and evidence for it is to be tracked down in myths and erotic poetry. A story preserved by Antoninus Liberalis (second century A.D.) hints at the fact that stories of divine rape in animal disguise were somehow connected to physical intimacy between women and pet animals (Met. 32.1–3; transl. Francis Celoria):

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Δρύοψ ἐγένετο Σπερχειοῦ παῖς τοῦ ποταμοῦ καὶ Πολυδώρης μιᾶς τῶν Δαναοῦ θυγατέρων. οὗτος ἐβασίλευσεν ἐν τῇ Οἴτῃ καὶ θυγάτηρ αὐτῷ μονογενὴς ἐγένετο Δρυόπη καὶ ἐποίμαινεν αὐτὴ τὰ πρόβατα τοῦ πατρός· ἐπεὶ δὲ αὐτὴν ἠγάπησαν ὑπερφυῶς ἁμαδρυάδες νύμφαι καὶ ἐποιήσαντο συμπαίκτριαν ἑαυτῶν, ἐδίδαξαν ὑμνεῖν θεοὺς καὶ χορεύειν. ταύτην ἰδὼν Ἀπόλλων χορεύουσαν ἐπεθύμησε μιχθῆναι. καὶ ἐγένετο πρῶτα μὲν κλεμμύς, ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ἡ Δρυόπη γέλωτα μετὰ τῶν νυμφῶν καὶ παίγνιον ἐποιήσατο τὴν κλεμμὺν καὶ αὐτὴν ἐνέθετο εἰς τοὺς κόλπους, μεταβαλὼν ἀντὶ τῆς κλεμμύος ἐγένετο δράκων. καὶ αὐτὴν κατέλειπον αἱ νύμφαι πτοηθεῖσαι· Ἀπόλλων δὲ Δρυόπῃ μίγνυται, ἡ δὲ ᾤχετο φεύγουσα περίφοβος εἰς τὰ οἰκία τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ οὐδὲν ἔφρασε πρὸς τοὺς γονεῖς. ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ἔγημεν αὐτὴν ὕστερον Ἀνδραίμων ὁ Ὀξύλου, γεννᾷ παῖδα ἐξ Ἀπόλλωνος Ἄμφισσον. οὗτος ἐπεὶ τάχιστα ἠνδρώθη, ἀνὴρ ἐγένετο πάντων κρατῶν καὶ ἔκτισε παρὰ τὴν Οἴτην πόλιν ὁμώνυμον τῷ ὄρει καὶ τῶν ἐκεῖ τόπων ἐβασίλευεν. “Dryops (‘Oak Face’) was the son of the River Sperkheios (Spercheus) and of Polydore (‘Many Gifts’), one of the daughters of Danaos. He was king in Oeta and he had an only daughter, Dryope (‘Oak Face’). She herself herded the flocks of her father. Now, the Nymphai Hamadryades were very much attached to her and made her their companion, teaching her to sing to the gods and to dance. Apollo, seeing her dancing, felt an urge to couple with her. He first changed himself into a tortoise. Dryope, with the other Nymphai, was amused by it and they made a toy of the tortoise. She placed it in her bosom. He changed from a tortoise to a serpent. The frightened Nymphai abandoned Dryope. Apollo coupled with her and she ran full of fear to her father’s house, saying nothing to her parents. When Andraimon, son of Oxylos, later married her, she gave birth to Amphissos, the son of Apollo. As soon as he came of age, he proved to be a man stronger than all others and founded a town by Mount Oeta which took the name of the mountain. He became the king of the places thereabouts.”

In a similar vein, according to Pseudo-Hyginus (Astr. 2.8), Zeus turned himself into a swan in order to find protection in Nemesis’ lap before raping her. In Catullus, Juvenal, Martial and other Latin authors, there are hints at the closeness between pet animals and their dominae, who entertain themselves with the animals and enjoy a great physical intimacy with them. When the lover is absent, Catullus has Lesbia play with a pet sparrow in order to relieve her sorrow (Carm. 2; my translation): Passer, deliciae meae puellae, quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere, cui primum digitum dare appetenti et acris solet incitare morsus, cum desiderio meo nitenti carum nescio quid lubet iocari ut solaciolum sui doloris, credo, ut tum gravis acquiescat ardor: tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem et tristis animi levare curas!

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“Sparrow, delight of my girl, with whom she plays, whom she holds in her lap, to whom she holds out her fingertip to peek at, and provokes sharp bites, when it pleases her, my gleaming desire, to make some sweet joke as a relief from her sorrow, I believe, so that heavy passion might then settle down. How I wish I could play with you the way she does herself, and relieve the sad cares of the spirit!”

In Propertius the poet’s puella goes so far as to state that, when he is not there, the dog Glaucis take his place in bed (Carm. 4.3.56: illa tui partem vindicat una toro). Juvenal even insinuates that many women, if they had a chance, would offer themselves to save their dog’s life rather than their husbands’ ‒ unlike Alcestis (Sat. 6.651–654; transl. Susanna Morton Braund): illam ego non tulerim quae conputat et scelus ingens sana facit. spectant subeuntem fata mariti Alcestim et, similis si permutatio detur, morte viri cupiant animam servare catellae. “The woman I cannot stand is the one who calculatingly commits an enormous crime in full command of her senses. They watch Alcestis endure her husband’s death and, if a similar swap were offered to them, they’d happily see their husbands die to save their puppy’s life.”

It seems as if to the poet’s mind the pet animal was suitable for playing the role of ‘substitute lover’ in the mistress’ bed. In an inscription from Auch (Armagnac, Gallia, second century A.D.) the dead she-dog Myia (a Greek name meaning ‘fly’) is said to have been jealous of any ‘rival’ that should want to lie next to her domina (CIL XIII 488 [see Herrlinger 1930: 48]; my translation): Quam dulcis fuit ista, quam benigna, quae cum viveret in sinu iacebat, somni conscia semper et cubilis. O factum male, Myia, quod peristi! Latrares modo, si quis adcubaret Rivalis dominae, licentiosa. O factum male, Myia, quod peristi! Altum iam tenet insciam sepulcrum, nec sevire potes nec insilire, nec blandis mihi morsibus renides. “How sweet, how kind was she! As long as she lived, she would lie in her owner’s lap and partake her sleep and her bed. It was wrong, Myia, wrong it was of you to die! You were a rival for your lady’s favours too: did one sit a little closer, you would bark, a graceless libertine! It was wrong, Myia, wrong it was of you to die! Now unwitting you lie buried in a deep grave, you cannot rage any more, nor you can pounce; nor you charmingly flash your teeth at me and bite in gentle snatches.”

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The poem is reminiscent of Catullus’ lines on Lesbia’s sparrow20 and perhaps of Martial’s poem on the lapdog Issa (1.109), but puts additional emphasis on the ‘substitute lover’ role of the dog at her domina’s side in bed.21 All this is of course ironical.22 Nevertheless, it betrays a certain envy – and perhaps even distaste – towards the intimacy bestowed on the pet animal and the space it occupies in the mistress’ house.23 When the lady shares her life with a non-human companion, the human lover feels like an intruder, who enters an already established relationship and is likely to face resistance from the animal. To be sure, men too had tight bonds with animals – hounds and horses in the first place. However, this was something they were probably ashamed to admit explicitly, if not in the zero-degree pattern of ‘my animal loves me’. This is what happens, for example, in Arrian’s Cynegeticus, in one of the most detailed and vivid descriptions of a human-animal relationship to be found in ancient literary texts (see also Fögen, in this volume). In praising his dog Horme, the

_____ 20 Catullus, Carm. 2.2–4: quem in sinu tenere, / cui primum digitum dare appetenti / et acris solet incitare morsus. On Catullan echoes in the inscription, see Walters (1976). 21 One may compare Clement of Alexandria’s portrait of the elegant woman who enjoys the company of lurid eunuchs and shares her kliné with exotic animals (Paed. 3.4). 22 Ironical in my view is the image of the dog as a rivalis amans, inasmuch as the animal cannot literally be a rival of a man, even though it seems to behave as such from the lover’s perspective. Similarly, Catullus’ passer in Carm. 2 “fungiert sozusagen als Medium” (Lefèvre 1999: 233), since it entertains with Lesbia a physical intimacy that the poet wishes to enjoy for himself; in Carm. 3 its death inspires an epicedium with parodic overtones (see Kroll 21929: 5), which nevertheless seems to betray some genuine jealousy on the poet’s part (see Lefèvre 1999: 237). Benevolent irony was at play also in the Hellenistic models: for example, in Anyte’s poems for dead animals, the poet intentionally employs the (male) language of epic to describe her little animal ‘heroes’ (see Greene 2005: 148). Playful irony in these contexts does not aim to make fun of the animal nor does it ridicule the owner’s attachment; it seems rather to reflect the acknowledgement of a constraint in human language and comprehension, since we seem to be able to conceive of interactions between species only in anthropomorphic terms. Pets can accomplish great deeds and entertain intimacy with their owners; there is no way of celebrating this except by using words and concepts from epic and erotic poetry. 23 See the remarks by Walters (1976: 358–359) on the Auch poem: “The pejorative ista in line 1 alerts us to the author’s uncharitable attitude toward the little dog. (…) The poet displays a certain satisfaction that it is now impossible for Myia to harrass any of her mistress’ lovers. The sarcasm is here brought out by the pun on licentiosa in line 6. This word not only refers to the dog’s spoiled procacity, its irrepressible barking and pouncing on ‘rivals’ (insilire line 9), but also to the dog’s ‘sexual’ jealousy. (…) Far from lamenting Myia’s passing away, he is undoubtedly pleased to be rid of this pest who had interrupted his love-making.” One may compare the ‘lap-dog poems’ of eighteenth-century English poetry; see Brown (2010: 73–81) and Brown (2011).

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author emphasises the hound’s affection and love for him, but does not spend a single word to describe his feelings towards the dog.24 Significantly the elogium ends with a sentence that betrays a defensive state of mind (Cyn. 5.6; my translation): ὥστε οὐκ ἂν ὀκνῆσαί μοι δοκῶ καὶ τὸ ὄνομα ἀναγράψαι τῆς κυνός, ὡς καὶ ἐς ὕστερον ἀπολελεῖφθαι αὐτῆς, ὅτι ἦν ἄρα Ξενοφῶντι τῷ Ἀθηναίῳ κύων, Ὁρμὴ ὄνομα, ὠκυτάτη τε καὶ σοφωτάτη καὶ πραοτάτη. “I do not think I should feel ashamed to immortalise the name of this dog: that it may be left to posterity that Xenophon the Athenian had a dog called Horme (‘Rush’), of the greatest speed and wisdom, and extremely gentle.”

Most likely Arrian felt that the real Athenian Xenophon, whose Cynegeticus he intended to continue, would never have thought of praising one of his hounds in such a public and affectionate manner.

6 Conclusion Up until present times, interspecies love has been conceptualised only through metaphors. In the future, as the interest in human-animal relations grows in society and science, we may want to coin new words for this bond. So far, to the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence of a specific vocabulary for this kind of relationship in Western cultures. Cognitive metaphors, however, can vary widely historically and geographically. A fairly new fact is that twenty-first-century Western urbanised people increasingly think of themselves as ‘parents’ of their pet animals. It happens more and more often that someone addresses a person walking a dog down the street by asking whether she is the animal’s ‘mum’. The pet animal is someone’s ‘baby’. The label ‘animal lover’ as well seems to imply a feeling very close to either parental love or close friendship, with no sexual overtones.25

_____ 24 This is similar to Columella, De re rust. 7.12.1, who praises the farm dog’s love for the owner with no mention of the owner’s affection for his animal. See Fögen (2016: 341–343) for details. 25 On pet animals as their owners’ ‘babies’ and the inherent contradictions in applying kin terminology to interspecies relationships, see Cassidy (2009: 101–103) and Hurn (2012: 98–110). The most common metaphor to conceptualise the human-animal bond in modern times is

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Although the modern metaphor for interspecies bond does not cover the whole semantic area of kinship terminology (as far as I know, nobody would address their pet as ‘son’ or ‘daughter’), Graeco-Roman evidence suggests that the ancients, in particular adult males, would have found it horrifying to call a pet ‘one’s baby’ and the owner ‘the pet’s mum’ (or ‘dad’ or ‘grandmother’).26 Conversely, they would not refuse to resort to the semantic area of erotic relationships, something that would be uncommon in the modern world.27 Metaphors that conceptualise an animal as one human’s ‘lover’, as someone who feels attraction and desire for physical contact with its human partner, would normally make us feel uncomfortable. Accordingly, translations of ‘interspecies love stories’ tend to downplay the erotic undertones of the narrative, thus concealing a striking cultural difference: a quite dissimilar distribution of linguistic preferences and taboos.

Bibliography Alexandridis, Annetta (2008): Wenn Götter lieben, wenn Götter strafen. Zur Ikonographie der Zoophilie im griechischen Mythos. In: Annetta Alexandridis, Markus Wild & Lorenz Winkler-Horaček (eds.), Mensch und Tier in der Antike. Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung, Wiesbaden, 285–311. Brown, Laura (2010): Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes. Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination, Ithaca, New York. Brown, Laura (2011): The lady, the lapdog, and literary alterity. In: The Eighteenth Century 52, 31–45. Bruneau, Philippe (1965): Illustrations antiques du Coq et de l’Âne de Lucien. In: Bulletin de Correspondence Hellénique 89, 349–357.

_____ probably ‘friendship’ (see e.g. Serpell 1996: 108–143). The term ‘companionship’, which implies a certain degree of equality, is becoming increasingly common; it is indeed the metaphor of choice for people who grant personhood and subjectivity to the non-human member in a relationship (see Haraway 2003 and Hurn 2012: 109). 26 As already noted, when it came to interspecies relationships, the ancients would not only avoid kinship metaphors, but refrain from expressing their attachment to the animal and rather focus on the animal’s affection towards them. The animal is a friend, the animal is the one who loves; its human partner is the recipient. 27 Korhonen’s argument that mythical stories of gods in animal disguise may have imbued the imagination of the Greeks and Romans with the pictures of interspecies sexual relations and thus favoured the development of ‘interspecies love stories’ (see Korhonen 2012: 73 and 77) sounds quite circular to me. It remains unexplained why the Greeks would have imagined their gods raping their victims in an animal shape in the first place.

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Cassidy, Rebecca (2009): Zoosex and other relationships with animals. In: Hastings Donnan & Fiona Magowan (eds.), Transgressive Sex. Subversion and Control in Erotic Encounters, New York & Oxford, 91–112. Coleman, Kathleen M. (1990): Fatal charades. Roman executions staged as mythological enactments. In: Journal of Roman Studies 80, 44–73. Davies, Mark I. (1990): Asses and rams. Dionysiac release in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Attic vase-painting. In: Mètis 5, 169–183. Fögen, Thorsten (2016): All Creatures Great and Small. On the roles and functions of animals in Columella’s De re rustica. In: Hermes 144, 321–351. Franco, Cristiana (2014): Shameless. The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece, Oakland. Greene, Ellen (2005): Playing with tradition. Gender and innovation in the epigrams of Anyte. In: Ellen Greene (ed.), Women Poets in Ancient Greece and Rome, Norman, Oklahoma, 139–157 (originally published in: Helios 27, 2000, 15–32). Haraway, Donna (2003): The Companion Species Manifesto. Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, Chicago. Haskins, Susan L. (2014): Bestial or human lusts? The representation of the matron and her sexuality in Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10.19.3–22.5. In: Acta Classica 57, 30–52. Hedreen, Guy (2006): ‘I let go my force just touching her hair’. Male sexuality in Athenian vasepaintings of Silens and iambic poetry. In: Classical Antiquity 25, 277–325. Herrlinger, Gerhard (1930): Totenklage um Tiere in der antiken Dichtung, Stuttgart. Hindermann, Judith (2011): Zoophilie in Zoologie und Roman. Sex und Liebe zwischen Mensch und Tier bei Plutarch, Plinius dem Älteren, Aelian und Apuleius. In: Dictynna 8 (http:// dictynna.revues.org/717). Hurn, Samantha (2012): Humans and Other Animals. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on HumanAnimal Interactions, London. Keuls, Eva (1986): History without women. Necessity or illusion? In: Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 12, 125–145. Korhonen, Tua (2012): On human-animal sexual relationships in Aelian’s Natura animalium. In: Arctos 46, 65–77. Kroll, Wilhelm (21929): Catull. Herausgegeben und erklärt, Leipzig & Berlin. Lee, Mireille M. (2015): Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece, New York. Lefèvre, Eckard (1999): Catulls alexandrinisches Programm (C. 1–3). In: Gregor Vogt-Spira & Bettina Rommel (eds.), Rezeption und Identität. Die kulturelle Auseinandersetzung Roms mit Griechenland als europäisches Paradigma, Stuttgart, 225–239. Lissarrague, François (1990): The sexual life of Satyrs. In: David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler & Froma I. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality. The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, Princeton, 53–81. Mazurek, Alexander (2015): Light my fire. An overview, typology, and analysis of erotic Roman lamps. Unpublished paper (available online: https://www.academia.edu/4990009/_ Light_My_Fire_An_ Overview_Typology_and_Analysis_of_Erotic_Roman_Lamps_). Robson, James E. (1997): Bestiality and bestial rape in Greek myth. In: Susan Deacy & Karen F. Pierce (eds.), Rape in Antiquity, London, 65–96. Serpell, James A. (1996): In the Company of Animals. A Study of Human-Animal Relationships, Cambridge. Singer, Peter (2001): Heavy petting. In: Nerve (http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/2001---.htm). Sissa, Giulia (2008): Sex and Sensuality in the Ancient World, New Haven & London.

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Walters, Kenneth R. (1976): Catullan echoes in the second century A.D.: CEL 1512. In: Classical World 69, 353–359. Wiedemann, Thomas E. J. (1992): Emperors and Gladiators, London & New York. Williams, Craig A. (2013): When a dolphin loves a boy. Some Greco-Roman and native American love stories. In: Classical Antiquity 32, 200–242. Zimmerman, Maaike (2000): Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses: Book X. Text, Introduction, and Commentary, Groningen.

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Louise Calder

Pet and Image in the Greek World: The Use of Domesticated Animals in Human Interaction Louise Calder Pet and Image in the Greek World: The Use of Domesticated Animals Abstract: This paper examines a number of the many ways in which the Greeks positioned themselves socially through their interactions in the medium of pet-keeping and companion animals. Some of these interactions, such as seeking private comfort and reassurance by holding and caressing a pet, might be familiar to us in the present day, and indeed it can be argued that humans have, as a side product of their social makeup, an innate capacity and drive for pet-keeping, and a developing capacity to carry an unproductive ‘other’. However, many of the interactions seem unique to antiquity. Greek human-animal interactions had social complexities well beyond those of the relationship simply between an animal and its owner. This includes the part of pets in individuals’ internal dialogues and how they related to other humans. It also encompasses such practices as including pets as family members, memorialising and treatment of remains, accessorising, socialising outside the home and showing off with pets, competing with pets themselves, pitting pets against each other, love gifts, rewarding and punishing pets, mishandling and abuse, and criticism of pet-keeping by other humans. Images of pets are frequent in the surviving material, particularly on funerary stelae and figured vases. This repeated depiction of pets in particular settings, coupled with ancient literary observations, is used here to demonstrate the extent and variety of human interactions with pets and allude to what might have been driving these. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-004

1 Introduction Despite parallels that can be drawn with other times and cultures, Greek petkeeping had social complexities beyond those of the human-animal relationship. This paper looks at ways in which the Greeks positioned themselves socially through the medium of pet-keeping. It discusses how they related to themselves and to others through animals, and considers practices such as including pets as family members, memorialising, accessorising, showing off with pets, love gifts, rewarding and punishing pets, abuse, and criticism of petkeeping. DeMello (2012) explains that not all people relate to companion animals in the same way. Naturally, every ancient Greek person had a different personality, varying social factors, their own personal environment and experiences at play in what they thought about pets and companion animals. In short, not everyone will have had the exact same views, and the roles that pets played could DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-004

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vary widely. They could advertise status and prestige, function as ornaments or playthings, be primarily utilitarian, act as companions, or be a combination of these things (see DeMello 2012: 45–46, 49–50, 147–159). Companion animals, who might also have utilitarian roles, tend to attract the deepest commitments from their owners. The emotions can be powerful, with animals indulged as family members, and with genuine sorrow at their passing (see Lazenby 1949, Bodson 2000, and DeMello 2012). Where a companion animal is involved, there is often a desire for full and reciprocal integration. However, the integration of an animal into human family life can have varying levels of success, depending on the species involved, and sometimes great inconvenience may be incurred. Why would people, who need to meet their own daily needs and struggle with life’s many pressures, use precious resources and energy to support nonutilitarian animals? The reasons for keeping pets seem to be deeply rooted in man’s innate psycho-social makeup. An essential component of human survival, and the survival of other social species, has long been a shared innate talent for identifying the emotions of others (including members of other species), empathising and seeking affirmation. All social animals need to be nurtured and included in some group. Fortunately, we are programmed from birth to nurture and include others, and cross-species empathy appears as genuine as that between humans (see de Waal 2006, de Waal 2010, and Trevarthen 2003: 161). Social inclusion is frequently expressed by physical contact, and pet animals have been demonstrated to improve modern human well-being in this way, including blood pressure reduction (see Allen 2001 and Savishinsky 1983: 119). Owners often build reassuringly solid relationships with pets, especially dogs, which can assuage loneliness (see Burley 2008: 9). Some studies into whether pet owners are subjectively happier than people who do not own pets have pointed to benefits, others have not, and further research is needed (see Bao & Schreer 2016). However, though unscientific, many pet owners link their own happiness with their association with their pets. Even impoverished societies and individuals will indulge in pet-keeping and companion animals. Serpell (1989), and more recently Podberscek, Paul & Serpell (2000) and Hurn (2012), explore the animal-keeping phenomenon, and it seems that pet-keeping was probably common, if not universal, among Palaeolithic hunters and incipient agriculturalists. In a powerful example, North Queensland aboriginal Australians of the 1880s generally lived in primitive conditions (see Lumholtz 1889: 79–84). Yet, they reared dingos with extraordinary care, even though they would often leave them at home rather than hunt with them (see Meggitt 1965: 15 and Fisher 1983: 134–135). Rose (2011) explores the aboriginals’ relationships

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with their dogs and explains that, in aboriginal ethics, one’s own well-being entwines with that of the land and of others, regardless of species (see Rose 2011: 3–4, 7, 17–18). This contrasts with western definitions of human and animal, which often place them apart (see Rose 2011: 30). Even so, early European settlers recognised the depth of the aboriginals’ kinship with their dogs, and used brutal dog-shooting raids to devastate and intimidate the aboriginal Australians (see Rose 2011: 23–25). From historic examples (see Galton 1865) and examples involving modern homeless people (see Singer, Hart & Zasloff 1995 and Taylor, Williams & Gray 2004), it seems that the valuing of pets and companion animals can be independent of the economic circumstances of their owners, and that hardships may even enhance this. A person need not be socially disadvantaged, maladjusted or antisocial to appreciate animal companions. In modern human society, pets can serve as confidants (see Robin, ten Bensel, Quigley & Anderson 1983: 438–439), surrogate children or siblings, parents, or replace lost spouses (see Beck & Katcher 1983: 59–77; further Veevers 1985: 21–24). Companion animals may or may not love their owners, but owners often imagine that they do (see Hart 1995: 169), and it is facilitative that a pet’s thoughts cannot be known in detail. In a way, this ignorance of negative feelings from the subordinate pet has links to the slave-master relationship, as does the extent of control typically held over domestic animals (see DeMello 2012: 148–149, 161–166 and Tuan 1984: 88–114), although few pet owners would be happy to be confronted with this idea. As luck would have it, a pet’s inability to articulate advice, judgement or anything beyond the most basic criticism can seem like unquestioning friendship and acceptance. For humans, this naturally promotes feelings of involvement, acceptance, and inclusion that can moderate negative feelings and confirm a positive bias towards oneself, allowing increased confidence in dealings with other humans. At the same time, pets can provide outlets for affection, sadness, or anger, with little risk of permanent rejection (see Hart 1995: 163–164; further Robin, ten Bensel, Quigley & Anderson 1983: 438–439). With regard to the ancient Greeks, we cannot now measure their blood pressure, or ask individuals if they feel happier having a pet than not, but the holding and caressing of animals certainly does feature in ways suggesting that many derived reassurance and pleasure. Surviving depictions and literature from ancient Greece suggests that petkeeping was commonplace, and that the species and roles of the animals spanned a full variety. Dogs feature prominently in the following examples of companion animal interactions. This is partly because they were so prevalent, and because dogs, as pack animals, are highly socially oriented. This factor no doubt supported their ubiquity. Dogs’ sociability and intelligence allow a high

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capacity for a two-way partnership that inevitably attracted the attention of the Greeks. However, there are plenty of other species, and a number of these appear in this paper.

2 Social integration and emotional security As suggested, one of the most important contributions made by pets is to enhance feelings of social integration and emotional security in their owners, and companion animals often become especially important to those who reject or lack human companionship. Plutarch observed that men who are peevish and difficult with other humans sometimes divert themselves to grow fond of dogs, lynxes, cats, monkeys, and so on (Mor. 482c). By isolating themselves through their animals they manage to exclude other humans, but still receive very necessary companionship and comfort. Plato heartily approves of the uncriticality of dogs in his remarks on their hostility to strangers, in contrast to their strong loyalty to their households, despite perhaps receiving no kindness at all (Rep. 2.16). This affirming dog behaviour seems to have inspired human loyalty and affection in return. From the fourth century B.C. onwards, there is a continuing and distinct softening in attitudes towards dogs (see Day 1984). Xenophon’s Cynegeticus (§ 6), written about 380 B.C., is sparing in sentiment, but does acknowledge the dogs’ emotional existence by emphasising the need for praise. However, Arrian’s much later Cynegeticus, written in the second century A.D., indulges in a loving description of his own favourite hound, kept as a pet as well as a hunter, and accompanying him wherever possible. It describes a two-way relationship in terms that could be those of any Greek, or indeed any modern dog-owner (Cyn. 5). Arrian’s remarks on his dog Horme are interesting for the hint of embarrassment when he excuses himself for memorialising the dog’s name. He knows that he is being indulgent to digress like this in a treatise on hunting, but such are his feelings, and he does it anyway (on Arrian’s Cynegeticus see further Fögen, in this volume). At this time, graves and epigrams signal a true sentimentality that becomes applicable to practically any pet species (see e.g. Anth. Pal. 7.211). Even before the fashion for grave monuments for pets, other burials signalled emotional attachment. Morris (2016) calls for more careful interpretation of ancient animal burials, to include emotional elements that have been put aside in favour of simple ritualistic interpretations. One pleasant example of an unmarked, but sentimental pet grave is a fourth-century B.C. clay-lined pit behind the Stoa of

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Attalus in the Athenian Agora. This contained a single, carefully laid-out dog, with a large beef bone laid next to its nose (see Thompson 1951: 52, pl. 26a). This burial recognises the animal as an individual valued by some person. Someone mourned and respected it on its passing, and the beef bone signals an expectation of it having an afterlife requiring a sustaining grave gift. Unless the burial was made secretly (unlikely given the care in the creation of the pit), the owner could also have been allowing other humans to witness his state of emotional vulnerability or sadness over the animal. Given the location of the burial, it might have been a community familiar, as seen around halls of residence today. Such things did occur, as we will see later on. One method of designating an animal as an individual is to give it a personal name. The act of naming symbolically and literally incorporates the recipient into the human sphere, says DeMello (2012: 156–157), and widens channels of communication. Even on a simple command level, imperatives tend to work better when used with a genuine invocation. As communication grows, so relationships build (see Hearne 1986: 166–171). Naming might integrate an animal to the human sphere, but these names tend to be open to the scrutiny of others. Among ancient Greeks, conventions seem to have been observed that kept the relationship in its socially proper place. Importantly, the Greek animal names that have survived to us were not those given to humans. Apparently, it did not do to advertise an animal as equivalent to a human in one’s thinking, and the separation in naming conventions appears to have helped safely to define animals as ‘others’. Columella recommends that dog names be short, so that a dog will respond quickly when commanded. Nevertheless, many surviving names also convey positive qualities such as strength, spirit or sagacity.1 Naturally, these are characteristics that owners themselves would like to embody, and as extensions of themselves, under their command, these named animals added to their own image. We can see the formal recognition of the naming process in the existence of a crude late Hellenistic ‘dog-tag’ scarab inscribed ‘Laelaps’ (‘the dog that always catches its prey’).2 This name has only been found applied to dogs (see Ovid, Met. 3.211). That a dog was made to wear its name sends a clear expecta-

_____ 1 See Xenophon, Cyn. 7.5: e.g. Θάλλων (‘Vigorous’), Ὁρμή (‘Impetus’), Σπέρχων (‘Hasty’), Φύλαξ (‘Sentinel’), Χαρά (‘Ecstasy’), Μήδας (‘Crafty’), or Νόης (‘Counsellor’). Further Columella, De re rust. 7.12.13: e.g. Σπουδή (‘Zeal’), Λάκων (‘Spartan’), Ἀλκή (‘Valour’). On the Columella passage see Fögen (2016: 342 with n. 75). 2 Graeco-Egyptian translucent serpentine scarab, late Hellenistic; whereabouts unknown, once in the possession of Professor Petrie. See Gardner (1899).

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tion that other humans take the name and the animal seriously, and suggests a publicly recognised pride in association. In a fictional example recognising the significance of a proper name, Odysseus’ hound Argus is distinguished as the only dog to have his name published in the Odyssey (see Seymour 1907: 358; further Fögen, in this volume). This distinguishes Argus from all the other domestic dogs, such as those belonging to Eumaeus. Odysseus’ tears express pity and compassion at Argus’ neglect, and appreciation of the dog’s loyalty, recognition and tacit praise of Odysseus himself (Homer, Od. 17.304–305). There can be no doubt that the audience was expected to empathise, rather than see this as mawkishly sentimental, and we have an instance of ordinary sorrow (not caused by magic or the gods), where the audience can sympathise and identify with Odysseus as a mortal, with natural human feelings and frailty. In a reversal of recognition that works because of Odysseus’ closeness with him, the degradation of Argus becomes one of the methods by which the suitors display their disregard for Odysseus, to abuse even his pets. Without Odysseus to command respect, and following the lead of the usurpers, the women cannot be bothered with poor Argus, and he lies in a dung heap, covered in ticks. In real life, Plutarch points out that elderly persons may feel themselves disregarded when younger members of a household neglect care of a dog or horse that they are fond of (Mor. 480b). It is as if the elder person feels the animal to be an extension of themselves. A companion animal in public was not only a possession on display. It could convey information about the owner to anyone who saw it. Dogs so frequently accompany male owners publicly in Greek art that they seem to have been almost essential accessories of respectable leisure. We frequently see them occupying the space beneath symposiasts’ tables, and we hear of these dining attendants from Odysseus when he wonders what work Argus did. Odysseus is pleased to hear that Argus was a hunting hound rather than a table dog (Homer, Od. 17.309–310). Even though Odysseus is in disguise, this is an example of dog ownership as a gender display (see Ramirez 2006): Odysseus does not want to be associated with an animal that was inactive and lacking in suitable masculinity. As respectable companions, dogs also appear with the deceased on tombstones.3 Often a sense of comfortable companionship is conveyed, as on a type exemplified by the Boeotian ‘Alxenor’s stele’, where a man in a relaxed stance

_____ 3 See Ridgway (22004). Zlotogorska (1997) catalogues nearly 350 examples.

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stoops to offer his eager hound a locust (see Fig. 1).4 There is some awkwardness in fitting the dog into the narrow frame, but somehow the crowding contributes to the effect, and though it has not worked out well for the locust, we end up with a contented and intimate scene, where the entire focus is on the man’s pleasant relationship with his dog. A late fourth-century B.C. grave relief from Ilissus achieves a very different mood.5 It shows a hound emerging closely from behind a deceased youth into the centre of the scene. The deceased gazes distractedly out, oblivious to the displays of human grief either side of him. “Even the dog expresses sadness”, says Bieber (1961: 29, with fig. 69), while Beazley and Ashmole (1966: 63 fig. 138) have called it “distressed”. It does indeed seem that the dog has been included as a mourner. The hunting hound on the Ilissus stele informs viewers of the youth’s active, masculine and respectable life, but it and its brothers in variants of the motif may do something more. Harrison (1959: 208) sees on the Ilissus stele an “unbridged gulf” between the elderly mourner and the youth, but there is a small bridge. The hound is standing in close contact ‘with’ the deceased, but is nosing the feet of the bereaved parent, literally bridging between worlds, and linking the deceased to the land of the living. Again, the animal is an extension of the owner, and may have comforted survivors by remaining to share their grief and to be cared for as a proxy of the deceased. In other examples of closeness with animals, we see a rather poignant marble grave stele in New York (c. 460 B.C.).6 This shows a subdued and sorrowfullooking young girl, who lovingly holds two pigeons close. She could be whispering to them or kissing them, or both, and she is definitely holding them in a gentle and intimate manner, almost as if saying goodbye. Also in New York is a cup ascribed to an erotic context, the tondo of which shows a quiet indoor scene of domestic solitary repose (see Fig. 2).7 A seated, reflective-looking youth fondles a hare on his lap. Nearby is the cage from which it has been removed, and to keep the animal from escaping it is tethered by a long cord. Hares were considered very appropriate love gifts (more of which later), and, if this is one, the contemplative caressing may allude to thoughts of an unpictured lover. This is not to say that the animal might not become a meal at a later date, especially if

_____ 4 Athens, National Museum 39. See Ridgway (22004: 45–46, 48, 50, 52–57, fig. 1). 5 Athens, National Museum 869. See Zlotogorska (1997: no. 42). 6 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 27.45. See Richter (21950: 132, 204, fig. 426). 7 New York, ex-Hirschmann Collection G64. See Barringer (2001: 77 fig. 37), and Bérard & al. (1989: 81, fig. 188 I).

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the suitor goes out of favour. Staying with what is pictured, holding and stroking the animal appears to be a pleasurable activity in itself, while possession is a boost to self-esteem; and, whether or not an unseen lover is referenced, we have a young man deriving comfort and reassurance about his own place in the world. One prized participant in caressing, holding and shared activities that can lead to camaraderie, and unambiguously a pet and companion, was a type of little toy-dog called a Melitaean. Melitaeans seem to have facilitated public displays of consumption, blithe enjoyment, and indulgence in pets with such success that they could be satirised along with their fashionable owners. The oldest known certain representation of a Melitaean is named on an amphora from c. 500 B.C. (see Fig. 3).8 Sadly, the vase is either lost or no longer exists, but sketches of it survive. Supporting the idea of the breed as a respectable accessory and companion, the little dog and an accompanying youth pose smartly, with an air of fashionable young people about town, beneath the prominently inscribed word MEΛITAIE. The other side of the amphora shows a bearded man leaning casually on a staff, talking to his own dog, which is much more utilitarian-looking. Above this couple is inscribed OI ΦΡΟΥΡΟΙ (‘the guards’). It seems as if a contrast is being made between the couples. The older man has formed a useful partnership, versus the frivolous fashionable one. Arthur Bernard Cook suggests that “(w)e might complete the sense thus: ‘Folk on guard, master Maltese puppy, have something better to do’” (see Leitch 1953: 10). Melitaeans are increasingly prominent from 480 B.C., appearing on vases and as the subject of terracotta figurines (see Boardman 22001: 194). They become the dominant breed on Attic stelai after c. 450 B.C. (see Ridgway 2004: 47 n. 5), and there is a continuously strong theme of interaction. The dogs reach up to their masters, and are tempted to give their owners their attention with offered morsels or small birds. On one particularly charming stele a tiny Melitaean, in a classic play-bow posture, attacks the end of a youth’s staff.9 The youth reciprocates, and holds on to his staff with both hands, actively participating and absorbed in the game. Melitaeans were widely celebrated for their friendliness and devotion to their masters, providing the same kind of approval to their owners as Argus did to Odysseus, and, usefully, a kind of approval that could easily be boasted

_____ 8 Vulci, Basseggio Collection at one time, but whereabouts now unknown. See Keller (1905: 243 diag. fig. 56). 9 Athens, National Museum 994. See Clairmont (1993: 323–324, pl. 1.343). On the posture see O’Farrell (1992: 31 fig. 1).

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about as a reflection of one’s excellent character and inspiring leadership qualities. For instance, Aelian was able to report that a Melitaean enthusiastically greeted Epaminondas on his return from Sparta (Var. hist. 13.42). Aelian also tells of a Melitaean belonging to a musician called Theodorus, which was so devoted that it flung itself into his grave and was buried with him (De nat. anim. 7.40). This last, rather alarming instance may contain more than is stated. We do have a number of records of dogs inhumed in human Greek burials (see Day 1984), but it is difficult to imagine a healthy, conscious and unrestrained animal passively allowing itself to be buried. Perhaps the dog did investigate the grave, and the onlookers decided to add it to the grave goods by way of a sacrifice and companion in the afterlife. Whatever the true fate of the Melitaean, the story supports a view shared by the onlookers that it was appropriate for the two not to be parted, on account of their great friendship. Surviving depictions and literary references might almost suggest that every small pet dog was a Melitaean. This is inconceivable, or Theophrastus’ Man of Petty Ambition would be wasting his time in boasting of and emphasising his dog’s pedigree (Char. 21.9). Mongrel breeds were doubtless numerous and acceptable, but it seems that the Melitaean’s prestige value and distinctiveness made it the pet dogs’ ambassador, and a symbol of fashionable, fine living. Although dogs loom very large in the preserved record, it turns out that birds were also popular pets.10 Talking birds in particular are evidence of considerable attention on the part of the owner, with the object of not only entertaining oneself, but also creating a pet that would attract attention and praise by impressing other people (see Fögen 2007: 46–49, 50–52, 55, 57–58 and esp. 61–65). Aristotle observes that talking parrots become especially impudent after drinking wine (Hist. anim. VII 12 597b27–29), presumably in the context of social gatherings. But Ctesias’ wonderment at talking Indian parrots (FGrHist 688 F45.8) suggests they were novelties in late fifth-century B.C. Greece. However, other, more available, birds could also be taught to imitate human speech. In literary sources, Pliny thought magpies the best talkers (Nat. hist. 10.118), and he says that crows, ravens, and thrushes could also learn (Nat. hist. 10.120– 124; see Fögen 2007: 55). On his return from Actium, Caesar Augustus was persuaded to buy talking crows that were trained to congratulate him (Macrobius, Sat. 2.4.29–30). Pet corvids that might have been taught to speak appear on

_____ 10 For cats in greater depth than is covered in this paper, see Calder (2011: 62–66, 85–89, 93–97).

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some vases, like the table-perching bird on a chous in Boston.11 This has the attention of a small boy, who holds a conversational pose. Some people found other ways to display themselves through their birds; Theophrastus has his Man of Petty Ambition display his jackdaw with a little ladder and bronze shield (Char. 21.6). This seems meant to deride his determination to project himself as patriotic. Even if they were not being dressed up, talking, or doing tricks, birds still seem to have been popular pets, especially with women. For one, Penelope, the paragon of wifely virtue, famously derived pleasure from watching her geese (see Homer, Od. 19.536–537), and it has been shown that wild bird watching promotes well-being (see Lawrence 1989). Demonstrating the appropriate pairing, Antipater of Sidon describes a housewife’s tomb, carved with a goose to represent her care over her home (Anth. Pal. 7.425). Anyone who has ventured too near to a nesting goose will be able to appreciate this connection. Such associations and the frequent depictions of domestic interactions between women and waterfowl, herons, geese, ducks, and swans suggest that these birds were considered suitable as women’s companions. This gender norm is a counterpoint to Ramirez’ gender-motivated selection of dogs by men (see Ramirez 2006), illustrated by the Greek images of men with their boisterous hounds out of doors. Given how quickly certain species of wild birds will become bold around humans when encouraged with food, it is quite conceivable that wild birds visited household courtyards, especially if resident tame birds were present. It takes very little time for a regular, wild visitor to be seen as part of the household if the humans inside are disposed to do so. For women confined to home (see Xenophon, Oec. 30–36; further Gould 1980: 40, 46–49), with a smaller sphere of social support than their menfolk, there may have been a greater need for companion animals, and birds may well have provided valuable amusement and company, and a sense of well-being about their homes. Fowl may have even ventured further indoors, as seen on a red-figure hydria in Oxford, where a woman appears to feed a goose.12 The domesticity of the scene is indicated by a suspended cloth, and the mirror that another woman holds. On another redfigure hydria, three women participate in feeding two eager herons.13 Again, a

_____ 11 Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 01.8086. See Beck (1975: 49, no. 300, pl. 58), van Hoorn (1951: no. 377, fig. 363), and Klein (1932: 11, pl. 11a). 12 Oxford, Ashmolean Museum V297, 1885.663, 297. See Beazley (1927: 25, pl. (124) 32.2). 13 Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, Arthur M. Sackler Museum 1960.340. See Robinson (1937: 27, pls. (277, 277A) 34.1, 34.A1) and Holliday (1984: 3, 6, fig. 4).

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domestic scene is signalled by the hanging kalathos, the skyphos containing the food, and a chair. Taken as a collection, images of birds and women in domestic scenes seem intended to conjure a sense of relaxed domestic stability, and to the ancient Greek viewer of these scenes, there is nothing challenging about the animals concerned – as there might be if a leopard were present instead of a bird. Since women cared for infants, it is not surprising to find birds depicted among the playmates of the very young (see Richards 1894: 195). Returning to the chous in Boston (see n. 11), the scene with the conversational small boy also contains bread, held by the boy, and a table, while the toy cart behind him signals a play-context in a domestic setting. Pets in general are strongly represented in idealising scenes of childhood play, especially on late fifth- and early fourth-century B.C. red-figure choes (see Golden 1990: 42–43). For example, in some rather one-sided play, a chous in Athens shows a child firmly grasping the leg of a struggling goose, holding it on a table while another offers it grapes (see Fig. 4).14 On another chous, a child holds up food, tempting a Melitaean dog to dance on its hind legs.15 On a chous in New York, children revel and dance as their Melitaean leaps about with them, sharing the excitement, and contributing to it.16 Some play is more sophisticated, and on a charming chous in London, a dog jumps through a hoop held by a boy and a girl.17 Hares, tortoises, deer, and other animals also feature, and goats are common. On an entertaining chous in London, boys cavort and dodge around a large goat that rears to butt.18 It sends a message about the expectation of boys to engage in rough, lively play, and the artist has made a point of showing the goat’s enjoyment, for though he has omitted the goat’s ears, it has been anthropomorphised to smile very cheerfully, with upturned mouth, arched eyebrows, and eyes shaped at the bottom by smiling cheeks. If you play with goats, it appears, things can get out of hand, but the mood is active and engaged with life and living. Anyte may have encapsulated the idea behind such scenes in an epigram (Anth. Pal. 6.312; transl. William R. Paton):

_____ 14 Athens, National Museum 1224. See Beck (1975: 49, pl. 58.297) and Klein (1932: pl. 10a). 15 Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University, Fogg Museum 24.08. See van Hoorn (1951: no. 438, fig. 324). 16 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 06.1021.196. See Richter (1936: no. 164, pls. 161, 177). 17 London, British Museum 1894.12-4.1. See Walters (1921: 147–148, fig. 14). 18 London, British Museum 1929.10-16.2. See van Hoorn (1951: fig. 300) and Rühfel (1984: 159, figs. 92a–b).

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Ἡνία δή τοι παῖδες ἐνί, τράγε, φοινικόεντα θέντες καὶ λασίῳ φιμὰ περὶ στόματι ἵππια παιδεύουσι θεοῦ περὶ ναὸν ἄεθλα, ὄφρ᾽ αὐτοὺς φορέῃς ἤπια τερπομένους. “The children, billy-goat, have put purple reins on you and a muzzle on your bearded face, and they train you to race like a horse round the god’s temple that he may look on their childish joy.”

As children grew, their pets seem to have continued to accompany them. On two hydriai in the British Museum, animals attend music lessons. On the first, a dog is about to howl, apparently in response to the aulos being played directly behind him.19 On closer inspection, two dark relief lines have been used to indicate an opened mouth on the dog. It is perhaps a humorous jibe by the potpainter at the pastime of a more moneyed class. A rarer pet features further along in the same scene. It is an alert, perkily smiling, rosetted leopard cub, standing on a stool, being offered food by a kitharodes. The cub introduces a set of pets that are associated with the next stage in life after childhood, and which are part of some very specific Greek and animal interactions: animal love gifts.

3 Animals as gifts On Attic vases, where animal love gifts abound in erotic scenes, we see gifts from men to youths of hares and cocks, occasionally deer and felines (see KochHarnack 1983: 105–115). Aristophanes’ Birds mentions quails, coots, and geese as desirable love gifts (Birds 707), while his satire on Wealth specifies horses and dogs (Wealth 157; see Dover 1978: 92). The animals are given alive (see Barringer 2001: 83), and hares like the one on a cup tondo in Tarquinia, held aloft by the youth who has received it, visibly tense as they hang, painfully suspended by their ears (see Fig. 5).20 On the Tarquinian cup, the recipient boy sits on the lap of his older, bearded lover, who reaches to fondle him as the pair close in to kiss. Cages for hares, as on the New York tondo mentioned earlier,21 also suggest that the animals were intended, initially at least, as pets rather than an imminent dinner.

_____ 19 London, British Museum E171. See Walters (1930: pls. 325, 326, 75.3, 76.2). 20 Tarquinia, Museo Nazionale Tarquiniense 701. See Barringer (2001: 77–79, fig. 39). 21 New York, ex-Hirschmann Collection G64. See Barringer (2001: 77, fig. 37).

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Live animal gifts serve as entertainment and, provided they survive in captivity, lasting proof of esteem. They require feeding and care; and in tending them, the recipient gives attention, by proxy, to the giver. The species of the chosen creatures also carry message potential. Animal hunts and stages of taming can be used to symbolise different stages of courtship,22 and the presentation of a captured animal demonstrates and symbolises a suitor’s resources and prowess (see Bremmer 1990: 142). If the suitor can capture or obtain and then present an animal, his own qualities must at least match that of the creature given. Barringer (2001: 89) particularly points out that “virility, combativeness, courage, and cunning are all associated with the animals given in pederastic courtship paintings”. A suggestion of this kind of competitive comparison between human and animal is made on the tondo of a red-figure cup in London (see Fig. 6).23 Here a hare seems to set the standard for fleet-footedness in a running game. The sprinting youth is just reaching out to grab the hare, and prove himself a superb athlete. That the hare is wearing a red collar suggests that this is a planned and prepared activity, rather than a pursuit set in the wild. The youth also wears a band, around his left ankle, which is the same size and colour as the collar on the hare. Though it is difficult to make out any tether between them, it is possible to suggest that the pair might be tethered together, to prevent the hare from escaping completely. If so, this hare is in for a tiring day of it. Shared interest in animals and the desire to display them can facilitate socialising (see Hart 1995: 166; further Messent 1983: 37, 45), and, although we cannot determine the origin of every pet, this seems to be especially true of the love gifts, which are frequently depicted being taken out and displayed among friends. Not surprisingly, this seems to have been the cause of occasional difficulty. For example, what appear to be unwanted confrontations between pets in social settings occur on two Attic red-figure cups. The first, in Zurich, shows a dog pausing uncertainly, face-to-face with a cat that is displayed on a stool and confined by a leash.24 The cat is beginning to arch itself in a hostile pose, and one of the flanking men seems to warn the dog to stay still, or he could be warning the man with the dog. Meanwhile, the naked youth holding the cat’s leash watches the dog closely, while pulling the cat’s leash away. This is an animated scene, with a lot of pointing. The older

_____ 22 See Barringer (2001: 85), von Reden (1995: 201), and Bérard & al. (1989: 81–87). 23 London, British Museum E46, 1892.7-18.7. See Bérard & al. (1989: 85, fig. 121). 24 Zurich, private collection. See Koch-Harnack (1983: 114, fig. 49A), Ashmead (1978: 38, fig. 8A), and Münzen- und Medaillen-AG (1961: no. 172, pls. 49, 57 A, B, I).

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man is pointing towards the youth, and it is tempting to see some sort of developing conflict between the people as well as the animals. In the second scene, on the outside of the erotic cup with the contemplative youth and the hare, it is clear that the animals are in conflict (see Figs. 1 and 7).25 The substantial leopard has taken exception to the similarly large dog that someone else has brought. The pair snarl, and look extremely agitated. The animals’ hostility is shown with great care, with exquisite attention to the hound’s dentition, tensed muscles and raised hair and tail. The leopard in turn furls back its ears and shows a furrowed brow and muzzle as it snarls. That the leopard is on a stool suggests that it was being displayed rather than forced to fight. Around the pair, the men raise their hands in alarmed gestures. It would seem that the outing is not going as planned. A more intimate display of animals as evidence of the owners’ social success perhaps explains the scene on a stele from Salamis.26 On this, a youth, holding a small bird in his left hand, reaches up to open a bird-cage with his right. Directly below the cage, a cat crouches on a pillar. What remains of it shows a confident, relaxed and seemingly unrestrained pose, so this may well be a pet. Further, it is being tolerated near the bird cage. The age of the youth seems likely to make him a recipient of these animals as gifts, and, even if this is not the case, their prominence on the stele is a public endorsement of petkeeping. Of course, it makes sense that love gifts should become competitive. Exceptional, expensive, and even potentially dangerous animals might be used to wow the recipient, emphasise the wealth and status of the giver, and to confer some of that coveted status along with the gift. Further, by association, owning certain animals can fuel a sense of importance, competence, individuality and recognition by others. These interests might explain certain early fifth-century B.C. Attic vases, where men hold what appear to be well-observed, elegant spotted big cats on leashes. Brown (1960: 172–173) and Ashmead (1978) identify the cats as cheetahs. In favour of cheetahs as pets, they are much more easily domesticated than the other big cat species (see Adamson 1969: 63–64). They are comparatively small, and lightweight for their stature, and have blunt, nonretractile claws. Clutton-Brock (21999: 199) comments that but for poor reproduction in captivity, they might be popular domestic animals today. Nevertheless, as display pets, they can look fearsome (see Adamson 1969: 30), and since modern-day pet cheetahs are known to chase strangers and dogs enthusiasti-

_____ 25 New York, ex-Hirschmann Collection G64. See Buitron-Oliver (1993: pl. 59, no. 89 Side A). 26 Athens, National Museum 715. See Clairmont (1993: 396–398, pl. 1.550).

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cally (see Adamson 1969: 12), there may well have been some spirited behaviour. This benefits the perception of the handler as powerful enough to have subjugated and enslaved this intimidating animal to his will. Some of this exuberance, and some upstaging, is exhibited on a red-figure pelike (see Fig. 8), where a cockerel and an actively prancing cheetah are being proffered as gifts by an older man to a youth.27 The youth seems keener on the more unusual prize, and reaches for the leash. Behind him, his ignored and upstaged dog wears an air and expression of great offense. Glamorous animals like this cheetah advertise a liking for vigour, leadership in style, and tastes for the exotic and dangerous. It is indeed a compliment to receive one. At the other end of the scale, public statements using commoner animals could emphasise human generosity and fair-mindedness. The Greeks’ appreciation of the hardships of animals’ labour is evident in literature, where brokendown burden animals are sold, killed, or moved to lighter duties (see Babrius, Fab. 29, App. 565 Perry), while the less fortunate are worked to death (see Babrius, Fab. 7, 141 Perry). This allows extravagant kindness to form an effective message. The luckiest burden animals could be rewarded for their service, and effectively become pets. Addaeus of Macedon mentions one (Anth. Pal. 6.228; transl. William R. Paton): Αὔλακι καὶ γήρᾳ τετρυμένον ἐργατίνην βοῦν Ἄλκων οὐ φονίην ἤγαγε πρὸς κοπίδα, αἰδεσθεὶς ἔργων· ὁ δέ που βαθέῃ ἐνὶ ποίῃ μυκηθμοῖς ἀρότρου τέρπετ᾽ ἐλευθερίῃ. “Alcon did not lead to the bloody axe his labouring ox worn out by the furrows and old age, for he reverenced it for its service; and now somewhere in the deep meadow grass it lows rejoicing in its release from the plough.”

Aristotle describes a mule that was liberated on account of being thought to be eighty years old. Once unharnessed, however, it continued to plod alongside the draught-beasts that continued working on the Parthenon site. This mule was simply remaining with its companions, but in human eyes it was encouraging the other burden animals. It must have continued for some while, because, in recognition, a public decree was passed to prevent corn merchants there-

_____ 27 Boulogne, Musée Communale 134. See Ashmead (1978: 39, 45, figs. 12–13) and Koch-Harnack (1983: 108, fig. 44).

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abouts from refusing it feed (see Aristotle, Hist. anim. VI 24 577b39–578a4). Thus the mule effectively became a community pet, though the corn merchants might not have loved it. It is a believable story, especially when put alongside such modern examples as the blind sled dog that continued to run alongside her working companions (see de Waal 2010: 51). Manumitting old work animals could demonstrate an array of deeply valued feelings and qualities: gratitude, empathy, and kinship with fellow-workers (even if you were not actually labouring yourself, you could show understanding). It shows good family orientation, with reverence for old age (see Aeschines, Orat. 1.24), and care for dependents and inferiors (see Aristotle, Pol. VI 5 1320a32-b11). It demonstrates generosity, the ability to afford a retired animal’s keep, and willingness to reward service and accept a loss for the sake of justice. This is similar to freeing a loyal human slave, and Aeschines says that some people “by the voice of the herald manumitted their household slaves, and made the Greeks their witness” (Orat. 3.41). For the manumission of human slaves, some declaration was a necessary formality (see Garlan 1988: 73–74). Whether the slave had to purchase his freedom or not, it would draw positive attention to the master, and the practice is easily diverted for use with an animal.

4 Unkindness towards animals Lest all this sound like a happy story of perfect and mutual satisfaction, not every pet was a happy bunny. Deliberate, blatant and pointless animal cruelty was certainly frowned upon, and in Plutarch’s De esu carnium we have Xenocrates reporting that the Athenians punished a man for flaying a live ram, as a gratuitous, uncustomary act (De esu carn. 7 996a). But one ought to note the emphasis on ‘uncustomary’. What constituted cruelty to animals appears to have been determined more by convention than by whether an animal was quietly suffering or not. One may also recall the miserably tiny and inadequate cage for the hare on the New York cup; let alone that this highly strung creature was probably captured in the wild, where it had been happily going about its business. It is unlikely to have been given the variety of food that it needed, nor to be able to retreat from disturbances by humans and other animals. Even Pliny remarks that hares are seldom really tamed (Nat. hist. 8.56), and it would take a particularly oblivious person not to realise that its captive conditions were dramatically different from what it was suited to. If Alcon’s ox can be described as rejoicing

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in its freedom, it is unlikely that caged animals were viewed as entirely content. Yet, such was the desire to possess these creatures that any niggling pangs of conscience were pushed aside. For unkindness delivered directly by human hands, there is the commonly depicted practice of holding hares painfully up by their ears. This appears on the Tarquinian cup with the seated lovers, while the racing hare, on the London cup, looks set to repeatedly run for its life. On a marble statue base in Athens (c. 510 B.C.), youths in the palaestra set a dog and a cat against each other.28 From the postures of the youths holding the leads, who remain seated with no effort to intervene, and are poised forward in fascination, this is deliberate animal baiting. If the small cat was a love gift, its giver seems to have fallen from favour. In another kind of animal baiting, Plato says that young men carried quails under their cloaks, ready to face challenges (Leg. 7 789b). On the tondo of another cup in London appears a youth seated with a quail in a cage.29 This quail might very well have a headache later, because, in the game of ‘quailphillipping’, a challenger’s quail would be placed inside a ring and struck on the head by a professional ‘phillipper’. These blows were quite hard (see Aristophanes, Birds 1290), and if the bird retreated, the owner lost his bet (see Gosling 1935: 11). In a famous example, Plutarch claims that Alcibiades carried a favourite quail under his cloak at his first public appearance (Alc. 10). Apparently, quails were normal accessories for well-to-do youths – whether they enjoyed being kept under cloaks or not. Frequently emphasised is the demonstration of man’s self-perceived superiority, in abilities and overall power. It has been pointed out that dogs’ greater willingness than other species to submit to commands and domination has been one of their attractions (see Ritvo 1987: 20–21 and Tuan 1984: 102–104, 105–108). This willingness also seems to have been noted in Greek society. Among other animals, the imperfect similarity of apes to humans, in behaviour and appearance, allowed Greeks to laugh at the worst in humanity, safely dissociated from themselves. Plutarch says that apes were useless for anything but laughter (Mor. 64e), and that they offered “even the most degraded of men a feeling of superiority” (McDermott 1938: 109; for further references see Fögen 2009: 32–33 with n. 43 and n. 44). Apes’ liking for wine is attested by Pliny and

_____ 28 Athens, National Museum 3476. See Richter (1930: 77, fig. 175) and Richter (21950: 95, 114, fig. 283). 29 London, British Museum 1901.5-14.1. See Walters (1893: 125–126, fig. 6).

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Aristotle,30 and, as with the parrots (Hist. anim. VII 12 597b27–29; see above), it seems almost inevitable that some symposiasts would make apes drunk for their own amusement, providing another opportunity to rejoice in their own superiority. Some vases show more ordinary expressions of power, in particular those that feature pets reaching for objects held to tempt them. On a well-drawn redfigure chous in London, a girl experiments with power over her pets, dangling a tortoise by a string around its leg, towards a small dog.31 The swinging tortoise has no choice, and the girl determines whether the dog will get at it. In addition to indifference and ignorance, there was direct and intentional cruelty, and some instances were specifically designed to be witnessed. Aelian cites a Cyprian law entitling farmers to pull out the teeth of pigs they caught trespassing in crops (De nat. anim. 5.45). This law must have been well known, as it is alluded to in Homer’s Odyssey (Od. 18.28; see Russo, Fernández-Galiano & Heubeck 1992: 48). Regarding pets, deliberate cruelty tended to be exceptional, but, in an example involving actual maiming, Alcibiades notoriously redirected public criticism by cutting off the tail of his much-admired dog, for which he had paid 70 minae. Alcibiades remarked that he preferred Athens to talk about this than his other activities (Plutarch, Alc. 9). The exceptional and public abuse of this dog obliquely expressed Alcibiades’ influence among men, and his affluence was emphasised by the immateriality of the 70 minae; he could despoil his dog’s beauty and be no worse off. The act threatens that this is not a man to trifle with, if he will casually injure innocent familiars. Plutarch points out that men are “more observant of acts contrary to convention than of those that are contrary to nature” (De esu carn. 7 996a–b), and this seems to have been true, for, where human wishes followed another agenda, animal suffering routinely arose from misunderstanding, callousness and indifference. Ironically, it is sometimes the criticisms of pet-keeping that emphasise how popular it was; and, of course, it provided a means to deride the pet-keeper. The negative comments often concern owners treating animals in ways that would be appropriate for human companions. When Theophrastus had his Man of Petty Ambition set up a tomb for his Melitaean, engraved ‘Branch of Melite’ (Char. 21.9), this parades his well-bred lap dog, and the cost of its memorial is a conspicuous expenditure. Such instances almost certainly involved genuine grief, perhaps akin to that of losing a human loved one (see Barton Ross &

_____ 30 Pliny, Nat. hist. 23.44, and Aristotle, fr. 107 (from Drunkenness, transmitted by Athenaeus, Deipn. 10 429d). 31 London, British Museum F101. See Beck (1975: 50, pl. 60.309) and Deubner (1982: 370, fig. 18).

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Baron-Sorensen 22007), but Theophrastus criticises it as excessive. Aelian’s story of the Peripatetic philosopher Lacydes and the lavish funeral he gave his faithful goose (De nat. anim. 7.41) was obviously rumoured, quite possibly as malicious gossip. Trivialising a bereaved owner’s grief is a criticism, and defining memorialising and honours for animals as excessive made the bereaved owner seem ridiculous. More broadly, Eubulus criticised pet-keeping in general as a waste of time and effort, remarking how much better it is “to bring up a human being, (rather) than a splashing, quacking goose, or a sparrow, or a monkey (…)” (Athenaeus, Deipn. 12 519a).32 Naturally, the Greeks found it useful to criticise other cultures’ pet-keeping practices. Herodotus points out Egyptian mourning practices for household dogs and cats (Hist. 2.66.4), and Athenaeus remarks the luxury of the Sybarites, pointing out their Melitaean lap dogs – as if the Greeks had none. At the same time, he approvingly quotes Massinissa’s disdain for the Sybarites’ desire for pet monkeys and his questioning whether the women do not bear babies (Deipn. 12 518–519). Such remarks can be a relatively safe way of trivialising a culture’s women, their households, their lifestyle, and their values (see DeMello 2012: 152).

5 Conclusions The pet-keeping phenomenon surrounded Greeks of all ages. From infancy, animals were a normal part of life and society, ostensibly useful or not. Certain conventions grew up around animals that were appropriate pets, and many depictions of animals reflected these. In turn, literature and depictions further reinforced the symbolisms that certain species took on. Animals that served as accessories and symbols of childish freedom, wifely virtue, youthful beauty, and manly ἀρετή were emphasised, and the display of these animals was a selfreinforcing social lubricant. Naturally, every ancient Greek person had their own views on pets. For some, they supplied companionship and comfort; to others, they were ornaments and entertainment. Companion animals could advertise personality and prestige, and provided a medium for passing a compliment and improving one’s standing with someone else. Some pets came in for rough treatment, but there

_____ 32 On monkeys, see further the article by Vespa (in this volume).

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could be sentimentality, when an animal died or declined, and treating an old working animal well could get humans noticed for their morality and ethics. Thus, public associations with animals could be used to create impressions. Sometimes unintentional impressions were created, depending on the agenda of the observer. From the humble to the exotic, pets were kept for their own sakes, for the simple pleasure of having them around. From this, many Greeks probably enjoyed benefits that we cannot now scientifically define, but which are strongly suggested. The social benefits were not restricted to direct or sophisticated and oblique messages conveyed about pet owners to observers. Even when alone with their owners, pets could be active and involuntary participants in a continual dialogue that their owners were having with themselves.

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Hurn, Samantha (2012): Humans and Other Animals. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on HumanAnimal Interactions, London. Keller, Otto (1905): Hunderassen im Altertum. In: Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien 8, 242–269. Klein, Anita E. (1932): Child Life in Greek Art, New York. Koch-Harnack, Gundel (1983): Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke. Ihre Bedeutung im päderastischen Erziehungssystem Athens, Berlin. Lawrence, Elizabeth A. (1989): Wild birds. Therapeutic encounters and human meanings. In: Anthrozoös 3, 111–118. Lazenby, Francis D. (1949): Greek and Roman household pets. In: Classical Journal 44, 245–252 and 299–307. Leitch, Virginia T. (1953): The Maltese Dog, Riverdale, Maryland. Lumholtz, Carl (1889): Among Cannibals. An Account of Four Years’ Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland, London. McDermott, William C. (1938): The Ape in Antiquity, Baltimore. Meggitt, Mervyn J. (1965): The association between Australian Aborigines and dingoes. In: Anthony Leeds & Andrew P. Vayda (eds.), Man, Culture, and Animals. The Role of Animals in Human Ecological Adjustments, Washington, 7–26. Messent, Peter R. (1983): Social facilitation of contact with other people by pet dogs. In: Aaron H. Katcher & Alan M. Beck (eds.), New Perspectives on our Lives with Companion Animals, Philadelphia, 37–46. Morris, James (2016): Mourning the sacrifice. Behavior and meaning behind animal burials. In: Margo DeMello (ed.), Mourning Animals. Rituals and Practices Surrounding Animal Death, East Lansing, 11–20. Münzen- und Medaillen-AG (1961): Kunstwerke der Antike. Skulpturen, Terrakotten, Bronzen, Keramik, Goldschmuck (Auktion Basel, 13. Mai 1961), Basel. O’Farrell, Valerie (21992): Manual of Canine Behaviour, Cheltenham. Paton, William R. (1916): The Greek Anthology. With an English translation (vol. 1), London & New York. Podberscek, Anthony L., Elizabeth S. Paul & James A. Serpell (eds.) (2000): Companion Animals and Us. Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, Cambridge. Ramirez, Michael (2006): “My dog’s just like me”. Dog ownership as a gender display. In: Symbolic Interaction 29, 373–391. Richards, G. C. (1894): Selected vase-fragments from the Acropolis of Athens II. In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 14, 186–197. Richter, Gisela M. A. (1930): Animals in Greek Sculpture. A Survey, London. Richter, Gisela M. A. (1936): Red-Figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven. Richter, Gisela M. A. (21950): The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, New Haven. Ridgway, Brunilde S. (2004): The man-and-dog stelai. In: Brunilde S. Ridgway, Second Chance. Greek Sculptural Studies Revisited, London, 45–70. Ritvo, Harriet (1987): The Animal Estate. The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age, Cambridge, Mass. Robin, Michael, Robert ten Bensel, Joseph S. Quigley & Robert K. Anderson (1983): Childhood pets and the psychosocial development of adolescents. In: Aaron H. Katcher & Alan M. Beck (eds.), New Perspectives on our Lives with Companion Animals, Philadelphia, 436–443.

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Robinson, David M. (1937): Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. USA 6. Baltimore, Robinson Collection 2, Cambridge, Mass. Rose, Deborah B. (2011): Wild Dog Dreaming. Love and Extinction, Charlottesville. Rühfel, Hilde (1984): Kinderleben im Klassischen Athen. Bilder auf klassischen Vasen, Mainz. Russo, Joseph A., Manuel Fernández-Galiano & Alfred Heubeck (1992): A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Vol. 3: Books XVII-XXIV, Oxford. Savishinsky, Joel S. (1983): Pet ideas. The domestication of animals, human behavior, and human emotions. In: Aaron H. Katcher & Alan M. Beck (eds.), New Perspectives on our Lives with Companion Animals, Philadelphia, 112–131. Serpell, James (1989): Pet-keeping and animal domestication. A reappraisal. In: Juliet CluttonBrock (ed.), The Walking Larder. Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism, and Predation, London, 10–21. Seymour, Thomas D. (1907): Life in the Homeric Age, New York. Singer, Randall S., Lynette A. Hart & R. Lee Zasloff (1995): Dilemmas associated with rehousing homeless people who have companion animals. In: Psychological Reports 77, 851–885. Taylor, Heidi, Pauline Williams & David Gray (2004): Homelessness and dog ownership. An investigation into animal empathy, attachment, crime, drug use, health and public opinion. In: Anthrozoös 17, 353–368. Thompson, Homer A. (1951): Excavations in the Athenian Agora: 1950. In: Hesperia 20, 45–60. Trevarthen, Colwyn (2003): Making sense of infants making sense. In: Intellectica 34, 161–188. Tuan, Yi-Fu (1984): Dominance and Affection. The Making of Pets, New Haven. van Hoorn, Gerard (1951): Choes and Anthesteria, Leiden. Veevers, Jean E. (1985): The social meaning of pets. Alternative roles for companion animals. In: Marvin B. Sussman (ed.), Pets and the Family, New York, 11–30. von Reden, Sitta (1995): Exchange in Ancient Greece, London. Walters, Henry B. (1893): Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum, London. Walters, Henry B. (1921): Red-figured vases recently acquired by the British Museum. In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 41, 117–150. Walters, Henry B. (1930): Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Great Britain 7. British Museum 5, London. Zlotogorska, Maria (1997): Darstellungen von Hunden auf griechischen Grabreliefs. Von der Archaik bis in die Römische Kaiserzeit, Hamburg.

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Illustrations Kapitel_04_Bild_01.tif

Figure 1: Boeotian blue-grey marble funerary relief, c. 500–490 B.C. National Archaeological Museum, Athens 39 © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports / Archaeological Receipts Fund

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Kapitel_04_Bild_02.tif Figure 2: Attic red-figure cup, c. 525–475 B.C. New York, ex-Hirschmann Collection G64 © Sotheby’s, London

Kapitel_04_Bild_03.tif

Figure 3: Attic red-figure amphora, c. 500 B.C. Vulci, Basseggio collection at one time, but whereabouts now unknown (taken from Keller 1905: 243 diag. fig. 56)

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Kapitel_04_Bild_04.tif Figure 4: Attic red-figure chous, c. 425–400 B.C. National Archaeological Museum, Athens 1224 Photographer: St. Stournaras (Museum Photographic Archives) © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports / Archaeological Receipts Fund Kapitel_04_Bild_05.tif

Figure 5: Attic red-figure cup, c. 500–450 B.C. Tarquinia, Museo Nazionale Tarquiniense 701 © Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo ‒ Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per l’Area Metropolitana di Roma, la provincia di Viterbo e l’Etruria Meridionale

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Figure 6: Attic red-figure cup, c. 525–475 B.C. London, British Museum E46, 1892.7-18.7 © The Trustees of the British Museum

Kapitel_04_Bild_06.tif Kapitel_04_Bild_07.tif

Figure 7: Attic red-figure cup, c. 525–475 B.C. New York, ex-Hirschmann Collection G64 © Sotheby’s, London

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Figure 8: Attic red-figure pelike, 500–450 B.C. Musée Communal de Boulogne-sur-Mer 134 © Philippe Beurtheret Kapitel_04_Bild_08.tif

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Thorsten Fögen

Lives in Interaction: Animal ‘Biographies’ in Graeco-Roman Literature? Thorsten Fögen Lives in Interaction: Animal ‘Biographies’ in Graeco-Roman Literature? “Why are there no entries for animals in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (DNB)? Clearly, an animal’s life can be recorded; but the concept of biography has always been applied uniquely to humans (…).” (Fudge 2004: 21) DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-005

Abstract: This paper analyses some representative examples of literary texts in which a tendency towards an individualisation of animals can be discerned. It considers Odysseus’ dog Argus in Homer’s Odyssey, Arrian’s dog Horme in his Cynegeticus, King Alexander’s horse Bucephalas in Plutarch and Arrian, Corinna’s (unnamed) parrot in Ovid’s Amores 2.6, and the ‘donkey’ Lucius in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Special attention is given to the questions of what kind of details on the lives of the animals in question are conveyed, and in what way these lives are related to the human sphere. The paper also examines to what extent such accounts may be categorised as ‘biographies’ and how they differ from each other. Wherever possible, there will be some reflections on the specific historical and socio-political background of the texts discussed.

1 Introduction Graeco-Roman literature offers abundant source material on animals in the ancient world. Although this corpus comprises rather diverse texts from different literary genres and different periods ranging from the archaic age to late antiquity, most of these documents illustrate that there was hardly any area where animal and human lives were separated from each other. Furthermore, they shed light on the very diverse roles and functions that animals had, including, for example, those of pets and entertainers, of labourers (especially in an agricultural context), of being a medium of transportation, and of creatures embodying divine power or being sacrificed to the gods. However, the majority of these sources focus on ‘prototypical’ representatives of certain species and talk about them in a rather general fashion; they pay relatively little attention to inDOI 10.1515/9783110545623-005

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dividual animals and their particular lives and circumstances. In ancient literature, most animals do not even have any proper names. It is the few exceptions in this regard that constitute the subject of this paper. I will consider some representative examples of literary texts in which a tendency towards an individualisation of animals can be discerned. Among other things, I would like to pursue the question of how such cases are presented, what kind of details on the life of a particular animal are conveyed, and in what way such a life is related to the human sphere. I will also discuss to what extent such accounts may be categorised as ‘biographies’ and how they differ from each other.1 On another level, one may ask to what extent they can be related to the established ancient biographical tradition dealing with wellknown human individuals.2 Whether and how ‘biographies’ of animals can be written has recently been asked by scholars engaged in the field of human-animal studies.3 Relying upon

_____ 1 Modern definitions of what a ‘biography’ is range from very short statements such as “Biography is about individuals” (Pelling 2009: 608) to more extensive classifications such as “a literary text of book length telling the life story of an historical individual from cradle to grave (or a substantial part of it)” (Hägg 2012: ix) or the “Darstellung der Lebensgeschichte einer Persönlichkeit, v.a. in ihrer geist.-seel. Entwicklung, ihren Leistungen und ihrer Wirkung auf die Umwelt” (Hölzle 21990: 55); see also Swain (1997: 1–2), Sonnabend (2002: 2–3, 8–9, 13–15, 17–19), and Hägg (2012: 2–8). As Hölzle (21990) further points out, there are different types and forms of biographies, or, as Pelling (2009: 612–613) puts it, “‘biography’ is an extremely broad genre – indeed, it is so broad that it may be misleading to count it as a single genre at all, rather than a range of texts linked only in that they do whatever they do through the filter of a person’s life.” It may be added that ancient authors perceived a certain difference between historiography and biography; see, for example, Polybius, Hist. 10.21.2–8, Plutarch, Alex. 1.1–3, and Nepos, Pelop. 1.1. See further Sonnabend (2002: 4–8) and Stadter (2007), the latter of whom rightly says that “it is often quite difficult to distinguish history from biography, even with the most careful analysis, nor did the ancients do so consistently. Historiography itself is protean, and biography no less so: not surprisingly, they frequently overlap (…)” (Stadter 2007: 528). See also Pelling (2011: 13–25). 2 There is a vast amount of secondary literature on the ancient biographical tradition. One may single out the volumes by Gentili & Cerri (1983), Edwards & Swain (1997), Ehlers (1998), Sonnabend (2002), and Hägg (2012). See also the articles by Stadter (2007) and Pelling (2009), already quoted in n. 1 (above). 3 On human-animal studies, see the recent overview by Petrus (2015), who defines this relatively new discipline as follows (2015: 157): “Die HAS [i.e. Human-Animal Studies] stehen für eine multidisziplinäre Erforschung der Mannigfaltigkeit der Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen. Dabei geht es zum einen um ganz konkrete Beziehungen zwischen menschlichen und nichtmenschlichen Individuen (…). Zum anderen wird aber auch die Gesamtheit an Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen sowie deren Einbettung in kulturelle, gesellschaftliche und politische Strukturen untersucht (…).” For further definitions and references, see the introduction to this volume.

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various types of sources, they have attempted to reconstruct the lives of individual animals such as dogs, horses, cats or hippopotami in order to make them visible as distinctive entities and independent actors, and to trace their impact on certain cultures and communities as well as their ideas and concepts. In other words, analytical criteria such as agency (“Handlungsfähigkeit” and “Handlungsmacht”), as opposed to being mere objects or targets of mostly human actions (“Einschreibeflächen von Macht- und Wissensprozeduren”), and historicity or, taken together, even the power to make history (“Geschichtsmächtigkeit”) have been given serious thought.4 One of the methodological issues that researchers have grappled with is the question of what types of information or sources need to be factored in to investigate the individuality of animals from a historical perspective. The following quotation from Roscher (2011: 127–128) is a good example of this challenge: “Tiere hinterlassen keine schriftlichen Überlieferungen, fürwahr. Sie schreiben keine Briefe, Biografien oder literarische Werke noch geben sie Auskunft darüber, wie sie leben, wo sie leben und mit wem sie unter welchen Bedingungen leben und lebten. Sie geben uns auch nicht ästhetische Formen wie Bilder bekannt, welche Eindrücke sie von ihrer Umwelt gehabt haben. Aber dieser Mangel authentischer Ego-Dokumente trifft, zumindest zum Teil, auf ganze Gruppen von Menschen zu, die sozial benachteiligt worden sind und es daher schwer hatten und haben, in den Annalen der Geschichte aufzutauchen. Sollte man sie also deshalb ignorieren? Natürlich nicht! (…) Es gilt also, Quellen zu finden, die es zulassen, das Leben der Tiere aus historischer Perspektive zu interpretieren. Zu denken wäre beispielsweise an Zuchtbücher, Frachtpapiere, Stadtrechte und Marktordnungen, Tagesprotokolle von zoologischen Gärten, Beobachtungsprotokolle von Ornitholog_innen und Naturforscher_innen, die Vermerke von Tierheimen, Gerichtsakten, in denen Tiere thematisiert sind, Akten aus Tierkliniken, normative Regelwerke wie Gesetzessammlungen oder Steuerordnungen usw. Dies sind textliche Quellen, die genauso wenig von den Subjekten der Untersuchung angefertigt worden sind wie es bei den zuvor genannten menschlichen Versklavten der Fall war. Auch sie müssen gegen den Strich gelesen werden.”5

_____ 4 The German terms are borrowed from Steinbrecher (2012: 16). On animal biographies, see Fudge (2004), Ullrich, Weltzien & Fuhlbrügge (2008b), Pycior (2010), Roscher (2011), Steinbrecher (2012), and Roscher (2015), to select but a few. To give a very recent example, “Animal Biographies: Recovering Animal Selfhood through Interdisciplinary Narration?” was the topic of a conference held at the University of Kassel (Germany) from 9 until 11 March 2016; for details see https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb05/fachgruppen/geschichte/human-animal-studies/kon ferenzen.html. 5 Translation: “Animals leave no written records, for sure. They write no letters, biographies or works of literature, nor do they give any information about how, where, with whom or under what conditions they live today or have ever lived in the past. They also give us no aesthetic forms like images that might intimate the kind of impressions they have had of their environ-

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Among other concerns that scholars have had about the biographical approach is the general viability and usefulness of the biographical genre for a stronger focus on the personality and uniqueness of individual animals. Do the sources, whatever they may be, actually allow for the creation of such ‘life stories’? How extensive and detailed, and how reliable, are they? How many different creatures can be accounted for through biographies, or is it just a few exceptional ones? What about the mass of animals for which very little or no information is available? And does the species matter ‒ or in other words, do smaller animals such as insects receive the same degree of attention as larger ones, wild ones the same as domesticated ones?6 Furthermore, what does the desire to extrapolate animal biographies entail for disciplines such as Classics that work with remote source material, both literary and visual? With these issues in mind, I will concentrate on various literary narratives, spanning the period from the archaic Greek world to the time of the High Roman Empire, in which individualised animals play a significant role. For reasons of space, I will limit my analysis to Odysseus’ dog Argus in Homer’s Odyssey, Ar-

_____ ment. But this absence of authentic documents about the self is also, at least partially, true for entire groups of human beings who have become socially marginalised and therefore find and have found it difficult to figure in the annals of history. Should they therefore be disregarded? Of course not! (…) So it is worth finding source material which allows the lives of animals to be interpreted from a historical perspective. Such sources might include stud books, shipping documents, municipal laws and market orders, daily protocols of zoos, observation notes of ornithologists and natural scientists, the registers of animal shelters, judicial records in which animals are discussed, proceedings of animal hospitals, normative rule books such as statutes or tax orders, etc. These are textual sources which have been as little fabricated by the subjects of the investigation as used to be the case with the former category of human slaves. They too must be read against the grain.” 6 On differences between species, see e.g. Ullrich, Weltzien & Fuhlbrügge (2008a: 9): “Der Unterschied zwischen Schimpansen und Menschen ist vermutlich in jeder Hinsicht kleiner als der zwischen einem Schimpansen und einem Seepferdchen oder zwischen einem Grashüpfer und einem Wal.” See also Ullrich, Weltzien & Fuhlbrügge (2008a: 12): “Daran zeigt sich schon, dass uns Menschen Tier nicht gleich Tier ist. Wer etwas zu bieten hat – sei dies Nahrung, Schutz oder Unterhaltung –, der steht näher an einem Einschlussangebot in die humane Lebensgemeinschaft, als derjenige, der Gefahr bedeutet, Krankheiten überträgt oder schlicht abstoßend aussieht. Es wird immer wieder über Menschenrechte für Menschenaffen diskutiert, im Hinblick auf Moskitos oder Borkenkäfer eine eher selten gestellte Forderung. (…) Hinzu kommt, dass sich Einzelgänger zur Namensgebung und damit zur Individualisierung eher eignen, als leicht verwechselbare Mitglieder einer großen Herde, eines Schwarms oder Staats, auch wenn das massenweise Auftreten eine besondere Ästhetik erzeugt und im Vergleich mit humanen Sozialwesen Fragen nach dem Verhältnis von Einzelnem und Gesellschaft provozieren kann.”

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rian’s dog Horme in his Cynegeticus, King Alexander’s horse Bucephalas in Plutarch and Arrian, Corinna’s (unnamed) parrot in Ovid’s Amores 2.6, and the ‘donkey’ Lucius in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. For each case, the literary and thematic context will be taken into account; wherever possible, there will also be some reflections on the specific historical and socio-political background of the texts considered.7

2 Odysseus’ dog Argus in Homer’s Odyssey One of the first examples of animals in ancient literature that are given names is the dog Argus in Homer’s Odyssey,8 and what is more, he is the only dog in Homer who has a name, as Lilja (1976: 31) has noted.9 The scene in Book 17 is famous and describes the dog’s death after his master’s return to Ithaca. However, despite its moving character, it is a very short episode of no more than thirty-eight lines which does not say very much about the dog’s actual life.10

_____ 7 On the indispensability of the historical and poetological contextualisation of literary documents on animals, see Borgards (2012: 96–103), who stresses that “(e)ine Anreicherung mit möglichst vielen Kontexten ist im Grunde bei jedem einzelnen literarischen Tier geboten. (…) Von Interesse sind hier für den Literaturwissenschaftler alle Felder, auf denen sich die Menschen in praktischer oder theoretischer Hinsicht mit den Tieren auseinandersetzen (…)” (2012: 97). On the poetological level, it is crucial to take into account “die formalen Eigenheiten der Texte (…), (…) die rhetorischen Strategien, die argumentativen Muster, die Verfahren der Repräsentation” (2012: 100). 8 On the dog’s name, see Mentz (1933: 112): “Natürlich aus ἀργός ‚hell, schimmernd, glänzend, schnell‘, mit Zurückziehung des Akzentes, wie bei Eigennamen häufig. Ob bei dem HN. die Bedeutung des hellen Glanzes oder der Schnelligkeit vorwiegt, ist nicht leicht zu entscheiden. (…) Ich möchte (…) behaupten, daß Homer gerade die Doppelbedeutung von ἀργός bei der Wahl des Namens in Auge gehabt hat. Betont doch Odysseus bei der Frage nach dem Namen, den er natürlich kennt, ausdrücklich, des Hundes schönes Aussehen (…) und fragt, ob er ἐπὶ εἴδεϊ τῷδε auch ταχύς gewesen sei.” See also Baecker (1884: 14–26, esp. 14–21), Körner (21930: 18–19), Lilja (1976: 26–28, 33), Mainoldi (1984: 118–119, 124 n. 81), Schneider (2000: 26), and Wernicke (1895: 797): “Als Hundename bedeutet A. ‚Flink‘ oder ‚Weiss‘ und hat mit mythischen Vorstellungen überhaupt nichts zu thun.” 9 See also Schnapp-Gourbeillon (1981: 164): “Seul de toute la gent canine homérique, il possède un nom, comme un cheval.” Repeated almost verbatim by Mainoldi (1984: 113). 10 On dogs in Greek and Roman antiquity, see esp. von Keitz (1883: 15–17), Keller (1909: 91– 151), Orth (1910), Hull (1964), Merlen (1971: esp. 25–89), Toynbee (1973: 102–124, 330–331), Lilja (1976), Lonsdale (1979: 149–152, 153–154), Bodson (1980), Zaganiaris (1980/81), Perfahl (1983),

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The text mentions that Odysseus had raised the animal, but because of his participation in the Trojan War he did not have the opportunity to use him as a hunting dog, as one would have expected under normal circumstances.11 Due to his master’s absence, Argus is utterly neglected and very weak, but he nonetheless recognises Odysseus disguised as a beggar to avoid immediate confrontation with the suitors who have established themselves at his court. However, the dog’s lack of strength does not permit him to move towards the hero, who identifies his animal and asks the swineherd Eumaeus why he lies in a pile of dung and is in such bad shape.12 Eumaeus replies that the dog’s state is the result of his master’s absence who, as he thinks, has died abroad; otherwise, his beauty, strength and speed would be admirable (Od. 17.312–323; transl. Arthur T. Murray & George E. Dimock, Loeb Classical Library): “καὶ λίην ἀνδρός γε κύων ὅδε τῆλε θανόντος. εἰ τοιόσδ᾿ εἴη ἠμὲν δέμας ἠδὲ καὶ ἔργα, οἷόν μιν Τροίηνδε κιὼν κατέλειπεν Ὀδυσσεύς, αἶψά κε θηήσαιο ἰδὼν ταχυτῆτα καὶ ἀλκήν. οὐ μὲν γάρ τι φύγεσκε βαθείης βένθεσιν ὕλης κνώδαλον, ὅττι δίοιτο· καὶ ἴχνεσι γὰρ περιῄδη· νῦν δ᾿ ἔχεται κακότητι, ἄναξ δέ οἱ ἄλλοθι πάτρης ὤλετο, τὸν δὲ γυναῖκες ἀκηδέες οὐ κομέουσι. δμῶες δ᾿, εὖτ᾿ ἂν μηκέτ᾿ ἐπικρατέωσιν ἄνακτες, οὐκέτ᾿ ἔπειτ᾿ ἐθέλουσιν ἐναίσιμα ἐργάζεσθαι· ἥμισυ γάρ τ᾿ ἀρετῆς ἀποαίνυται εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς ἀνέρος, εὖτ᾿ ἄν μιν κατὰ δούλιον ἦμαρ ἕλῃσιν.”

_____ Mainoldi (1984: passim), Peters (1998: 166–187), Brewer, Clark & Phillips (2001: esp. 83–106), Amat (2002: 25–92, 225–226), Franco (2003), Giebel (2003: 120–128), and Franco (2014). On dogs in Homer, see Körner (21930: 18–23, 35–36), Rahn (1953/54: 456–461, 469–473, 476), Lilja (1976: 13–36), Schnapp-Gourbeillon (1981: 162–169), Mainoldi (1984: 104–126), Beck (1991), Schneider (2000: 24–28), Dumont (2001: 65–66, 68, 74, 92–96), Franco (2003: esp. 37–50), and Franco (2014: 17–25, 37–38, 54–61, 63–67, 72–79, 82–87, 99–105, 118–120); see also Hainsworth (1961). 11 Homer, Od. 17.292–295: Ἄργος, Ὀδυσσῆος ταλασίφρονος, ὅν ῥά ποτ᾿ αὐτὸς / θρέψε μέν, οὐδ᾿ ἀπόνητο, πάρος δ᾿ εἰς Ἴλιον ἱρὴν / ᾤχετο. τὸν δὲ πάροιθεν ἀγίνεσκον νέοι ἄνδρες / αἶγας ἐπ᾿ ἀγροτέρας ἠδὲ πρόκας ἠδὲ λαγωούς. 12 Homer, Od. 17.296–304: δὴ τότε κεῖτ᾿ ἀπόθεστος ἀποιχομένοιο ἄνακτος, / ἐν πολλῇ κόπρῳ, ἥ οἱ προπάροιθε θυράων / ἡμιόνων τε βοῶν τε ἅλις κέχυτ᾿, ὄφρ᾿ ἂν ἄγοιεν / δμῶες Ὀδυσσῆος τέμενος μέγα κοπρήσοντες· / ἔνθα κύων κεῖτ᾿ Ἄργος, ἐνίπλειος κυνοραιστέων. / δὴ τότε γ᾿, ὡς ἐνόησεν Ὀδυσσέα ἐγγὺς ἐόντα, / οὐρῇ μέν ῥ᾿ ὅ γ᾿ ἔσηνε καὶ οὔατα κάββαλεν ἄμφω, / ἆσσον δ᾿ οὐκέτ᾿ ἔπειτα δυνήσατο οἷο ἄνακτος / ἐλθέμεν.

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“Yes, truly this is the dog of a man who has died in a far land. If he were but in form and action such as he was when Odysseus left him and went to Troy, you would soon be amazed at seeing his speed and his strength. No creature that he startled in the depths of the thick wood could escape him, and in tracking too he was keen of scent. But now he is in evil plight, and his master has perished far from his native land, and the heedless women give him no care. Slaves, when their masters cease to direct them, no longer wish to do their work properly, for Zeus, whose voice is borne afar, takes away half his worth from a man when the day of slavery comes upon him.”

As Rose (1979: 222–223) has shown, the character and superior qualities of the dog, outlined in Od. 17.313–317, are similar to those of his master: he used to have great speed (ταχυτῆτα), strength (ἀλκήν) and intelligence (καὶ ἴχνεσι γὰρ περιῄδη) ‒ virtues that Odysseus himself demonstrated in a variety of situations. In other words, “(t)he poet has linked hound and master in a bond not only of affection but of likeness as well. (…) he has endowed Argos here with the canine counterparts to Odysseus’ aretai (…)” (Rose 1979: 223). At the same time, the animal who does not receive any attention from the negligent maids is presented as a mirror of Odysseus’ supposed fate and of the devastating situation at his residence in Ithaca.13 Furthermore, Eumaeus uses the specific case of Argus to elaborate on what usually happens in the household of a master who is no longer there to exercise control over his slaves. Implicitly, this comment, taken together with other passages in the Odyssey, proves that he himself does not belong to the category of careless servants. Eumaeus is thus presented as one of the few conscientious and trustworthy individuals living at Odysseus’ court whom the hero may rely upon in order to regain power over Ithaca.14 The episode concludes with the death of the dog: there is a reference to his age of twenty years,15 but nothing is said of Odysseus’ reaction to the loss of his

_____ 13 See Rahn (1953/54: 458): “in dem Hunde Argos tritt ihm [sc. Odysseus] das Einst und Jetzt unmittelbar anschaulich vor die Seele”. Similarly Köhnken (2003: 391–392): “Argos einst (V. 314 …) und Argos jetzt (V. 318f. …) rücken dem Hörer exemplarisch den Zustand des Haushalts einst (mit Odysseus) und jetzt (ohne Odysseus) plastisch vor Augen (…).” Further Köhnken (2003: 393): “So vernachlässigt wie der Hund durch die Abwesenheit seines Herrn ist der Haushalt des Odysseus, und so vergessen wie Argos ist der verschollene Odysseus selbst.” 14 See Rohdich (1980: 37–38) who argues that “(d)ie Existenz des Sauhirten ist ganz von der Erinnerung an Odysseus geprägt.” 15 Homer’s remark on Argus’ age is questioned by Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.40: κυνὶ δὲ βίος ὁ μήκιστος τεσσαρεσκαίδεκα ἔτη. Ἄργος δὲ ὁ Ὀδυσσέως καὶ ἡ περὶ αὐτὸν ἱστορία ἔοικε παιδιὰ Ὁμήρου εἶναι. See also De nat. anim. 7.29 on the credibility of the Argus story as a whole. But see Aristotle, Hist. anim. VI 20 574b30–575a2: ζῇ δ᾿ ἡ μὲν Λακωνικὴ κύων ὁ μὲν ἄρρην περὶ

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animal. However, it must be added that his disguise would not even permit him to express grief, as it would have immediately revealed his identity. Nonetheless, the passage makes it sufficiently clear that the hero is indeed touched by the bad state of his dog and that he hides his tears from Eumaeus (Od. 17.304– 305: αὐτὰρ ὁ νόσφιν ἰδὼν ἀπομόρξατο δάκρυ, / ῥεῖα λαθὼν Εὔμαιον).16 At the same time, this expression of feelings should not lead to the assumption that the animal is some kind of lapdog or pet.17 Homer’s verses leave no doubt about the fact that Argus belongs to the category of hunting dogs which were primarily used for practical purposes,18 and as such, he must have represented a status symbol for his owner ‒ at least when he was still in proper shape.19 This

_____ ἔτη δέκα, ἡ δὲ θήλεια περὶ ἔτη δώδεκα, τῶν δ᾿ ἄλλων κυνῶν αἱ μὲν πλεῖσται περὶ ἔτη τετταρακαίδεκα ἢ πεντεκαίδεκα, ἔνιαι δὲ καὶ εἴκοσιν· διὸ καὶ Ὅμηρον οἴονταί τινες ὀρθῶς ποιῆσαι τῷ εἰκοστῷ ἔτει ἀποθανόντα τὸν κύνα τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως. On the defensive approach of the later scholiasts, see Most (1991: 154, 164). See also Körner (21930: 21–22). 16 See Dumont (2001: 94): “La scène des retrouvailles entre Ulysse et le vieil Argos (…) est un chef d’œuvre de profondeur psychologique.” See also Most (1991: 145–146): “Die ganze Szene ist mit größter Kunst auf die Erzielung eines Pathos angelegt ‒ äußeres Zeichen dafür ist Odysseus’ Träne, die das Ereignis wortlos aber beredt kommentiert und sicherlich eine ähnliche Reaktion beim Zuhörer programmieren soll.” See further Wirshbo (1983: 12–13), with references to earlier scholarship, and Schneider (2000: 25): “Eine ähnlich tiefe Gefühlsregung zeigt Odysseus bei seiner Heimkehr nur Penelope gegenüber (Od. XIX 203 ff.).” Rahn (1967: 100) speaks of a “Gefühlsansturm reinster Sympathie” and maintains that “(f)ür einen Augenblick scheint die Grenze zwischen Mensch und Tier aufgehoben”, a claim that seems exaggerated because it is not supported by the Homeric text. As Franco (2003: 48) has pointed out, one of the reasons why Odysseus is moved to tears is that Argus is the first to recognise him: “(…) prima e unica creatura dell’isola a riconoscere l’eroe nonostante il suo travestimento e i lunghi anni di assenza, Argo riesce a commuovere Odisseo fino alle lacrime.” But see already Marg (1973: 9) and Most (1991: 146), to name but two scholars. With Köhnken (2003: 393) it should be added that the Argus scene is “die einzige ἀναγνώρισις in der Odyssee, in der sich beide Partner sofort und gleichzeitig erkennen: Argos den Odysseus und Odysseus den Argos.” 17 For definitions of the term ‘pet’, see Fögen (2016c: 342–343 n. 77). To the secondary literature listed there, one may now add Wischermann (2014: esp. 108–113) and Grier (2014: esp. 125). 18 See also Most (1991: 146): “(…) kein an der Tafel verwöhnter Weichling wie die Freier (…), sondern ein harter Kämpfer, ausdauernd wie sein Herr (…).” Similarly Rohdich (1980: 34). 19 Scrutinising the Argus scene and other passages in Homer, Schneider (2000: 28) concludes that the dog was “ein aristokratisches Statussymbol in der homerischen Gesellschaft (…), das den erwachsenen Mann von seinem ersten Auftreten vor seinen Standesgenossen bis ins hohe Alter begleitet.” He adds that a similar verdict can be applied to the later literary sources such as the elegies of Solon and Theognis as well as the visual evidence offered by vases of the sixth century B.C. (Schneider 2000: 29) and the sepulchral stelai of the archaic period (Schneider 2000: esp. 29–36). See also Mainoldi (1984: esp. 114) and L’Allier (2009: 9–11).

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certainly does not rule out that their owners may have developed a certain emotional attachment to them, but their central function was defined by utilitarian concerns of the humans to whom they belonged. Such a diagnosis is also confirmed by ancient technical works on hunting and the use of hunting dogs such as Xenophon’s and Arrian’s Cynegeticus as well as the didactic poems by Grattius, Nemesianus and Oppian, all entitled Cynegetica.20 As will be expounded in the next section, this conclusion even applies to Arrian’s highly sympathetic portrayal of his dog Horme in his Cynegeticus. Although the impressive skills and the noble nature of the dog Argus are clearly accentuated in the Homeric scene, there is altogether far too little information to call it a proper biography of an animal. The text does not even explain exactly what Argus looks like and is limited to a very general classification of the animal as a hunting dog.21 Instead, the episode fulfils several other narrative functions. Above all, it serves the characterisation of the protagonist of the epic poem, but also of his loyal servant Eumaeus, whose praise of the dog’s qualities has been compared to a ‘funerary’ lamentation.22 At the same time, it cannot be denied that Odysseus’ encounter with Argus is conceived of as a miniature tragedy which appeals to the reader’s emotions and even incorporates an established element of ancient drama, the recognition

_____ 20 For an edition and translation of Xenophon’s and Arrian’s Cynegeticus, see Phillips & Willcock (1999). Hull (1964: 107–140, 161–184) offers an English rendering of these two works. L’Allier (2009) provides French translations of Arrian’s Cynegeticus and Oppian’s Cynegetica, accompanied by brief notes. The original texts and English translations of Grattius’, Nemesianus’ and Oppian’s Cynegetica are most easily accessible in the Loeb Classical Library series: for Grattius and Nemesianus see Duff & Duff (1934), for Oppian see Mair (1928). On ancient literature on hunting with the assistance of dogs, see e.g. Aymard (1951), Hull (1964), Merlen (1971: 27–36, 48–62, 65–72), Effe (1977: 154–183), Phillips & Willcock (1999: 21–25), Dumont (2001: esp. 284–299, 404–418), Brewer, Clark & Phillips (2001: 84, 87–90, 100–101), and Amat (2002: 45–63). 21 But see Orth (1910: 20): “Da (…) gesagt wird, daß Argos zur Jagd auf wilde Ziegen, Hirsche und Hasen geführt wurde, der Keiler, das wichtigste Wild des altgriechischen Weidmannes, aber nicht genannt wird, so kann Argos jedenfalls keiner besonders großen, starken Rasse angehört haben.” See also the more general observation made by Körner (21930: 19): “Wenn wir auch aus dem späteren Altertum Bildwerke und Beschreibungen verschiedener Hunderassen haben, so fehlen uns doch solche für die homerische Zeit gänzlich, und Ilias wie Odyssee enthalten nichts über die Verschiedenheiten in Färbung, Größe und Gestalt der Hunde. Das schließt natürlich nicht aus, daß es schon damals verschiedene Hunderassen gegeben hat.” 22 See Dumont (2001: 95–96): “Eumée (…) fait son éloge, chantant ses qualités et sa malchance, comme une lamentation funèbre, durant ses derniers instants.”

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scene (ἀναγνώρισις). However, what makes this recognition special is the fact that it is a short scene which ends with the death of one of the two subjects involved in it. Ultimately, it has no further immediate consequences other than contributing to the picture that Odysseus gets of the state of his court. In that regard, it differs from the later recognition between Odysseus and Penelope which paves the way for further action, namely the killing of the suitors and the restoration of Odysseus’ full power and control over Ithaca. It is certainly easy to contend that Odysseus’ dog Argus is a purely fictional animal which is part of a mythical story. While it would be futile to discard such an argument, it may be worth remembering that, unlike many other creatures of the Odyssey, Argus is portrayed as a genuine and authentic (‘real’) dog; his portrayal had a basis in reality and is thus compelling for the reader. That he must have enjoyed a considerable renown in antiquity can be deduced from the fact that he appeared on one of the so-called Campana reliefs and on some sarcophagus reliefs,23 but also in a satirical poem written by the first-century A.D. epigrammatist Lucillius, in which the dog’s recognition of his master Odysseus is used as a humorous point of comparison.24 As Most (1991) has documented, there are several other strands of how later authors used Argus for their purposes: he occurs in philosophical debates on the intelligence and reason of animals as well as in texts that assess the fidelity of dogs. Furthermore, Argus was also the object of much later contemplations on the Homeric Odyssey (see Most 1991: 157–161, 166–168).

_____ 23 See Campana relief, British Museum, reg. no. 1951, 11–23, 1 (first/second century A.D.) and the sarcophagus fragment showing Odysseus and Argus, Museo Nazionale di San Martino, Napoli (late second century A.D.). For details see Robert (1890: 161–162, 216–217), Higgins (1953) and Perfahl (1983: 60–61). Further references in Most (1991: 148 n. 13), who rightly remarks that “Darstellungen des Odysseus zusammen mit einem Hund sind ausschließlich aus der etruskischen und römischen Kunst bekannt. Da in allen solchen Denkmälern der Hund noch lebt und in den meisten in Begleitung von Odysseus und Penelope zusammen auftritt, dürfte es sich vielleicht um eine von der griechischen abweichende etruskische Variante der Legende handeln; jedenfalls können diese nicht als Illustrationen der uns bekannten ArgosSzene gelten.” 24 Lucillius, Anth. Pal. 11.77: Εἰκοσέτους σωθέντος Ὀδυσσέος εἰς τὰ πατρῷα / ἔγνω τὴν μορφὴν Ἄργος ἰδὼν ὁ κύων· / ἀλλὰ σὺ πυκτεύσας, Στρατοφῶν, ἐπὶ τέσσαρας ὥρας, / οὐ κυσὶν ἄγνωστος, τῇ δὲ πόλει γέγονας. / ἢν ἐθέλῃς τὸ πρόσωπον ἰδεῖν ἐς ἔσοπτρον ἑαυτοῦ, / “Οὐκ εἰμὶ Στρατοφῶν”, αὐτὸς ἐρεῖς ὀμόσας. See also Martial 11.69 (epitaph of the hunting dog Lydia), esp. 11.69.7–8: non me longa dies nec inutilis abstulit aetas, / qualia Dulichio fata fuere cani. For the full text and translation of this epigram, see Lewis (in this volume).

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3 Arrian’s dog Horme in his Cynegeticus Another prominent example of a hunting dog that was given a name is Arrian’s Horme, described in a chapter of his short treatise on hunting, the Cynegeticus (§§ 5.1–6).25 As the author, whose full name was Flavius Arrianus Xenophon and who is best-known for his Anabasis of Alexander and other historiographical works, sets out in the introduction, he conceived this little work as a supplement to Xenophon’s eponymous work, composed much earlier. 26 With his predecessor he shares an interest in the same areas, including hunting with dogs (κυνηγέσια).27 Repeatedly, he advertises himself as an expert in this discipline and takes over the role of an instructor who transmits his personal knowledge to his readers.28

_____ 25 The work comprises altogether no more than 36 chapters, many of which contain just a few paragraphs. For editions and translations of Arrian’s Cynegeticus, see n. 20 (above). The only full-scale monograph on Arrian as a whole is Stadter (1980), which also provides a short overview of his works (Stadter 1980: 171–172) and a separate chapter on the Cynegeticus (Stadter 1980: 50–59). The massive book of Tonnet (1988) is more selective and includes an extensive analysis of Arrian’s language and style (1988: 297–421), but also has two sections on the Cynegeticus (1988: 65–67, 266–280). On Arrian’s life and career, see Stadter (1980: esp. 1–18, 173–174), Syme (1982), Tonnet (1988: 5–101), and Bosworth (1993: 226–233). On the opera minora, see also Bosworth (1993). 26 Burliga (2009: 36) surmises that Arrian’s Cynegeticus was “written probably ca. AD 145 (that’s almost 550 years after Xenophon’s essay)”, but fails to provide any evidence for such a date. However, one may agree with Bosworth (1993: 233) that “(t)he so-called minor works all come relatively late in Arrian’s career”; see also Tonnet (1988: 65–67), who argues for the period between A.D. 137 and 145/146 (1988: 67). On Arrian’s name, see Stadter (1976: 158, with n. 3), Stadter (1980: 2–3), Syme (1982: 184), and Tonnet (1988: 17–19). 27 Arrian, Cyn. 1.1–2.5, esp. 1.4: ὅσα δὲ ἐλλείπειν μοι δοκεῖ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ, οὐχὶ ἀμελείᾳ ἀλλ᾽ ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ γένους τῶν κυνῶν τοῦ Κελτικοῦ καὶ τοῦ γένους τῶν ἵππων τοῦ Σκυθικοῦ τε καὶ Λιβυκοῦ, ταῦτα λέξω, ὁμώνυμός τε ὢν αὐτῷ καὶ πόλεως τῆς αὐτῆς καὶ ἀμφὶ ταὐτὰ ἀπὸ νέου ἐσπουδακώς, κυνηγέσια καὶ στρατηγίαν καὶ σοφίαν. On Xenophon’s Cynegeticus, whose authenticity has occasionally been questioned by modern scholarship, see Stadter (1976) and Fögen (2016a: 275–276). 28 See e.g. Arrian, Cyn. 4.1–2: λέξω δὲ καὶ αὐτός, ἀφ᾽ οἵων τινῶν χρὴ τεκμαίρεσθαι τὰς ὠκείας τε καὶ γενναίας, καὶ τίσιν αὖ προσέχων τις τὸν νοῦν τὰς ἀγεννεῖς τε καὶ βραδείας ἀποκρίνοι αὐτῶν. πρῶτα μὲν δὴ μακραὶ ἔστωσαν ἀπὸ κεφαλῆς ἐπ᾽ οὐράν· ἓν γὰρ οὐδὲν οὕτω τεκμήριον ἐς ὠκύτητά τε καὶ γενναιότητα εὕροις ἂν ἐπιλεγόμενος ταὐτὸν ἐπὶ πάσῃ ἰδέᾳ κυνός, ὡς τὸ μῆκος, καὶ τοὐναντίον τὴν βραχύτητα ἐς τὸ βραδὺ καὶ ἀγεννές. ὥστε ἤδη ἔγωγε εἶδον πολλὰ ἄλλα κακὰ ἐχούσας κύνας, ὅτι δὲ μακραὶ ἐτύγχανον, ὠκεῖαι ἦσαν καὶ θυμοειδεῖς. See also Cyn. 3.5–6 and 7.2: ἤδη δὲ ἔγνων κύνα, ἥτις οἴκοι μὲν κατηφὴς ἦν καὶ οὐδενὶ τῶν πλησιαζόντων ἔχαιρεν, ἐπὶ θήραν δὲ ἐξαγομένη ὑπερευφραίνετο καὶ παντὶ τῷ προσελθόντι προσμειδιῶσα καὶ

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A paragraph on the shape and colour of the eyes of dogs (Cyn. 4.5) leads him over to an excursus on a dog that he owned previously, and it is indeed this animal’s very grey eyes that are singled out first of all.29 But this is followed by a series of other qualities (Cyn. 5.1–2; transl. Hull 1964: 166): ἐπεί τοι ἀνέθρεψα ἐγὼ κύνα χαροπὴν οἵαν χαροπωτάτην, καὶ αὕτη ὠκεῖά τε ἦν καὶ φιλόπονος καὶ εὔψυχος καὶ εὔπους, ὥστε καὶ τέτταρσιν ἤδη ποτὲ λαγωοῖς ἐφ᾽ ἡλικίας ἀντήρκεσεν. καὶ τὰ ἄλλα δὲ πραοτάτη τέ ἐστιν (ἔτι γάρ μοι ἦν, ὁπότε ταῦτα ἔγραφον) καὶ φιλανθρωποτάτη, καὶ οὔπω πρόσθεν ἄλλη κύων ὡς αὐτὴ οὔτε ἐμὲ ἐπόθησεν οὔτε τὸν ἑταῖρον τὸν ἐμὸν καὶ σύνθηρον τὸν Μέγιλλον. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ τοῦ δρόμου ἀπεπαύσατο, οὐκ ἔτι ἡμῶν ἢ θατέρου γε ἀπαλλάττεται. “For I myself, you know, raised a hound with eyes as grey as the greyest, and she was both fast and diligent and of good spirit and had good feet, so at one time before this in youthful vigour she even held out after chasing four hares. And as to other qualities, she is very gentle (for she was still mine when I was writing this) and very fond of people; never before did any other hound yearn as she did for either me or my companion and fellow hunter, Megillus. For when she quit her course she still did not leave either of us.”

That this is a very special dog is evident from the fact that she was raised by Arrian himself, an activity for which he uses the same verb as Homer did in the Argus episode.30 The above paragraphs combine comments on some of the animal’s physical attributes and her overall character which are all to be seen as ideal for a hunting dog, but they also draw attention to her emotional disposition. She was very affectionate, devoted and “loved people very much”,

_____ προσσαίνουσα διεδήλου ὅτι ἀνιᾶται οἴκοι μένουσα· καὶ τοῦτο ἀγαθόν. Further Cyn. 16.1 (ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν), 16.5 (πολλάκις ἤδη ἔγωγε …), 16.6 (disagreement with his predecessor Xenophon: οὐ ξύμφημι τῷ ἐμαυτοῦ ὁμωνύμῳ), 16.8 (οἶδα), 17.2 (μοι δοκῶ), 24.5 (ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν), 31.1 (ὀρθῶς ξυμβουλεύει), 31.2 (καὶ τοῦτο χρὴ πείθεσθαι αὐτῷ … δεξιῶς ἀναγέγραφεν), 31.5 (κράτιστον περιμεῖναι, … ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ), 32.2 (μοι δοκεῖ), and 35.1 (καὶ ἐγὼ ἅμα τοῖς συνθήροις ἕπομαι τῷ Κελτῶν νόμῳ, καὶ ἀποφαίνω ὡς οὐδὲν ἄνευ θεῶν γιγνόμενον ἀνθρώποις ἐς ἀγαθὸν ἀποτελευτᾷ). The words printed in bold in the longer quotations highlight the author’s ἐμπειρία and/or αὐτοψία (on which see n. 38 below). 29 For Xenophon, grey eyes of a dog are a physical defect, entailing bad sight (Cyn. 3.2–3): χείρους δὲ καὶ πλείους αἱ τοιαίδε, μικραί, γρυπαί, χαροποί, μυωποί, ἄμορφοι, σκληραί, ἀσθενεῖς, ψιλαί, ὑψηλαί, ἀσύμμετροι, ἄψυχοι, ἄρρινες, οὐκ εὔποδες. (…) χαροποὶ δὲ καὶ μυωποὶ χείρω τὰ ὄμματα ἔχουσιν (…). According to Stadter (1980: 57), it is precisely “Xenophon’s stricture against gray eyes” that provoked Arrian’s “warm description of the excellent qualities of his favorite hound”. 30 Homer, Od. 17.292–294: Ἄργος, Ὀδυσσῆος ταλασίφρονος, ὅν ῥά ποτ᾿ αὐτὸς / θρέψε μέν, οὐδ᾿ ἀπόνητο, πάρος δ᾿ εἰς Ἴλιον ἱρὴν / ᾤχετο.

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as is expressed by the emphatic superlative φιλανθρωποτάτη.31 This astonishing fondness did not just pertain to Arrian as her owner, but also to his companion Megillus with whom he went hunting. Together with the subsequent paragraphs, it creates the image of a highly loyal and committed animal (Cyn. 5.3–4; transl. Hull 1964: 167, with some modifications): ἀλλὰ εἰ μὲν ἐγὼ ἔνδον εἴην, ἅμα ἐμοὶ διατρίβει, καὶ προϊόντα ποι παραπέμπει, καὶ ἐπὶ γυμνάσιον ἰόντι ἐφομαρτεῖ, καὶ γυμναζομένῳ παρακάθηται, καὶ ἐπανιόντος πρόεισιν, θαμινὰ ἐπιστρεφομένη, ὡς καταμανθάνειν μή πη ἄρα ἐξετράπην τῆς ὁδοῦ· ἰδοῦσα δὲ καὶ ἐπιμειδιάσασα αὖθις αὖ πρόεισιν. εἰ δὲ ἐπί τι ἔργον πολιτικὸν ἴοιμι, ἣ δὲ τῷ ἑταίρῳ τῷ ἐμῷ ξύνεστιν, καὶ πρὸς ἐκεῖνον τὰ αὐτὰ ταῦτα δρᾷ. ὁπότερος δὲ ἡμῶν κάμνοι τὸ σῶμα, ἐκείνου αὖ οὐκ ἀπαλλάσσεται. εἰ δὲ καὶ δι᾽ ὀλίγου χρόνου ἴδοι, ἐπιπηδᾷ ἀτρέμα, ὥσπερ ἀσπαζομένη, καὶ τῷ ἀσπασμῷ ἐπιφθέγγεται, οἷα φιλοφρονουμένη. καὶ δειπνοῦντι ξυνοῦσα ἐφάπτεται ἄλλοτε ἄλλῳ τοῖν ποδοῖν, ὑπομιμνήσκουσα ὅτι καὶ αὐτῇ ἄρα μεταδοτέον εἴη τῶν σιτίων. καὶ μὴν πολύφθογγός ἐστιν, ὡς οὔπω ἐγὼ ἰδεῖν μοι δοκῶ ἄλλην κύνα· καὶ ὅσων δεῖται τῇ φωνῇ σημαίνει. “But if I were at home, she would pass her time with me and escort me when I went out somewhere and follow closely after me when I went to school. She would sit beside me while exercising; and when I returned, she would go ahead, frequently turning around so as to make sure that I did not perhaps turn off the road. But when she saw me, she would smile and at once go ahead again. Then if I should go out upon some civic task, she would join my companion and do the same things for him. Then if she should see him after even a little time, she would jump gently, just as if greeting him, and respond to his greeting, showing great affection; and when staying with him while dining, she would lay hold of him with her feet, first this way and then that, reminding him that some of the food must be shared with her also. And truly there would be such immense variety of voice as I think I have never before perceived in another hound, for whatever she wants she indicates with her voice.”

This excerpt leaves no doubt about the fact that this was a clear master–dog relationship, with the animal accompanying his owner and friend wherever they go. The dog’s life was completely centred around Arrian’s, and the environment in which she moved was defined by her master’s routines and where-

_____ 31 “Fondness of people” (φιλανθρωπία) is a sign of a dog’s excellence, as Arrian says later on (Cyn. 7.3): κράτισται δὲ αἱ φιλανθρωπόταται καὶ ὅσαις οὐκ ἔστιν ξένον ὄψις ἀνθρώπου οὐδενός. ὅσαι δὲ ἀνθρώπους δεδίασιν καὶ ὑπὸ ψόφου ἐκπλήττονται καὶ θορυβώδεις εἰσὶν καὶ ἐπὶ πολλὰ καὶ εἰκῇ κινοῦνται ‒ καὶ ταῦτα ἀλογίστων ἐστὶν καὶ οὐκ ἐμφρόνων ‒, καθάπερ ἄνθρωποι εἰ δειλοὶ καὶ ἔκφρονες, οὕτω δὲ καὶ αἱ κύνες αἱ τοιαῦται οὔποτε ἂν εἶεν γενναῖαι. See also Cyn. 9.1.

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abouts.32 Moreover, it is noticeable that neither here nor anywhere else in his treatise does Arrian speak of his own feelings for his dog (see also Franco, in this volume). This certainly does not mean that he did not reciprocate her affection, but he does not explicitly say how much he liked her; it can only be inferred from his very positive portrayal of her. One feels somewhat reminded of a passage in Columella (De re rust. 7.12.1), where he exalts the devotion of farm dogs to their owners without explicitly referring to the farmers’ feelings for them (see Fögen 2016c: 342). However, as in Arrian, Columella’s eulogy on dogs in De re rust. 7.12–13 exposes his own very positive attitude towards them, and since he writes as a knowledgeable estate owner, his judgement expresses an attitude to be adopted by any farmer interested in the efficient and profitable organisation of his estate, to which dogs contributed in no small way. The aforementioned passage is also interesting in other respects. It comments on the dog’s vocal and non-verbal behaviour which includes smiling (Cyn. 5.3: ἰδοῦσα δὲ καὶ ἐπιμειδιάσασα αὖθις αὖ πρόεισιν), showing affection through jumping up and down which is compared to greeting (Cyn. 5.4: εἰ δὲ καὶ δι᾽ ὀλίγου χρόνου ἴδοι, ἐπιπηδᾷ ἀτρέμα, ὥσπερ ἀσπαζομένη, καὶ τῷ ἀσπασμῷ ἐπιφθέγγεται, οἷα φιλοφρονουμένη), and the use of her feet and voice to beg for food (Cyn. 5.4: καὶ δειπνοῦντι ξυνοῦσα ἐφάπτεται ἄλλοτε ἄλλῳ τοῖν ποδοῖν, ὑπομιμνήσκουσα ὅτι καὶ αὐτῇ ἄρα μεταδοτέον εἴη τῶν σιτίων. καὶ μὴν πολύφθογγός ἐστιν, ὡς οὔπω ἐγὼ ἰδεῖν μοι δοκῶ ἄλλην κύνα· καὶ ὅσων δεῖται τῇ φωνῇ σημαίνει). In conjunction with the reference to the dog’s voice which is said to be used to signify whatever she wanted, the word πολύφθογγος is particularly instructive: Rather than implying “a great outcry”, as Hull (1964: 167) has put it in his translation, it seems to mean that the dog was able to produce all kinds of voices or sounds to achieve her goal. Hence, the word does not refer to the volume of the animal’s voice, but its impressive capacity for variation and nuance.33 Besides, anyone who has ever witnessed dogs begging for food will be

_____ 32 See also Orth (1910: 25): “Sie [sc. Horme] kennt kein anderes Bestreben, als ihrem Herrn mit allen Kräften zu dienen, und während sie auf der Jagd es mit vier Hasen aufnimmt, ist sie daheim das anschmiegendste, sanftmütigste Tier, das in einem Kusse des Herrn auf den Kopf seine größte Belohnung findet.” 33 Correctly translated by L’Allier (2009: 23): “Elle produit beaucoup de sons différents”; similarly Phillips & Willcock (1999: 97): “And indeed she makes many different noises”. See Eric A. Barber’s Supplement (p. 123) to Henry G. Liddell, Robert Scott & Henry S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford 91940 (repr. 1968): “add ‘II. with an expressive voice, Arr. Cyn. 5.4.’” One may, however, doubt whether “expressive” really captures the meaning. In Aelian, De nat. anim. 5.51 the word πολύφθογγος refers to the many different voices and sounds produced by different, not one and the same species of animals.

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likely to confirm that they use different scales or tones of whining and yelping rather than a loud voice for that purpose. The penultimate paragraph of this digression on Arrian’s dog briefly takes the reader back to the animal’s youth (Cyn. 5.5; transl. Hull 1964: 167): καὶ ὅτι σκυλακευομένη μάστιγι ἐκολάζετο, εἴ τις εἰς τοῦτο ἔτι μάστιγα ὀνομάσειεν, πρόσεισιν τῷ ὀνομάσαντι, καὶ ὑποπτήξασα λιπαρεῖ, καὶ τὸ στόμα ἐφαρμόζει τῷ στόματι ὡς φιλοῦσα, καὶ ἐπιπηδήσασα ἐκκρέμαται τοῦ αὐχένος, καὶ οὐ πρόσθεν ἀνίησιν πρὶν τῆς ἀπειλῆς ἀποπαῦσαι τὸν θυμούμενον. “And because when she was a puppy she used to be punished with a whip, if anyone even now mentions a whip for this purpose, she approaches him who mentions it, cringes, and entreats him, puts her face to his face as if to kiss him, jumps on him, clings to his neck, and will not let go until she stops the wrathful man from his threat.”

The passive verb ἐκολάζετο used here does not specify who performed the chastisement of the animal, but the imperfect tense implies that it must have been done on a regular basis.34 At any rate, the practice clearly had a traumatic effect on the dog: with her body language she will try to win that person’s sympathy and prevent him from punishing her that way. This description of her nonverbal behaviour nicely complements the references to her emotional character in the previous paragraphs. Surprisingly, Arrian does not disclose his dog’s name until the very end of the excursus (Cyn. 5.6; transl. Hull 1964: 167): ὥστε οὐκ ἂν ὀκνῆσαί μοι δοκῶ καὶ τὸ ὄνομα ἀναγράψαι τῆς κυνός, ὡς καὶ ἐς ὕστερον ἀπολελεῖφθαι αὐτῆς, ὅτι ἦν ἄρα Ξενοφῶντι τῷ Ἀθηναίῳ κύων, Ὁρμὴ ὄνομα, ὠκυτάτη τε καὶ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἱερωτάτη. “And so I think I should not hesitate to record the name of the hound, as later I was parted from her, because truly Xenophon the Athenian had a most swift, most wise, and most wonderful hound, ‘Impulse’ by name.”

The tricolon of superlatives (ὠκυτάτη τε καὶ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἱερωτάτη), placed at the very end of this sentence, contributes to the laudatory tone of the entire digression which, despite its backward-looking perspective, sketches a very vivid and memorable portrayal of Horme. To some extent, the structure of the excur-

_____ 34 It should be noted that corporal punishment of dogs has no place in Arrian’s treatise. But see Cyn. 11.1–2 on tying them up.

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sus is reminiscent of an epigram which creates a certain suspense (Erwartung, to use Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s terminology) and then resolves it at the very end (Aufschluß): everything amounts to the mention of the animal’s name which represents the climax of the digression. The name itself, which may be translated as “Impetus” or “Rush” and which recurs in a later chapter,35 denotes Horme’s suitability as a hunting dog.36 It is not entirely certain whether Horme was a female dog. According to Stadter (1976: 163 n. 15), “Horme was probably male, despite the feminine pronouns used. κύων in Xenophon and Arrian is regularly feminine, but Arrian considered male dogs much more valuable: see Arr. 32.1–2.”37 While this is generally correct, the passage quoted by Stadter also says at the very beginning that “a bitch is faster than a doghound” (Cyn. 32.1: κύων θήλεια μὲν ὠκυτέρα ἄρρενος), and that is a quality which Arrian ascribes to Horme – both in the text and through her very name. The gender of the name is, of course, feminine, but it is an abstract which makes it difficult to equate it automatically with the name of a female dog. Ὁρμή is mentioned at the very end of Xenophon’s list of dog names (Cyn. 7.5), but unlike Columella (De re rust. 7.12.13; see Fögen 2016c: 342), Xenophon does not explicitly differentiate between male and female dog names; at the same time, all three Greek dog names given by Columella (Σπουδή, Ἀλκή, Ῥώμη) are abstract female substantives, as is Ὁρμή. Hence it cannot be completely ruled out that Horme was a female dog. To summarise this section, except for the reference to Horme’s grey eyes and her swift feet, Arrian tells the reader nothing about her outward appearance such as the colour of her fur, size or shape of the body. This is only little more than what we learn about Homer’s Argus. Much more emphasis is given to her temperament or emotional nature which leads to a very sympathetic charac-

_____ 35 Arrian, Cyn. 18.1: ἔχουσαν δὲ τὴν κύνα ἢ καὶ ἄλλως κρατήσασαν τῷ δρόμῳ καταπηδήσαντα ἀπὸ τοῦ ἵππου καταψᾶν χρὴ ἐπευφημοῦντα, καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν φιλεῖν, καὶ τὰ ὦτα ἀποτείνειν, καὶ ὀνομαστὶ ἐπιλέγειν “εὖγε ὦ Κιρρά, εὖγε ὦ Βόννα, καλῶς γε ὦ Ὁρμή,” καὶ ὅ τι περ ἄλλο ἑκάστῃ ὄνομα αὐτὸ τοῦτο ἀνακαλοῦντα· χαίρουσιν γὰρ ἐπαινούμεναι, καθάπερ τῶν ἀνθρώπων οἱ γενναῖοι. The analogy between animal and human joy about praise, expressed in the final sentence of this quotation, is noteworthy. 36 See also Mentz (1933: 435): “Die Freude am mutigen Draufgehen, am Jagdeifer der Hunde äußert sich in abstr. Namen wie Θυμός, Ὀργή, Ὁρμή, Σπουδή (…).” For a fuller treatment of ancient dogs’ names more generally, see Baecker (1884) and Mentz (1933), already referred to in n. 8 (above). 37 In his English translation of Cyn. 5.1–6 which Stadter prints in his monograph (1980: 54–55), all pronouns referring to Horme are masculine. On the gender of the Greek substantive κύων, see Franco (2014: 142–153).

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terisation of the animal. This, in turn, may have repercussions for how Arrian as her owner and the author of this treatise is perceived by his target audience. It not only adds a very personal note to a technical treatise, but also commends him as an experienced authority in all matters related to dogs and their use for hunting, and it is their competence (auctoritas) and experience (ἐμπειρία or usus / experientia) that ancient writers of technical literature were eager to promote.38 Thus, it is certainly not inappropriate to assert that “(i)n no work does Arrian reveal himself more directly and personally than in his little treatise on hunting” (Stadter 1980: 50; similarly 1980: 55). However, one may add that he does so with the intention of self-advertisement in mind, at least to some extent. Such a purpose may have been motivated by his desire to commend himself to upper-class Romans as his target audience, and especially by his friendship with the emperor Hadrian (regn. A.D. 117‒138), who took a keen interest in hunting.39 About Hadrian the Historia Augusta reports that he loved his horses and dogs so much that he had burial places erected for them.40 Therefore, the emperor will have been very likely to welcome Arrian’s chapter on Horme. Although Arrian’s Cynegeticus is not dedicated to Hadrian, it is not impossible to envisage him as one of its potential readers (provided that he was still alive at the time of its publication; see n. 26). Arrian may have written his work with the emperor in mind.41 After all, many ancient technical treatises were dedicated to important political figures.42

_____ 38 See Fögen (2009a: passim), Fögen (2016a: 267, 272, 275–276), Fögen (2016b: 962–964, 966, 968), and Fögen (2016c: 321–322, 330, 343–344), with detailed references. 39 See Cassius Dio, Hist. 69.10.2 (quoted in the introduction to this volume) and Historia Augusta, Hadr. 2.1: quintodecimo anno ad patriam rediit ac statim militiam iniit, venandi usque ad reprehensionem studiosus. Further Hadr. 20.13: oppidum Hadrianotheras in quodam loco, quod illic et feliciter esset venatus et ursam occidisset aliquando, constituit. Also Hadr. 26.3–4: venatus frequentissime leonem manu sua occidit. venando autem iugulum et costam fregit. venationem semper cum amicis participavit. See further Stadter (1980: 50–52). On Arrian and Hadrian more generally, see Syme (1982: 185–186, 189–190) and Tonnet (1988: 33–36). It may be added that Hadrian’s predecessor Trajan, during whose reign (A.D. 98‒117) Arrian began his career (see Stadter 1980: 9), also had a penchant for hunting, as is attested by Pliny, Paneg. 81.1–3. 40 Historia Augusta, Hadr. 20.12: equos et canes sic amavit ut iis sepulchra constitueret. One may compare Cassius Dio, Hist. 69.10.2. See also the introduction to this volume. 41 As regards Hadrian’s presence in Arrian’s works, his Periplus of the Black Sea and a lost work on Roman infantry exercises were addressed to Hadrian (see Stadter 1980: 32–33, 36, 42; Bosworth 1993: 249–250), and the Ars tactica was composed with the emperor in mind (see Stadter 1980: 44–45; Bosworth 1993: 259–260). 42 See Fögen (2009a: passim; see index, s.v. “Herrscher”) and Fögen (2016a: 270).

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That animals other than dogs also had a certain appeal for Arrian can be gathered from a longer section in his work on India, “the most distant and most exotic of Alexander’s conquests”, as Stadter (1980: 115) has put it.43 In the socalled Indica, which follow the ethnographic tradition of Herodotus, roughly five out of forty-three chapters are reserved for the animals of that country, in particular elephants (Ind. 13–14), but also tigers, ants, parrots, apes, and snakes (Ind. 15); later sections deal with the methods of fish-hunting common among the Ἰχθυοφάγοι (Ind. 29.9–16) and with whales (Ind. 30). That animals figure quite prominently in this work is also manifest from a reference in Arrian’s earlier Anabasis (5.4.3; transl. Peter A. Brunt, Loeb Classical Library): ὑπὲρ ὧν ἐγὼ οὔτε οἷστισι νόμοις διαχρῶνται ἐν τῇδε τῇ συγγραφῇ ἀνέγραψα, οὔτε ζῷα εἰ δή τινα ἄτοπα ἡ χώρα αὐτοῖς ἐκφέρει, οὔτε ἰχθύας ἢ κήτη ὅσα ἢ οἷα ὁ Ἰνδὸς ἢ ὁ Ὑδάσπης ἢ ὁ Γάγγης ἢ οἱ ἄλλοι Ἰνδῶν ποταμοὶ φέρουσιν, οὐδὲ τοὺς μύρμηκας τοὺς τὸν χρυσόν σφισιν ἐργαζομένους, οὐδὲ τοὺς γρῦπας τοὺς φύλακας, οὐδὲ ὅσα ἄλλα ἐφ᾿ ἡδονῇ μᾶλλόν τι πεποίηται ἢ ἐς ἀφήγησιν τῶν ὄντων, ὡς τά γε κατ᾿ Ἰνδοὺς ὅσα ἂν ἄτοπα ψεύσωνται, οὐκ ἐξελεγχθησόμενα πρὸς οὐδαμῶν. (…) Ἀλλὰ ὑπὲρ Ἰνδῶν ἰδίᾳ μοι γεγράψεται ὅσα πιστότατα ἐς ἀφήγησιν οἵ τε ξὺν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ στρατεύσαντες (…), ἐπὶ δὲ ὅσα Μεγασθένης τε καὶ Ἐρατοσθένης (…) ξυνεγραψάτην, καὶ νόμιμα ἅττα Ἰνδοῖς ἐστι καὶ εἰ δή τινα ἄτοπα ζῷα αὐτόθι φύεται καὶ τὸν παράπλουν αὐτὸν τῆς ἔξω θαλάσσης. νῦν δὲ ὅσον ἐς τὰ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἔργα ἀποχρῶν ἐφαίνετο, τοσόνδε μοι ἀναγεγράφθω. “In this history I have not recorded their customs, nor whether their country produces any strange animals, nor the size or kinds of fishes or water monsters which the Indus, Hydaspes, Ganges or other Indian rivers produce, nor the ants that mine their gold, nor the griffons that guard it, nor all the other stories which have been made up for amusement rather than as a description of reality, on the basis that whatever ridiculous lies men may tell about the Indians will not be refuted by anyone. (…) However, I shall write a special monograph about India including the most reliable descriptions given by Alexander’s fellow-campaigners (…), and further all that Megasthenes and Eratosthenes (…) have written, and I shall record the customs of India, any strange beasts which are bred there and the actual voyage along the coast of the Outer Sea. But the present record must be restricted to what appears sufficient to explain Alexander’s achievements.”

The very first paragraph of the section in the Indica starts with the remark that the hunting of wild animals is also common among the Indians, the difference to the Greeks being that their methods are as unique as the animals themselves

_____ 43 On Arrian’s Indica, see in particular Stadter (1980: 115–132), who also provides an outline of the structure of the work (1980: 118, 126) and tackles the issue of the author’s originality (1980: esp. 132). In Anab. 5.6.8 and 6.16.5 Arrian refers to his work as Ἰνδικὴ ξυγγραφή; on the title, see Stadter (1980: 116, 224 n. 4).

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(Ind. 13.1). Hence it is the context of hunting that provides the basis for the section on creatures occurring in India, and to some degree, this background topic may be used to bridge the general thematic gap between the Indica and the Cynegeticus. At the same time, this does not prevent Arrian from supplying some information on the characteristics, ways of life and habitats of these animals, although it has to be admitted that these details are much closer to what we find in Books 8‒11 of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia or Aelian’s Περὶ ζῴων ἰδιότητος (De natura animalium), with their tendency towards mirabilia, than to Aristotle’s zoological works.44

4 Alexander’s horse Bucephalas in Plutarch and Arrian Another well-known example of an animal with a personal name is the horse Bucephalas which belonged to the Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356‒323 B.C.). Apart from Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Life of Alexander, which is passed over here for convenience,45 the two most extensive accounts are to be found in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander and in Arrian’s Anabasis.46 Plutarch’s first report on Bucephalas focuses on Alexander’s initial encounter with the horse which is presented as savage and altogether intractable (Alex. 6.1: ἐδόκει τε χαλεπὸς εἶναι καὶ κομιδῆ δύσχρηστος). It turns out that the young Alexander is the only one who is able to manage the animal, which he does by

_____ 44 On the different agendas and narrative structures of the works of Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, and Aelian, see Fögen (2007a), with further references. On Pliny the Elder, see also Fögen (2009a: 201–264). 45 A serious discussion of this work, also for the questions pursued in this article, would involve a more thorough examination of its different versions. For details and secondary literature, see Hägg (2012: 117–134, 399–401), who also has two brief sections on Alexander and Bucephalas (Hägg 2012: 124, 126). 46 For a concise overview on Plutarch the biographer, see Stadter (2007: 532, 536–540); for a more extensive analysis, see e.g. Sonnabend (2002: 146–168) and Hägg (2012: 239–281). On Arrian’s Anabasis, see Stadter (1980: 60–114) and Hammond (1993: 189–333). On the reliability of these two authors as sources on Alexander, see Demandt (2009: 4–7); with regard to Arrian, Demandt points out: “Er ist unsere mit Abstand beste Quelle für Alexander. (…) Arrian wollte für Alexander das leisten, was Homer für Achill getan hatte; er ist der letzte Autor, der uns über den historischen Alexander zuverlässig unterrichtet.” Very similarly Stadter (1980: 1); see also Hammond (1993: 317–333).

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means of a simple trick (Alex. 6.3–4; transl. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library, slightly modified): (…) εὐθὺς προσδραμὼν τῷ ἵππῳ καὶ παραλαβὼν τὴν ἡνίαν ἐπέστρεψε πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐννοήσας ὅτι τὴν σκιὰν προπίπτουσαν καὶ σαλευομένην ὁρῶν πρὸ αὑτοῦ διαταράττοιτο. μικρὰ δὲ οὕτω παρακαλπάσας καὶ καταψήσας, ὡς ἑώρα πληρούμενον θυμοῦ καὶ πνεύματος, ἀπορρίψας ἡσυχῆ τὴν χλαμύδα καὶ μετεωρίσας αὑτὸν ἀσφαλῶς περιέβη. καὶ μικρὰ μὲν περιλαβὼν ταῖς ἡνίαις τὸν χαλινὸν ἄνευ πληγῆς καὶ σπαραγμοῦ προσανέστειλεν· ὡς δὲ ἑώρα τὸν ἵππον ἀφεικότα τὴν ἀπειλήν, ὀργῶντα δὲ πρὸς τὸν δρόμον, ἐφεὶς ἐδίωκεν ἤδη φωνῇ θρασυτέρᾳ καὶ ποδὸς κρούσει χρώμενος. “(…) and at once Alexander ran to the horse, took hold of his bridle-rein, and turned him towards the sun; for he had noticed, as it would seem, that the horse was greatly disturbed by the sight of his own shadow falling in front of him and dancing about. And after he had calmed the horse a little in this way, and had stroked him with his hand, when he saw that he was full of spirit and courage, he quietly cast aside his mantle and with a light spring safely bestrode him. Then, with a little pressure of the reins on the bit, and without striking him or tearing his mouth, he held him in hand; but when he saw that the horse was rid of the fear that had beset him, and was impatient for the course, he let him go, and at last urged him on with sterner tone and thrust of foot.”

This excerpt, taken together with the ensuing description of the bystanders’ positive reaction to Alexander’s endeavour, demonstrates that the horse and its new owner work in perfect synergy. Alexander is presented not only as confident and courageous, but also as skilled and knowledgeable. This case shows that he accomplishes what no one else does; it thus makes him stand out from the crowd.47 At the same time, the anecdote singles out the animal’s characteristics which are portrayed as in harmony with his owner. Bucephalas is as special as Alexander and can only be handled by a human who is, as it were, on the same level.48 However, the passage gives the reader no more than just a glimpse

_____ 47 See Demandt (2009: 81): “Berichte über die Frühzeit großer Männer wollen gern deren spätere Bedeutung schon in Begebenheiten aus ihrer Kindheit zeigen. (…) Den Frühbeweis für Alexanders Herrscherqualitäten bringt die legendär ausgestaltete Bukephalas-Episode.” See also Martin & Blackwell (2012: 17): “The story describes a competition, pitting Alexander against a horse, against the grown Macedonian men, and, especially, against his father. The youth pitted his judgment against that of his elders and won, based on an ability to observe what others did not see. (…) Alexander’s actions show unshakeable confidence. From his youth on, then, Alexander’s life was dedicated to facing risks, assessing them, and winning.” 48 Bucephalas’ uniqueness ‒ literally, his ‘rarity’ ‒ is also declared by Pliny the Elder, Nat. hist. 8.154 (part of a longer section on famous horses): Eidem Alexandro et equi magna raritas contigit. Slightly further on, it is said that the horse’s beauty captivated the young Alexander: XVI talentis ferunt ex Philonici Pharsalii grege emptum etiam tum puero capto eius decore.

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at the initial stages of the almost symbiotic relationship between the Macedonian king and his horse. Furthermore, the narrative perspective of this little text, which constitutes a short chapter within a much more extensive biography, makes it obvious that Plutarch is more interested in Alexander than in the horse. It must not be forgotten either that the wondrous taming of wild animals is an established motif in folklore literature, as Moravcsik (1961: 99–103, 108– 110), who also looks at later variants of the Bucephalas story, has convincingly shown.49 Bucephalas is referred to in a few other chapters of Plutarch’s Alexander biography. Apart from two relatively insignificant passages (Alex. 16.7 and 32.7; on the latter see Lewis, in this volume), there is a paragraph on the abduction of the horse by barbarians (Alex. 44.3), which is similar to the report given by Arrian (see below), and a separate chapter on Bucephalas’ death (Alex. 61; transl. Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library): Ἐκ δὲ τῆς πρὸς Πῶρον μάχης καὶ ὁ Βουκεφάλας ἐτελεύτησεν, οὐκ εὐθύς, ἀλλ᾿ ὕστερον, ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι λέγουσιν ἀπὸ τραυμάτων θεραπευόμενος, ὡς δὲ Ὀνησίκριτος, διὰ γῆρας ὑπέρπονος γενόμενος· τριάκοντα γὰρ ἐτῶν ἀποθανεῖν αὐτόν. ἐδήχθη δ᾿ ἰσχυρῶς Ἀλέξανδρος, οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ συνήθη καὶ φίλον ἀποβεβληκέναι νομίζων· καὶ πόλιν οἰκίσας ἐπ᾿ αὐτῷ παρὰ τὸν Ὑδάσπην Βουκεφαλίαν προσηγόρευσε. “After the battle with Porus, too, Bucephalas died, not at once, but some time afterwards, as most writers say, from wounds for which he was under treatment, but according to Onesicritus, from old age, having become quite worn out; for he was thirty years old when he died. His death grieved Alexander mightily, who felt that he had lost nothing less than a comrade and friend; he also built a city in his memory on the banks of the Hydaspes and called it Bucephalia.”

Plutarch is careful to indicate what he found in the variant sources on the reasons for the horse’s death, but seems to give preference to Onesicritus’ account.50 By providing a more specific historical context, he also narrows down

_____ 49 The fairly topical character of the story makes it somewhat difficult to agree with Hammond (1993: 21–22), who finds the account “so vivid that it must have come ultimately from an eyewitness. (…) The mastering of Bucephalus was told by someone who understood horses as well as A[lexander] himself did. The details are convincing.” The scene was nonetheless powerful enough to inspire later painters such as André Castaigne (The Taming of Bucephalus, 1888/89) and François Schommer (Alexandre le Grand domptant Bucéphale, c. 1900), to name but two examples (see appendix: Figures 1 and 2). 50 For a discussion of this passage and competing versions of the horse’s death in other authors, see Hammond (1993: 110–113).

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the time of Bucephalas’ death. Such a meticulous approach corroborates that this is not just any animal, but a rather unique creature. However, what is perhaps most intriguing in this passage is Plutarch’s description of Alexander’s sentiments, who is said to have seen the horse as his “comrade and friend” and to have commemorated him through the foundation of a city named after him.51 This puts Bucephalas more or less on the same level as a human being, without actually anthropomorphising him.52 It should be added that the paragraph on the horse’s death also contains a brief remark on Alexander’s dog Peritas for whom the king felt love and founded a city after the animal’s death.53 Although the information given here is very condensed, the pattern is similar to the Bucephalas story, and it likewise underlines that Alexander was capable of deep emotions for animals and that he viewed them as his companions. Plutarch used such evidence not simply to tell his readers about the lives of animals, although he did take a lively interest in them, as is shown in particular by his treatises De sollertia animalium and Bruta animalia ratione uti (see e.g. Giebel 2003: 198–208; further Newmyer, in this volume), but also De esu carnium. The stories also enabled him to draw a nuanced portrayal of Alexander and to offer a counterbalance to the king as a warrior which would exhibit his personal feelings and thus show the more humane side of a celebrated public figure.54 A slightly different approach is taken by Arrian in the fifth book of his Anabasis. He dedicates three coherent paragraphs to a miniature biography of Bucephalas which starts with his death at the age of thirty years. Like Plutarch,

_____ 51 On Bucephalas’ death and the foundation of the city named after him, see also Pliny the Elder, Nat. hist. 8.154 (without direct reference to the city’s name), and Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 5.2.4–5 (where the city is called ‘Bucephalon’ instead of ‘Bucephalia’). Pliny even speaks of a funeral procession headed by the king: (…) rex defuncto ei duxit exequias urbemque tumulo circumdedit nomine eius. On horse burials in that period, see Antikas & Alifakiotis (2002). 52 The word συνήθη is quite strong; it implies living together and suggests shared habits or even intimacy. For that reason, Perrin’s translation (“comrade”) is perhaps a bit weak and might be replaced with “intimate”. 53 Plutarch, Alex. 61: λέγεται δὲ καὶ κύνα Περίταν ὄνομα τεθραμμένον ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ στεργόμενον ἀποβαλὼν κτίσαι πόλιν ἐπώνυμον. τοῦτο δὲ Σωτίων φησὶ Ποτάμωνος ἀκοῦσαι τοῦ Λεσβίου. It is unlikely that any of the dogs mentioned in conjunction with Alexander the Great by Pliny the Elder (Nat. hist. 8.149–150), Diodorus Siculus (Hist. 17.92), Plutarch (De soll. anim. 15 970f), and Aelian (De nat. anim. 8.1) are identical with Peritas. 54 See also Sonnabend (2002: 168): “So ist Plutarch eine wahre Fundgrube für antike Anekdoten und Pointen, die (…) alle den Hintergrund haben, Charaktere zu erhellen (…). Denn gerade die Anekdoten (…) lassen die Größen der Antike eben nicht nur als unnahbare Heroen, sondern auch als Menschen erscheinen.”

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Arrian emphasises the companionship between Alexander and his horse who had experienced numerous exertions and dangers with his master in war scenarios and did not allow anyone else to mount him. The special status of the animal is underscored by the fact that the city in which he died was named after him – an act through which Alexander paid tribute to his faithful companion.55 A few words are added on the horse’s outward appearance and character, and on the meaning and origin of his name, but Arrian admits that the sources he relies upon for those details do not provide the same kind of information.56 The author concludes his account with an anecdote also found in Plutarch,57 which is suitable enough to illustrate the meaning and value that Bucephalas had for Alexander (Anab. 5.19.6; transl. Peter A. Brunt, Loeb Classical Library): οὗτος ὁ ἵππος ἐν τῇ Οὐξίων χώρᾳ ἀφανὴς ἐγένετο Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος προεκήρυξεν ἀνὰ τὴν χώραν πάντας ἀποκτενεῖν Οὐξίους, εἰ μὴ ἀπάξουσιν αὐτῷ τὸν ἵππον· καὶ ἀπήχθη εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τῷ κηρύγματι. τοσήδε μὲν σπουδὴ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ ἀμφ᾿ αὐτὸν ἦν, τόσος δὲ Ἀλεξάνδρου φόβος τοῖς βαρβάροις. καὶ ἐμοὶ ἐς τοσόνδε τετιμήσθω ὁ Βουκεφάλας οὗτος Ἀλεξάνδρου ἕνεκα. “In the Uxian country Alexander once lost him, and issued a proclamation throughout the country that he would kill every Uxian unless they brought him back his horse; he was brought back immediately after the proclamation. Such was Alexander’s devotion to him, and such was the terror he inspired in the barbarians. So much I had to say in praise of this Bucephalas for Alexander’s sake.”

_____ 55 Arrian, Anab. 5.19.4–5: Ἵνα δὲ ἡ μάχη ξυνέβη καὶ ἔνθεν ὁρμηθεὶς ἐπέρασε τὸν Ὑδάσπην ποταμὸν πόλεις ἔκτισεν Ἀλέξανδρος. καὶ τὴν μὲν Νίκαιαν τῆς νίκης τῆς κατ᾿ Ἰνδῶν ἐπώνυμον ὠνόμασε, τὴν δὲ Βουκεφάλαν ἐς τοῦ ἵππου τοῦ Βουκεφάλα τὴν μνήμην, ὃς ἀπέθανεν αὐτοῦ, οὐ βληθεὶς πρὸς οὐδενός, ἀλλὰ ὑπὸ καύματος τε καὶ ἡλικίας (ἦν γάρ ἀμφὶ τὰ τριάκοντα ἔτη) καματηρὸς γενόμενος, πολλὰ δὲ πρόσθεν ξυγκαμών τε καὶ συγκινδυνεύσας Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, ἀναβαινόμενός τε πρὸς μόνου Ἀλεξάνδρου [ὁ Βουκεφάλας οὗτος], ὅτι τοὺς ἄλλους πάντας ἀπηξίου ἀμβάτας. 56 Arrian, Anab. 5.19.5: καὶ μεγέθει μέγας καὶ τῷ θυμῷ γενναῖος. σημεῖον δέ οἱ ἦν βοὸς κεφαλὴ ἐγκεχαραγμένη, ἐφ᾿ ὅτῳ καὶ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦτο λέγουσιν ὅτι ἔφερεν· οἱ δὲ λέγουσιν ὅτι λευκὸν σῆμα εἶχεν ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς, μέλας ὢν αὐτός, ἐς βοὸς κεφαλὴν μάλιστα εἰκασμένον. Further sources dealing with the horse’s name are discussed by Anderson (1930: 3–7). 57 Plutarch, Alex. 44.3: Ἐνταῦθα τῶν βαρβάρων τινὲς ἀπροσδοκήτως περιτυχόντες τοῖς ἄγουσι τὸν ἵππον αὐτοῦ τὸν Βουκεφάλαν λαμβάνουσιν. ὁ δὲ ἤνεγκεν οὐ μετρίως, ἀλλὰ κήρυκα πέμψας ἠπείλησε πάντας ἀποκτενεῖν μετὰ τέκνων καὶ γυναικῶν, εἰ τὸν ἵππον αὐτῷ μὴ ἀναπέμψειαν. ἐπεὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν ἵππον ἄγοντες ἧκον καὶ τὰς πόλεις ἐγχειρίζοντες, ἐχρήσατο φιλανθρώπως πᾶσι καὶ τοῦ ἵππου λύτρα τοῖς λαβοῦσιν ἔδωκεν. On the differences between Plutarch and other sources on this incident, see Hammond (1993: 77–78).

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The king’s threat to kill the inhabitants of an entire region is a drastic but effective measure, justified by Alexander’s high esteem (σπουδή) for his horse. His attachment to Bucephalas is well appreciated by Arrian who stresses in the final sentence that this passage is to be understood as a homage to the animal. Although the testimonies presented by Plutarch and Arrian are of a rather different nature, they have in common that they portray Bucephalas as “the equine counterpart of Alexander” (Anderson 1930: 1), the exceptional animal companion of a powerful leader figure whose life is worth reporting, though perhaps not quite to the same extent as the life of Alexander himself.58 This symbiosis has also been captured by the Alexander mosaic (c. 150‒100 B.C., Pompeii, Casa del Fauno) and the Alexander sarcophagus (c. 325 B.C., Sidon, Lebanon) which show the king together with his horse. The most obvious model for ancient literary sources on Bucephalas such as Plutarch and Arrian may have been the portrayal of heroes’ horses in Homer’s Iliad, in particular of Achilles’ horse Xanthus who prophesies his master’s death at the end of Book 19 (Il. 19.404–418).59 And it is indeed telling that a parallel between Alexander and Achilles is evoked several times in Arrian’s Anabasis and in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander.60 In Arrian, the Macedonian king’s emulation of the Homeric character, as indicated for instance by his visit to Achilles’ tomb (Anab. 1.12.1–2) or by his grief for his deceased friend Hephaestion who is to resemble Patroclus (Anab. 7.14.1–4), forcefully contributes to his own heroisation.61 The episode about Alexander paying tribute to Achilles’ gravestone is also testified by Plutarch and conveys a similar impression.62

_____ 58 For a sociological analysis of present-day horse-human relationships, see the recent study by Birke & Hockenhull (2015), who state that “relationships are processes, they produce biographies: they both happen in context and create context themselves” (2015: 94). 59 See also Vergil, Aen. 11.89–90 on the horse Aethon mourning for his dead master Pallas. On horses in Homer’s Iliad, see Chomel (1900: esp. 90–95), Delebecque (1951), Schnapp-Gourbeillon (1981: 169–178), and Dumont (2001: 52–60), the latter of whom argues that in the heroic world “le cheval (…) est le compagnon, le serviteur noble, presque le confident” and “c’est un animal de prestige, voué à faire valoir la noblesse de son maître” (2001: 52). See also Körner (21930: 23–29), Rahn (1953/54: 295–296, 456, 458–459), Giebel (2003: 105–112), Griffith (2006: esp. 199–202, 313–314), and Gregory (2007: 195–200). For horses in later epic texts, in particular in the ‘Prose Lancelot’, see Ackermann-Arlt (1990). 60 On Achilles as Alexander’s model in Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Life of Alexander, see Hägg (2012: 125, 131). 61 See also Hamilton (1965: 118), Stadter (1980: 74–75, 103, 169), Tonnet (1988: 19–21, 69–70, 89, 526), and Hammond (1993: 138–140, 158, 218). 62 See Plutarch, Alex. 15.4–5. See also Plutarch, Alex. 5.8: ὁ δὲ τὸ σχῆμα τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ καὶ τὴν προσηγορίαν ὑποποιούμενος ἦν Λυσίμαχος, τῷ γένει Ἀκαρνάν, ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν ἔχων

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From a comment in Aelian it is apparent that the extraordinary character of the relationship between Bucephalas and Alexander was very well-known among the ancients, although it is by no means the only instance of a strong bond between a horse and a powerful leader figure, as the examples of the Roman emperor Hadrian and his horse Borysthenes, referred to in the introduction to this volume,63 and of several others such as Caesar, Augustus, a Scythian chieftain, and the kings Nicomedes, Antiochus and Dionysius attest.64 At the

_____ ἀστεῖον, ὅτι δ᾿ ἑαυτὸν μὲν ὠνόμαζε Φοίνικα, τὸν δὲ Ἀλέξανδρον Ἀχιλλέα, Πηλέα δὲ τὸν Φίλιππον, ἠγαπᾶτο καὶ δευτέραν εἶχε χώραν. 63 See Cassius Dio, Hist. 69.10.2, and Historia Augusta, Hadr. 20.12, together with the inscription on the horse’s tomb found in Apta in the province of Gallia Narbonensis (CIL XII 1122 [= CLE II 1522 Bücheler]). For the text and translation of the inscription, see further Duff & Duff (1934 [vol. 2]: 446–447) and Geist (21976: 153–154); see also Herrlinger (1930: 48–50). 64 Pliny the Elder offers a comprehensive list which begins with Alexander and Bucephalas (Nat. hist. 8.154) and then moves on to similar examples (Nat. hist. 8.155–158): nec Caesaris dictatoris quemquam alium recepisse dorso equus traditur, idemque similis humanis pedes priores habuisse, hac effigie locatus ante Veneris Genetricis aedem. fecit et divus Augustus equo tumulum, de quo Germanici Caesaris carmen est. Agrigenti conplurium equorum tumuli pyramides habent. equum adamatum a Samiramide usque in coitum Iuba auctor est. Scythici quidem equitatus equorum gloria strepunt: occiso regulo ex provocatione dimicantem hostem, cum ad spoliandum venisset, ab equo eius ictibus morsuque confectum (…). idem praesagiunt pugnam, et amissos lugent dominos: lacrimas interdum desiderio fundunt. interfecto Nicomede rege equos eius inedia vitam finivit. Phylarchus refert Centaretum e Galatis in proelio occiso Antiocho potitum equo eius conscendisse ovantem, at illum indignatione accensum domitis frenis ne regi posset praecipitem in abrupta isse exanimatumque una; Philistus a Dionysio relictum in caeno haerentem, ut se evellisset, secutum vestigia domini examine apium iubae inhaerente, eoque ostento tyrannidem a Dionysio occupatam. See also Silius Italicus, Pun. 10.454–475 on Cloelius and his horse. ‒ What Pliny writes about Caesar and his horse in the above passage (Nat. hist. 8.155) is somewhat reminiscent of Plutarch’s report on Alexander and Bucephalas, albeit much more compressed. Conspicuously, there is nothing on such a special horse in Plutarch’s parallel Life of Caesar, apart from brief references to horsemanship having been easy for him from boyhood (Caes. 17.4; similarly Suetonius, Div. Iul. 57) and to a (nameless) horse being brought to him shortly before a fight (Caes. 18.2). During the latter incident, Caesar does not have time to devote any attention to the animal and goes straight against the enemy, and although he does say that he wants to use the horse for the pursuit after his victory, no further reference is made to this animal later on in the text. However, there is an account very similar to, but slightly more elaborate than that of Pliny the Elder in Suetonius’ Life of Caesar (Div. Iul. 61): utebatur autem equo insigni, pedibus prope humanis et in modum digitorum ungulis fissis, quem natum apud se, cum haruspices imperium orbis terrae significare domino pronuntiassent, magna cura aluit nec patientem sessoris alterius primus ascendit; cuius etiam instar pro aede Veneris Genetricis postea dedicavit. Perhaps Plutarch was simply not aware of these details, for otherwise he would have been likely to include them, in particular since they would have constituted an interesting analogy to Alexander and Bucephalas. Or was

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beginning of a chapter in which Aelian is about to give some examples of horses’ devotion to their masters, he states that he does not want to repeat a story that is “current everywhere”.65 Similarly, he decides to avoid a comparable case, namely the report about the horse of Antiochus Soter, founder of the Seleucid dynasty (reigned 280‒261 B.C.), who was avenged by the animal after being killed in battle by the Gaul Centoarates.66 Instead, he prefers to narrate the less famous story about the handsome young Athenian Socles and his horse (De nat. anim. 6.44; transl. Alwyn F. Scholfield, Loeb Classical Library): Σωκλῆς δὲ ἄρα (οὐ γάρ τί που πολλοὶ τόνδε μοι δοκοῦσιν ἐγνωκέναι) Ἀθηναῖος μὲν ἦν, καλὸς δὲ καὶ ἐδόκει καὶ ἐπεφύκει. οὗτος οὖν ἐπρίατο ἵππον ὡραῖον μὲν καὶ αὐτόν, ἐρωτικὸν δὲ ἰσχυρῶς καὶ οἷον σοφώτερον ἢ κατὰ τοὺς ἄλλους ἵππους. οὐκοῦν ἐρᾷ τοῦ δεσπότου δριμύτατα, καὶ προσιόντος ἐφριμάττετο καὶ ἐπικροτοῦντος ἐφρυάττετο, καὶ ἀναβαίνοντος ἑαυτὸν παρεῖχεν εὐπειθῆ, καὶ παρεστῶτος κατὰ πρόσωπον ὁ δὲ ὑγρὸν ἑώρα. καὶ ταῦτα μὲν ἐρωτικὰ ὄντα ἤδη ὅμως τερπνὰ ἐδόκει· ἐπεὶ δὲ ἦν ὥς τι καὶ δρασείων ἐς τὸ μειράκιον προπετέστερος, καὶ διέρρει λόγος ὑπὲρ ἀμφοῖν ἀτοπώτερος, ὁ Σωκλῆς οὐκ ἐνεγκὼν τὸ ἀπόφημον, ὡς ἐραστὴν ἀκόλαστον μισήσας ἀπημπόλησε τὸν ἵππον. ὁ δὲ οὐ φέρων τὴν ἐρημίαν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ καλοῦ, ἑαυτὸν τοῦ ζῆν ἀπήλλαξε λιμῷ βιαιοτάτῳ. “Socles then, about whom not many seem to know, was an Athenian who was esteemed, and indeed was, a comely boy. Now he bought a horse, handsome too like its master but of a violently amorous disposition and with a far sharper eye than other horses. Hence it conceived a passionate love for its master, and when he approached, it would snort; and if he patted it, it would neigh; when he mounted, it would be docile; when he stood before it, it would cast languishing glances at him. These actions already savoured of love, but were thought pleasing. When however the horse, becoming too reckless, seemed to be meditating an assault upon the boy, and tales about the pair of a too monstrous nature began to circulate, Socles would not tolerate the slander, and in his detestation of a licentious lover sold the horse. But the animal could not bear to be separated from the beautiful boy and ended its days by a rigorous starvation.”

_____ the omission intentional, conducive to creating the impression of Alexander having a much stronger emotional rapport to animals than Caesar? The fact that these two Lives were published as parallel pieces does indeed invite comparison (including on an ethical level), but it may be questioned whether this also extends to the aspect of love for animals. On Plutarch, Caes. 17.4 and 18.2, see also Pelling (2011: 216, 225–226). 65 On Aelian, see Fögen (2009b: esp. 49–50, 59–61), with further references, to which Smith (2014) may now be added (see the review by Fögen 2016d). 66 Aelian, De nat. anim. 6.44: Ἵππος εἰ τυγχάνοι κηδεμονίας, ἀμείβεται τὸν εὐεργέτην εὐνοίᾳ τε καὶ φιλίᾳ. Ἵππος εἰ τυγχάνοι κηδεμονίας, ἀμείβεται τὸν εὐεργέτην εὐνοίᾳ τε καὶ φιλίᾳ. καὶ ὁποῖος μὲν ἦν ὁ Βουκεφάλας ἐς Ἀλέξανδρον διαρρεῖ πανταχόσε ὁ λόγος, καὶ οὔ μοι λέγειν αὐτὸν ἥδιόν ἐστι. καὶ τὸν Ἀντιόχου δὲ ἵππον τὸν τιμωρήσαντα τῷ δεσπότῃ καὶ ἀποκτείναντα τὸν Γαλάτην ὅσπερ οὖν ἀπέσφαξε τὸν Ἀντίοχον ἐν τῇ μάχῃ (ὄνομα δὲ τῷ Γαλάτῃ Κεντοαράτης ἦν) ἐῶ καὶ τοῦτον.

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Given the accumulation of words derived from the verb ἐρᾶν and the horse’s strong physical reaction to his master’s presence, the emphasis on the sexual nature of the animal’s emotions is impossible to ignore. And although the young man and the horse have a remarkable beauty in common, the text signals from the beginning that this love is excessive (see the words ἰσχυρῶς, δριμύτατα and ἀκόλαστον); it is also one-directional, and eventually Socles himself finds the animal’s behaviour unacceptable and decides to get rid of it in order to avoid a bad reputation.67 This account, which ends with the tragic suicide of the horse,68 touches upon a taboo that was widespread in the ancient world: sexual intercourse between humans and animals.69

_____ 67 One may compare this story to a passage in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses where a sadistic boy falsely accuses the donkey Lucius of his excessive lust towards humans (Met. 7.21): Ut quemque enim viatorem prospexerit, sive illa scitula mulier seu virgo nubilis seu tener puellus est, ilico disturbato gestamine, nonnunquam etiam ipsis stramentis abiectis, furens incurrit et homines amator talis appetit, et humi prostratis illis inhians illicitas atque incognitas temptat libidines et ferinas voluptates aversaque Venere invitat ad nuptias. Nam imaginem etiam savii mentiendo ore improbo compulsat ac morsicat. Quae res nobis non mediocris lites atque iurgia, immo forsitan et crimina pariet (…). See also Met. 7.22: Denique unus ex illis: ‘Quin igitur publicum istum maritum’ inquit ‘immo communem omnium adulterum illis suis monstruosis nuptiis condignam victimamus hostiam?’. Later on, the donkey does have sexual intercourse with a wealthy lady (Met. 10.19–22), but with the woman taking the initiative, for which she is compared to Pasiphae (Met. 10.19); on that scene, see e.g. Goguey (2003: 59–60) and Hindermann (2011: 20–26). On the Metamorphoses, see below. 68 Other examples of animal suicide can be found in Aristotle, Hist. anim. VIII 47 631a1–8 (stallion); Pliny the Elder, Nat. hist. 8.143–144 (dogs), 8.156 (horse), 8.158 (horse) and 10.18 (eagle); Plutarch, Coniug. praec. 45 144e, De superst. 5 167c (tiger), De soll. anim. 14 970c (dog and eagle) and 36 984f (dolphin); Athenaeus, Deipn. 9 388c (bird Porphyrion); Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.7 (mare and her foal, after being forced by their owner to mate), 6.25 (dogs), 6.29 (eagle), 7.28 (dog), 7.40 (dogs), 10.41 (Eupolis’ dog), and 11.13 (Daphnis’ dogs); and Nonnus, Dion. 47.219–245 (Erigone’s dog). See also Fögen (2015: 23 n. 11), with further literature. 69 On the Socles episode, see Williams (2013: 218, 230–231). See also Griffith (2006: 328): “Aelian’s narrative seems to compliment the horse on its good taste in noticing Socles’ beauty; indeed their erotic affair, it seems, was initially decorous and even somewhat mutual, similar to that between any human erastes/eromenos pair. But it went a little too far. The conclusion of the story confirms the essential nobility of the lovesick horse (…).” However, Griffith’s expression “a little too far” is a clear understatement of what Aelian’s text actually says. In particular words and phrases such as ἐρωτικὸν δὲ ἰσχυρῶς, διέρρει λόγος ὑπὲρ ἀμφοῖν ἀτοπώτερος, τὸ ἀπόφημον, and ἐραστὴν ἀκόλαστον μισήσας do not suggest that the Greeks and Romans would have viewed this horse as ‘noble’. At least with regard to Aelian, Hindermann (2011: 19) is thus wrong to claim that “Zoophilie, die vom Tier ausgeht, (…) erfährt (…) in keinem Fall explizite oder implizite Kritik.” See also Korhonen (2012: 73, 74, 76).

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For the purposes of this paper, it is crucial that the episode about Socles and his horse is introduced by a reference to Bucephalas and Alexander. However short this prelude may be, it does not simply fulfil the purely rhetorical function of a praeteritio; through its juxtaposition with the Socles story, it may also reflect the perception that the strong attachment between animal and human is not wholly unlikely to have an erotic or even sexual component. Such an association is not directly suggested by the above passages from Plutarch or Arrian, but it might be mirrored by Aelian’s chapter which also indicates the transgressive nature of such relationships.70

5 Corinna’s (unnamed) parrot in Ovid’s Amores 2.6 Some of the instances of ancient texts that resemble most closely what one may call ‘animal biography’ fall under the category of the so-called epicedion, the funerary song or dirge for deceased animals. One of the most extensive examples is Ovid’s poem on the dead parrot of Corinna, the beloved of the amator (Amores 2.6).71 To some extent this text is indebted to the genre of the funerary oration (laudatio funebris), which usually praised the exemplary behaviour and character of the deceased human. Such speeches addressed a variety of standard themes such as origin (ortus), family background (genus), outward appearance (forma corporis), education and talent (ingenium), public posts and hon-

_____ 70 That it is indeed a taboo is also confirmed by De nat. anim. 4.8, the story of a man falling in love with a young mare. That it constitutes the transgression of a natural boundary is difficult to disregard: καὶ τὰ μὲν πρῶτα ἐγκαρτερεῖν, τελευτῶντα δὲ ἐπιτολμῆσαι τῷ λέχει τῷ ξένῳ καὶ ὁμιλεῖν αὐτῇ. The end of the story is similarly revealing: the man gets killed by the mare’s foal which observed their intercourse, and even after his death, his corpse is dug up and maimed by the foal. On this report, see Griffith (2006: 328–329) and Korhonen (2012: 74); see also Williams (2013: 229–230, with n. 71). One may compare De nat. anim. 6.42, an anecdote about the sexual relationship between the goatherd Crathis and a she-goat, which even results in the birth of a hybrid creature (γίνεται δὲ ἐκ τῆς ὁμιλίας τῆς πρὸς τὴν αἶγα παιδίον, καὶ ἦν αἲξ τὰ σκέλη, τὸ πρόσωπον ἄνθρωπος); in the end Crathis is killed by the leading he-goat of the flock who had become jealous of the goatherd. On “zoophilia” in the ancient world more generally, see e.g. Goguey (2003: 59–62), Hindermann (2011), and Korhonen (2012), with further references. 71 On this poem, see Fögen (2007b: 62–64), with detailed references to secondary literature (esp. in 63 n. 83).

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ours (habiti honores), and character (mores).72 Ovid dwells upon the bird’s exotic origin (India), the beautiful colours of its feathers and its beak, and its numerous virtues, in particular its imitative skills which are underscored from the very first line onwards (Am. 2.6.1: imitatrix ales) and resumed throughout the poem. The parrot is depicted as so garrulous that it hardly found time to eat (Am. 2.6.29–30); it had a voice adept in mimicry of sounds (Am. 2.6.18) and could moreover render human words (Am. 2.6.23–24). Among its other qualities, Ovid refers to its peace-loving nature (Am. 2.6.25–28) and its frugality (Am. 2.6.29–32). Through the comparison with other, less virtuous birds the parrot is extolled for its outstanding character. The connection with its loving owner, the girl Corinna, is brought out in particular in the final part of the poem: the parrot’s last words were addressed to her (Am. 2.6.43–48),73 and even the inscription on his gravestone thematises Corinna’s love for the bird and its ‘linguistic’ skills (Am. 2.6.59–62). The question is, of course, to what extent this dirge should be taken seriously. In particular a comparison with Catullus’ poem on Lesbia’s dead sparrow (Carm. 3) may suggest that Ovid is parodying the established elements of the funerary song. Not only is the parrot highly anthropomorphised, it also has certain comic traits, especially his extreme garrulity. At the same time, it cannot be denied that the text is not without moving elements and that it serves as a consolation for the elegiac puella for the loss of her pet. It does not completely differ from other dirges on deceased animals, and, with its short epigram at the end (Am. 2.6.61–62), it may be linked with numerous poems and inscriptions on ancient tombs for animals which revere and glorify their special skills and talents.74 To apprehend the intricate character of this poem, one may agree with the following statement of Amat (2002: 123): “Le poème d’Ovide unit une sympathie véritable à une pointe d’ironie, destinée à distraire la jeune fille de sa tristesse.” Moreover, one may argue that Corinna’s parrot is recognisable as an individual, although Ovid does not even mention the animal’s name. The poem is

_____ 72 On these topoi, see Esteve-Forriol (1962: 131–136). On the laudatio funebris more generally, see Kierdorf (1980), Sonnabend (2002: 87–88), and Hägg (2012: 234–236). 73 On the significance of ultima verba in ancient literature, see Fögen (2015: 25–26, with n. 19, 27 n. 25, 33–34). 74 See e.g. Herrlinger (1930: esp. 106–120), Geist (21976: 150–154), Toynbee (1973: 110–122), Lilja (1976: 111–116, 123–124), Perfahl (1983: 88–90), Bodson (2000: passim, esp. 31–33), Amat (2002: 62–63, 66–67), and Goguey (2003: 63–68). See also n. 63 (above) on the tomb of Hadrian’s horse Borysthenes and the sixth section of Lewis’ article (in this volume).

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long enough to draw a memorable picture of the bird, and, to do so, it utilises a number of topical elements from the literary tradition of the funerary speech. It is also much longer and more detailed than Catullus’ sparrow poem (Carm. 3) with its eighteen lines or most other epigrammatic poems and inscriptions on deceased animals. Nonetheless, it is debatable whether this is really enough to call it a proper ‘biography’.

6 The ‘donkey’ Lucius in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses Apart from the above examples, there is one particularly intriguing text that deserves consideration for the purposes of this paper: Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, which relates the story of a human temporarily transformed into a donkey.75 This is, of course, a special case: it is not a separate animal associated with a human, but the human himself changed into an animal; it is therefore a hybrid form with human characteristics and rationality. Nonetheless, this extensive tale, which is normally seen as a representative of the Roman novel, may also be classified as an animal’s ‘autobiography’.76 At any rate, it is a unique literary experiment which forces the narrator to adopt the donkey’s perspective and describe the events that he experiences as seen through the animal’s eyes.77

_____ 75 Scholarship on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has seen a real explosion in the past thirty years or so. See e.g. the monographs by Tatum (1979), Winkler (1985), Schlam (1992), Harrison (2000: 9–10, 210–259), Frangoulidis (2001), Graverini (2007 [2012]), Kirichenko (2010), Harrison (2013), and Tilg (2014); see also Walsh (1970: esp. 141–223). For a convenient summary of the plot of the novel, see Harrison (2000: 211–215), further Tatum (1979: 23–24, 37–38, 40, 47–48, 51, 58– 59, 68, 71–72, 73–74, 76–77, 80–81). On Apuleius’ numerous other works, both extant and lost, see Harrison (2000: 10–38); these works included zoological writings, presumably following the model of Aristotle (see Harrison 2000: 29–30). 76 On modern animal autobiographical writing, see the contributions in DeMello (2013b), who writes in her introduction (De Mello 2013a: 10): “(…) what is important about literary representations of animal minds isn’t whether or not they’re accurate; it’s what they reveal about how humans think about other animals, and what the consequences of that thinking is.” 77 On donkeys in the ancient world, see Olck (1907), Opelt (1966), Toynbee (1973: 193–197), Bodson (1986), Griffith (2006: esp. 205, 213–228), Gregory (2007), and Calder (2008); on donkeys and mules in an agricultural context, see e.g. Bodson (1986: 7–9) and Fögen (2016c: 336). Opelt (1966: 571) rightly says that the donkey was “billiger als das Pferd, daher für Arme erschwinglich.” With Olck (1907: 650), it is important to remember that “der E.[sel] schon im

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In the first book of the Metamorphoses, the protagonist of the novel, Lucius, comes to Thessaly, the homeland of magic and witchcraft. He persuades the maid of a sorceress (Photis), with whom he has a sexual affair, to transform him into a bird, but the experiment fails and Lucius is turned into a donkey who can only regain his human shape if he eats roses.78 However, before he finally achieves this goal, he has to undergo numerous adventures, which may be read as a donkey’s Odyssey.79 The final book of the Metamorphoses (Book 11) culminates in Lucius’ initiation into the mystery cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis. It is thus clear that Apuleius has composed a complex text which can be interpreted in various different ways: it combines elements of the picaresque novel weaving together numerous individual stories, the account of someone’s personal development and salvation (in the sense of the modern Entwicklungsroman), and certain philosophical and religious ideas.80

_____ Altertum mit derselben Mißachtung behandelt wurde, wie heute meist in Europa.” See also Opelt (1966: esp. 572–579), Griffith (2006: 227–228), Gregory (2007: 193–194), and Bodson (1986: 8): “Entêté, stupide, paresseux, ridicule, telles sont les épithètes qui lui sont régulièrement décernées dans les fables, les proverbes, les récits romanesques ou les épisodes mythologiques (…).” To these character traits commonly associated with donkeys one should add lasciviousness (see e.g. Opelt 1966: 572–574, 586, 589). On the symbolic value of the ass within the Isis cult, see Tatum (1979: 43–47); in Met. 11.6 the instructions given by the goddess Isis to Lucius before his re-transformation into a human include the following command: pessimae mihique iam dudum detestabilis beluae istius corio te protinus exue. Lucius himself says in Met. 7.3: Ego denique, quem saevissimus eius [sc. Fortunae] impetus in bestiam et extremae sortis quadripedem deduxerat cuiusque casus etiam quovis iniquissimo dolendus atque miserandus merito videretur (…). See also Met. 11.13 (scene of Lucius’ re-transformation into a human): protinus mihi delabitur deformis et ferina facies. 78 See Apuleius, Met. 3.25 (Photis’ words): Sed bene quod facilior reformationis huius medela suppeditat. Nam rosis tantum demorsicatis exibis asinum statimque in meum Lucium postliminio redibis. 79 On Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Homer’s Odyssey, see e.g. Tatum (1979: 18–19, 35–36, 75–76, 89–91), Schlam (1992: 19–21, 68–69), Harrison (2000: 222–223), Graverini (2012: 141–154), Harrison (2013: 125–134, 257–258), and Tilg (2014: 52–54, 94–95), with references to previous scholarship. 80 Book 11 of the Metamorphoses has been interpreted in various ways. While some scholars view it as satire, others have pleaded for a serious religious meaning. For details, see e.g. Walsh (1970: 143–146, 149, 174–176, 182–189), Tatum (1979: 19–20, 81–91), Schlam (1992: 1–4, 8–9, 25, 38–39, 113–125), Harrison (2000: 210 n. 4, 235–252, 259), Frangoulidis (2001: 149–150, 161–176), Graverini (2012: 51–94, 118–132), Harrison (2013: 26–27, 108–122), and Tilg (2014: 7–18, 85–105, 116–125, 149–150, 155–158); see also Kirichenko (2010: esp. 4–6, 71–105, 135–141).

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Repeatedly, Lucius’ unbound curiosity is referred to,81 and it is this inquisitive attitude, in particular his interest in anything related to magic, which ultimately leads him into trouble. After his arrival in Thessaly, he has the impression that every object he perceives, whether animate or inanimate, is the result of the transformation of a human being (Met. 2.1; transl. J. Arthur Hanson, Loeb Classical Library): Nec fuit in illa civitate quod aspiciens id esse crederem quod esset, sed omnia prorsus ferali murmure in aliam effigiem translata, ut et lapides quos offenderem de homine duratos, et aves quas audirem indidem plumatas, et arbores quae pomerium ambirent similiter foliatas, et fontanos latices de corporibus humanis fluxos crederem; iam statuas et imagines incessuras, parietes locuturos, boves et id genus pecua dicturas praesagium, de ipso vero caelo et iubaris orbe subito venturum oraculum. “Nothing I looked at in that city seemed to me to be what it was; but I believed that absolutely everything had been transformed into another shape by some deadly mumbojumbo: the rocks I hit upon were petrified human beings, the birds I heard were feathered humans, the trees that surrounded the city wall were humans with leaves, and the liquid in the fountains had flowed from human bodies. Soon the statues and pictures would begin to walk, the walls to speak, the oxen and other animals of that sort to prophesy; and from the sky itself and the sun’s orb there would suddenly come an oracle.”

To some extent, this statement anticipates Lucius’ own fate. But there are other forebodings of his transformation into an animal. For example, when Lucius visits the house of his aunt Byrrhena, he sees a statue of Actaeon being changed into a stag while watching the goddess Diana stepping into her bath (Met. 2.4). His aunt then remarks that everything he sees is “his own” – a comment which a knowledgeable reader can understand in two different ways, in particular when taken together with Byrrhena’s subsequent warning that Lucius watch out carefully for his host’s wife Pamphile who is a witch keen to seduce young and attractive men and not afraid of using magic to transform them into rocks or animals if they resist her.82 However, with her advice Byrrhena achieves the ex-

_____ 81 See esp. Apuleius, Met. 2.1: (…) anxius alioquin et nimis cupidus cognoscendi quae rara miraque sunt, reputansque me media Thessaliae loca tenere, quo artis magicae nativa cantamina totius orbis consono ore celebrentur, fabulamque illam optimi comitis Aristomenis de situ civitatis huius exortam, suspensus alioquin et voto simul et studio, curiose singula considerabam. On curiositas in the Metamorphoses, see e.g. Tatum (1979: 22, 34–36, 88–89), Schlam (1992: 48–57, 97–98, 119–120, 124–125), and Harrison (2000: 219, 221, 239, 252–253). 82 Apuleius, Met. 2.5: Dum haec identidem rimabundus eximie delector, “Tua sunt” ait Byrrhena “cuncta quae vides.” Et cum dicto ceteros omnes sermone secreto decedere praecipit. Quibus dispulsis omnibus, “Per hanc” inquit “deam, o Luci carissime, ut anxie tibi metuo et ut

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act opposite and kindles Lucius’ interest in magic even further. As is signalled in the text, Lucius is not prepared at all to exercise caution, but this also means that he will have to live with the consequences.83 The actual transformation of the protagonist happens in the final part of Book 3 of the Metamorphoses (3.22–25). Here is the key scene (Met. 3.24–25): Haec identidem asseverans summa cum trepidatione irrepit cubiculum et pyxidem depromit arcula. Quam ego amplexus ac deosculatus prius, utque mihi prosperis faveret volatibus deprecatus, abiectis propere laciniis totis, avide manus immersi et haurito plusculo cuncta corporis mei membra perfricui. Iamque alternis conatibus libratis bracchiis in avem similem gestiebam. Nec ullae plumulae nec usquam pinnulae, sed plane pili mei crassantur in setas, et cutis tenella duratur in corium, et in extimis palmulis perdito numero toti digiti coguntur in singulas ungulas, et de spinae meae termino grandis cauda procedit. Iam facies enormis et os prolixum et nares hiantes et labiae pendulae; sic et aures immodicis horripilant auctibus. Nec ullum miserae reformationis video solacium, nisi quod mihi iam nequeunti tenere Photidem natura crescebat. Ac dum salutis inopia cuncta corporis mei considerans non avem me sed asinum video, querens de facto Photidis, sed iam humano gestu simul et voce privatus, quod solum poteram, postrema deiecta labia, umidis tamen oculis obliquum respiciens ad illam tacitus expostulabam. “After repeating this recipe several times, she crept very nervously into the room and removed a jar from the box. First I embraced and kissed the jar and prayed to it to bless me with a lucky flight. Then I hastily threw off all my clothes, greedily plunged my hand into the jar, pulled out a largish daub, and rubbed my body all over. Next I spread out my arms and pumped them alternately, trying hard to become a bird like Pamphile. No down appeared, not a single feather. Instead, my body hair was thickening into bristles and my soft skin hardening into hide. At the ends of my palms my fingers were losing their number and being all compressed together into single hoofs, and from the end of my spine came forth a great tail. My face was immense now, mouth spread, nostrils gaping, lips sagging. My ears too grew immoderately long and bristly. I saw no consolation in my

_____ pote pignori meo longe provisum cupio, cave tibi, sed cave fortiter a malis artibus et facinorosis illecebris Pamphiles illius, quae cum Milone isto, quem dicis hospitem, nupta est. Maga primi nominis et omnis carminis sepulcralis magistra creditur, quae surculis et lapillis et id genus frivolis inhalatis omnem istam lucem mundi sideralis imis Tartari et in vetustum Chaos summergere novit. Nam simul quemque conspexerit speciosae formae iuvenem, venustate eius sumitur et ilico in eum et oculum et animum detorquet. Serit blanditias, invadit spiritum, amoris profundi pedicis aeternis alligat. Tunc minus morigeros et viles fastidio in saxa et in pecua et quodvis animal puncto reformat, alios vero prorsus exstinguit. (…). On this passage, see Harrison (2013: 34, 114, 141–143), with references to earlier secondary literature; see also Walsh (1970: 178) and Tatum (1979: 38–39). 83 Apuleius, Met. 2.6: At ego curiosus alioquin, ut primum artis magicae semper optatum nomen audivi, tantum a cautela Pamphiles afui ut etiam ultro gestirem tali magisterio me volens ampla cum mercede tradere et prorsus in ipsum barathrum saltu concito praecipitare.

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wretched metamorphosis except for the fact that, although I could not now embrace Photis, my generative organ was growing. Helplessly I examined every part of my body and saw that I was not a bird, but an ass. I wanted to complain about what Photis had done, but I lacked human gestures as well as words. Still, I did the only thing I could: I hung my lower lip, looked askance at her with moist eyes, and berated her in silence.”

Lucius’ reaction to his asinine shape, though lamentable on the surface, is without doubt rather comical from the reader’s point of view – not just because of his sudden lack of words, but also because of the reference to his enlarged sexual organ. Furthermore, the narrator’s explicit comment that he has retained his human intelligence makes his situation less tragic than it may appear at first sight.84 It is this gift of rational thinking that allows him to carefully ponder on an appropriate solution and to reject a response that would be typical of a donkey (Met. 3.26): Ego vero, quamquam perfectus asinus et pro Lucio iumentum, sensum tamen retinebam humanum. Diu denique ac multum mecum ipse deliberavi an nequissimam facinerosissimamque illam feminam spissis calcibus feriens et mordicus appetens necare deberem. Sed ab incepto temerario melior me sententia revocavit, ne morte multata Photide salutares mihi suppetias rursus exstinguerem. Deiecto itaque et quassanti capite ac demussata temporali contumelia, durissimo casui meo serviens ad equum illum vectorem meum probissimum in stabulum concedo, ubi alium etiam Milonis quondam hospitis mei asinum stabulantem inveni. “For my part, although I was a complete ass and a beast of burden instead of Lucius, I still retained my human intelligence; and so I held a long, earnest debate with myself concerning that utterly worthless and criminal woman. Should I kick her repeatedly with my hoofs, assault her with my teeth, and kill her? But that was a rash idea and better thinking brought me back to my senses, lest, by punishing Photis with death, I also destroy the assistance I needed for recovery. So, lowering and shaking my head, I silently swallowed my temporary humiliation, and accommodating myself to my harsh misfortune, I went off to the stable to join my horse, my most excellent mount.”

This is, of course, also a strategic device of the author, for if Lucius had lost his intellect (λόγος / ratio), he would no longer be able to tell his story. Nevertheless, as a donkey, he cannot speak and is limited to non-verbal communication, and when he does try to make himself understood, all he is able to produce is a bray-

_____ 84 But see Tatum (1979: 47): “A transformation at once amusing and ghastly: there is no difficulty in seeing it as simple poetic justice for all of Lucius’ rashness and curiosity (…). But devotees of the Isis cult would read a more sinister meaning into the metamorphosis.” On this scene, see also Tilg (2015: 16–18), who views Lucius’ transformation as “the beginning of a serious crisis of identity” (2015: 17).

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ing sound (see Met. 3.29 [quoted in n. 94, below], 7.3 and 8.29). Another comical effect is achieved by his attempt to share the stable with his horse: he presupposes that there is some kind of natural bond between animals and that his horse would recognise him and be hospitable towards him, but instead the horse and another donkey attack him when he tries to get close to their barley rations, which he had given to them himself when he was still human.85 However, it would be misguided to believe that such comical effects are the only function of Lucius’ transformation into a donkey. Rather, it also allows the author to confront the animal with situations that a human being might not normally experience, or at least not in the same way. Most of the other human characters of the novel do not know that the donkey is in fact a bewitched human; they will thus behave and say things in its presence as if no human observer were around. The first example of such a setting is the reaction of Lucius’ own slave when the donkey tries to reach garlands of roses through the window of his stable and is held back by the servant who gets very angry with the animal and beats him relentlessly (Met. 3.27; with Hanson’s translation slightly modified): Quod me pessima scilicet sorte conantem servulus meus, cui semper equi cura mandata fuerat, repente conspiciens, indignatus exsurgit, et “Quo usque tandem” inquit “cantherium patiemur istum paulo ante cibariis iumentorum, nunc etiam simulacris deorum infestum? Quin iam ego istum sacrilegum debilem claudumque reddam.” Et statim telum aliquod quaeritans temere fascem lignorum positum offendit, rimatusque frondosum fustem cunctis vastiorem, non prius miserum me tundere desiit quam, sonitu vehementi et largo strepitu percussis ianuis, trepido etiam rumore viciniae conclamatis latronibus profugit territus. “But as I was making the attempt ‒ this was bad luck, of course ‒ my slave, who had always been in charge of caring for my horse, noticed me immediately. He stood up angrily and exclaimed: ‘How long, pray, shall we put up with this old gelding who attacks first the animals’ food and now even the gods’ statues? No, I shall now maim and cripple that temple-robber!’ And as he quickly began to look round for some weapon, he stumbled on a bundle of sticks which happened to be lying there. Hunting out a leafy branch for a club, the thickest of them all, he began to beat poor me unceasingly, stopping only when he heard a crashing noise and the loud din of doors being battered, along with nearby cries of alarm and shouts of ‘Thieves! Thieves!’ At this he fled in terror.”

_____ 85 Apuleius, Met. 3.26: Atque ego rebar, si quod inesset mutis animalibus tacitum ac naturale sacramentum, agnitione ac miseratione quadam inductum equum illum meum hospitium ac loca lautia mihi praebiturum. Sed pro Iuppiter hospitalis et Fidei secreta numina! Praeclarus ille vector meus cum asino capita conferunt in meamque perniciem ilico consentiunt et, verentes scilicet cibariis suis, vix me praesepio videre proximantem: deiectis auribus iam furentes infestis calcibus insequuntur, et abigor quam procul ab hordeo, quod apposueram vesperi meis manibus illi gratissimo famulo.

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This is the kind of behaviour a slave would never exhibit towards his master. To some extent, the passage may also be interpreted as an indirect reflection on the widespread cruelty towards animals in the ancient world. In order to hold the donkey back, the slave would not have been forced to resort to this extremely brutal treatment, which is further illustrated through the adjective miserum (not rendered in Hanson’s original translation).86 At the same time, such incidents seem to mirror common practice in Roman farming and other dealings with animals used for work, as a passage on the lesser donkey (asellus) from Columella’s agricultural treatise De re rustica proves (De re rust. 7.1.1–3; see Fögen 2016c: 336). According to this testimony, this animal was particularly useful for the farmer because it was cheap, robust, satisfied with very little, and able to endure all kinds of hardship. Praised by Columella as a maxime necessarium instrumentum for every farm (De re rust. 7.1.3), it even tolerates bad treatment, as the following excerpt bears out (De re rust. 7.1.2; transl. Edward S. Forster & Edward H. Heffner, Loeb Classical Library): Tum imprudentis custodis negligentiam fortissime sustinet: plagarum et penuriae tolerantissimus: propter quae tardius deficit, quam ullum aliud armentum. Nam laboris et famis maxime patiens raro morbis afficitur. Huius animalis tam exiguae tutelae plurima et necessaria opera supra portionem respondent, cum et facilem terram qualis in Baetica totaque Libye sit levibus aratris proscindat, et non minima pondera vehiculo trahat. “Further, it endures most bravely the neglect of a careless master and tolerates blows and want most patiently; for which reasons it is slower in breaking down than any other animal used for ploughing, for, since it shows the utmost endurance of toil and hunger, it is rarely affected by disease. The performance by this animal of very many essential tasks beyond its share is as remarkable as the very little care which it requires, since it can both break up with a light plough easily worked soil, such as is found in Baetica and all over Libya, and can draw on vehicles loads which are far from being small.”

Columella’s voice is that of a country estate owner whose duty it is to look after the economic well-being of his farm.87 The ‘donkey’ Lucius, on the other hand,

_____ 86 With regard to modern animal autobiographical writing, see also De Mello (2013a: 8): “Another theme found in animal autobiographical writing is suffering. It should not surprise us that when animals are ultimately given a voice, even if that voice is a literary device, it sometimes articulates pain, neglect, or abuse.” 87 However, see already Semonides, fr. 7.43–46 West: τὴν δ᾽ ἔκ †τε σποδιῆς† καὶ παλιντριβέος ὄνου, / ἣ σύν τ᾽ ἀνάγκηι σύν τ᾽ ἐνιπῆισιν μόγις / ἔστερξεν ὦν ἅπαντα κἀπονήσατο / ἀρεστά. The passage is discussed by Gregory (2007: 202–206).

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articulates a rather different perception of the condition of work animals and indirectly censures their often violent and exploitative treatment. The topic of violence towards the ass recurs so frequently and is sometimes recounted so elaborately that the reader of the Metamorphoses is forced to reflect on these issues.88 An engagement with such matters is further stimulated by a passage at the beginning of the novel which exemplifies not only how Lucius, being on his way to Thessaly and still having his human shape, takes good care of his horse after an exhausting ride, but also how thoughtful and gentle he is with everything he does and how he even caresses the animal.89 Related to this are two scenes of mules and horses performing extremely hard and exhausting work in a grinding mill. Both passages, a shorter (Met. 7.15) and a longer one (Met. 9.10–13), give a graphic picture of the conditions of animals forced to do this kind of monotonous and unhealthy labour, which also exposes them to considerable danger. Their lack of freedom is enhanced through the direct comparison of the animals’ situation to ‘slavery’, and the

_____ 88 See in particular Apuleius, Met. 4.3–4 (a young man, a woman and eventually an entire village), 6.29–30 (robbers), and 7.17–20 (a sadistic boy torturing the donkey); the latter passage is an evocative ekphrasis of a human gone out of control, capable of devising all sorts of brutalities. See further Met. 6.25, 7.15, 7.25, 7.28, 8.30, 9.11 (quoted in n. 90), and 9.15. On the maltreatment of donkeys, see also Plautus, Pseud. 136: neque ego homines magis asinos numquam vidi, ita plagis costae callent; further Ovid, Am. 2.7.15–16: adspice, ut auritus miserandae sortis asellus / adsiduo domitus verbere lentus eat! The kindness that the donkey Lucius experiences from his last owner Thiasus (Met. 10.16–19) diverges markedly from the treatment that he has to suffer from others. At the same time, the keeper, a freedman to whom the animal has been entrusted, uses Lucius for his personal material gain: when Thiasus visits Corinth with Lucius, his overseer makes large sums of money by charging others to be admitted to the donkey who has turned out to be almost like a human and thus become a ‘celebrity’ whose performances people are eager to watch (Met. 10.19). The keeper even rents out the animal to a wealthy lady who wants to have sex with Lucius (Met. 10.19; see also n. 67, above). The man’s materialistic mindset is plainly brought to light in that passage: At ille nequaquam anxius ecquid posset de me suave provenire, lucro suo tantum contentus, annuit. See also Met. 10.23: Nec gravate magister meus voluptates ex eius arbitrio largiebatur, partim mercedes amplissimas acceptando, partim novum spectaculum domino praeparando. On the parallel to the sexual exploitation of human slaves, see Bradley (2000: 115–116). 89 Apuleius, Met. 1.2: Postquam ardua montium et lubrica vallium et roscida caespitum et glebosa camporum emersi, in equo indigena peralbo vehens, iam eo quoque admodum fesso, ut ipse etiam fatigationem sedentariam incessus vegetatione discuterem in pedes desilio, equi sudorem frontem curiose effrico, aures remulceo, frenos detraho, in gradum lenem sensim proveho, quoad lassitudinis incommodum alvi solitum ac naturale praesidium eliquaret. On Lucius’ horse, see also Met. 11.20.

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constant threat of being beaten is also touched upon.90 The more extensive of the two passages comprises a depressing account of the harmful impact that the work in the grinding mill has on equids (Met. 9.13): Iam de meo iumentario contubernio quid vel ad quem modum memorem? Quales illi muli senes vel cantherii debiles! Circa praesepium capita demersi contruncabant moles palearum, cervices cariosa vulnerum putredine follicantes, nares languidas adsiduo pulsu tussedinis hiulci, pectora copulae sparteae tritura continua exulcerati, costas perpetua castigatione ossium tenus renudati, ungulas multivia circumcursione in enorme vestigium porrecti, totumque corium veterno atque scabiosa macie exasperati. “As for my comrades, the animals, what can I say? How can I describe their condition? What a sight! Those old mules and feeble geldings stood round the manger with their heads sunk down, munching through piles of chaff; their necks sagged from the rotting decay of sores; their flabby nostrils were distended from constant coughing; their chests were ulcerated from the continual rubbing of the rope harnesses; their flanks were bare to the bone from everlasting whipping, their hoofs stretched out to abnormal dimensions from their multiple circling, and their entire hide rough with decay and mangy starvation.”

Although the language of this excerpt is highly rhetorical, it would be wrong to assume that its content is grossly exaggerated or even far from reality. Moreover, speaking as a human, Lucius is in fear of the consequences that the work in the mill might have on his own well-being.91 This evaluation of his personal circumstances may be read as an appeal to the reader to consider what it is like for an animal to be condemned to such an existence. However, one feels likewise reminded of the life of a Roman slave, and as Bradley (2000) has demon-

_____ 90 Apuleius, Met. 7.15: Sed ubi me procul a civitate gregarius ille perduxerat, nullae deliciae ac ne ulla quidem libertas excipit. Further Met. 9.11: Ibi complurium iumentorum multivii circuitus intorquebant molas ambage varia, nec die tantum, verum perpeti etiam nocte prorsus instabili machinarum vertigine lucubrabant pervigilem farinam. Sed mihi, ne rudimentum servitii perhorrescerem scilicet, novus dominus loca lautia prolixe praebuit. On beating, see the final part of Met. 9.11: Complures enim protinus baculis armati me circumsteterunt atque, ut eram luminibus obtectis securus etiamnunc, repente signo dato et clamore conserto, plagas ingerentes acervatim, adeo me strepitu turbulentant, ut cunctis consiliis abiectis ilico scitissime taeniae sparteae totus innixus discursus alacres obirem. One may compare Secundus of Tarentum, Anth. Pal. 9.301: Τίπτε τὸν ὀγκηστὴν βραδύπουν ὄνον ἄμμιγ᾽ ἐν ἵπποις / γυρὸν ἀλωειναῖς ἐξελάατε δρόμον; / οὐχ ἅλις, ὅττι μύλοιο περίδρομον ἄχθος ἀνάγκης / σπειρηδὸν σκοτόεις κυκλοδίωκτος ἔχω; / ἀλλ᾽ ἔτι καὶ πώλοισιν ἐρίζομεν. ἦ ῥ᾽ ἔτι λοιπὸν / νῦν μοι τὴν σκολιὴν αὐχένι γαῖαν ἀροῦν. Note that this epigram is also spoken by a donkey in the first person. 91 Apuleius, Met. 9.13: Talis familiae funestum mihi etiam metuens exemplum veterisque Lucii fortunam recordatus et ad ultimam salutis metam detrusus summisso capite maerebam.

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strated, the parallels evoked by Apuleius are hard to miss,92 especially in Met. 9.12–13 where Lucius’ description of his co-worker animals cited above is preceded by a grim portrayal of the human slaves toiling in the mill.93 With his animal shape, Lucius is furthermore able to observe the conduct and actions of the thieves who steal him in the above scene. The donkey thus manages to uncover their unethical and antisocial behaviour, including their bad treatment of animals. For instance, when Lucius tries to make himself understood and utters nothing but typical donkey sounds, the robbers flog him vigorously.94 On another occasion, he criticises their excessive and dissolute comportment during a meal and compares them to ‘half-beasts’ – a somewhat amusing dictum from the mouth of a donkey which plays with the notion of the sometimes rather vague boundary between animal and human.95 Further on in the novel, the ass proclaims even greater indignation at the sight of priests of the ‘Syrian Goddess’ (Atargatis) performing violent rites of self-laceration (Met. 8.27–28) and then being engaged in an ecstatic orgy (Met. 8.29). With his comments, Lucius the animal unmasks the priests’ feigned chastity and religious devotion.96 The donkey has similar scorn for the debauched and adulterous wife

_____ 92 See in particular Bradley (2000: 113): “the transformation of Lucius can be taken as a paradigmatic illustration of the animalization of the slave in real life, and as a guide to the meaning of animalization in the master-slave relationship.” 93 Apuleius, Met. 9.12: Dii boni, quales illic homunculi vibicibus lividis totam cutem depicti, dorsumque plagosum scissili centunculo magis inumbrati quam obtecti, nonnulli exiguo tegili tantum modo pubem iniecti, cuncti tamen sic tunicati, ut essent per pannulos manifesti, frontes litterati et capillum semirasi et pedes anulati, tum lurore deformes et fumosis tenebris vaporosae caliginis palpebras adesi atque adeo male luminati, et in modum pugilum, qui pulvisculo perspersi dimicant farinulenta cinere sordide candidati. 94 Apuleius, Met. 3.29: Et “O” quidem tantum disertum ac validum clamitavi, reliquum autem Caesaris nomen enuntiare non potui. Aspernati latrones clamorem absonum meum, caedentes hinc inde miserum corium nec cribris iam idoneum relinquunt. 95 Apuleius, Met. 4.8: Estur ac potatur incondite, pulmentis acervatim, panibus aggeratim, poculis agminatim ingestis. Clamore ludunt, strepitu cantilant, conviciis iocantur, ac iam cetera semiferis Lapithis Centaurisque similia. The double tricolon in these two sentences, combined with strict syntactic parallelism, adds emphasis to Lucius’ condemnation of the robbers. See also Met. 6.30: Quam quidem detractam protinus cum suo sibi funiculo devinctam dedere praecipitem, puellaque statim distenta vinculis cenam, quam postuma diligentia praeparaverat infelix anicula, ferinis invadunt animis. 96 See esp. Apuleius, Met. 8.29: Paucisque admodum praegustatis holusculis ante ipsam mensam, spurcissima illa propudia ad illicitae libidinis extrema flagitia infandis uriginibus efferantur, passimque circumfusi nudatum supinatumque iuvenem exsecrandis oribus flagitabant (…). Iamiamque vicinos undique percientes turpissimam scaenam patefaciunt, insuper ridicule sacerdotum purissimam laudantes castimoniam. In some respects, this scene, sum-

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of the baker to whom he is sold to work in his grinding mill (Met. 9.14–31, esp. 9.14–17 and 9.22–31). He also despises the Phaedra-like stepmother lusting after her young son (Met. 10.2–12) and reviles her as “an extreme example of stepmotherly wickedness”.97 He has yet another negative verdict for the vicious woman who poisoned her husband and murdered others, and who has been condemned to a public sexual performance with the donkey in the arena (Met. 10.23–28), a staged show which is not carried out in the end because Lucius manages to escape (Met. 10.29–35). Given that Lucius’ transformation does not take place until Book 3, the novel as a whole should not be viewed as an ‘animal autobiography’ stricto sensu. However, the major portion of the narrative is presented through the eyes of the donkey, which makes this classification not altogether inappropriate. At the same time, the question is to what extent the portrayal of the donkey Lucius carries truly individual traits. In many instances, the animal seems to embody not much more than a prototypical representative of its species which is difficult to distinguish from other donkeys.98

7 Conclusion In this paper, I have looked at various ‘test cases’ in order to ascertain to what extent animals occurring in representative examples of Graeco-Roman literature are individualised. For that purpose, I have considered texts belonging to the genres of epic poetry, technical literature, biography, historiography, love elegy (making use of the form of the epicedion and the laudatio funebris), and the novel. With the exception of Corinna’s parrot, all of the animals discussed here have proper names. Despite the generic differences of the source material, one may argue that all texts offer portraits of animals which are sufficiently differentiated to let them appear as individuals, though perhaps to a varying degree.

_____ marised in Met. 8.30 as infamia, is reminiscent of certain lines in Juvenal, Sat. 2, which thematises the contradiction between public and private forms of behaviour; see Fögen (2014: 83–85). 97 Apuleius, Met. 10.5: dira illa femina et malitiae novercalis exemplum unicum (…). 98 In this regard, Lucius the ass is similar to donkeys occurring in the ancient fable. Another parallel to this literary genre lies in the fact that fables “present animals thinking and speaking”, and it may be argued that this feature “probably affected the way the story of Lucius was conceived” (Schlam 1992: 28). On donkeys in the ancient fable, see Opelt (1966: 574–576).

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Especially in Bucephalas’ case, the historicity of the animal is indisputable: the horse participates in battles (as Alexander’s ‘fellow combatant’, as it were) and its death is the motive for the foundation of a city. Moreover, the literary tradition delineated here throws light upon various stages of this animal’s life. That, too, is the case for Arrian’s hound Horme, and it is also she who epitomises a good example of animal agency, despite the fact that her life is very much determined by the activities of her master.99 The literary evidence provided by Plutarch and Arrian spells out that Bucephalas and Horme are anything but “auswechselbare Objekte”, to use Steinbrecher’s phrase (2012: 20). Also, in both instances, the reciprocity of interactions between animal and human is unmistakeable. On a more general level, Bucephalas and Horme are idiosyncratic representatives of cultural institutions and practices of Greek society, namely of warfare and hunting respectively. The term ‘historicity’ is more difficult to apply to fictional animals such as Odysseus’ dog Argus, Corinna’s parrot, or the “donkey” Lucius in Apuleius. Yet it is not so far off the mark to argue that the portrayals of Argus and Corinna’s parrot are credible images of ‘real’ animals of their respective times, the archaic period and the early Roman Empire, and that the donkey’s story is not too farfetched with regard to its numerous allusions to the often dire conditions of farm and work animals. It may, however, be questioned whether all this justifies the use of the term ‘biography’. In most cases, all that is offered is a glimpse at certain episodes in the life of an animal; a fuller picture is not really provided – not even in the case of the parrot, although its dirge follows relatively closely the tradition of the funerary speech and addresses many of its parameters. The only exception is perhaps the ‘autobiography’ of the donkey Lucius which turns out to be the story of a man who, by going through a whole series of obstacles in the shape of an animal, eventually finds his true destination in the form of his devotion to the goddess Isis. Therefore, it may be more apposite to subsume the texts examined in this paper under the category of anecdotes, but with the additional

_____ 99 To justify the use of the term agency for actions performed by animals, the intentionality of such actions is not regarded as absolutely relevant by many scholars working in human-animal studies. See, for example, Roscher (2011: 123) and Steinbrecher (2012: 21–22), the latter of whom writes that “auch nicht-intentionales Handeln (oder die Reaktion auf menschliches Handeln) dazu führen kann, Geschichte in die eine oder andere Richtung zu beeinflussen und damit auch zu verändern” (Steinbrecher 2012: 22) and also notes that “Tiere sind lebendige, von der Geschichte veränderte Wesen, die selbst wiederum Geschichte verändern” (Steinbrecher 2012: 29). See also Borgards (2012: 103–105), Krüger, Steinbrecher & Wischermann (2014: 12–15, 30– 33), and Steinbrecher (2016: 7–8, 9–10, 12–13).

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qualification that these anecdotes can be seen as antecedents of proper biographies.100 As such, they are more than ordinary digressions serving as a humorous or quirky interruption of the main narrative and contributing for the most part to the entertainment of the reader. Such a notion is especially valid for Ovid’s poem which, though connected to other elegies of the corpus of the Amores, may be read as an independent literary piece. What matters in all cases is the interaction between animals and humans. The ancient narratives about the lives of animals considered here have in common that they often shed light on the humans with whom these animals are in direct contact. These interactions may illustrate their character, behaviour and moral convictions. Without those humans, the stories of the animals’ lives would be incomplete. But this is also true for the humans: their animals are an essential part of their own ‘biography’. Among other things, it is this mutual dependency that makes it difficult to speak of autonomous animal biographies in the context of Graeco-Roman literature.101

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_____ 100 On anecdotes and episodes as antecedents of ancient biography, see Wehrli (1973). On “biographische Kleinformen” more generally, see Richter & Hamacher (2009). 101 Drafts of this paper were presented at the University of Kassel (March 2016), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS) in Wassenaar (April 2016), the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (June 2016), and the University of Cologne (November 2016). I would like to thank the members of the audiences, but also Stephen Newmyer and Edmund Thomas for their valuable comments and suggestions. The generous funding for my research was provided by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen) where I held a Senior Research Fellowship from September 2015 until June 2016. I am extremely grateful to NIAS staff for their kind support, in particular to the librarians Dindy van Maanen and Erwin Nolet.

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Illustrations

Figure 1: André Castaigne (1861‒1929), The Taming of Bucephalus (1888/89) © Wikimedia (public domain)

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Figure 2: François Schommer (1850‒1935), Alexandre le Grand domptant Bucéphale (c. 1900) © Wikimedia (public domain)

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Gillian Clark

Philosophers’ Pets: Porphyry’s Partridge and Augustine’s Dog Gillian Clark Philosophers’ Pets: Porphyry’s Partridge and Augustine’s Dog Abstract: This paper uses two examples of a philosopher and a pet to illustrate late antique discussion of communication between animals and humans. Porphyry, in the late third century A.D., drew on earlier sources to argue in On Abstinence that non-human animals have a kind of rationality, which is attested in their communication with each other and with humans. Augustine, a century later, was confident that non-human animals are not rational. But he briefly considered communication among animals, and he suggested that diversity of language is so strong a barrier to communication among humans that a man would rather be with his dog than with a fellowhuman whose language he does not speak. Porphyry and Augustine both contribute to debate on human-animal interaction, but both were primarily concerned with humans, Porphyry with the lifestyle of the true philosopher and Augustine with the tensions of human society. Stories of holy men who communicate with animals remain focused on the holiness of the human. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-006

1 Introduction Interaction between humans and animals implies some kind of communication, at the least some understanding of each other’s intentions. Can animals and humans communicate, and if so, how? Classical readers, like the viewers of presentday documentaries, were fascinated by stories of exceptional animals who respond to humans or seek to associate with humans (see Fögen 2007 and Fögen 2014). Often these exceptional animals are pets, who are a special case of humananimal interaction because they are animals chosen and raised as companions. People become convinced that there is a special bond between the animal and the human companion, so that even without a shared language the animals try to communicate what they want and feel, and understand some of what the humans say and feel. “Pet” may not be a classical category. Greek and Latin do not have a word for it: animals were classed as wild or tame, and tame animals were useful animals, who supplied labour or food or other materials. Some tame animals could be trained, and plough-oxen, horses, and hunting dogs in particular had close relationships with humans. But even without a specific word for “pet”, there is evidence for animals kept for company and amusement.1 This chapter starts

_____ 1 On pets, see Lazenby (1949), Bodson (2000), and Calder (in this volume). See McKinnon (2014: 269–270) on classification and on evidence for an emotional bond; for wider perspectives see Hurn (2012: 98–111). DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-006

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from two examples of a philosopher and a pet, because the philosophers were interested in communication, and the pets, a bird and a dog, were the two most common kinds of pet in the classical world, and the most promising examples of human-animal communication.2 Birds make a range of articulated sounds, and some can imitate words and phrases of human speech. Dogs respond to human commands, and convey information and feelings by body-language and by making different sounds: growling, barking, whining.3 Some influential recent writers take long-term relationships between humans and companion animals as the starting-point for reflection on the differences between animal and human.4 The two philosophers discussed here may not have had any such relationship. Porphyry’s first-person account of interaction with a responsive partridge may have been borrowed from another author.5 Augustine did not claim personal experience of preferring to be with his dog rather than with a human being who does not speak his language (De civ. 19.7). Neither Porphyry nor Augustine set out to answer the question whether humans can communicate with animals. For both of them, this question was part of a wider argument: Porphyry was concerned with the soul of the true philosopher, Augustine with the problems of human society. But Porphyry’s partridge and Augustine’s dog illustrate the challenges of human-animal communication.

2 Porphyry Porphyry tells the story of the partridge as follows (De abst. 3.4.7): ἡμεῖς γοῦν κατὰ Καρχηδόνα, πέρδικος ἐπιπτάντος ἡμέρου, τρέφοντες τοῦτον, τοῦ χρόνου προϊόντος καὶ τῆς συνηθείας εἰς πολλὴν ἡμερότητα αὐτὸν μεταβαλούσης, οὐ μόνον σαίνοντος καὶ θεραπεύοντος ᾐσθόμεθα καὶ προσπαίζοντος, ἀλλ᾽ ἤδη καὶ ἀντιφθεγγομένου πρὸς τὸ ἡμέτερον φθέγμα καὶ καθ᾽ ὅσον ἦν δυνατὸν ἀποκρινομένου, ἀλλοίως ἢ καλεῖν ἀλλήλους εἰώθασιν οἱ πέρδικες. οὔκουν σιωπῶντος, φθεγξαμένου δ᾽ ἀντεφθέγξατο μόνον.

_____ 2 Cats were not yet bred for cuteness; see Engels (1999). 3 Sheepdogs, now an obvious example of response to commands, were used to guard flocks but not to herd them. In the widely used image of the shepherd and his flock, the sheep respond to the voice of the shepherd (e.g. John 10: 27). On dogs, see McKinnon (2014: 270–274). 4 See, for example, Gaita (2003) and Rowlands (2008). 5 See Clark (2000: 19–20) on borrowing from other authors, and Clark (2000: 166 n. 402) for examples of borrowed statements in the first person.

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“I used, at Carthage, to feed a tame partridge which fluttered to me, and as time went on and habit made it very tame, I observed it not only making up to me and being attentive and playing, but even uttering in response to my utterance and, so far as possible, replying, differently from the way that partridges call to each other. It did not utter when I was silent; it only uttered back when I uttered.”6

This translation uses the cumbersome word “uttered” to avoid prejudging the question whether the partridge “spoke”.7 The partridge, it appears, was not just chirruping for food, but understood that the human wanted to communicate and that humans use different sounds from those which partridges make to each other.8 This engaging story of human-animal interaction is often cited without context, but Porphyry told it as part of an argument against the belief that non-human animals are ἄλογα ζῷα. This phrase is often translated as “irrational animals”, but would be better translated as “non-rational animals”, or more precisely as “living creatures without λόγος”, i.e. lacking thought which can be expressed in speech. The argument needs its context in De abstinentia, which in turn needs its context in the many works of Porphyry. In recent years Porphyry has become much better known, partly because of renewed interest in late Platonism and partly because he has been recognised as a valuable source for cultural history, especially the history of religion.9 But two fundamental problems remain. Porphyry was a very productive philosopher and polymath, but most of his work survives only as fragments, and, as his opponents charged, he argued different cases at different times. He is best known for editing the works of Plotinus, whose seminar he attended in Rome from A.D. 263 until 268. He organised, as the Enneads, the writings he had encouraged Plotinus to produce, and his introduction on the life and writings of Plotinus, with an internal date of A.D. 301, offers a classic account of a philosopher and his students. But nobody edited the writings of Porphyry. None of them can be dated, so there is no clear intellectual trajectory, and Porphyry is often accused of inconsistency or of writing what the occasion required. Almost all of his seventy or eighty works have been lost, or survive only in hostile quotation (usually

_____ 6 All translations in this article are my own. Translations of Porphyry’s De abstinentia are sometimes modified, after further reflection, from Clark (2000). 7 Edwards (2016) notes that Porphyry also used φθέγγεσθαι of the sounds made by infants (Ad Gaurum 12.4.7–10). These, Porphyry said, are ἄσημα, i.e. not signs, but they signify (ἐπισημαίνειν) that the infant is upset. 8 On local variation in partridge calls, see Aristotle, Hist. anim. VIII 9 614a22–23, and Aelian, De nat. anim. 3.35 (reference owed to Fögen 2007: 47 n. 26). 9 On Porphyry and cultural history, see the pioneering article of Millar (1997).

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by Christian authors), or at best are incomplete; scholars differ on ascribing fragments to books, and therefore on the content and purpose of the books.10 Nevertheless, Porphyry’s lost works are often assumed to be a source of ideas in other writers who may never have read them, especially Augustine.11 De abstinentia is Porphyry’s longest extant work, but it is incomplete: an unknown amount is missing from the end of the fourth book (see Clark 2000: 194 n. 687). It is conventionally called “On Abstinence” or “On Abstinence from Animal Food”, but its title Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων literally means “On holding back from the ensouled”, i.e. not killing animals. Porphyry composed De abstinentia, he said, because he heard that a fellow-student had reverted to eating meat (De abst. 1.1). He argued that the true philosopher, i.e. the true lover of wisdom, should not eat food which had once been animate, because meateating harms both the body and the soul.12 This philosopher should not sacrifice animals to the gods, because gods do not want dead animals, and pure thoughts about the gods are the appropriate offering. He should not kill animals unless in self-defence; and he should not exploit animals, though it is permissible to trade food and protection for their labour, as in the case of plough-oxen, or for their surplus, as in the case of dairy cows or bees or sheep. Porphyry’s plan was to set out all the arguments his friend might use, then refute them (De abst. 1.3.2). To do this, he borrowed from several sources, mostly without acknowledgement, and without clear demarcation of quotation or paraphrase or comment. The result is a very interesting range of material, which is not always clearly expressed or effectively organised.13 Porphyry’s discussion of human-animal communication, in Book 3, responds to the claim that humans can treat non-human animals as they wish, because non-human animals are ἄλογα: they have neither internal λόγος (thought) nor expressive λόγος (speech). In the opening section of Book 1, Porphyry quoted from Plutarch (without acknowledgement) a brief statement of the position that “we cannot act unjustly towards creatures which cannot act justly towards us” (De abst. 1.6; see Plutarch, De soll. anim. 6 964b). He did not at that point develop the argument, but it can be filled out as follows: if justice is doing

_____ 10 Johnson (2013) is an excellent guide to the range of Porphyry’s writing. On the problem of fragments, see Magny (2014). 11 For a sceptical view of Augustine’s knowledge of Porphyry, see Clark (2007). 12 He briefly considered the case of plants, in which the animating soul enables growth and nutrition. See Clark (2000: 173 n. 469). 13 For a survey, see Clark (2000: 8–15). For the wider context of debate about animals, see Sorabji (1993).

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the right thing, animals cannot act justly, because they cannot identify the right thing and decide to do it; and if, as the Epicureans argued, justice is a social contract, animals cannot make and keep agreements. Animals cannot do these things because, according to Peripatetic and Stoic philosophers, animal experience is different from human. Humans have λογικαὶ φαντασίαι (“rational appearances”), i.e. impressions with a content which can be expressed in words.14 In modern terms, the impression has a “propositional content” such as “yawning lion, scary”. Humans have reason, so we can assess the impression which appears to us, and if we do not assent to “scary” we are not overcome by fear.15 But animals do not have reason, so appearances present themselves without a propositional content, and animals cannot assess appearances, but only react to them. Consequently, animals do not have feelings in the same way as humans do, and cannot make decisions; and because animals do not have expressive λόγος, they cannot talk to humans or make agreements with humans. It follows that animals cannot act justly, so justice cannot apply to them; and because animals cannot be part of the human community, they may be used as humans see fit, for food or clothing, medicine or labour. Many people argued that human life would be impossible otherwise, and this was persuasive in a world without synthetics which mostly depended on muscle power.16 At the start of Book 3, Porphyry said he had shown how eating animate creatures does not contribute to temperance or to piety, and would now turn to justice, another of the cardinal virtues (De abst. 3.1.4). His opponents said that justice extends only to beings like us, so they exclude non-rational animals, but Porphyry would show that every soul is rational in so far as it shares in perception and memory, so justice does extend to every animal. He did not make it explicit that according to Stoic teaching, concepts (ἔννοιαι) arise from perception and memory,17 but said he would refute the Stoic claim (see De abst. 3.2.4)

_____ 14 See Diogenes Laertius 7.49–51 (= Long & Sedley 1987: 2.39A 6). 15 This is a very rapid summary of a complex process. See further Graver (2007). 16 Edwards (2014) argues against what she calls the “consensus interpretation” of Porphyry, namely that he believed that animals are rational, and collected examples of animal capacities, as philosophers did in the 1970s, to show that there are ethical implications for human treatment of animals. She makes the case that Porphyry, as a Platonist, did not think that animals are rational, and that his purpose was specifically to refute the Stoics. I am most grateful to G. Fay Edwards for allowing me to see, before its publication, the revised version of her paper (Edwards 2016), in which she further discusses Porphyry’s argument for justice as harmlessness. 17 See Aetius 4.11.1–4 (= Long & Sedley 1987: 2.39E), discussed in Long & Sedley (1987 [vol. 2]: 240). On concepts, perception, and memory, see further Sorabji (1993: 17–61).

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that all non-human animals lack both internal and expressive λόγος (De abst. 3.3.2): ἐπεὶ τοίνυν διττὸς ἦν, ὃ μὲν ἐν τῇ προφορᾷ, ὃ δὲ ἐν τῇ διαθέσει, ἀρξώμεθα πρότερον ἀπὸ τοῦ προφορικοῦ καὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὴν φωνὴν τεταγμένου. εἰ δὴ προφορικός ἐστι λόγος φωνὴ διὰ γλώττης σημαντικὴ τῶν ἔνδον καὶ κατὰ ψυχὴν παθῶν· κοινοτάτη γὰρ ἡ ἀπόδοσις αὕτη καὶ αἱρέσεως οὐδέπω ἐχομένη, ἀλλὰ μόνον τῆς τοῦ λόγου ἐννοίας· τί τούτου ἄπεστι τῶν ζῴων ὅσα φθέγγεται; τί δὲ οὐχὶ καὶ ἃ πάσχει τι, πρότερον καὶ πρὶν εἰπεῖν ὃ μέλλει, διενοήθη; λέγω δὴ διάνοιαν τὸ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ κατὰ σιγὴν φωνούμενον. “So, if there are two kinds of λόγος, one in expression and the other in disposition, let us start from expressive λόγος which is organised by voice (φωνή). If expressive λόγος is voice signifying with the tongue (φωνὴ διὰ γλώττης σημαντικὴ) that which is experienced internally and in the soul (for this is a general definition, depending not on any school but only on the concept of λόγος), what in this is absent from animals that utter (φθέγγεται)? And why should a creature not first have thought what it experiences, before saying (εἰπεῖν) what it is going to? I mean by ‘thought’ that which is silently voiced (φωνούμενον) in the soul.”

Porphyry did not discuss the interpretation of the key words φωνή, γλῶττα and φθέγγεσθαι, each of which poses the question whether animals, including birds, actually speak, in the sense that they make sounds with distinct meanings. Animals make vocal sounds, and birds make sequences of vocal sounds. These sounds may signify something; they may be part of a system, as when (according to modern observation) animals or birds react to one warning call as “predator in the air” and to another as “predator on the ground”. It seems that animals are communicating with each other, and can be understood by a human being who learns what their sounds signify. But are those sounds speech which expresses thought, external λόγος expressing internal λόγος, or are they no more than a natural or instinctive reaction to a stimulus? To begin with γλῶττα: this word can mean “tongue”, i.e. the part of the mouth which is required for articulating vocal sounds; but in Greek, as in Latin and in English, “tongue” can also mean “language”, a system of sounds with vocabulary and syntax. Aristotle distinguished ψόφος (“sound”) from φωνή (“voice”) and from διάλεκτος (“articulate voice”), both of which require a tongue. Birds, he said, have φωνή, and some, depending on their tongue, have more διάλεκτος than others; among quadrupeds only humans have διάλεκτος.18

_____ 18 Aristotle, Hist. anim. IV 9 535a26–536b23. See further Clark (2000: 164 n. 388) and Fögen (2007: 46–49).

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But Porphyry used διάλεκτος for a distinct human language, such as Egyptian (De abst. 4.10.4), Persian (4.16.1), or Latin (4.16.5). Clement of Alexandria, a century earlier, took διάλεκτος to mean speech (λέξις) which shows regional or ethnic characteristics, but he used φωνή and γλῶττα dismissively: “the Greeks say they have five διάλεκτοι, but barbarian φωναί are incomprehensible and should be called γλῶτται, not διάλεκτοι” (Strom. 1.142.4). Porphyry himself may not have been consistent in his use of words for sound and speech and language: he may have varied his style, or borrowed from different authors without modifying their vocabulary.19 It is puzzling that Porphyry did not in this context use λέξις, which the Stoics defined as φωνὴ ἐγγράμματος (“voice that can be written”).20 According to Diogenes Laertius (7.57), they distinguished φωνή from λέξις: a vocal sound (ἦχος) is also a φωνή, but only articulated sound is λέξις. They also distinguished λέξις from λόγος, because λέξις can be nonsense, such as βλίτυρι, but λόγος always signifies. Porphyry moved from his general definition of λόγος to the claim that everything voiced by the tongue (ὑπὸ τῆς γλώττης φωνηθέντος) is λόγος however it is voiced, so every animal with a voice shares in λόγος (De abst. 3.3.3). It does not matter if we do not understand them: οὐδὲ γὰρ τῆς Ἰνδῶν οἱ Ἕλληνες οὐδὲ τῆς Σκυθῶν ἢ Θρᾳκῶν ἢ Σύρων οἱ ἐν τῇ Ἀττικῇ τραφέντες· ἀλλ᾽ ἴσα κλαγγῇ γεράνων ὁ τῶν ἑτέρων τοῖς ἑτέροις ἦχος προσπίπτει. καίτοι ἐγγράμματος τοῖς ἑτέροις ἡ αὐτῶν καὶ ἔναρθρος, ὡς καὶ ἡμῖν ἡ ἡμετέρα· ἄναρθρος δὲ καὶ ἀγράμματος ἡ τῶν Σύρων φέρε εἰπεῖν ἢ τῶν Περσῶν, ὡς καὶ πᾶσιν ἡ τῶν ζῴων. καθάπερ γὰρ ἡμεῖς ψόφου μόνου ἀντιλαμβανόμεθα καὶ ἤχου, ἀξύνετοι ὄντες τῆς [φέρε] Σκυθῶν ὁμιλίας, καὶ κλαγγάζειν δοκοῦσιν καὶ μηδὲν διαρθροῦν, ἀλλ᾽ ἑνὶ ψόφῳ χρῆσθαι μακροτέρῳ ἢ βραχυτέρῳ, τὸ παρηλλαγμένον δὲ αὐτοῦ εἰς σημασίαν οὐδαμῶς προσπίπτει, ἐκείνοις δὲ εὐσύνετος ἡ φθέγξις καὶ πολὺ τὸ διάφορον ἔχουσα, καθάπερ ἡμῖν ἡ συνήθης. “Greeks do not understand the speech of Indians, or those brought up in Attica the speech of Scythians or Thracians or Syrians, but the vocal sound (ἦχος) of one strikes the others like the call of cranes. Yet for those others their own speech can be written down (ἐγγράμματος) and is articulate (ἔναρθρος), as ours is for us. But the speech of Syrians, for example, or Persians, is inarticulate (ἄναρθρος) and cannot be written down (ἀγράμματος), as that of animals is for everyone. Just as we are aware only of sound and vocal sound (ἦχος), because we do not understand Scythian conversation, and they seem to us to be calling without any articulation, but making one sound which is longer or shorter, and its variation for signifying (εἰς σημασίαν) does not strike us at all; yet to them the utterance (φθέγξις) is easy to understand and clearly differentiated, as ours is to us.”

_____ 19 My thanks to Irini-Fotini Viltanioti for discussion of this point. She finds that in other works, notably On images, Porphyry does use words precisely. See further Viltanioti (2017). 20 See Long & Sedley (1987: 2.33A), discussed by Fögen (2007: 49–53).

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Birdsong was a classic comparison for sounds which are clearly intended as speech, but which we cannot understand, as when Herodotus suggested that the priestesses at Dodona were called “doves” because they were foreigners whose speech was not understood (Hist. 2.57).21 Porphyry told stories of people who do understand birdsong, then made the general claim that “the complexity and diversity of animal utterance (φθέγξις) shows its σημαντικόν”, i.e. it signifies something (De abst. 3.4.2). Animals, he said, make different sounds when they are afraid, when they are calling, when they want to be fed, when they are friendly, when they are challenging to a fight. They make clear and significant (εὔσημα) utterances to each other. Some even learn Greek and understand their owners; some birds imitate people, remember what they hear, listen to their teacher, and even use what they have learned to warn against wrongdoers in the household.22 Of course, some animals are much better at imitating human speech than others, just as some humans are better at learning languages; some, perhaps, do not learn because they are not taught, or because they lack vocal organs. Then comes the story of the partridge which uttered in response to Porphyry’s utterance. The sequence of argument suggests that the partridge, which is not a “talking” bird, was taught to respond to a human; it could not imitate human speech, but answered, “so far as was possible” (a favourite phrase for Porphyry), differently from the way partridges call to each other. Porphyry went on to say that voice is not essential, because even voiceless animals respond (De abst. 3.5.1); his examples include the lamprey which came to the call of the Roman financier Crassus. Porphyry concluded that animals must have “the same φαντασία as the one who speaks, whether or not it reaches the tongue” (De abst. 3.5.2). Does this follow from his examples?23 When Crassus voices “here, lamprey”, does the lamprey have an impression, but not in words thought or spoken, “Crassus is calling”? Do talking birds merely “parrot”, repeating sounds without understanding what the words signify?24 Instead of asking, or answering, these questions, Porphyry returned to his argument that calling only the φωνή of humans

_____ 21 Porphyry could have observed that in Aristophanes’ Birds the song of various birds is written down, but its meaning remains unknown. 22 For animals warning against wrongdoing, one may compare a passage in Aelian, De nat. anim. 8.17, discussed in Fögen (2007: 58–59). 23 See Fögen (2007) on the tendency to accumulate instances rather than offering arguments. 24 The Latin verb garrire (see Burton 2007: 23–24) applies to birds twittering or chirruping. Augustine used it for the “chattering classes” of humans who parrot ideas and say nothing that matters; for example, “a few people in schools and gymnasia chattering in litigious disputations” (De civ. 18.41).

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λόγος, because we understand it, and dismissing that of other animals, is as if ravens claimed that theirs is the only φωνή and humans are ἄλογοι, or Attic speakers claimed that theirs is the only φωνή and anyone who does not share Attic λέξις is ἄλογος (De abst. 3.5.3).25 He added examples of animal φθέγματα which are understood by the humans who work with them: the huntsman knows whether the dog is searching, has found, is chasing, has caught, or is lost; the herdsman knows whether the cow is hungry or thirsty or tired or in heat or looking for her calf. Animals likewise respond appropriately to a human voice, whether the humans are angry or friendly or calling, hunting or wanting something or giving something (De abst. 3.6.1). Porphyry did not ask whether animals respond to tone, not to content, but perhaps he would not think that this is an important difference: his next point is that animals are calmed by music (De abst. 3.6.2), presumably by music in an appropriate mode. Porphyry’s argument now invokes a dog. The Stoic “logical dog” uses a multiple disjunction when tracking its quarry to a place where three roads meet: “It went down A, B or C; not A, not B”, and the dog heads down C without pausing to sniff. Porphyry noted the obvious response that animals do all this by nature (De abst. 3.6.4), but he did not set out the arguments of Sextus Empiricus, who held that the dog interprets signs but does not derive an impression “if this is a footprint, a beast is here” (Adv. math. 8.271), or of Plutarch, who held that the dog works by perception of the tracks, not by inference (De soll. anim. 13 969a–c).26 The questions remain unanswered by present-day sustained observation of animals, using technology as well as human attention, or by neuroscience showing which areas of the brain are active. Are animals self-aware, do they have agency, do they want to communicate with humans, and if they want to, can they? Porphyry, then, wanted to show that animals communicate with each other, and with humans, because communication implies that animals have reason, both internal and expressed. If animals have reason, his opponents cannot use the argument that humans can treat animals as they see fit because justice is not applicable to animals; and that removes one powerful argument for meateating, which Porphyry regarded as inappropriate for the true philosopher. The lifestyle of the true philosopher is Porphyry’s central concern.

_____ 25 This is the first appearance of λέξις, used not as a Stoic technical term, but to mean “way of speaking”. There may be a subtext about “Atticist” literary snobbery. 26 See further Clark (2000: 167 nn. 410–411).

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3 Augustine Augustine, like Porphyry, was not primarily concerned with communication between animals and humans, but he did at least ask one of the questions which Porphyry did not ask: do animals deliberately communicate feelings and information?27 Augustine’s treatise on Christian teaching, De doctrina Christiana, is concerned with the interpretation and exposition of scripture. He discussed signs because, he explained, words are signs of things, and the great majority of signs are words, which, unless they are written down, last only as long as they sound (De doct. Chr. 2.7–9). The divinely inspired authors of scriptura (“writing”) used written signs, which for various reasons can be difficult to understand. Augustine began his discussion with a distinction between natural and given signs. Natural signs just happen: without any wish to signify, they cause something other than themselves to be known from them, as when smoke signifies fire. Natural signs include facial expressions which show how we feel, even if there is no wish or purpose to show it. In contrast (De doct. Chr. 2.3): Data vero signa sunt quae sibi quaeque viventia invicem dant ad demonstrandos quantum possunt motus animi sui, vel sensa aut intellecta quaelibet. Nec ulla causa est nobis significandi, id est signi dandi, nisi ad depromendum et traiciendum in alterius animum id quod animo gerit is qui signum dat. Horum igitur signorum genus, quantum ad homines attinet, considerare atque tractare statuimus, quia et signa divinitus data quae in Scripturis sanctis continentur, per homines nobis indicata sunt qui ea conscripserunt. Habent etiam bestiae quaedam inter se signa, quibus produnt appetitum animi sui. Nam et gallus gallinaceus reperto cibo dat signum vocis gallinae ut accurrat, et columbus gemitu columbam vocat vel ab ea vicissim vocatur, et multa huiusmodi animadverti solent. Quae utrum, sicut vultus aut dolentis clamor, sine voluntate significandi sequantur motum animi an vere ad significandum dentur, alia quaestio est, et ad rem quae agitur non pertinet. Quam partem ab hoc opere tamquam non necessariam removemus. “Given signs are those which living things give to each other to show, as best they can, their emotions, or something perceived or understood. There is no reason for us to signify, that is, to give a sign, except to express and transmit to the mind of another that which is in the mind of the one who gives the sign. I have decided to consider and discuss this kind of signs, in so far as it relates to people, because even the divinely given signs which are contained in the holy scriptures were shown to us by the people who wrote them. Some

_____ 27 Fögen (2014: 222–223) surveys ancient authors who thought that animals have expressive λόγος and reflect on what they want to say.

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animals too have signs among themselves by which they reveal the desire of their mind. A cockerel, finding food, gives a vocal sign to its hen to hurry along, and a male dove calls the female by cooing or is called by her in turn, and many other such things are observed. Whether, as for a facial expression or a cry of pain, they follow emotion without a wish to signify, or whether they are really given so as to signify, is another question, and is not relevant to the matter under discussion. I am leaving it out of this work, as being unnecessary.”

Signs among animals are, indeed, not relevant to the interpretation of scripture. Augustine did not need to consider whether they are natural or given; he did not even need to mention that there is a debate, but he had the teacher’s habit of mentioning possible lines of argument or matters of interest. In general, animals are not relevant to Augustine’s concerns, which are the response of human beings to God, and the interpretation and exposition of the scriptures inspired by God. Interpretation of scripture required interpretation of written signs, both literal and metaphorical. These signs, Augustine explained, could not be common to all peoples, because of human competition. He made a rapid allusion to the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:4–9): humans, in their arrogance, tried to raise a tower to heaven, but their dissonant souls were deservedly punished by dissonant languages. So the range of knowledge required for interpretation includes knowledge of the various languages in which scripture was first written and into which it has been translated (De doct. Chr. 2.8). In City of God Augustine gave a fuller explanation. Humans, he believed, are naturally social beings, who like to find connections of family or homeland. God made us not just with similar natures, but with one common ancestor; that is why Eve was created from, not together with, Adam (De civ. 12.22). So human society could have been one great family, living in households and cities and nations; the stronger in mind and body would protect the weaker, who would willingly follow orders given for their benefit (De civ. 19.16). But the first humans turned from what God wanted to what they wanted, and all their descendants, that is the entire human race, inherit that desire. None of us can get what we want unless others do what we want, so we inherit the “lust for mastery” (libido dominandi), which Sallust ascribed to nations (Cat. 2.2) and Augustine borrowed for human nature in general. Pride in oneself ensures that natural hierarchy and co-operation are replaced by competition, at all levels of society: household, city, the world (see further Clark 2009). Human arrogance led people to believe they could build the Tower of Babel reaching to heaven; human competition ensured that they could not, and God made that failure of co-operation evident in languages, so that different peoples do not understand each other. Before Babel everyone spoke Hebrew, though Hebrew did not need a name until

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the division of languages (De civ. 16.11). The name “Babel”, Augustine (mistakenly) thought, means “confusion” (De civ. 16.4). Language and disunity provide the context for Augustine’s dog, within a bleak account (De civ. 19.6–8) of conflict and suspicion at all levels of human society (De civ. 19.7): Post civitatem vel urbem sequitur orbis terrae, in quo tertium gradum ponunt societatis humanae, incipientes a domo atque inde ad urbem, deinde ad orbem progrediendo venientes; qui utique, sicut aquarum congeries, quanto maior est, tanto periculis plenior. In quo primum linguarum diversitas hominem alienat ab homine. Nam si duo sibimet invicem fiant obviam neque praeterire, sed simul esse aliqua necessitate cogantur, quorum neuter linguam novit alterius: facilius sibi muta animalia, etiam diversi generis, quam illi, cum sint homines ambo, sociantur. Quando enim quae sentiunt inter se communicare non possunt, propter solam diversitatem linguae nihil prodest ad consociandos homines tanta similitudo naturae, ita ut libentius homo sit cum cane suo quam cum homine alieno. “After the city or town comes the world, which people count as the third level of human society, starting from the household and advancing to the town, then to the world; and like a gathering of waters, the greater it is, the more full of danger. In it diversity of languages first alienates one human being from another. For if two people, neither of whom knows the other’s language, meet and for some compelling reason must not pass by but must be together, dumb animals, even of different kinds, associate more readily than they do, though both are human. For when they cannot communicate to each other what they think, then, only because of the diversity of language, the great similarity of nature is no use in making people associate, so that a human being would more willingly be with his dog than with a foreign human being.”

This dog is one of very few animals who make an appearance in City of God. Biblical exegesis raises some questions, Noah’s Ark being a particularly rich source (De civ. 15.27). The Ark is said to have held two, male and female, of every living creature, but were there really only two locusts and beetles and flies and fleas? What about the creatures which reproduce without sex? How did animals get back to islands after the Flood, if they did not spontaneously generate from the earth, could not swim, and were not brought by humans: perhaps by angelic airlift (De civ. 16.7)? More ominously, the salamander, which shows that bodies can survive in fire (De civ. 21.4), is part of the demonstration that Hell is not impossible. But animals are not part of the city of God, because that is a community of rational beings, who are angels and humans. Animals, Augustine said bluntly, are not associated with us by reason (De civ. 1.20). Augustine did not say this in a discussion of animal reason. The context is a discussion of suicide, and his point was that the commandment “thou shall not kill” applies to human beings, including oneself; but not, as the Manichaeans

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argued, to animals or even to plants.28 Augustine was confident that animals are not rational: they can coordinate sense-experience, but they cannot move beyond it to understand principles, still less to reflect on the activity of understanding principles. God created animals and God’s providence cares for them, but, Augustine claimed, they are not in contact with God and they do not pray (Enarr. in ps. 146.18). They do not think like us or feel as we do: if they have something like emotion, it is not a “disturbance contrary to reason” (De civ. 8.17), as it is in us. God gave humans dominion over non-rational animals, not over other rational beings, because rational beings are in the image of God (De civ. 19.15). In so far as Augustine discussed any of these claims (he did not do so in City of God), he was aware that there are questions, and that there was evidence to challenge his assumptions. But that was not his concern. It is not for us to question the Lord, he said, by asking, for example, why animals suffer when suffering is not punishment for sin and cannot morally improve them.29 Animals, then, are not part of a rational community, in which people can talk to each other. Rationality is the defining characteristic of humans; however monstrous its form, a being which is rational and mortal is human, descended from Adam, whereas monkeys and apes are not (De civ. 16.8). But rational humans inherit Adam’s pride and disobedience, so they live in a flawed society. Augustine used an extreme case of a monstrous, anti-social, uncommunicative, half-human being to reinforce his argument that to avoid permanent conflict, there must be agreement on who gives orders and who takes them, with authorised power-holders who enforce the agreement. He borrowed from Vergil the anti-social Cacus, one of the monsters defeated by Hercules (see Aen. 8.190– 267). In the Aeneid the story of Cacus is told by Evander, king of Rome, to explain a ritual which commemorates the defeat. Vergil says nothing about the isolation of Cacus, but Augustine immediately made the point that Cacus had no one to talk to (De civ. 19.12): (…) nulla coniunx ei blandum ferret referretque sermonem, nullis filiis vel adluderet parvulis vel grandiusculis imperaret, nullo amici conloquio frueretur, nec Vulcani patris (…). “(…) no wife exchanged caressing talk with him, he had no children to play with when they were little or command when they were older, he enjoyed no conversation with a friend, not even with his father Vulcan (…).”

_____ 28 For Augustine on suicide, see Hofmann (2007: esp. 52–60). For a bibliography on suicide in antiquity, see Fögen (2015: 48–56). 29 For Augustine on animals more generally, see Clark (1998).

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If Augustine had not found Homer a challenge (Conf. 1.14.23), he could have added that Cacus did not even have a pet, whereas Homer’s monstrous Polyphemus, living in isolation from his fellow Cyclopes, has a favourite ram (Od. 9.447–460; see Fögen 2007: 66–67). Cacus is not at peace with his fellow humans, whom he robs and kills; he is not part of a city and he has no household. But everyone wants peace; even Cacus wants to be at peace with his own body, satisfying its hunger and preserving its life; even wild animals achieve domestic peace. Vergil, at the start of the story of Cacus, called him semihomo, “half human” (Aen. 8.194); Augustine took semiferus (“half-wild animal”) from the end of Vergil’s narrative (Aen. 8.267). But wild animals are more social than Cacus (De civ. 19.12): Ipsae enim saevissimae ferae, unde ille partem habuit feritatis (nam et semiferus dictus est), genus proprium quadam pace custodiunt coeundo gignendo pariendo, fetus fovendo atque nutriendo, cum sint pleraeque insociabiles et solivagae; non scilicet ut oves cervi columbae sturni apes, sed ut leones vulpes aquilae noctuae. Quae enim tigris non filiis suis mitis inmurmurat et pacata feritate blanditur? Quis milvus, quantumlibet solitarius rapinis circumvolet, non coniugium copulat, nidum congerit, ova confovet, pullos alit et quasi cum sua matre familias societatem domesticam quanta potest pace conservat? “Even the most savage wild beasts, from whom he had his wild-beast part (for he is also called ‘half wild-beast’), safeguard their own kind in a sort of peace, by mating and begetting and giving birth, by nurturing and feeding their offspring, although most are unsocial and solitary; not, that is to say, creatures like sheep and deer and doves and starlings and bees, but like lions and wolves and foxes and eagles and little owls. What tigress does not purr gently to her children, pacify wildness, and caress them? What kite, however solitary his flight circling for prey, does not join in marriage, collect material for a nest, brood the eggs, feed the chicks, and preserve domestic society, in as much peace as he can, with (so to speak) his mater familias?”

The tigress and the kite are literary clichés for the savage and unfeeling animal, but here even wild and solitary animals maintain, without language, the first level of society: the household.30 At the other end of the range, the world, language is the primary cause of division in human society. Signs should convey to others what we think and feel, but after Babel we cannot talk to people from another group, so language divides instead of being a social bond. Even “dumb” animals, i.e. animals without language, even animals from different

_____ 30 Kite, eagle, lion and wolf are examples of solitary animals in Augustine, De civ. 12.22. There may be an allusion to Vergil, Aen. 4.550–551, in which Dido says that she was not allowed to live without marriage more ferae (“in the way of a wild animal”).

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species, co-exist more easily than humans who do not share a language (De civ. 19.7). Augustine did not say why: is it because humans know that there is a language barrier, whereas animals do not have one? So a man would prefer to be with his dog, who is not associated with him by reason, rather than with a fellow-human who does not share a language. What is it to “be with” the dog? Presumably the dog has learned to read the human’s facial expressions and body language, to understand tones of voice and to recognise some orders, and the human has learned to interpret some of the dog’s wishes and signals, which include sounds. But the dog has no words, and Augustine was always preoccupied with words. Two much-used translations expand “being with”: Henry Bettenson (1972) translates “a man would be more cheerful with his dog for company than with a foreigner”, and Robert Dyson (1998) “a man would more readily have a conversation with his dog than with another man who is a foreigner”. But Augustine did not suggest company or conversation. He contrasted the foreigner (alienus) with the man’s own dog (cum cane suo), and in this section of City of God, “one’s own” and “alien” recur to make the point that in this fallen world, it is not safe to trust even one’s own household. The faithful dog could be part of the household, not seeking its own way, but obedient to the rational human; Porphyry asked why there should not be a bond with the dog who lives with us (De abst. 3.19.3: σύντροφος). But Augustine was not interested in dogs, or in animals as moral example. The dog appears in a passing comment, to make a point about human behaviour.

4 Conclusion It is often said that classical discussion of animals is anthropocentric.31 Authors are interested in affirming the superiority of humans, sometimes arguing for their right to treat animals as they please, or at best they are interested in the moral benefit to humans of treating animals kindly, learning from their moral example, perhaps even abstaining from eating them or sacrificing them. Do the philosophers’ pets challenge that assessment? Porphyry’s partridge contributes to his argument that animals have some λόγος, even if it is weak, and humananimal communication, even if it is limited, strengthens his case that animals

_____ 31 For a useful survey, see Newmyer (2007).

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must be included in the community of beings to whom justice applies. But Porphyry’s central concern is the lifestyle of the true philosopher whose soul seeks to return to the divine, and who lives in isolation from the human community. Augustine’s dog points up the problems of human communication in a world of social beings who are divided by language and arrogance. Human-animal communication continued to fascinate readers, and there are stories in which it succeeds. Iamblichus, a younger contemporary of Porphyry, transmitted reports that Pythagoras could teach even non-rational animals, including wild animals (Vit. Pyth. 60; transl. Clark 1989): τὴν μὲν γὰρ Δαυνίαν ἄρκτον, χαλεπώτατα λυμαινομένην τοὺς ἐνοίκους, κατασχών, ὥς φασι, καὶ ἐπαφησάμενος χρόνον συχνόν, ψωμίσας τε μάζῃ καὶ ἀκροδρύοις, ὁρκώσας μηκέτι ἐμψύχου καθάπτεσθαι ἀπέλυσεν· ἣ δὲ εὐθὺς εἰς τὰ ὄρη καὶ τοὺς δρυμοὺς ἀπαλλαγεῖσα οὐκέτ᾽ ἔκτοτε ὤφθη τὸ παράπαν ἐπιοῦσα οὐδὲ ἀλόγῳ ζῴῳ. “They say he laid hands on the Daunian she-bear, which had done the most serious damage to the people there. He stroked her for a long time, feeding her bits of bread and fruit, administered an oath that she would no longer catch any living creature, and let her go. She made straight for the hills and the woods, and was never again seen to attack even a non-rational animal.”

There are comparable stories of monks, who, like Porphyry’s true philosopher, live in austere isolation from human society. They are at peace with the nonhuman animals, however fierce, who share their isolation (Hist. mon. 21): Ἄλλοτε δέ φασι τὸν Μακάριον σπήλαιον οἰκοῦντα ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ προσεύχεσθαι. ἄλλο δὲ σπήλαιον ὑαίνης πλησίον ἐτύγχανεν. ἥτις εὐχομένου αὐτοῦ ἐπέστη καὶ τῶν ποδῶν αὐτοῦ ἥπτετο. καὶ λαβομένη αὐτοῦ ἠρέμα τοῦ κρασπέδου εἷλκεν ἐπὶ τὸ οἰκεῖον σπήλαιον. ὁ δὲ ἠκολούθει αὐτῇ λέγων· “Τί ἄρα θέλει τὸ θηρίον τοῦτο ποιεῖν;” ὡς δὲ ἤγαγεν αὐτὸν ἄχρι τοῦ ἑαυτῆς σπηλαίου, εἰσελθοῦσα ἐξάγει πρὸς αὐτὸν τοὺς ἑαυτῆς σκύμνους τυφλοὺς γεννηθέντας. ὁ δὲ ἐπευξάμενος θεωροῦντας τοὺς σκύμνους τῇ ὑαίνῃ ἀπέδωκεν. ἡ δὲ ὥσπερ δῶρον εὐχαριστήριον φέρουσα τῷ ἀνδρὶ δέρμα μέγιστον κριοῦ μεγάλου τοῖς ποσὶν αὐτοῦ παρέθηκεν. ὁ δὲ ἐπιγελάσας αὐτῇ ὡς εὐγνώμονι καὶ αἴσθησιν ἐχούσῃ λαβὼν ἑαυτῷ ὑπεστρώσατο (…). “At another time, they say, Macarius, who was living in a cave in the desert, was at prayer. Nearby, as it happened, was another cave, a hyaena’s. She came to him as he prayed and touched his feet, and gently taking hold of his hem, pulled him towards her own cave. He followed her, saying “Now why does this animal want to do this?” She led him as far as her own cave, went in, and brought out to him her cubs, who had been born blind. He prayed over them, and gave the cubs, now able to see, back to the hyaena. She brought the man, as a thank-you gift, a very big skin from a big ram, and laid it at his feet. He smiled at her, as at a thoughtful and perceptive creature, took it, and spread it out under him (…).”

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This story has variants. In one, Macarius does not accept the gift until he has told the hyaena not to take sheep from a poor man, and she has shown that she agrees; in another, the anxious mother is a yet more feared predator, a lioness.32 There are other stories in which saints teach animals to live justly. Predators do what is right by giving up hunting, foragers keep an agreement not to take food which is needed by humans. The animals show by their behaviour that they understand, and the human beings, by their commitment to doing God’s will, begin to restore the paradise of benign human rule and animal co-operation which was lost by Adam’s disobedience to God (see Elliott 1987 and Leyerle 2005). But still the focus is the human being who is close to the divine; and still the animals do not speak.

Bibliography Editions, translations and commentaries Bettenson, Henry (1972): Augustine: City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson, edited with an introduction by David Knowles, Harmondsworth. Clark, Gillian (1989): Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean Life. Translated with introduction and notes, Liverpool. Clark, Gillian (2000): Porphyry. On Abstinence from Killing Animals. Translated with introduction and commentary, London. Deubner, Ludwig (1973): Iamblichus: De vita Pythagorica liber, Stuttgart. Dombart, Bernard & Alphonse Kalb (1955): Augustinus: De civitate Dei (Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 47–48), Turnhout. Dyson, Robert (1997): Augustine: The City of God against the Pagans. Translated with introduction and notes, Cambridge. Festugière, André-Jean (1961): Historia monachorum in Aegypto, Bruxelles. Green, Roger (1995): Augustine: De doctrina Christiana. Edited with an introduction, translation and notes, Oxford. Long, Anthony & David Sedley (1987): The Hellenistic Philosophers. Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary. Vol. 2: Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography, Cambridge. Nauck, August (1886): Porphyrius philosophus Platonicus. Opuscula selecta, Leipzig. O’Donnell, James (1993): Augustine: Confessions. Vol. 1: Introduction and Text, Oxford.

_____ 32 Sulpicius Severus, Dial. 1.15. Atkins (2001) discusses the story of Macarius. On monks and hyaenas, see Burton-Christie (1993: 231–233).

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Secondary literature Atkins, Margaret (2001): “And immediately he received his sight”. St Macarius and the miracle of the hyena. In: Maurice F. Wiles & Edward J. Yarnold (eds.), Studia Patristica XXXV. Papers presented at the Thirteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 1999, Leuven, 3–9. Bodson, Liliane (2000): Motivations for pet-keeping in Ancient Greece and Rome. A preliminary survey. In: Anthony L. Podberscek, Elizabeth S. Paul & James A. Serpell (eds.), Companion Animals and Us. Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, Cambridge, 27–41. Burton, Philip (2007): Language in the Confessions of Augustine, Oxford. Burton-Christie, Douglas (1993): The Word in the Desert. Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism, Oxford. Clark, Gillian (1998): The Fathers and the animals. The rule of reason. In: Andrew Linzey & Dorothy Yamamoto (eds.), Animals on the Agenda. Questions about Animals for Theology and Ethics, London, 67–79. Clark, Gillian (2007): Augustine’s Porphyry and the universal way of salvation. In: George Karamanolis & Anne Sheppard (eds.), Studies on Porphyry (= Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplementary Papers 98), London, 127–140. Clark, Gillian (2009): “The truth shall make you free”. Augustine on the power of religion. In: Andrew Cain & Noel Lenski (eds.), The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, Farnham, 189– 200. Edwards, G. Fay (2014): Irrational animals in Porphyry’s logical works. A problem for the consensus interpretation of On Abstinence. In: Phronesis 59, 22–43. Edwards, G. Fay (2016): The purpose of Porphyry’s rational animals. A dialectical attack on the Stoics in On Abstinence from Animal Food. In: Richard Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle ReInterpreted. New Findings on Seven Hundred Years of the Ancient Commentators, London, 263–290. Elliott, Alison G. (1987): Roads to Paradise. Reading the Lives of the Early Saints, Hanover, New Hampshire & London. Engels, Donald (1999): Classical Cats. The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat, London & New York. Fögen, Thorsten (2007): Antike Zeugnisse zu Kommunikationsformen von Tieren. In: Antike & Abendland 53, 39–75. Fögen, Thorsten (2014): Animal communication. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 216–232. Fögen, Thorsten (2015): Ars moriendi. Literarische Portraits von Selbsttötung bei Plinius dem Jüngeren und Tacitus. In: Antike & Abendland 61, 21–56. Gaita, Raimund (2003): The Philosopher’s Dog, London. Graver, Margaret (2007): Stoicism and Emotion, Chicago. Hofmann, Dagmar (2007): Suizid in der Spätantike. Seine Bewertung in der lateinischen Literatur, Stuttgart. Hurn, Samantha (2012): Humans and Other Animals. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on HumanAnimal Interactions, London. Johnson, Aaron (2013): Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre. The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity, Cambridge. Lazenby, Francis D. (1949): Greek and Roman household pets. In: Classical Journal 44, 245– 252 and 299–307.

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Leyerle, Blake (2005): Monks and other animals. In: Dale B. Martin & Patricia Cox Miller (eds.), The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies. Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography, Durham, North Carolina, 150–171. Magny, Ariane (2014): Porphyry in Fragments. Reception of an Anti-Christian Text in Late Antiquity, Farnham. McKinnon, Michael (2014): Pets. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 269–281. Millar, Fergus (1997): Porphyry. Ethnicity, language and alien wisdom. In: Jonathan Barnes & Miriam Griffin (eds.), Philosophia Togata II. Plato and Aristotle at Rome, Oxford, 241–262. Newmyer, Stephen (2007): Animals in ancient philosophy. Conceptions and misconceptions. In: Linda Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity, Oxford, 151–174. Rowlands, Mark (2008): The Philosopher and the Wolf. Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness, London. Sorabji, Richard (1993): Animal Minds and Human Morals. The Origins of the Western Debate, London. Viltanioti, Irini-Fotini (2017): Cult statues in Porphyry of Tyre and Makarios Magnes (Porph. C. Chr. Fr. 76 and 77 von Harnack). In: Journal of Late Antiquity 9 (in press).

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Arnaud Zucker

Psychological, Cognitive and Philosophical Aspects of Animal ‘Envy’ Towards Humans in Theophrastus and Beyond Arnaud Zucker Psychological, Cognitive and Philosophical Aspects

Abstract: This paper deals with animal ‘envy’ (φθόνος or invidia) in ancient literature, with a particular focus on Theophrastus. According to ancient popular belief, as expressed for example in Aelian, animals are jealous of how humans use certain parts of animal bodies for technical or therapeutic purposes. In order to illustrate this concept, various authors describe a recurring set of puzzling types of animal behaviour with regard to the human sphere; this could be conceived of as a special case of interaction between animals and humans, which postulates a certain interest among animals in the human world. In an opusculum devoted to this unusual ethological concept, Theophrastus outlines the general issues of this phenomenon. The topic of begrudging animals in antiquity turns out to be symptomatic of contradictory approaches to animals: on the one hand, animals are supposed to know that their bodies are of technical value in human society, and refuse to satisfy human appetite; on the other hand, profitoriented humans are convinced that animals have envy towards human culture. However, from a modern perspective, the concept of envy as a motivation for animal conduct could be countered on three different levels: first, on a cognitive level (animals do not possess any knowledge of human technology and medicine); second, on a psychological level (animals do not have any particular interest in human activities); and third, on an ethical level (animals have no moral awareness). Of these three objections, only the first was apparently introduced by ancient thinkers. Theophrastus’ critique, which constitutes an isolated instance in history, has been misinterpreted by modern commentators as a denial of animal moral consciousness, although his central argument rests more on the assumption that animals cannot comprehend the use of elaborate technical tools. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-007

1 Introduction This paper focuses on a category of animal behaviours whose motivation is coined as φθόνος in Greek and invidia in Latin, implying an intentional and sometimes complex process on the part of the animal, aiming at depriving men of a valuable product in its possession. The interpretation of these attitudes implies that men could be both the cause and target of some animal ‘cultural’ behaviour. The study of the topics of ‘animal envy’ sheds light on many interesting aspects of zooanthropological relations, and the persistent difficulty humans have in conceiving of the animal world without projecting the cultural and psychological frame of the human condition. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-007

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The term φθόνος primarily points to a psychological concept, and the attribution of this πάθος to animals gives rise to many problems, since it is closely connected not only to ethology but also to ethics, and human behaviour and psychology. I will start with the classical definition of φθόνος in Plato and Aristotle, contemporary with the first occurrence of φθόνος used for animal conduct which appears in Theophrastus. Φθόνος is defined as a πάθος or a λύπη that is a mix of pleasure and pain (see Stevens 1948 and Mills 1985), and more precisely as the displeasure that one feels at the prosperity of others (Aristotle, Top. 109b35; transl. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge):1 Καὶ εἰ φθονερὸς ὁ σπουδαῖος, τίς ὁ φθονερὸς καὶ τί ὁ φθόνος; εἰ γὰρ ὁ φθόνος ἐστὶ λύπη ἐπὶ φαινομένῃ εὐπραγίᾳ τῶν ἐπιεικῶν τινος, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ σπουδαῖος οὐ φθονερός· “Again, to see if the good man is jealous, ‹ask› who is the ‘jealous’ man and what is ‘jealousy’. For if ‘jealousy’ is pain at the apparent success of some well-behaved person, clearly the good man is not jealous.”

This definition matches the Stoic definition preserved in a Latin fragment (SVF III 415, p. 101 von Arnim [= Cicero, Tusc. 4.17]; transl. Charles D. Yonge, with some modifications):2 invidentiam esse dicunt aegritudinem susceptam propter alterius res secundas, quae nihil noceant invidenti (…). “Envy, they say, is a sickness arising from the prosperous circumstances of another, which are in no degree injurious to the person who envies.”

The jealous man has two defects: he not only has a malevolent attitude towards his neighbour, but also feels personally uncomfortable and sad. The double negative aspect of φθόνος (bad feeling versus good person) is stressed in various passages of Aristotle’s ethical works, for example in the following sentence (Eth. Eud. 1233b18-21, transl. Harris Rackham): Kαθ’ ἃς γὰρ ἕξεις λέγονται, ὁ μὲν φθόνος τὸ λυπεῖσθαι ἐπὶ τοῖς κατ’ ἀξίαν εὖ πράττουσιν ἐστίν, τὸ δὲ τοῦ ἐπιχαιρεκάκου πάθος ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἀνώνυμον, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ ἔχων δῆλός ἐστι τὸ χαίρειν ταῖς παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν κακοπραγίαις.

_____ 1 See also Aristotle, Top. 110a1: φθονερὸς μὲν ὁ λυπούμενος ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν ἀγαθῶν εὐπραγίαις. Further Aristotle, Eth. Eud. 1221a39–40. 2 Cicero himself agrees with it (Tusc. 3.21): invidentia aegritudo est ex alterius rebus secundis.

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“For, to take the states of character after which they are named, envy means being pained at people who are deservedly prosperous, while the emotion of the malicious man is itself nameless, but the possessor of it is shown by his feeling joy at undeserved adversities.”

The word is translated into English by ‘grudge’, which seems partly inadequate, as the term is defined as follows by the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2011: 631): “a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury”. In fact, the behaviour or feeling expressed as φθόνος proves difficult to define precisely and translate. Sanders (2014: 33–57) says that the term covers twelve different meanings in English, of which the most relevant in the present context is ‘begrudging refusal’ (not the same as ‘begrudging desire’): to keep away from someone something I have which is useless for me, but could be of great use for someone else. So, if animals are subject to φθόνος, this seems to mean that they are at the heart of the ethical sphere and that they can form some conception of good and evil. Φθονεῖν is not only a feeling, but also a passion that leads to hostile forms of conduct and deliberate strategies. But this is not the only implication, and this topic entails a range of psychological, cognitive and philosophical issues. ‘Animal envy’ may appear to be a trivial issue, but it involves the whole status of the animal. As a proof that this conception of animal behaviour is important to the general representation of the animal, Vincent of Beauvais declares himself surprised at having found one animal (a kind of marten) which is an ungrudging creature, noting that it is an exception (mirum).3 This animosity towards humans, though it appears as a general sensation and so to speak a ‘natural affect’, is illustrated by regular examples in the Greek and Latin traditions under the name invidia.

2 Analysis of Photius’ excerpt of Theophrastus’ treatise The essential text for the topic pursued here is the summary of a Theophrastean opusculum provided by Bishop Photius in the last codex (278) of his Myriobiblos (or Library). The text was edited by Valentin Rose in his Aristoteles Pseudepi-

_____ 3 Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum naturale 19.103: Rosurella est animal circa aquas habitans (…). Et hoc mirum in bestia, quia bonum suum presto omnibus accipiendum ponit, quo videatur bonum non invidere.

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graphus (1863) as an Aristotelian fragment (fr. 322), with a synoptic table, along with parallel texts by Antigonus, the Pseudo-Aristotelian Mirabilia, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch and Aelian. It has been newly edited by Fortenbaugh and Gutas (1992), and a commentary has been published by Sharples (1995). With Huby (1985) and Sharples (1995), we can assume that Photius’ summary reflects the genuine text by Theophrastus, even if Regenbogen (1940: 1427) is hesitant about the scholarship ascribing the criticising part to Theophrastus or Photius.4 The concise text, which is quoted here in its entirety, may be divided into three logical sections: firstly the ethological description, secondly the philosophical criticism and psychological motivation, and thirdly mention of further mysterious behaviours defying human understanding (Photius, Bibl. 278 528a40–b27; transl. William W. Fortenbaugh & al. 1992 [as fr. 362A], with one slight modification):5 Τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ περὶ τῶν λεγομένων ζῴων φθονεῖν. Ὅτι ὁ γαλεώτης, φασί, φθονῶν τῆς ὠφελείας τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, καταπίνει τὸ δέρμα ὅταν ἐκδύηται· ἔστι γὰρ βοήθημα ἐπιλήπτῳ. Καὶ ὁ ἔλαφος τὸ δεξιὸν κατορύττει κέρας, πρός τε τὰ τῆς φρύνης φάρμακα καὶ πρὸς ἄλλα πολλὰ χρήσιμον. Καὶ ἡ ἵππος ἀπεσθίει τῶν πώλων τὸ ἱππομανές· καὶ γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο πρὸς ἔνια χρήσιμον. Καὶ ἡ φώκη ὅταν μέλλῃ ἁλίσκεσθαι, ἐξεμεῖ τὴν πιτύαν, χρησιμεύουσαν καὶ ταύτην τοῖς ἐπιλήπτοις. Καὶ ὁ χερσαῖος ἐχῖνος ἐνουρεῖ τῷ δέρματι καὶ διαφθείρει. Καὶ ἡ λὺγξ κατακρύπτει τὸ οὖρον, ὅτι πρὸς τὰς σφραγῖδας καὶ πρὸς ἄλλας χρείας ἐπιτήδειον. Ἀλλ’ ὅτι μὲν οὐ διὰ φθόνον ταῦτα ποιεῖ τὰ ζῷα, ἀλλ’ οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἐκ τῆς ἰδίας ὑπολήψεως ταύτην αὐτοῖς περιῆψαν τὴν αἰτίαν, παντὶ δῆλον. Πόθεν γὰρ τοῖς ἀλόγοις ἡ τοσαύτη σοφία, ἣν καὶ οἱ λογικοὶ μετὰ συχνῆς μελέτης μανθάνουσιν; Ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν φώκη διὰ τὸν φόβον ἴσως ταραττομένη ἐμεῖ τὴν πιτύαν, καὶ ὁ γαλεώτης καταπίνει τὸ δέρμα φυσικόν τι ποιῶν πάθος, καθάπερ αἱ κύνες καὶ αἱ ὕες καὶ σχεδὸν τὰ τετράποδα πάντα· κατεσθίει γὰρ τὰ χόρια μετὰ τοὺς τόκους. Καὶ ὁ ἐχῖνος δὲ διὰ φόβον ἢ δι’ ἄλλο τι πάθος φυσικὸν ἐνουρεῖ, ἀλλ’ οὐχ ἵνα φθείρῃ τὸ δέρμα. Πολλὰ δὲ καὶ ἄλλα πράττεται τοῖς ἀλόγοις, ὧν οὐκ ἔχομεν λόγον ἀποδοῦναι, οἷον διὰ τί ἡ ὄρνις ὅταν τέκῃ περιρρίπτει τὰ κάρφη; Διὰ τί οἱ κύνες ἐπαίροντες τὰ σκέλη προσουροῦσι; Διὰ τί ἡ αἴξ, ὅταν λάβῃ τὸ ἠρυγγίον εἰς τὸ στόμα, μένει καὶ τὰς ἄλλας ἵστασθαι ποιεῖ; Καὶ τὸ τῆς λυγκὸς οὖν καὶ τὸ τῆς ἐλάφου ὁ αὐτὸς κατάλογος περιέξει. “By the same name (Theophrastus), from the (book) On Creatures Said to be Grudging. They say that the gecko, grudging the benefit to men, swallows its skin when it sheds it; for it is a remedy for epileptics. And the stag buries its right horn, which is useful against toad’s poison and or many other things. And the mare bites off the ‘mare’s frenzy’ of the foals; for this too has certain uses. And when the seal is going to be captured, it vomits up its rennet, this too being useful for epileptics; and the hedgehog makes water on its skin

_____ 4 On the truthfulness of Photius’ ‘summaries’ of Theophrastus, see Zucker (2008b), Sharples (1995: 24–26), and White (2002: 24). 5 For a commentary on the various parallel texts, see Sharples (1995: 71–84).

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and destroys it. And the lynx conceals its urine, because it is suitable for rings and for other uses. However, it is clear to everyone that the animals do not do these things because they are grudging, but rather that men have imposed this motive upon them as a result of their own supposition. For how could irrational cratures have so much knowledge, seeing that the rational ones only acquire it by prolonged study? No, the seal, perhaps, vomits up its rennet because it is agitated by fear; and the gecko’s swallowing of its skin may be something which it does because it is affected in some natural way, just like bitches and sows and almost all quadrupeds – for they swallow the afterbirth after they have given birth. And the hedgehog makes water on its skin on account of fear or because it is affected in some other natural way, but not in order to destroy it. And there are many other things which irrational (animals) do which we cannot explain; for example, why does the hen cover itself with chaff when it has laid an egg? Why do dogs lift up their legs when they make water? Why, when a goat takes eryngo into its mouth, does it come to a standstill and make the others do so? So the same list will include the facts about the lynx and about the deer too.”

I will briefly present the examples and comment on the six different situations: (1) The first animal in this canonical list is the gecko, which is supposed to swallow its old skin when shedding it. This habit is mentioned in the PseudoAristotelian Mirabilia,6 and the fact is that the gecko, unlike other reptiles, molts very rapidly (in about three hours), helps its skin drop with its mouth and swallows parts of it.7 This popular report has even led lawyers to give the name ‘stellionate’ (from Latin stelio: ‘gecko’) to ‘robbery depriving someone by trickery or deceit’.8 (2) The second suspicious conduct is that of the stag, intentionally hiding its antlers, either the left one (in Aristotle, Hist. anim. VIII 5 611a26–31) or the right

_____ 6 Mir. 835a: Τὸν δὲ γαλεώτην, ὅταν ἐκδύσηται τὸ δέρμα, καθάπερ οἱ ὄφεις, ἐπιστραφέντα καταπίνειν· τηρεῖσθαι γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν ἰατρῶν διὰ τὸ χρήσιμον εἶναι τοῖς ἐπιληπτικοῖς. Aristotle does not mention it in the Historia animalium (see Hist. anim. VII 17 600b15–27). 7 This process, called ceratophagia, seems to have both a defensive motivation (by erasing its tracks) and an alimentary one. 8 The precise meaning of this word is disputed. See Georges Cuvier, Le règne animal distribué d’après son organisation (vol. 2), Paris 1817, p. 31 n. 2: “Le stellion des Latins était un lézard tacheté vivant dans les trous des murailles. Il passait pour venimeux, ennemi de l’homme et rusé. De là le nom de stellionat ou dol dans les contrats.” Cf. Carl Eduard Pfotenhauer, Ergänzungsblätter zur allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung 35 (April 1843), 275–276: “Jede durch Anwendung geistiger Kraft bewirkte Verletzung der Rechtsphäre eines Anderen wenn nicht schon ein benanntes Verbrechen dadurch begangen wurde, woraus denn gefolgert wird, dass alle unbenannten Verbrechen als Stellionat zusammengefasst würden.” See also Dig. 47.20: Ubicumque igitur titulus criminis deficit, illic stellionatum obiciemus.

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one (in the general tradition: Mirabilia 75; Arist. Byz., Epit. 2.488). Although this antler is hard to find and supposed to be deliberately hidden by its owner, it has many virtues, alluded to in numerous texts, and is especially used in fumigation to drive away serpents (Pliny, Nat. hist. 8.118, 10.195, 28.149), to overpower intestinal worms (Pliny, Nat. hist. 28.211), and as a remedy for epilepsy (Pliny, Nat. hist. 28.226). (3) The third case concerns the notorious hippomanes of the foal. This anatomical part, described by Aristotle as slightly smaller than a dried fig, flat, round and black (Hist. anim. VI 22 577a8–11), is either considered as a discharge of the mare (Hist. anim. VI 18 572a19–22), or a piece of flesh on the new-born foal’s forehead (Antigonus, Mir. 20). Theophrastus probably regarded it as a part of the χόριον, and what is still called today ‘foal’s bread’ or ‘foal’s tongue’ is indeed a floating structure about ten centimetres long in the amniotic fluid of cow or mares.9 (4) The fourth example introduces the seal’s “rennet”. The πιτύα or ὀρρός mentioned in the texts is a “complex of enzymes produced in stomachs of ruminant mammals” and can hardly be spitted out. All ruminants produce this “[kind of] milk, found in the stomach of the young animals while they are suckling”, as Aristotle puts it (Hist. anim. III 21 522b7–9), describing it as “milk mixed with fire”, “emerging from the animals’ natural heat (…) while the milk is concocted”.10 Rennet from cattle is indeed used to make cheese, but hare’s and seal’s rennet is particularly well-known in medical literature as remedies against epilepsy,11 and seal’s rennet, probably taken from young animals, is the best kind, and mentioned twice in the Hippocratic Corpus.12 (5) The fifth type of behaviour is famous too (see Aelian, De nat. anim. 6.64): the hedgehog, which has an extremely important bladder compared to other

_____ 9 Note that Aelian, who reports this habit twice, explains that this is a natural precaution on the part of the mare, intended to avoid being constantly possessed by erotic frenzy (De nat. anim. 14.18; cf. 3.17). 10 See Scarborough (2006: 8). See Aristotle, De gen. anim. 739b21–27: καὶ γὰρ ἡ πυετία γάλα ἐστὶ θερμότητα ζωτικὴν ἔχον ἣ τὸ ὅμοιον εἰς ἓν ἄγει καὶ συνίστησι. On the cheese analogy of conception, see Ott (1979). 11 See Galen, Simp. med. 11.11–12 (XII 274 Kühn). Further Theophrastus, Hist. plant. 9.11.3: ἀγαθὴν δὲ τῆς ἱερᾶς νόσου μιγνυμένην φώκης πιτύᾳ ὅσον τεταρτημόριον πίνειν. On the use of seal products, also commonly employed in the treatment of diarrhoea, see Lloyd (1983: 45–46). 12 See De natura muliebri 34 and De mulierum affectibus 203. Cf. Pedanius Dioscurides, De mat. met. 2.75.2: ἡ δὲ τῆς φώκης ἔοικε κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν τῷ καστορίῳ, δοκεῖ δὲ ἁρμόζειν μάλιστα ἐπιλημπτικοῖς καὶ ὑστερικαῖς πνιξὶ πινομένη.

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insectivors, often spreads its urine on its body, probably in order to repel aggressors with the pungency of the smell.13 (6) The last puzzling habit is also related to urinal excretion and involves the lynx, suspected of hiding it to prevent humans from using this valuable product when solidified, an amber-like stone able to attract objects electrostatically (see Sharples 1995: 80) and popular in the lapidaries since Theophrastus (De lap. 28) as a remedy against urinary problems. As Walton (2001) has pointed out, the lyngurium, already mocked by Aristotle and Pedanius Dioscurides (De mat. med. 2.81.3) and never seen in ancient or medieval times, is fictitious, especially when considering that cats (in particular wild ones) usually display their urine in order to mark their territory.14 Let us discuss this motley set of behaviours. The common feature of all these cases is the utility of an animal part or product. Some are necessary for their life (the skin of the hedgehog), but the majority are an unnecessary excretion or, to use Aristotle’s term, a περίττωμα (De gen. anim. 725a). They have either a technical interest (stag’s horn, hippomanes, hedgehog’s skin, lyngurium) or a therapeutic one (at least gecko’s skin, stag’s horn, hippomanes, seal’s rennet). But there are clearly two different situations: in one case, the animal is in danger and fears for its life, in front of hunters (hedgehog and seal); in the other case, the strange behaviour is completely disconnected from interactions with men, and only one of the animals concerned is a domestic animal (the mare). The behaviour of the hedgehog is very similar to the tactics of the beaver, which, whilst being chased, is capable of biting off and throwing away its testicles (considered highly suitable for medicinal purposes) in order to save its life.15 Thus men have apparently gathered disparate habits under a common motive: reasoning backwards from the technical value of a product hard to find or seemingly protected by animals, humans imagine that animals are aware of it and act intentionally.

_____ 13 Hedgehogs have also been reported to self-anoint with toxic substances, including toad venom and faecal matter (see Brodie 1977). 14 Note that usually only weakened individuals hide their discharge in order not to attract opponents, since this signature gives precise information on the features of its emitter. 15 See Juvenal, Sat. 12.34–36; Pliny, Nat. hist. 8.109 (cf. 32.26); Aelian, De nat. anim. 6.24. One may remember that the male beaver has internal (and invisible) testicles.

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3 Critical synthesis of Theophrastus’ information The appreciation of these types of behaviour is fairly inaccurate, at least for most of them (stag, lynx, seal, beaver). But that is not the problem. There is no critical account of the behaviour itself in the tradition of begrudging animals until modern times. All these reports focus on the popular belief (φασι) of the begrudging motivation (φθονεῖν in the title, and φθόνον at the beginning), and Theophrastus insists on the fact that the explanation is unacceptable for anyone (παντί), that is to say by any rational man. He offers alternative explanations for four cases: the two animals, whose conduct is to be appreciated in an explicit context of defence against human aggression (seal and hedgehog), are probably determined by fear (φόβος); the gecko is experiencing a φύσικον πάθος, just like the mare, likely to have been mentioned by Theophrastus in the extant genuine version after the gecko, before the sentence “just like bitches and sows and almost all quadrupeds – for they swallow the afterbirth after they have given birth”,16 and probably skipped by Photius. As for the lynx and the stag, their behaviour belongs to a wider catalogue of puzzling animal conducts, as Theophrastus puts it in the third section, for which he gives no explanation. One may object that ‘fear’ is not an explanation, but an alleged and general explanatory principle substituted for ‘grudge’, giving no reason for this specific behaviour and deleting any purpose. In a way, it is a rather insufficient interpretation, but it refers to a basic and undisputable emotion of animals. The same goes for the φύσικον πάθος adduced for gecko and hedgehog: it does not mean more than ‘instinct’, a now outdated concept pointing out an uncontrolled and irrational, but beneficial conduct. But Theophrastus does not suggest that he has found the answer. It is clear that for Theophrastus the motive for these behaviours is mysterious, and that he considers envy to be an irrelevant and ridiculous motivation, alleged by others. In his view they need to be situated in a more general intellectual context encompassing all strange and apparently unmotivated types of behaviour. The essential question that Theophrastus puts is whether men are able to understand the meaning and purpose of all animal conduct, and he seems to urge zoologists to suspend any rash conclusions they might be tempted to make. The forms of behaviour he considers are very similar to the manner in which the dog lifts its leg when it urinates (see Photius, Bibl. 278; third para-

_____ 16 The analogy of eating its skin and the χόριον may be genuine.

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graph of the passage quoted above). Thus the last section, in the manner of the Peripatetic Problemata, introduces three further cases of the same kind. Some support for this is provided by Plutarch, who refers to Theophrastus, takes up the same examples (stag, seal, hen, goat), and assigns these weird types of behaviour to the category of habits “whose explanation is impossible, or very difficult, to discover” (Quaest. conv. 7.2 700d; transl. William W. Fortenbaugh & al.): ἀλλὰ περὶ αὐτῆς διηπορεῖτο τῆς αἰτίας καθ᾽ ἣν τοῦτο πάσχει τὰ προσπίπτοντα τοῖς κέρασι τῶν βοῶν σπέρματα. Kαὶ πολλάκις ἀπειπάμεθα τοῖς φίλοις, οὐχ ἥκιστα Θεοφράστου δεδιττομένου τὸν λόγον, ἐν οἷς πολλὰ συναγήοχεν καὶ ἱστόρηκεν τῶν τὴν αἰτίαν ἀνεύρετον ἡμῖν ἐχόντων· οἷός ἐστιν ὁ τῶν ἀλεκτορίδων ὅταν τέκωσι περικαρφισμός, ἥ τε καταπίνουσα ὑπὸ τῶν ἐλάφων κέρας, καὶ τὸ ἠρύγγιον, ὃ μιᾶς αἰγὸς εἰς τὸ στόμα λαβούσης ἅπαν ἐφίσταται τὸ αἰπόλιον· ἐν τούτοις γὰρ καὶ τὰ κερασβόλα τῶν σπερμάτων προτίθεται, πρᾶγμα πίστιν ἔχον ὅτι γίγνεται, τὴν δ’ αἰτίαν ἔχον ἄπορον ἢ παγχάλεπον. “The puzzle was about the reason why this happens to the seeds that fall against the hoofs of the oxen (= the fact that seeds that fell against the hoofs of the oxen produced hardened grain, i.e. ‘hoofstruck’). And I often refuse my friends (an explanation), especially as Theophrastus shunned the explanation, (in writings) in which he has collected and examined many of the things the explanation of which we cannot discover; for example, the way in which hens cover themselves with chaff when they have laid an egg, the seal which swallows its rennet when it is captured, the horn which is buried by the stags, and the eryngo; when one goat takes this into its mouth the whole herd comes to a standstill. For among these he also raises the matter of the hoofstruck seeds, which we are assured happens, but of which the explanation is impossible, or very difficult, to discover.”17

Theophrastus recognises an instance of a common word and notion in psychology: a ὑπόληψις. But if the critique of this behaviour reveals limitations in animal reflection, it also discloses the limits of human reason, which cannot unravel the secrets of animal behaviour. It is worth noting, by the way, that Theophrastus has a flexible approach to the teleological principle established by Aristotle; some anatomical parts, physiological processes or habits in animals are not natural, such as “the copulation of the heron bird or the life of the dayfly”, or precisely the useless antlers of the stag (Theophrastus, Met. 10b7–15; transl. William D. Ross & Francis H. Fobes):18

_____ 17 I leave aside the question of ‘hoofstruck’. For details and references see Sharples (1995: 83– 84). 18 Aristotle himself seems to have considered deers’ antlers as useless. See De part. anim. 663a8.

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ἔτι δ’ ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς ζῴοις τὰ μὲν ὥσπερ μάταια (…) ἔτι δὲ κεράτων μεγέθη καθάπερ τῶν ἐλάφων τοῖς δὲ καὶ λελωβημένοις κνήσει τε καὶ παραιωρήσει καὶ ἐπιπροσθήσει τῶν ὀμμάτων· καὶ ὡς ἔνια δὴ βίᾳ ἢ παρὰ φύσιν, ὥσπερ ὁ ἐρῳδιὸς ὀχεύει καὶ τὸ ἡμερόβιον ζῇ (…). “Again, in animals themselves some things are practically useless (…) and again the size of the horns, as in deer, for those that are not benefitted by them (while some have even been injured by the rubbing of their horns against obstacles or by being suspended by them or by their horns covering up their eyes), and the way in which some phenomena are even violent or unnatural, like the copulation of the heron bird and the life of the day-fly (…).”

What troubles Theophrastus is the complexity of the behaviour described that involves medical awareness and a free malevolent strategy. The ὑπόληψις of humans reflects frustration on their part and connects a promised benefit and a conduct perceived as sabotage. Humans long for a property that animals possess and refuse them. Animals steal their drugs. Ultimately, it is not the φθόνος of animals that is at stake, but that of humans. This popular interpretation of animal behaviour says much about the utilitarian conception of humans regarding animals: they are seen as tool providers. The conduct, considered as an injustice, seems deprived of biological necessity, gratuitous, and people fill this gap with a psychological motivation that makes humans the recipients of animal behaviour. Before being an expression of psychological anthropomorphism (the gecko is as jealous or begrudging as humans can be), it is a proof of ecological and economic anthropocentrism. This critique is a proof of Theophrastus’ rationality, displayed also in the treatise On Creatures that Change Colour (fr. 365b–d Fortenbaugh). The phenomenon is an uncontrollable πάθος, only due to fear and unrestrained physiological response, as happens in men. Plutarch’s text, which explicitly mentions Theophrastus, is clear: “For the chameleon changes (colour) not by any design, nor concealing itself, but does so from fear and to no purpose, being naturally frightened by noise and cowardly (...), and it is full of breath” (Plutarch, De soll. anim. 27 978e–f). Theophrastus rules out any kind of self-control and calculation in this phenomenon.19 The colour change is an unintentional physiological accident; it may be irreversible (life cycle), alternative (seasonal cycle), or casual (chameleon, octopus).

_____ 19 There is nothing in Theophrastus that would suggest a unique and thoughtful behaviour, assuming a positive anticipation and activity. And Plutarch’s passage “is not conclusive proof Theophrastus assigned calculation to some but not all animals” (Fortenbaugh 2011: 404).

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4 The further tradition of animal envy Despite his critical account Theophrastus reinforces a dubious category and an illusory explanation, albeit involuntarily. In the tradition of ‘begrudging animals’ the authors, with the exception of Antigonus and Apuleius, generally drop the λεγόμενα (‘supposed’ or ‘alleged’) in their approach to these phenomena, 20 and even in the distorted form of the title, which becomes simply De invidentibus animalibus.21 The following table summarises the ten most authoritative sources:

Table 1: Tradition and conception of animal φθόνος from Theophrastus to Albertus Magnus

Even Antigonus and Apuleius do not share Theophrastus’ position to the extent of giving up the possibility of intentional mischievous decisions. Antigonus, despite the fact that his collection of Mirabilia is intended to display extraordinary phenomena and encourages an amazed perspective on natural performances, cannot decide whether this behaviour is on purpose or accidental, and echoes the embarrassment of Theophrastus on these baffling cases which deserve “great attention” (Antigonus, Mir. 20 Giannini; my translation):

_____ 20 Diogenes Laertius 5.43: περὶ τῶν ζῴων ὅσα λέγεται φθονεῖν. Further Photius, Bibl. 278 528a40: περὶ τῶν λεγομένων ζῴων φθονεῖν. 21 See Apuleius, Apol. 51: de invidentibus animalibus. Cf. Photius, Lex. (s.v. ἱππομανές): φθόνερα ζῷα.

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οὐχ ἧττον δὲ τούτων θαυμάσια τὰ φθαρτὰ [φθαρ..κά cod., φθονερὰ Rose] κατὰ τῶν ὠφελούντων, οἷον ὁ γαλεώτης, ὅταν ἐκδύῃ τὸ γῆρας, ἐπιστραφεὶς κατέπιεν· ἐπιληψίας γάρ ἐστιν, φασίν, ὡς ὁ Ἀριστοτέλης καταγράφει, φάρμακον. ὡσαύτως δ’ ἡ φώκη λέγεται ἐξεμεῖν τὸν ὀρρόν [μετὰ τὸ τεκεῖν τὸν θορόν cod.]· καὶ γὰρ τοῦτον πρὸς τὴν αὐτὴν ἀρρωστίαν χρήσιμον. τὰς δὲ ἵππους τὸ ἐπιφυόμενον τοῖς ἐμβρύοις ἱππομανὲς ἀπεσθίειν· γίνεσθαι δὲ τοῦτο ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου καὶ πρὸς πολλὰ ζητεῖσθαι. τὴν δὲ ἔλαφον τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας κατορύσσειν· εἶναι δὲ καὶ τοῦτο ἐν πολλοῖς χρήσιμον. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν, εἴτε κατὰ προαίρεσιν εἴτε κατὰ τύχην οὕτως ἔχει, πολλῆς ἐστιν ἐπιστάσεως δεόμενα. “No less remarkable than that is the destruction of [or animals begrudging?] the useful parts, such as the gecko which, when shedding its old skin, turns back and swallows it. This is indeed a remedy, as Aristotle describes, against epilepsy. Similarly, the seal is said to vomit its rennet [or its semen after giving birth]; for this is also beneficial against the same disease. The mares eat the hippomanes that grows on her foal: it is located on the forehead and is sought for many uses. The deer buries its right antler, which is also useful in many ways. To know if these behaviours are due to deliberate choice or occur by chance would require a long review.”

Though not expressed exactly in the same terms of ‘intention’ or ‘chance’, these alternatives are also present in Apuleius (Apol. 51; transl. William W. Fortenbaugh & al. 1992, slightly modified): Quibus tamen in alio libro, quem de invidentibus animalibus conscripsit, remedio esse ait exuvias stelionum, quas velut senium more ceterorum serpentium temporibus statutis exuant; sed nisi confestim eripias, malignone praesagio an naturali adpetentia ilico convertuntur et devorant. “In another book, which [Theophrastus] wrote On Grudging Creatures, he says that they (sc. epileptics) are cured by the cast-off skins of geckoes, which they shed as if in old age at fixed times, in the same way as other serpents; but unless you snatch them quickly, they immediately turn round and devour them, whether through an envious presentiment (of their usefulness) or through a natural impulse.”

But all the other texts embrace the doctrine of animal φθόνος or invidia,22 and Pliny, for example, does not hesitate to say that “nature itself is begrudging”

_____ 22 See Pliny, Nat. Hist. 8.115 (stag): cornua mares habent solique animalium omnibus annis stato veris tempore amittunt. ideo sub ista die quam maxime invia petunt: latent amissis velut inermes, sed et hi bono suo invidentes. dextrum cornu (…). Further Pliny, Nat. hist. 8.137: novere hoc sciuntque lynces et invidentes urinam terra operiunt. See also Solinus, Coll. 2.38–39: Istud etiam ipsas lynces persentiscere hoc documento probatur, quod egestum liquorem ilico harenarum tumulis quantum ualent contegunt, inuidia scilicet ne talis egeries transeat in nostrum usum ut Theophrastus perhibet.

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(Nat. hist. 6.1: peculiari invidia naturae; see also Nat. hist. 10.76). The closest parallel to Theophrastus’ text is provided by the Peripatetic Mirabilia and the begrudging motivation is clearly expressed by the logical connectives:23 Φασὶ δὲ καὶ τὸν ἐχῖνον ἄσιτον διαμένειν ἄχρι ἐνιαυτοῦ. Τὸν δὲ γαλεώτην, ὅταν ἐκδύσηται τὸ δέρμα, καθάπερ οἱ ὄφεις, ἐπιστραφέντα καταπίνειν· τηρεῖσθαι γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν ἰατρῶν διὰ τὸ χρήσιμον εἶναι τοῖς ἐπιληπτικοῖς (…). Τὰς ἐν Ἠπείρῳ ἐλάφους κατορύττειν φασὶ τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας, ὅταν ἀποβάλωσι, καὶ εἶναι πρὸς πολλὰ χρήσιμον. καὶ τὴν λύγκα δέ φασι τὸ οὖρον κατακαλύπτειν διὰ τὸ πρὸς ἄλλα τε χρήσιμον εἶναι καὶ τὰς σφραγῖδας. φασὶ δὲ καὶ τὴν φώκην ἐξεμεῖν τὴν πυτίαν, ὅταν ἁλίσκηται· εἶναι δὲ φαρμακῶδες καὶ τοῖς ἐπιλήπτοις χρήσιμον. “They say that the hedgehog can go without food for a year. The spotted lizard [= gecko], when it has sloughed its skin like a snake, is said to turn round and devour it; for it is watched for by physicians because of its value for epileptics. (…) They say that the deer in Epirus dig down and bury the right horn when they shed it, and that this is valuable for many purposes. They say that the lynx conceals its urine because it is used for many purposes, especially for making signets. They say that the seal vomits beestings when caught; this has curative properties, and is good for epileptics.”

The topic occurs several times in Aelian’s De natura animalium,24 even if a slight doubt is expressed in one passage (De nat. anim. 3.17; transl. Alwyn F. Scholfield): Λέγει μὲν οὖν Εὐριπίδης δυσώνυμον τὸν ϕθόνον· οὗτος δὲ ἄρα ἐνοικεῖ καὶ τῶν ζῴων ἔστιν οἷς. ὁ γοῦν γαλεώτης, ὥς ϕησι Θεόϕραστος, ὅταν ἀποδύσηται τὸ γῆρας, ἐπιστραϕεὶς εἶτα μέντοι καταπιὼν ἀϕανίζει αὐτό· δοκεῖ δὲ ἐπιλήψεως εἶναι τὸ γῆρας τὸ τοῦδε τοῦ ζῴου ἀντίπαλον. οἶδε δὲ καὶ ἔλαϕος τὸ δεξιὸν κέρας ἔχων ἐς πολλὰ ἀγαθόν, καὶ μέντοι καὶ κατορύττει τε αὐτὸ καὶ ἀποκρύπτει ϕθόνῳ τοῦ τοσούτων τινα ἀπολαῦσαι. ἴυγγας δὲ ἐρωτικὰς τῷ πώλῳ συντίκτουσα ἵππος οἶδε· ταῦτά τοι καὶ ἅμα τῷ τεχθῆναι τὸ βρέϕος ἣ δὲ τὸ ἐπὶ τῷ μετώπῳ σαρκίον ἀπέτραγεν. ἱππόμανες ἄνθρωποι καλοῦσιν αὐτό. καὶ οἱ γόητες τὰ τοιαῦτά ϕασιν ὁρμάς τινας ἑλκτικὰς ἐς μίξιν ἀκατάσχετον καὶ οἶστρον ἀϕροδίσιον

_____ 23 Ps.-Aristotle, Mir. 65–66 (835a26–29) and 75–77 (835b27–32); transl. Walter S. Hett (with one slight modification). See also Stobaeus, Flor. 4.36.27. 24 Aelian, De nat. anim. 3.19: Φώκη δέ, ὡς ἀκούω, τὴν πυετίαν τὴν ἑαυτῆς ἐξεμεῖ, ἵνα μὴ τοῖς ἐπιλήπτοις ᾖ ἰᾶσθαι. βάσκανον δὴ τὸ ζῷον ἡ ϕώκη, ναὶ μὰ τόν. Further Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.17: ῝Εν τῶν βασκάνων ζῴων μέντοι καὶ ἐχῖνος ὁ χερσαῖος εἶναι πεπίστευται. ὅταν γοῦν ἁλίσκηται, παραχρῆμα ἐνεούρησε τῷ δέρματι, καὶ ἀχρεῖον ἀπέϕηνεν αὐτό· δοκεῖ δὲ ἐς πολλὰ ἐπιτήδειον. καὶ ἡ λὺγξ δὲ ἀποκρύπτει τὸ οὖρον· ὅταν γὰρ παγῇ, λίθος γίνεται, καὶ γλυϕαῖς ἐπιτήδειός ἐστι, καὶ τοῖς γυναικείοις κόσμοις συμμάχεται, ϕασίν.

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παρέχειν καὶ ἐξάπτειν. οὔκουν τὴν ἵππον ἐθέλειν ἀνθρώπους μεταλαγχάνειν τοῦ γοητεύματος τοῦδε, ὥσπερ οὖν ἀγαθοῦ μεγίστου ϕθονοῦσαν. οὐ γάρ; “Well then, Euripides says that jealousy is hateful. And it seems that this is present even in some animals. At any rate, according to Theophrastus, when the gecko has shed its skin it turns around and does away with it by swallowing it; and it seems that the shed skin of this creature is a remedy for epilepsy. And the stag too knows that its right horn is useful for many things, and yet it even buries and conceals it, through jealousy that anyone should enjoy so many benefits. And the mare knows that it produces love-charms together with its foal; it is for this reason that, as soon as the foal is born, it bites off the piece of flesh on its forehead, which men call ‘mare’s frenzy’. The magicians say that such things produce and kindle certain impulses which draw people into uncontrollable sexual intercourse and a madness for sex. So the mare does not want men to have a share of this spell, as if she were grudging of so great a benefit. Is it not so?”

The situation is more complex in Plutarch. In De invidia and Quaestiones convivales, he challenges this interpretation, arguing that only humans may be affected by φθόνος.25 But in De sollertia animalium Phaedimus, one of the protagonists in this work, defends the idea of an animal cleverness and supports the opposite view that animals have the full range of emotions and feelings which men have (De soll. anim. 3 961d; transl. Harold Cherniss & William C. Helmbold, with one modification): τὰ δὲ πάθη σύμπαντα κοινῶς ‘κρίσεις φαύλας καὶ δόξας’ ὁμολογοῦντες εἶναι, θαυμαστὸν ὅτι δὴ παρορῶσιν ἐν τοῖς θηρίοις ἔργα καὶ κινήματα πολλὰ μὲν θυμῶν πολλὰ δὲ φόβων καὶ ναὶ μὰ Δία φθόνων καὶ ζηλοτυπιῶν. “And though they admit that emotions one and all are ‘false judgements and seeming truths’, it is extraordinary that they obviously fail to note many things that animals do and many of their movements that show anger or fear or, so help me God, envy or jealousy.”26

_____ 25 See Plutarch, De inv. 537b: Tὸ μέντοι φθονεῖν πρὸς μόνον ἄνθρωπον ἀνθρώπῳ γίνεται. Ἐν τοῖς θηρίοις φθόνον μὲν οὐκ εἰκὸς ἐγγίνεσθαι πρὸς ἄλληλα (τοῦ γὰρ εὖ πράττειν ἢ κακῶς ἕτερον φαντασίαν οὐ λαμβάνουσιν, οὐδ’ ἅπτεται τὸ ἔνδοξον ἢ ἄδοξον αὐτῶν, οἷς ὁ φθόνος ἐκτραχύνεται μάλιστα)· μισοῦσι δ’ ἄλληλα καὶ ἀπεχθάνονται καὶ πολεμοῦσιν ὥσπερ ἀσπείστους τινὰς πολέμους ἀετοὶ καὶ δράκοντες, κορῶναι καὶ γλαῦκες, αἰγιθαλλοὶ καὶ ἀκανθυλλίδες (…). Ὥστε καὶ ταύτῃ φαίνεσθαι διαφέροντα τοῦ μίσους τὸν φθόνον, τὸ μὲν δεχομένης τῆς τῶν θηρίων φύσεως τὸν δὲ μὴ δεχομένης. 26 See also Plutarch, De inv. 537a: φθονοῦσι δ’ ἁπλῶς τοῖς εὖ πράττειν δοκοῦσιν. Ὅθεν ἔοικεν ὁ μὲν φθόνος ἀόριστος εἶναι, καθάπερ ὀφθαλμία πρὸς ἅπαν τὸ λαμπρὸν ἐκταρασσόμενος.

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The canon of the six ‘paradigmatic’ animals may be extended, and the peacock,27 the plover,28 and the elephant29 also appear by tradition as begrudging animals. As for the peacock, Aristotle himself gives it as an example of a creature that is φθονερός in the opening of the Historia animalium, the only passage where the adjective is used for an animal.30

5 Cognitive issues related to the ‘begrudging’ hypothesis Theophrastus appears to be adopting an unusual attitude in his critique of this popular conception of begrudging animals. In the summary, as in the entire ancient and medieval tradition, the naturalistic data seem to be indisputable (or at least not worthy of further consideration), and the facts themselves are not studied but mechanically reported. The crucial issue in ethological reports is the interpretation of the behaviour. And we are dealing here with a very special case. The major problem for Theophrastus is the knowledge of human artefacts that it implies. Significantly, animal φθόνος is considered in the text as a σοφία. This is a surprising and paradoxical designation for such a despised affect, which is a cardinal sin and almost a taboo feeling, according to Stevens (1948), who tracked down its occurrences in classical literature. But the fact is

_____ 27 See Pliny, Nat. hist. 29.124: qua in mentione significandum est pavones fimum suum resorbere tradi invidentes hominum utilitatibus. Like the seal (see Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.58), this animal is also capable of falling in love with humans (see Clearchus in Athenaeus, Deipn. 13 606c; Pliny, Nat. hist. 10.44; Aelian, De nat. anim. 5.21). 28 See Plutarch, Quaest. conv. 681c–d (giving evidence of the popularity of the topic): ὅθεν οὐ προσβλέπουσιν οἱ χαραδριοὶ τοὺς τὸν ἴκτερον ἔχοντας οὐδὲ καρτεροῦσιν, ἀλλ’ ἀποστρέφονται καὶ τὰ ὄμματα συγκλείσαντες ἔχουσιν, οὐ φθονοῦντες, ὡς ἔνιοι νομίζουσι, τῆς ἀπ’ αὐτῶν ἰάσεως ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ὑπὸ πληγῆς τιτρωσκόμενοι. 29 Pliny, Nat. hist. 8.7–9: Praedam ipsi in se expetendam sciunt solam esse in armis suis, quae Iuba cornua appellat, Herodotus tanto antiquior et consuetudo melius dentes. quam ob rem deciduos casu aliquo vel senecta defodiunt (…). Mirum in plerisque animalium scire quare petantur, sed et fere cuncta quid caveant. 30 Aristotle, Hist. anim. I 1 488b12–25: Διαφέρουσι δὲ καὶ ταῖς τοιαῖσδε διαφοραῖς κατὰ τὸ ἦθος. Τὰ μὲν γάρ ἐστι πρᾶα καὶ δύσθυμα καὶ οὐκ ἐνστατικά, οἷον βοῦς, (…) τὰ δ’ ἀνελεύθερα καὶ ἐπίβουλα, οἷον οἱ ὄφεις, (…) τὰ δὲ γενναῖα καὶ ἄγρια καὶ ἐπίβουλα, οἷον λύκος· Καὶ τὰ μὲν πανοῦργα καὶ κακοῦργα, οἷον ἀλώπηξ, (…) τὰ δὲ φθονερὰ καὶ φιλόκαλα, οἷον ταώς. See also Arist. Byz., Epit. 1.25.

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that, in Theophrastus’ opinion, the main flaw of this theory is the cognitive ability and cultural consciousness granted to animals: according to current opinion they would be aware of the elaborate uses which men make of their desirable possessions. Cole (1991: 59) misinterprets the text when she writes that “the particular sophia of which animals are said to be incapable is that entailed by malicious resentment and spiteful plans (…)” and refers to “stratagems involved in the behaviour”. To eat or vomit is not particularly clever and the point is not the physical process or action, but the idea that animals know the technical use or abuse (the technique of carding and the art of making seals are explicitly mentioned in the text) which humans invented with their natural parts, and that they understand the subtlety of human medicine and cultural development. It would be far-fetched to imagine that animals could have acquired such knowledge through personal experience by spying on men, and the only conceivable assumption which could substantiate the popular interpretation is that they have discovered the cultural value of these natural products by their own means. It is not even necessary to give great importance to the conventional use of ἄλογα for ‘animals’ in Photius’ summary31 or to suppose that Theophrastus denies that beasts have any kind of reason: he simply cannot figure out so profound an understanding (τοσαύτη σοφία) as discerning remedies (φάρμακα) and techniques (τεχναί) which humans needed a lot of time and effort to contrive, and which are totally irrelevant for themselves. The generally approving tradition focuses on this aspect of the subjects and celebrates the deep understanding displayed on this occasion by animals. For Antigonus (Mir. 20), this φθόνος is a real source of wonder (θαυμάσια). Likewise, Pliny recognises in this behaviour the evidence of natural wisdom, as it clearly appears through the constant use of scire, noscere or gnarus.32 Even more convinced of this ability is Aelian in a famous chapter, emphasising on every occasion the astonishing faculties of animals.33 He goes far beyond the Peripa-

_____ 31 According to Kraak (1953), the two sentences containing this word might be Photian comments. 32 See Pliny, Nat. hist. 8.7–9, 8.133 and 8.137. Cf. persentiscere and sentire in Solinus, Coll. 2.38, and Isidore, Etym. 12.2.20. Pliny, after mentioning the urine of the lynx, evokes the sollertia of badgers. 33 De nat. anim. 3.17 (see above for text and translation). Aelian considers animal behaviour as completely natural and innate, but at the same time deliberate and purposeful. Animals know without learning anything and their know-how does not entail the compulsive aspect of instinct: they know from inside (see Zucker 2000 and Zucker 2008a).

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tetic consensus on animal intelligence.34 The ability to feel in advance natural phenomena such as earthquakes, thunder or changes of wind is commonly granted to animals,35 and many ancient authors indeed acknowledge their mental skills, but it is rather a practical intelligence that enables them to have some control over their environment and meet their basic needs.36 Nevertheless, the originality of the doctrine of animal φθόνος is the alleged emergence of animal mind into the core of the technical conceptualisation of men. In two other fields animals are reputed by some authors to share human activities of high cultural level: medicine and magic.37 But in medicine (auto-therapy through herbs or basic operations) they are constantly featured as autodidactic experts in a limited area, and the only connection with human practice is the fact that men are supposed to have been inspired by them. As for magic, Aelian’s claim that animals are aware of being potential victims of human magic and protect themselves against it, remains exceptional (De nat. anim. 1.35; though see also Pliny the Elder, e.g. Nat. hist. 28.92–93). But it is worth noting that the verb βασκαίνειν in Aelian has a triple meaning: ‘to envy’ (De nat. anim. 10.48), ‘to bewitch’ (1.35, 11.18, 12.7), and ‘to disparage’ (5.42).

_____ 34 Strato and Eudemus already recognise important intellectual capacities of animals (even the nous in Strato, fr. 47 Sharples). For an assessment of Strato’s conception, see Fortenbaugh (2011). 35 Evidence of this is given by Theophrastus himself in De signis. Aelian provides numerous examples (e.g. De nat. anim. 7.7–8). This kind of information is scattered in Pliny (e.g. Nat. hist. 28.92–93). 36 If the assertion of Pol. 1253a10–11 (see also 1332b5–6) that man is the only kind of animal possessing λόγος were conclusive, and if it were an easy task to decide whether Aristotle or other Peripatetics ascribe to animals λόγος or only the restricted and less prestigious register of φρόνησις (see Balme 1991: 58–59), modern scholars would not express opposite views on the subject. For key passages, see Hist. anim. VII 1–2 588a21–589b2 and VIII 1 608a13–20. A negative view is strongly endorsed by Sorabji (1993: 12–16); for a less negative approach see Labarrière (2005). According to Sorabji (1993: 78), the Pythagoreans attributed intellect to animals. For a recent discussion, see Lhermitte (2015). Rheins (2015: 393–395) summarises the textual data on Theophrastus’ apparent duplicity on animal intelligence. According to Anaxagoras, Plutarch or Aelian, the solution is clearer and all animals have intelligence (Plutarch, De soll. anim. 2 960a). 37 See Aelian, De nat. anim. 2.14: ϕαίη τις ἂν καὶ τὴν ϕύσιν (…) ϕαρμακίδα εἶναι. Aelian seeks to examine and unravel the mysteries of nature in order to “exhibit the properties of a large number of animals, by uncovering their habits, their forms, their knowledge, presence of spirit, sense of justice, temperance, courage, tenderness and piety” (De nat. anim. epilogue).

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6 Emotional and moral issues of animal φθόνος The psychological problem of the doctrine of φθόνος also has an emotional aspect, and it is related to the conception of animal temperaments and characters discussed in Books 8 and 9 of the Historia animalium, which some scholars assume to have been written by Theophrastus.38 Contrary to Huby’s assertion (1985: 320) that there is no reference in Aristotle to animal φθόνος, there is at least a clear reference to an animal being φθονερός, namely the peacock (Hist. anim. I 1 488b25). But the animal spirits are generally inferred from their general activity and taken into consideration in relation to other animals, whether fellows or enemies. This is probably the case for the peacock. Forms of animal behaviour are commonly assigned to basic affects and related to physiological needs, as a survival mechanism, even when involving complex strategies. The peculiarity of the φθόνος, in the case of the stag or the gecko for example, is that it seems practically gratuitous, without any personal benefit, and above all especially directed towards (and against) men. Of course, both tamed animals and wild ones interact with humans, and the negative attitude of some animals towards man (especially predators such as wolves and hyaenas) is not just attested in the texts, but perhaps very understandable. One may add that φιλανθρωπία, proving their φιλία towards humans through generic and individual behaviours of animals, is better documented in zoological narratives. But the postulate of a behaviour shaped by interest in human actions is at best a moot point. The popular belief is indeed that animals are potentially, if not necessarily, concerned with human activities and prone to help or hamper. On a deeper level, it discloses a conception also common to ancient Stoicism and Christianity: that animals are intended to serve human desires. We may go a step further, considering more attentively the definitions of φθόνος given in the Aristotelian tradition. The previous definitions were incomplete; it is the pleasure felt at the ill of friends or neighbours (Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1108b1–3; transl. William D. Ross): νέμεσις δὲ μεσότης φθόνου καὶ ἐπιχαιρεκακίας, εἰσὶ δὲ περὶ λύπην καὶ ἡδονὴν τὰς ἐπὶ τοῖς συμβαίνουσι τοῖς πέλας γινομένας.

_____ 38 On the authorship of books 7, 8 and 9, see Flashar (1983: 272–273), Lloyd (1983: 23), and Ross (2005: 10).

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“Again righteous indignation is a mean between envy and spite, and these states are concerned with the pain and pleasure that are felt at the fortunes of our neighbours.”39

The academic Definitions are even clearer (Plato, Def. 416.13; my translation): φθόνος λύπη ἐπὶ φίλων ἀγαθοῖς ἢ οὖσιν ἢ γεγενημένοις (…). “Envy is pain felt for good things present or past that affect friends (…).”

The identification of the victims of φθόνος as neighbours, fellows or friends (οἱ πέλας, οἱ φίλοι, οἱ ὅμοιοι) is not a trivial point, and Theophrastus surely had this ethical idea in mind when discussing animal φθόνος. According to popular doctrine, animals thus challenge humans just as close rivals would do in a competition between peers. As we have seen, the moral side of animal φθόνος is not the primary consideration. Yet we are dealing with “the worst of evils” according to Euripides (fr. 403 Nauck), Menander (fr. 538.6 Körte) or Galen (De aff. dign. 7.2). This aspect actually remains unmentioned in the Theophrastean debate and only appears in some philosophical or more general texts. Plutarch indeed very clearly denied that animals could feel this undesirable passion called φθόνος precisely because of the lack of moral conscience (see De inv. 537b; as above).40 Theophrastus might also have argued – and we cannot altogether rule out the possibility that he did in his genuine opusculum – that such an interpretation implied that an animal has moral awareness and knows what is good and what is bad. But this does not accord with his approach elsewhere and more generally the Greek philosophical concern about animal behaviour. Again Cole (1992: 59) is wrong when she argues that the Theophrastean critique implies the ‘innocence of animals’ in terms of ‘goodness’, opening up the way to Neopythagorean as-

_____ 39 Φθόνειν means taking pleasure in the ills of friends, as Plato puts it in the Philebus (48b11): ὁ φθονῶν γε ἐπὶ κακοῖς τοῖς τῶν πέλας ἡδόμενος ἀναφανήσεται. See also Plato, Phil. 49d6–7: Τὰ δέ γε τῶν φίλων ὁρῶντας ἔστιν ὅτε κακὰ μὴ λυπεῖσθαι, χαίρειν δέ, ἆρα οὐκ ἄδικόν ἐστιν. Further Aristotle, Rhet. 1387b25: φθονήσουσι μὲν γὰρ οἱ τοιοῦτοι οἷς εἰσί τινες ὅμοιοι ἢ φαίνονται· Δῆλον δὲ καὶ ἐπὶ τίσι φθονοῦσι καὶ τίσι καὶ πῶς ἔχοντες, εἴπερ ἐστὶν ὁ φθόνος λύπη τις ἐπὶ εὐπραγίᾳ φαινομένῃ τῶν εἰρημένων ἀγαθῶν περὶ τοὺς ὁμοίους, μὴ ἵνα τι αὑτῷ, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἐκείνους· φθονήσουσι μὲν γὰρ οἱ τοιοῦτοι οἷς εἰσί τινες ὅμοιοι ἢ φαίνονται· ὁμοίους δὲ λέγω κατὰ γένος, κατὰ συγγένειαν, καθ’ ἡλικίας, κατὰ ἕξεις, κατὰ δόξαν, κατὰ τὰ ὑπάρχοντα. See Knuuttila (2004: 23). 40 Plutarch agrees with Aristotle, and doubtless used Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in Rhet. 1380 b34–1381b37 (and ff.) and in Books VIII–IX of the Nicomachean Ethics.

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sumptions. In my view, we tend to exaggerate the well-worn Hesiodic formula that “there is no justice among animals” (Erga 278), which was repeatedly advocated by the Stoics, but which had a limited impact on the ancient philosophical controversy on the status of animals and the alleged privilege of humans or “human exceptionalism” (see Williams 2013: 208). One may think of Plutarch’s On Affection for Offspring, which highlights the tendency of contemporaries to turn to animals searching for moral models, because human nature is depraved, while animal behaviour is free and natural (προῖκα καὶ φυσικῶς).41 And the lack of ethical conscience and background is rarely pointed out in Greek texts on animal intelligence or general abilities. At any rate, it is interesting that Theophrastus apparently focuses exclusively on the cognitive issue and does not discuss at all the ethical problem involved.

7 Conclusion From the six typical behaviours of begrudging animals gathered in the Photian codex of Theophrastus’ opusculum, we are led to infer that, according to this popular point of view, some animals share with men this deadly sin and the mischievous ways deriving from it.42 But the zoological category is fully heterogeneous and even inconsistent from an ethological perspective. It incorporates both animals who simply try to save their lives and others that are supposed to hide or spoil a precious residuum. Probably overlooking the fact that the rarity gives everything a part of its value and that this feature probably attracts humans’ interest for the six precious substances listed above, the popular belief relies on a backward reasoning from human interest to natural frustration. Moreover, it assumes that animals should consider their life as principally justified by human exploitation. The hedgehog, when refusing to turn into a carding tool, is in reality ‘selfish’, as the word is defined by Ambrose Bierce (1911: 318): “devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others”, or in other words: of men. This doctrine is not only a paranoid misinterpretation. It discloses strong anthropocentrism since the animal behaviour is supposed here to be partly ruled by human concerns, as if it were necessarily interested in human ideology. Still, Theophrastus does not deny theoretically animal intentionality, in

_____ 41 See Plutarch, De am. prol. 495a, and on the animal model see De am. prol. 493b–e. 42 Envy was introduced by Pope Gregory the Great among the sinful dispositions of second rank. See Knuuttila (2004: 141–142).

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line with the flexible Aristotelian concept of φρόνησις that admits complex calculated behaviours: the basis of his critique is not the emotional or psychological features of animals, but, on the one hand, the inaccessibility of cultural representations on their part, and, on the other hand, the objective mystery of certain types of animal conduct which human reason is unable to explain. Theophrastus adopts a cautious position which is very unusual in GraecoRoman antiquity. In a similar way, he considers other strange phenomena (animals changing colour, animals appearing in swarms, hibernating animals, etc.) as misunderstood and partly inexplicable. Nowadays, the six alleged “begrudging” behaviours examined in this paper are not considered as equally real and (in the case of gecko and hedgehog) not any more discussed in relation to human technical interest. But if modern behavioural biologists and animal ethologists have found new ways of addressing these issues, they would not have a consensual position on the possible intentionality of disconcerting animal behaviours. Behaviourists (strict behaviourists, neo-behaviourists, or inclusive behaviourists) would probably argue, as Cole does in commenting on Photius’ text, that such interpretations “are engaging in anthropomorphism” (Cole 1992: 58), since “the animals have no thoughts, as such, to grasp” (Ingold 1988: 94). The zoologist John S. Kennedy, who takes an extreme position regarding animal volition and intent, asserts that “the scientific study of animal behaviour was inevitably marked from birth by its anthropomorphic parentage and to a significant extent it still is” (Kennedy 1992: 3–4), unmasking an implicit or “underground” agreement of most scientists with the assumption that “the behaviour of animals is consciously intentional” (Kennedy 1992: 28).43 As a matter of fact, the term “anthropomorphism” appears to be symptomatic of a fundamental controversy in ethology, and of the everpresent difficulty for modern scholars of apprehending (perceiving, describing and interpreting) animal behaviour without using human psychological terminology. But in the contemporary anthropological debate it is often used in an inconsistent way to stigmatise the attribution of intentionality to non-human beings. Milton, in the wake of a paper by Asquith (1997: esp. 33–34), proves that this label is biased and misleading, relying on the assumption that an animal “is not capable of the inner states supposedly attributed to it, and that these are specifically human characteristics” (Milton 2005: 259). The popular belief in

_____ 43 See especially Kennedy (1992: 91–93 and 157): “Being in-built, the anthropomorphism of scientists has not been eliminated but merely driven underground, so to speak, and now works mostly through unconscious assumptions. This is what is meant by the term ‘neoanthropomorphism’.”

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begrudging animals, correctly condemned by Theophrastus as presuming the knowledge of human technology, ultimately rests on the indisputable fact that some animals show fear and hostility towards human beings. In this respect, it does not result from an “anthropomorphic” misconception, but from an attempt to understand the motivation of mysterious behaviours that apparently do not produce any benefit for the subject itself, while inflicting a great loss to human beings. For sure, the “teleological imperative” (McFarland 1989: 147) at stake in this psychological interpretation postulates a rather twisted behaviour on the part of the concerned animals, negatively and gratuitously directed to men. Even if in the rapidly growing field of human-animal studies, inspired by the influential books of Griffin (1992), a large number of scientists (mainly cognitive ethologists) fully admit the existence of subjective conscious states in animals, it seems very doubtful that such an aetiology could appear reasonable to any of them. Nevertheless, many animal behaviours remain acutely obscure and suggest caution. Some contemporary ethologists, such as Lestel (2003), even consider all human psychic processes and cultural elaboration as rooted in animal experience or potentiality. Developing a “philosophical ethology”, he finds it legitimate to apply all social categories to animal groups, and to argue for interpreting animal behaviour as consisting in complex and cultural interactions. This re-insertion of culture in its supposed natural and original matrix offers a counterpart to the ancient interpretative scheme of animals acting more or less as humans would do. Besides, by closely coupling animal and human conditions, this perspective in fact converges with the ancient zoologists’ view, however constantly censured by contemporary behaviourists for their alleged “anthropomorphic” conception and their custom of projecting onto animals human psychological paradigms.44

Bibliography Asquith, Pamela J. (1997): Why anthropomorphism is not metaphor. Crossing concepts and cultures in animal behavior studies. In: Robert W. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson & H. Lyn Miles (eds.), Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, Albany, New York, 22–34. Balme, David. M. (1991): Aristotle. History of Animals. Books VII–X (Loeb Classical Library 439), Cambridge, Mass. & London.

_____ 44 I am very grateful to Thorsten Fögen, Jean-Charles Khalifa and Edmund Thomas for numerous comments and suggestions which have greatly improved my paper.

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Bierce, Ambrose (1911): Devil’s Dictionary, Cleveland & New York. Brodie, E. D. (1977): Hedgehogs use toad venom in their own defence. In: Nature 268 (5621), 627–628. Cole, Eve Browning (1992): Theophrastus and Aristotle on animal intelligence. In: William W. Fortenbaugh & Dimitri Gutas (eds.), Theophrastus. His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific Writings, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 45–62. Flashar, Hellmut (1983): Aristoteles. In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.), Grundriß der Geschichte der Philosophie. Abt. 1: Die Philosophie der Antike. Vol. 3: Ältere Akademie – Aristoteles – Peripatos, Basel & Stuttgart, 175–458. Fortenbaugh, William W. (2011): Theophrastus and Strato on animal intelligence. In: MarieLaurence Desclos & William W. Fortenbaugh (eds.), Strato of Lampsacus. Text, Translation and Discussion, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 399–412. Fortenbaugh, William W. & Dimitri Gutas (eds.) (1992): Theophrastus. His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific Writings, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Fortenbaugh, William W., Pamela M. Huby & Robert W. Sharples (eds.) (1992): Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence (2 vols.), Leiden. Fortenbaugh, William W. & Georg Wöhrle (eds.) (2002): On the Opuscula of Theophrastus, Stuttgart. Griffin, Donald R. (1992): Animal Minds, Chicago. Huby, Pamela (1985): Theophrastus in the Aristotelian corpus, with particular reference to biological problems. In: Allan Gotthelf (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and Living Things. Philosophical and Historical Studies Presented to David M. Balme on his 70th Birthday, Pittsburgh, 313–325. Ingold, Tim (1988): The animal in the study of humanity. In: Tim Ingold (ed.), What is an Animal?, London & Boston, 84–99. Kennedy, John S. (1992), The New Anthropomorphism, Cambridge. Knuuttila, Simo (2004): Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Oxford. Kraak, Willem K. (1953): First attempts at animal ethology in Greek biology (Theophrastus). In: Friedrich S. Bodenheimer (ed.), Actes du VIIe Congrès international d’histoire des sciences (Jérusalem, 4–12 août 1953), Paris, 411–414. Labarrière, Jean-Louis (2005): La condition animale. Études sur Aristote et les Stoïciens, Louvain-la-Neuve. Lestel, Dominique (2003): Les origines animales de la culture, Paris. Lhermitte, Jean-François (2015): L’animal vertueux dans la philosophie antique à l’époque impériale, Paris. Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. (1983): Science, Folklore, and Ideology. Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece, Cambridge. MacFarland, David (1989): The teleological imperative. In: Alan Montefiore & Denis Noble (eds.), Goals, No-Goals, and Own Goals. A Debate on Goal-Directed and Intentional Behaviour, London & Boston, 211–228. Mills, Michael J. (1985): ΦΘΟΝΟΣ and its related ΠΑΘΗ in Plato and Aristotle. In: Phronesis 30, 1–12. Milton, Kay (2005): Anthropomorphism or egomorphism? The perception of non-human persons by human ones. In: John Knight (ed.), Animals in Person. Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies, Oxford & New York, 255–271. Ott, Sandra (1979): Aristotle among the Basques. The ‘cheese analogy’ of conception. In: Man 14, 699–711.

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Regenbogen, Otto (1940): Theophrastos. In: RE Supplementum VII, 1354–1562. Rheins, Jason G. (2015): Human and animal cognition in Problemata 30.6. In: Robert Mayhew (ed.), The Aristotelian ‘Problemata Physica’. Philosophical and Scientific Investigations, Leiden, 381–412. Rose, Valentin (1863): Aristoteles Pseudepigraphus, Leipzig. Ross, William R. (2005): Aristotle, New York & London. Sanders, Ed (2014): Envy and Jealousy in Classical Athens. A Socio-Psychological Approach, Oxford. Scarborough, John (2006): Drugs and drug lore in the time of Theophrastus. Folklore, magic, botany, philosophy and the rootcutters. In: Acta Classica 49, 1–29. Sharples, Robert W. (1988): Some aspects of the secondary tradition of Theophrastus’ Opuscula. In: William W. Fortenbaugh & Robert W. Sharples (eds.), Theophrastean Studies. On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion, and Rhetoric, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 41–64. Sharples, Robert W. (1995): Theophrastus of Eresus. Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. Commentary Vol. 5: Sources on Biology, Leiden. Sorabji, Richard (1993): Animal Minds and Human Morals. The Origins of the Western Debate, London. Stevens, Edward B. (1948): Envy and pity in Greek philosophy. In: American Journal of Philology 69, 171–189. Walton, Steven A. (2001): Theophrastus on Lyngurium. Medieval and Early Modern lore from the classical lapidary tradition. In: Annals of Science 58, 357–379. White, Stephen (2002): Opuscula and opera in the catalogue of Theophrastus’ works. In: William W. Fortenbaugh & Georg Wöhrle (eds.), On the Opuscula of Theophrastus, Stuttgart, 14–37. Williams, Craig A. (2013): When a dolphin loves a boy. Some Greco-Roman and native American love stories. In: Classical Antiquity 32, 200–242. Zucker, Arnaud (2000): Magie instinctive et magie artificielle chez Élien. In: Alain Moreau & Jean-Claude Turpin (eds.), La magie. Actes du Colloque international de Montpellier (25– 27 mars 1999). Vol. 2: La magie dans l’antiquité grecque tardive, Montpellier, 79–94. Zucker, Arnaud (2008a): Homme et animal. Pathologies communes et thérapies partagées? In: Isabelle Boehm & Pascal Luccioni (eds.), Le médecin initié par l’animal. Animaux et médecine dans l’antiquité grecque et latine, Lyon, 63–78. Zucker, Arnaud (2008b): Théophraste à mots découverts. Sur les animaux qui mordent ou piquent selon Priscien. In: Danièle Auger & Étienne Wolff (eds.), Culture classique et christianisme. Mélanges offerts à Jean Bouffartigue, Paris, 331–340.

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Kenneth F. Kitchell

“Animal Literacy” and the Greeks: Philoctetes the Hedgehog and Dolon the Weasel Kenneth F. Kitchell “Animal Literacy” and the Greeks: Philoctetes and Dolon Abstract: This paper introduces and examines the concept of “animal literacy” among the ancient Greeks. The concept is predicated upon the concept of “cultural literacy” which studies the way in which cultural knowledge contributes to, and in fact controls, the degree to which we understand what we read. The Greeks had a great deal of common knowledge concerning animals due to the great interaction they had with them. Some of this was factual and based on observation of the world around them, for, in general, they came into more frequent contact with wild animals than the average city dweller does today. Other bits of information were more in the line of folk belief, but very often these beliefs are predicated on misobservation of the natural world and are just as great a part of the shared beliefs of the Greeks. Just as modern authors rely upon their audience’s cultural literacy to imbue their works with greater meaning, so too did ancient Greek authors rely upon the animal literacy of their readers. Specific examples of this premise are studied in Homer, Aeschylus and Plato. Then two previously unrecognised examples are set out. The first is an overlooked allusion Sophocles makes comparing Philoctetes to a cunning wild animal in the construction of his cave. The second concerns the cap worn by Dolon in the Iliad, the skin of which triggered associations of sneakiness and stealth. Finally, some instances of Roman animal literacy are given to demonstrate that the phenomenon pervaded classical antiquity. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-008

1 Introduction The origins of the premise behind this current paper lie in a seminal work which sought to change the way the United States deals with the problem of illiteracy. In 1987 Eric D. Hirsch Jr. published his Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and sent shockwaves through educational circles. The book addressed the well documented and widely lamented fact that American students were falling behind the children of other countries in their ability to read and comprehend English. Hirsch was Professor of English at the University of Virginia. His previous research had centred on the intriguing questions of how we read and how we remember what we have read ‒ in short, how we learn. These interests led him in turn to the works of specialists in fields like educational psychology and ultimately convinced him of the fact that in order to properly understand texts written in English, people must have more than English vocabulary, grammar, DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-008

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and syntax; they also need culturally relevant knowledge. Following Jeanne Chall’s concept of “world knowledge” (1983: 8), he stresses the need for “cultural literacy” in readers, defining this as “the background information, stored in their minds, that enables them to take up a newspaper and read it with an adequate level of comprehension, getting the point, grasping the implications, relating what they read to the unstated context which alone gives meaning to what they read” (Hirsch 1987: 2). Hirsch is saying that often, in order “to grasp the words on a page we have to know a lot of information that isn’t set down on the page”1 and that this information can be either culture-specific or content-specific in nature. At first, that sounds rather contradictory, as if one needs to know what a thing says before one reads it. Yet its fundamental truth is demonstrated by trying to understand the following passages excerpted from a report on an important cricket match: “India recorded a five-wicket victory over Pakistan on the final day of the warm-up matches on Monday (January 25) ahead of the ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup 2016, which starts on Wednesday, 27 January. Pakistan were dismissed for 197 in 44.1 overs in a match reduced to 45 overs-a-side due to a delayed start, and India surpassed the target in the 34th over to fashion a convincing and morale-boosting win. India’s left-arm seamer Khaleel Ahmed grabbed five wickets for 30 runs as Pakistan, who were cruising at 75 for one at one stage, lost their last nine wickets for 122 runs. Mohammad Umar (36) and Hasan Mohsin (33) were the main scorers. Sarfaraz Khan sealed India’s comfortable win by smashing 81 off 68 balls with 12 boundaries and a six.”2

Clearly all of us reading this piece are quite fluent in English, possessing the requisite grammar and syntax to allow us to follow the English. Yet only a select few of us can follow what actually happened during this game because we lack the necessary, culturally based background information to understand it. Similarly, a fluent English speaker from, say, South Africa, would have trouble following a description of a game of American baseball, complete with terms such as fielder’s choice, drag bunt, balk, and Texas leaguer.

_____ 1 Quotation from Hirsch (1987: 3). The sentiment is reminiscent of one commonly propounded by the great scholar of all things Greek, Eugene Vanderpool, who was very fond of saying about Greek inscriptions: “You have to know what they say before you can read them.” This was most lately related by John Traill (Institute for Advanced Study 1989: 15). 2 “Sarfaraz leads India to 5-wicket win over Pakistan in Under-19 World Cup warm-up match” (http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/77517/sarfaraz-khan-leads-india-to-5-wicket-win-overpakistan-in-under-19-icc-world-cup-warm-up-match; accessed on 26 January 2016).

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Hirsch’s research led him to believe that American students needed a certain basic core of expected knowledge and they were not getting it to the detriment of their English comprehension abilities. When an author referred to someone’s “Sermon on the Mount”, “Waterloo”, or “Rubicon”, the author did so expecting the reader to “get it”. Subsequent testing of students led to lists of such information, with the implication, hotly debated among academics, that this information should be reintroduced into curricula.3 One study found that “the most disturbing finding of the literature assessment was (…) the cumulative impression that students do not know many of the common allusions, especially those drawn from the Bible and mythology that regularly appear in serious literature” (Ravitch & Finn 1988: 215). The key phrase here, and the tie-in with animal studies, is “serious literature”. Greek authors had definite ideas as to the expected cultural literacy level of their audience and they wrote accordingly. As classicists we, like the ancient Greeks, possess in our cultural constructs the information that makes phrases like “the far thunderer” or “Tyrian purple” understandable. It is an expected and necessary part of our arsenal. Consider the latter of the two phrases just mentioned. An ancient Greek thought of more than just a colour when Tyrian purple was mentioned. It was well known that the dye that produced this colour was extraordinarily expensive. The dye was derived from the secretions of certain sea snails often referred to generically as murex, and the snail was crushed whole to obtain a tiny amount of dye. One study estimated that 60,000 shells were needed to make a single pound of dye.4 When Aeschylus produced his Agamemnon in 458 B.C., the audience saw Clytemnestra roll out a stunning and costly carpet for her husband to walk upon. It lay, brightly reddish purple, for all, even those in the uppermost rows of the Theatre of Dionysus, to see, and the audience immediately thought of the expense and, perhaps, the deaths of thousands of animals involved in producing it. Clytemnestra is tempting her husband to walk on a carpet such as those a tyrant like the recently departed Xerxes might use, and Aeschylus masterfully manipulates the associations of Tyrian purple with tyranny.5

_____ 3 A list of such information forms an appendix to the first book. This was a prelude to Hirsch, Kett & Trefil (1988); see also Ravitch & Finn (1987). Ravitch went on to serve as Assistant Secretary of Education of the United States from 1991 until 1993. 4 On the production of the dye, see Marzano (2013: 143–160). For the number of animals needed, see Marzano (2013: 157), with references. 5 It is also part of an intricate web of colour imagery throughout the play. See, for example, Crane (1993), Lanahan (1974/75), and Philippides (1984).

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This type of cultural literacy is ever-present when we study ancient texts. But the study of the role of animals as part of the more general cultural literacy of the ancient Greeks is only marginally mentioned. What was the level of Greek “animal literacy” and to what extent did ancient Greek authors rely upon it? The short answer to both questions is an easy one, for the ancient Greeks had far deeper and more frequent interaction with the animals around them. Those outside the city walls, in the rural areas of Attica, would have had intimate acquaintance with all sorts of animals, both domestic and wild, from domestic oxen, goats, and bees to foxes that devastated domestic fowl and wolves that threatened the flocks. At the same time, we must never forget that the average Greek inside the walls also had far more frequent interaction with animals than does the average city dweller today. On a daily basis they interacted directly with draught animals such as mules and oxen that drew carts carrying everyday goods as well as building materials to the Acropolis. Aelian relates the story of a mule that worked during the construction of the Periclean Acropolis; although it had been put on public welfare in gratitude for its many years of hard work, it refused to retire, walking instead alongside the animals that were still in harness (De nat. anim. 6.49). Such a story can be dismissed as a cute anecdote, perhaps, but it speaks to the common experience of an Athenian with animals in the streets (on which see Thomas, in this volume). We know that animals often interacted so directly and incessantly with humans in a polis that the entire city was forced to relocate (see Kitchell 1994). Xenophon speaks of a law that prohibited hunting game close to the polis (Cyn. 12.7), a piece of legislation that would be unnecessary unless wild game came close to the human realm. In commenting on the great plague at Athens during the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides notes an oddity: birds of prey and dogs did not feast on the bodies of the dead (Hist. 2.50). For him to take note of this speaks to such animal activity in the city as a normal occurrence. All levels of society were very accustomed to seeing large numbers of sacrificial animals inside the polis and, as demonstrated by Calder (in this volume), the number (not to mention the variety) of pets kept within the city walls was impressive.6 The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the average Greek inevitably carried about a great deal of information, factual and folkloric alike, about both the animals with which they shared their environment and those that were known only through tales or word of mouth. Authors recognised this and rou-

_____ 6 Jameson (1988) demonstrates well the magnitude of the numbers and the variety of animals involved.

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tinely utilised such information to inject levels of meaning into what they wrote. A full study of such use of animal literacy remains to be written, but for the present study, a few general examples will establish the fact. Then some specific examples, one of Sophocles and hedgehog lore, another from a pseudoEuripidean piece, will be presented and studied in more detail.

2 A glance at Homer and Plato To begin at the beginning, it is clear that Homer constantly relies on this animal literacy among his listeners/readers when he presents his similes. His comparisons of warriors with predators such as lions, wolves and raptors comes first to mind.7 It is worthwhile to note that one of Homer’s favourite animals, the lion, was probably not known to the audience the same way other predators were. The matter is constantly debated, but it seems clear that the lion did not inhabit Greece at this time. Instead, the audience knew of it through art and folklore.8 Yet it was sufficiently known in this way to enable Homer to make it an integral part of his animal arsenal. Animal literacy was not confined to animals actually seen. Other animals in similes were known from daily life and the list is enormous, ranging from flies and wasps to bulls, oxen and boars. In each case Homer uses the animal to evoke culturally accepted concepts associated with the animal in question. Wasps are fierce, lions brave, oxen strong, deer and fawns timid and helpless. An excellent example of animal literacy is found in Plato, where Socrates often employs the image of the wolf.9 For example, when describing the predatory nature of older males who chase young boys in a purely lustful manner, we hear that “(a)s wolves love lambs, so do lovers love a boy” (Phaedrus 241d). Such a statement goes beyond merely saying the wolf eats sheep, which is the level at which most moderns would understand it. The average Greek, however, could be expected to know that wolves, like other alpha predators, prey especially on the weak and the young, and the comparison is thus rendered even less flattering. In the Republic (336d), the sophist Thrasymachus (the name means “fierce/

_____ 7 The literature is vast, but see especially Schnapp-Gourbeillon (1981) and Lonsdale (1990). 8 See Kitchell (2014: 108–111), with bibliography. 9 See Long (2015: 131–148). A convenient list of all Platonic references to wolves can be found in the index of the volume (Long 2015: 256). The multiple points of interaction between wolves and humans are amply treated by Mainoldi (1984: passim).

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wild fighter”) interrupts the flow of the discussion to attack Socrates’ statements savagely. Such is the ferocity of his attack that Socrates says that he is glad he saw Thrasymachus before Thrasymachus saw him, for otherwise he would have lost his voice and would have been unable to respond. Plato is relying on his audience’s animal literacy, knowing that they possess the popular belief that if a wolf saw you before you saw it, you would be rendered mute (see Pappas 2008: 97–114). Franco (2014) has recently studied the complex set of suppositions and beliefs that surrounded literary overtones of dogs, most notably Helen’s famous denigration of herself as canine (Iliad 6.344; see also Day 2008). Even composite monsters such as the chimera or siren are based on widespread assumptions as to the basic natures and behaviours of the animals out of which they are made. Thus a sphinx has the ferocity of a lion and the wings of an eagle coupled with the misogynistic view of the treachery of the female, and a satyr is the perfect coupling of the uninhibited sexual urges of the male human and the billy goat. These few examples suffice to establish the fact that in the ancient Greek world there existed a deep familiarity with animals, whether domestic, feral, or imaginary, and that authors and artists regularly appealed to this common knowledge. The remainder of this paper will study two specific examples which have not, to my knowledge, been noticed previously.

3 Sophocles’ Philoctetes Sophocles’ tragedy Philoctetes was first produced at the City Dionysia in 409 B.C. and it won first prize. In three years Sophocles would be dead and in a few more years Athens would surrender to the Spartans, bringing to an end the glories of the fifth century B.C. The play is especially fertile for studying the Sophists, moral decay after the Plague, and much else that was going on in Athenian society at the time. The plot of the play is as follows. On the way to Troy, Philoctetes was bitten by a serpent. The bite did not kill him but rather caused intense pain and made his wounded foot gangrenous. His groans and the smell of the putrescent flesh were too much for the Greeks to bear. Moreover, such things interfered with their sacrifices. In a rather shocking break with what are generally thought of as Homeric ideals, his fellow warriors promptly deposited him on the island of Lemnos and fled the scene, leaving him to his own devices. As the Greek love of irony would have it, ten years later they learned that they must have Philoctetes’ bow, a gift to him from Heracles, in order to win the war. This is the point

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at which the play begins. Odysseus returns to Lemnos to get the bow, accompanied by Neoptolemus, Achilles’ son. In other works of literature, Neoptolemus is rather a brute. He kills old and helpless Priam and tosses Hector’s son off the ramparts of Troy. But in this play, Neoptolemus is an honest fellow who does not want to get the bow by trickery. Nevertheless, he falls under the spell of wily Odysseus, and uses deceit to obtain the bow from Philoctetes. Later, overcome with remorse, he returns it to Philoctetes and only an appearance by Heracles himself at the end of the play convinces Philoctetes to go with Neoptolemus and Odysseus, get healed, and help win the war. It is not an easy task to win Philoctetes over. Sophocles is at pains to emphasise the fact that Philoctetes had been abandoned with no human companionship at all. The Greeks watching his play were people that lived and died by identification with a polis and its subdivisions such as tribe, deme, or phratry. Thus, to be denied these connections was much more a matter of losing one’s identity than of mere loneliness. Aristotle famously said that mankind is a πολιτικὸν ζῷον, a “political animal” (Pol. 1253a1–11). It is important to stress that Aristotle uses the adjective πολιτικός to refer to creatures such as ants, bees, wasps, and cranes (Hist. anim. I 1 488a 9–11). It might be better to render Aristotle’s words as “the human is a social animal”, ever keeping in mind that the root of that society is the polis and Philoctetes has been denied one (see Mulgan 1974). Sophocles, then, emphasises the fact that Philoctetes is, as it were, “a-political” in that he has neither a polis nor any of its benefits, including social contact with others of his kind. In fact, Sophocles goes even further than this and constantly shows that Philoctetes’ isolation has rendered him more of an animal than a man. In so doing, he relies on his audience’s animal literacy. When Neoptolemus spies the cave in which Philoctetes now lives (a type of dwelling more fit for an animal than a man), Odysseus asks whether there are any signs of τρόφη in it. Schein, in his new commentary on the play (2013: 124– 125, on v. 32), says that τρόφη “includes not only food and drink, but other basic comforts – e.g. clothing, furniture, and household implements – that support human existence and distinguish a human dwelling from the lair or den of a wild animal.” But when Neoptolemus inspects the cave, he reports that all there is in the cave is a trodden down bed of leaves, the sort of bed, in fact, which deer and other animals use. Philoctetes’ cave, then, is more of a burrow or den than a proper place for human habitation. At vv. 180–181, Philoctetes is described as living alone, away from humans, “with beasts”. When Philoctetes first sees the Greeks (Phil. 225–226), he begs them to speak, longing to hear once again the sound of a human voice. He urges the new arrivals not to be frightened by his “having become wild”, using the same verb (ἀπαγριόομαι; see also Phil. 1321) that Theophrastus uses for plants that revert from their domestic va-

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rieties into wild ones (Hist. plant. 2.2.9 and 3.2.2). At v. 1263 Sophocles uses a word for Philoctetes’ cave (ἄντρον) that elsewhere in Greek denotes the den of animals such as the lion or serpent or the wild Cyclops. Schein (2013: 313) says that this word implies that Philoctetes “has been reduced to a kind of savagery or animality analogous to that of these inhuman cave-dwellers.” And Philoctetes moves like an animal. His wound forces him to crawl (Phil. 289–295), and, while at v. 702 he is compared to a crawling baby, the overall context of the longer passage makes it clear that his crawling is animalistic and not cute like that of a baby. He does not eat cultivated food such as bread, but only the other wild creatures he can take down with his bow. He lives like a wolf or a lion in the Iliad. The only bit of humanity allowed him is the bow, a bit of human τέχνη. So when Neoptolemus takes the bow from Philoctetes (v. 776), the latter laments that now he can no longer hunt even something as innocuous as a bird (v. 955). Prior to this he may have been more animal than man, but at least he was an alpha predator. Without the bow he will become the prey of those he used to prey upon (vv. 958–959). His fall is complete; he has become not just an animal, but an animal at the bottom of the food chain. There are other examples from the play that show Philoctetes as an animal, but it can be agreed that, in this play, Sophocles is intent on showing that Philoctetes has lost his human status and has been reduced to the state of a wild animal. This establishes Philoctetes as an animal. But why does the title of this article specify Philoctetes the hedgehog? The hedgehog was well known and studied throughout classical times.10 It is depicted as early as Mycenaean times following a long Egyptian tradition and there are even Mycenaean hedgehog helmets. It is frequently found in Archaic and Classical Greek contexts. Archilochus, for example, famously touted its ability to roll into a protective ball, claiming that the fox knew many tricks, but the hedgehog only one – a really important one (fr. 103 Diehl).11 In Athens, a clay vessel that held sealed evidence at trials was called a hedgehog due to the difficulty entailed in opening it (see e.g. Demosthenes, Orat. 45.17; Aristotle, Ath. pol. 53.2). Aristotle studied the animal, noting that it possessed bristles instead of hair (Hist. anim. I 6 490b27–31, III 11 517b22–27), and he knew its internal anatomy (Hist. anim. III 1 509b9). He states falsely that it mates upright and face to face in order to avoid being punctured (Hist. anim. V 2 540a3–4). The skins had industrial use in the fullers’ trade, being used to raise the nap of the fabric. But animal folklore tells us that the sagacious animal knew how, when threatened, to urinate on its spines, ruining

_____ 10 On the following, see also Kitchell (2014: 85–86). 11 Fully studied by Bowra (1940: 26–29).

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them. Pliny the Elder reports all this and adds that they were killed by being dangled from a hind foot until they starved in order not to ruin their skins (Nat. hist. 8.133–135). Poems from the Greek Anthology commemorate such events (Anth. Pal. 6.45 and 6.169). Aelian (De nat. anim. 3.10) and Plutarch (De soll. anim. 16 971e–f) claim that they roll on fruit, piercing it with their spines, and then carry it to their burrows to store or to feed their young. The belief lasted until late into medieval times and was reported as truth as late as 1991 on Cyprus (see Boye 1991: 120). This deeply rooted belief, however, existed in spite of the fact that it runs contrary to zoological data. Hedgehogs are almost exclusively carnivores, eating worms, slugs, snails, and occasionally small rodents and lizards. This is why it was kept in houses for pest control in antiquity.12 It was widely used in folk medicine treating everything from dropsy to hair loss. But it is another hedgehog trait that brings us to the Philoctetes. Sophocles stresses the fact that Philoctetes’ cave has two openings. Consider Odysseus’ words, addressed to Neoptolemus (Phil. 15–19; transl. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Loeb Classical Library): Ἀλλ᾽ ἔργον ἤδη σὸν τὰ λοίφ᾽ ὑπηρετεῖν, σκοπεῖν θ᾽ ὅπου ᾽στ᾽ ἐνταῦθα δίστομος πέτρα τοιάδ᾽, ἵν᾽ ἐν ψύχει μὲν ἡλίου διπλῆ πάρεστιν ἐνθάκησις, ἐν θέρει δ᾽ ὕπνον δι᾽ ἀμφιτρῆτος αὐλίου πέμπει πνοή· “From now on, your task is to help me and to see where in this place there is a cave with two mouths, such that when it is cold there is a double seat in the sun and in summer a breeze wafts sleep through the cavern with its opening at both ends.”

This is not a casual detail to be forgotten. Indeed, no one could forget it, for the stage may well have been set with a replica of the two-mouthed cave.13 And the image is recurrent. Here the cave is “two-mouthed” (v. 16: δίστομος). In vv. 159– 160 it is “double-doored” (ἀμφίθυρον). At v. 952 it is “double-gated” (δίπυλον). Now, in his Historia animalium Aristotle mentions that hedgehog burrows have two openings, one north and other south. When the north and south winds shift, the animals change the position of the entrance to their burrows to avoid

_____ 12 Owners of hedgehog pets report on the internet that grapes are harmful to the animals. I have not been able to find a scientific study proving this, however. See Mori & O’Brien (1997). 13 See Schein (2013: 14, with n. 45) for arguments pro and con for thinking that both entrances were shown on stage.

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the breeze. Even hedgehogs kept in houses will, he says, change their position from wall to wall. Aristotle states further that an entrepreneur in Byzantium utilised this trait to garner great fame as a forecaster of the weather (Hist. anim. VIII 6 612b1–9). Theophrastus is very specific on the point (De sign. 30; transl. Arthur F. Hort, Loeb Classical Library): Ἡ πέμπτη καὶ δεκάτη ἀπὸ τροπῶν τῶν χειμερινῶν ὡς τὰ πολλὰ νότιος. βορείων δὲ γινομένων ξηραίνει πάντα, νοτίων δὲ ὑγραίνει. ἐὰν δὲ νοτίων ὄντων ψοφῇ τῶν κεκολλημένων, εἰς τὰ νότια σημαίνει τὴν μεταβολήν· ἐὰν δὲ πόδες οἰδῶσι, νοτία ἡ μεταβολή. τὸ δὲ αὐτὸ σημεῖον καὶ ἐκνεφίου. καὶ ὀδαξῶν τὸν δεξιόν. ἐχῖνος ὁ χερσαῖος σημαντικόν· ποιεῖται δὲ δύο ὀπὰς ὅπου ἂν οἰκῇ, τὴν μὲν πρὸς βορρᾶν τὴν δὲ νοτόθεν· ὁποτέραν δ᾿ ἂν ἀποφράττῃ, ἐντεῦθεν πνεῦμα σημαίνει, ἐὰν δ᾿ ἀμφοτέρας, ἀνέμου μέγεθος. “The fifteenth day after the winter solstice is generally marked by southerly winds. If there is a northerly wind, everything gets dried up; if a southerly, there is abundant moisture. If, while a south wind is blowing, glued articles make a cracking sound, it indicates a change to a south wind. If the feet swell, there will be a change to a south wind. This also sometimes indicates a hurricane. So too does it, if a man has a shooting pain in the right foot. The behaviour of the hedgehog is also significant: this animal makes two holes wherever he lives, one towards the north, the other towards the south: now, whichever hole he blocks up, it indicates wind from that quarter, and, if he closes both, it indicates violent wind.”

Plutarch (De soll. anim. 16 972a) repeats much of this, saying that hedgehogs shift their positions as a sailor shifts sails and cites another hedgehog based weatherman in Cyzicus. McCarthy (1921: 98) cites a later version of all this, in an almanac for the year 1733: “Observe which way the hedgehog builds her nest, To front the north, or south, or east or west; For if ’tis true that common people say, The wind will blow the quite contrary way.”

Several other animals are said to have had this rudimentary sense of architectural planning. Pliny the Elder says that the sciurus, a squirrel, prepares for the winter by storing up food and adds that it can predict the weather and stops up any hole that is facing the wind, wrapping up in its bushy tail (Nat. hist. 8.138). McCarthy (1921: 98) lists many other animal forecasters, but the hedgehog, as an animal found in the house and garden, was better known to the Athenians. Once one has such knowledge as part of one’s animal literacy, it is clear why Sophocles wanted to emphasise that Philoctetes’ cave had two mouths. He was not saying that Philoctetes is literally a hedgehog, of course. Rather, the

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two-mouthed cave is a subtle way to reinforce the persistent theme of Philoctetes as an animal, possessing animal cunning. By stressing the double mouth of the cave several times throughout the play, and by having it constantly on stage as a visual reminder, Sophocles reminds us of what a person can become when cut off from the polis ‒ a cunning animal, but an animal nonetheless.

4 Dolon in the Iliad and the Rhesus Actual animals and animal characters were not unheard of on the Greek stage (see Arnott 1959: 177–179). We have, of course, the famous dog in Aristophanes’ Wasps (on which see Miles, in this volume), and horses or mules certainly pulled chariots such as the one in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. We also find humans acting as animals and this brings us to our second instance of a Greek playwright relying on his audience’s animal literacy. The play Rhesus was long attributed to Euripides, but in fact may be an early fourth-century play by someone else.14 Even at this date, it is probably only twenty years removed from Philoctetes. Its plot derives from Book 10 of Homer’s Iliad, which is generally referred to as the Doloneia.15 Rhesus was a Thracian who came to Troy to help the Trojan cause. As he lies asleep outside the walls of Troy, Odysseus and Diomedes plan a night raid to sneak into Rhesus’ camp and steal his famous horses. As they creep toward camp, they encounter Dolon, who has also been sent out at night from Troy to spy on the Greeks. His dress is impressive because he has taken on pelts of various animals (Homer, Il. 10.333–335; transl. A. T. Murray, revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library): αὐτίκα δ᾿ ἀμφ᾿ ὤμοισιν ἐβάλλετο καμπύλα τόξα, ἕσσατο δ᾿ ἔκτοσθεν ῥινὸν πολιοῖο λύκοιο, κρατὶ δ᾿ ἐπὶ κτιδέην κυνέην, ἕλε δ᾿ ὀξὺν ἄκοντα, βῆ δ᾿ ἰέναι προτὶ νῆας ἀπὸ στρατοῦ· (…). “Immediately then he cast about his shoulders his curved bow, and over it he put on the skin of a grey wolf, and on his head he set a cap of ferret skin, and grasped a sharp javelin, and set out to go toward the ships from the camp (…).”

_____ 14 See Ritchie (1964), Feickert (2005: 41–54), Liapis (2009), and Liapis (2012: lxvii-lxxv). 15 For an overview of the Dolon myth in literature and art, see Williams (1986), Liapis (2009), and Liapis (2012: xxix-xxxii), who also stresses the play’s debt to the “Pindaric” tradition.

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Steadman (1945: 6) thought that there was no particular meaning behind the choice of animal skins, saying that “Dolon’s purpose (…) was simply the negative purpose of camouflage: he caught up the hide and cap as the nearest coverings which would prevent any reflection from metal” (see also Liapis 2012: xxx). But there is surely more implied by the pelt than that. As several scholars have shown, the wolf played a vital and varied role in the ancient Greek consciousness.16 The animal was seen as a sneaky, vicious coward in almost all Greek literature, rarely friendly or useful to humans.17 In fact, it served as a prime example of an animal completely of the wild, known for its savage bloodlust and cruelty. Although it lay outside the civilised world of the human, the two frequently interacted at the boundary between the civilised and the wild (e.g. when wolves attacked sheep). A person who refused to abide by human decency or the rules of civilisation could be described as a werewolf.18 There was, therefore, a vast store of wolf-lore upon which Homer could rely, and his use of the wolf pelt in the Doloneia is a fairly obvious case of Homer’s reliance on his readers’ knowledge of the animal world. Dolon sneaks out bent on slaughter, clad in a pelt with unmistakable overtones. But Homer has added a more subtle, and hitherto overlooked, detail that is even more telling. The word Homer uses for the weasel (sometimes translated “marten”) is especially informative. The adjective κτιδέην refers to the animal called ἴκτις, a word that appears only a few times in all Greek literature.19 Its description in Nicander is most important for the current issue, for he says that the ἴκτις delights in sneaking into henhouses at night to slaughter hens as they sleep. Homer has used animal lore to paint a double picture: Dolon the wolf sneaks across the plain until Dolon the weasel can kill its prey in its sleep. Vase paintings, seemingly largely in response to the Rhesus, frequently show Dolon with the wolf’s skin completely covering him, and he is even depicted as going forth on all fours becoming, as it were, an actual wolf.20

_____ 16 For example, Eckels (1937), Mainoldi (1984), and Buxton (1987). 17 On the cowardice of the wolf, see especially Schnapp-Gourbeillon (1981: 50–51). 18 See Buxton (1987: 61–64) in general on the subject and Kunster (1990/91) for politicians as wolves. The predatory revenant named Lycas that preyed on the people of Temesa was seen by Pausanias (Per. 6.6.7–11) in a painting depicting him dressed in a black wolf’s skin. 19 See Aristophanes, Ach. 880; Aristotle, Hist. anim. VIII 6 612b10; Nicander, Ther. 196 (with scholia); and Aretaeus, De caus. 1.15. Few scholars have attached any particular importance to the ἴκτις; see Hainsworth (1993: 189). 20 See, for example, Thomson (1911), Elderkin (1935), and Marcinkowski (2001). Some have seen an allusion to lycanthropy in the Doloneia, e.g. Steadman (1945: 7) and Liapis (2012: 121).

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A vase in the British Museum (1846,0925.3), the name vase of the Dolon Painter, dates to about 380 B.C., not far from the date of the Rhesus. Dolon is in the middle, being captured by Odysseus and Diomedes. He wears the skin hat of Homer, but it is interesting to note that this painter depicts the larger pelt differently, painting it with spots, rather like the panther skin worn by Paris when he goes out to duel with Menelaus earlier in Book 3 of the Iliad, on which more below. An earlier vase in the Louvre in Paris (CA1802, Beazley 5236) dates well before either play, to between 475 and 425 B.C.21 Dolon creeps on all fours, his head in the wolf’s skin. A vase now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (B1542, Beazley 204505) shows an almost identical scene. A search of the Beazley Archive for “Dolon” will yield other examples, several in fragments. In fact, in the Rhesus Dolon specifically states that he will creep on all fours, completely concealed in a wolf skin until he nears the Greeks, whereupon he will resume a human, upright position (Rhes. 208–215). Dolon the wolf thus reminds us of Philoctetes the animal in Sophocles’ play, both humans who are also depicted with animal traits. It is interesting that in the majority of scenes the weasel cap is missing, and it may not have been transferred from Homer’s description into the play. Are there any other instances in the Doloneia of Homer drawing on his readership’s animal literacy? The scene begins with Agamemnon unable to sleep from worry about the war. He decides on action and girds himself accordingly (Il. 10.21–24). Over a chiton he put on the “tawny skin of a lion” whose pelt was so large that it reached his feet. Menelaus is also unable to sleep and, clad in the pelt of a leopard (Il. 10.29), he seeks out his brother. A bit later, the Greek spying party is chosen, consisting of Diomedes and Odysseus. Diomedes wears a lion skin (Il. 10.177–178) and a cap made of bull hide (Il. 10.256–257). Odysseus also wears a bull hide cap but as a liner for a boar’s tusk helmet, made so famous from Mycenean representations of such objects. Is there more behind these choices? Elsewhere in this volume, Alastair Harden treats the wildness and otherness that the wearing of an animal’s skin might signify and questions whether the species of animals involved here has specific meaning.22 Schnapp-Gourbeillon (1981: 62–63, 196–197), on the other hand, sees a definite hierarchy of bravery and courage among the animals with the lion at its top, closely followed by the

_____ 21 The Beazley number refers to the catalogue number in the online pottery database of the Classical Art Research Centre at Oxford University (https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/pottery/). 22 Hainsworth (1993: 160–161) tends to admit of a hierarchy.

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bull and boar. In her view the skins and helmets worn by Homeric heroes reflect the innermost natures of those who wear them, representing an interaction between animal and human only slightly less intimate than that of humans who actually become animals. The case of the leopard provides an opportunity to address such issues. As Harden suggests, Paris’ leopard skin might be seen as representing eastern luxury and effeminacy and thus be in direct symbolic contrast to, for example, lion’s skins.23 One thinks, for example, of the leopard skins often associated with Dionysus. The issue of Paris’ heroism or lack of it in the Iliad is important, and it would be interesting to see if animal literacy can be of use. In the Doloneia Menelaus wears a leopard’s skin and, just a few lines after donning it, both Nestor and Agamemnon berate him as indecisive and slow to join the fray (Il. 10.114–123). In the Paris-Menelaus duel (Il. 3.1–37), Paris wears a leopard skin and carries a bow, which is sometimes said to be a weapon used by lesser warriors in the Iliad.24 He comes face to face with Menelaus, who, in this scene, is clad in a lion’s skin and is compared in a simile to a lion about to devour a goat or deer (Il. 3.22–26). Naiden attempts to demonstrate that the leopard itself is brave in Homer, but admits that it is nonetheless vastly inferior to the lion. In his words, when Paris the leopard meets Menelaus the lion, “Paris is as good as dead” (Naiden 1999: 181). It would seem, then, that the leopard or panther skin on Paris might indeed have a symbolic meaning. A final bit of evidence is enticing, if not definitive. In later animal lore the panther was depicted as a weak hunter that did not forcibly bring down its prey.25 It rather lured them into its presence by exuding a sweet scent which the animals followed to the leopard’s lair where it leapt out and killed them, rather a cowardly type of hunting. There is, to my knowledge, no Greek source for this story, but, of course, Pliny the Elder preserved much information from lost works. This story may be referred to at the end of the duel when Paris’ mother, Aphrodite, saves him by whisking him away to Helen’s bedchamber, his more proper venue. It is interesting, if not provable, that Homer here uses a hapax legomenon to describe the chamber as “sweet smelling” (Il. 3.382: εὐώδεϊ) and in so doing draws attention to this detail. Might this

_____ 23 On the incongruity of Paris and his role as an anti-hero, see Clarke (1969) and Suter (1993). 24 On the scorn in Diomedes’ words at Il. 8.269–272, see Gottschall (2001: 289–290) and Sutherland (2001: 116). While Odysseus carries a bow in the Doloneia and shoots it well in the Odyssey, he never uses it in combat in the Iliad. 25 See Pliny, Nat. hist. 8.63. The term “panther” in antiquity was used indiscriminately, often being confused with the leopard (see Kitchell 2014: 147).

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be a reference to the hunting habits of the leopard and thus another subtle characterisation of Paris? Whether this is true or not, we see that the entire scene is imbued with animal imagery that play upon the readers’ interactions with animals. Some overtones, like those concerning the serpent, were known from quite personal interactions. Others, like those surrounding the lion and the leopard, are based on what I would call an indirect interaction. Although the term might sound contradictory, it is not. Many bits of ancient animal literacy did not hinge upon face-to-face encounters with animals, but with stories, legends, and folklore associated with a given animal. Most such encounters presumably originated when a traveller, such as a merchant, explorer, or soldier, came face to face with an animal or, perhaps, just a local tale about an animal. Such experiences were then transmitted to those at home, often with exaggeration and distortion. Indirect knowledge about exotic animals was no less part of ancient animal literacy than that acquired directly, and authors made no less use of it.

5 Roman animal literacy While this study is focused on Greek animal lore and interaction, it would be a disservice not at least to allude to the continuing tradition of animal literacy among the Romans. In fact, we have even more material to work with, since Latin literature is richer than Greek when it comes to preserving animal lore. Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia is packed with beliefs about animals that came to the Romans from Greek sources to be sure, but also from its far-flung empire.26 Romans interacted with the exotic fauna of places like Arabia and India and often brought them back to be exhibited in triumphs. They also brought back tales that became part of Roman animal literacy. But there already existed a great deal of material at home. Authors like Cato, Varro, and Columella testify to the frequent interactions Roman rural dwellers had with animals, both those they tended to and those living around them in the wild.27 A few quick examples will suffice. In sheer numbers, the bee must have been the most populous animal domesticated by ancient Greeks and Romans. Vast numbers of hives populated the landscape of both countries, providing the only sweetener available to them,

_____ 26 On Pliny the Elder, see Fögen (2007) and Fögen (2009: 201–264), with further references. 27 On animals in Roman agricultural writers, in particular Columella, see Fögen (2016).

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pollinating their crops and producing enormous amounts of wax for use in such diverse industries as the production of writing surfaces, casting bronze statues, and encaustic painting.28 The excellent work of Jones (1976) reveals that every farm, however small, must have kept beehives and in antiquity, as today, beehives lined pathways near nectar sources. The amount of ancient literature on the subject of “tanging” (the clashing together of cymbals or bronze objects to attract swarming bees) tells us that swarming was a common sight as well.29 In short, it would have been difficult for most ancients to have avoided interacting with bees. As a result of such intimate knowledge, Vergil could devote Book 4 of his Georgics to the bee, encouraging humans to emulate their ordered society. But such close interaction could also lead to misobservation and false reports. Vergil states that bees carried pebbles in their feet to serve as ballast in high winds (Georg. 4.194–196). This statement is false, for bees do no such thing. But the belief is nevertheless rooted in close (mis-)observation of the animal world. Bees contain pouches on their legs into which they pack pollen before bringing it back to the hive. These masses can indeed seem to be pebbles and thus the story began (see Kitchell 1988). Examples of reliance on both exotic and domesticated animals can be found in Vergil’s depictions of Dido in Book 4 of his Aeneid. Dido is gripped with an attraction to Aeneas that borders on madness, and her plight is compared to that of a doe who has been wounded by the arrow of an unknown hunter (Aen. 4.65–66). The doe wanders throughout the glades of Dicte with the fatal arrow stuck in her side (Aen. 4.68–73). Why did Vergil specify that the scene is on Crete? Because, as the ancient commentator Servius pointed out with regard to this passage, animals shot with an arrow on Crete used to seek out the herb dictamnum. If the animal could eat the herb, the arrow would be expelled (see O’Hara 1993: 13–14). Later, Dido pleads with Aeneas as he prepares to abandon her (Aen. 4.365–367). Aeneas will not listen, of course, for he has been commanded to leave by Jupiter himself and he is unmoved by her pleas. Stunned at this stoical behaviour, Dido says that surely Aeneas was born out of rock or perhaps whelped from a Hyrcanian tigress. Hyrcania lay on the southern shores of the Caspian sea, at the far reaches of Rome’s empire and was indeed home to the Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata), a subspecies that is now extinct. Some citizens of Rome had first-hand experience of the savage animal. Cassius Dio says that Augustus was presented with Indian tigers on Samos in 20–19 B.C.

_____ 28 On hives, see Crane (1983: 45–76). On bee products in general, see Fraser (21951: 109–129). 29 Evidence is collected by Betts (1922) and Ransome (1937: 94–95, 225–226).

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(Hist. 54.9.8), and according to Suetonius the tiger was first exhibited in Rome in 11 B.C. (Aug. 43.4). Either way, the animal lay at the forefront of the mind of Vergil’s audience. A final telling example of the importance of understanding animal literacy can be found in Catullus 83. In the poem Catullus is mulling over the behaviour of his lover, Lesbia, when they meet and her husband is present (Carm. 83; my translation): Lesbia mi praesente viro male plurima dicit haec illi fatuo maxima laetitiast. Mule, nihil sentis? si nostri oblita taceret, sana esset. Nunc, quod gannit et obloquitur, non solum meminit, sed, quae multo acrior est res, irata est. hoc est, uritur et loquitur. “Lesbia, with her husband right there, says a great number of bad things to me. And this gives that fool enormous pleasure. Mule! Don’t you sense anything? If she were oblivious of me and kept quiet, she would be fine. But as it is, the fact that she snarls and attacks me means not only that she has me in mind, but (and here is the much more important thing) that she is angry! That is to say, she burns with love and talks at the same time.”

The main thrust of the poem is clear. The husband takes Lesbia’s anger towards Catullus as a good sign. She dislikes Catullus, and therefore the two of them are not an item. Catullus believes, however, that only one on fire with love can be that angry. She burns and abuses him at the same time. But what of the insult to the husband? There has been a great deal of discussion about his being addressed as a mule. Most scholars have taken the insult as referring to the husband’s stupidity, the equivalent of calling him today an ass. Some have seen it as a reference to the husband as impotent or emasculated.30 But this does not suit Roman attitudes towards mules. First of all, mules were known for their sterility, not for their impotence. For a mule to be produced, one parent must be a horse, the other an ass. Nor is there any unassailable reference to a mule as stupid before the time of Catullus. Nor was a mule necessarily slow since some were bred to race. The one special characteristic of a mule that persisted from Greek times through Roman times as its ability to bear great loads. As early as Homer and Hesiod they are ταλαεργός (“enduring of labour”), and they are consistently praised thereafter for their ability to carry whatever is put upon them.31

_____ 30 Fordyce (1961: 372–373) sums up the major interpretations. See also Zarker (1969) and Rockwell (1969). 31 See the interesting evidence in Griffith (2006) and Gregory (2007).

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So common was this belief that when the Roman general Marius increased the equipment his soldiers had to carry, they became known as muli Mariani. The point of Catullus’ insult, then, must lie in this, and a passage from Plautus’ Mostellaria makes the intent clear. In this play a slave named Tranio is gulling his master and the next-door neighbour at the same time. Neither one catches on to the deception and Tranio brags about it (Most. 778–782; my translation): vehit hic clitellas, vehit hic autem alter senex. novicium mihi quaestum institui non malum: nam muliones mulos clitellarios habent, at ego habeo homines clitellarios. magni sunt oneris: quidquid imponas vehunt. “This old man is carrying a pack and the other one another. I have started a pretty good new venture here. Muleteers have pack mules, but I have got pack people. They take a lot of weight; whatever you pile on, they carry it.”

This is the explanation of the mule reference in Catullus. Whatever Lesbia and her lover Catullus might pile on Lesbia’s husband, he will bear it.

6 Conclusion Such examples serve to validate the concept and importance of animal literacy throughout Graeco-Roman antiquity. Ancient authors wrote for a population that shared a common knowledge base concerning animals domestic and wild, local and foreign, real and imagined. This knowledge base was the result of centuries of numerous interactions (of many types) with these animals and was passed on from generation to generation as being as valid as traditional mythic and heroic tales. The impact of human-animal interaction, then, resulted in a set of beliefs that authors from Homer to Vergil could utilise to enliven and give deeper meaning to their works. The charge to scholars looking at seemingly casual references to animals in ancient authors’ texts is never to forget the animal literacy of the past and, when facing such a reference, to investigate what the author and his audience may have had in mind.32

_____ 32 The author would like to thank Thorsten Fögen and Edmund Thomas for their assistance with the final version of this paper.

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Kitchell, Kenneth F. (1994): “So great a warfare”. Urban relocation and animal incursion. In: Syllecta Classica 5, 9–15. Kitchell, Kenneth F. (2014): Animals in the Ancient World from A-Z, New York. Kunster, Barton (1990/91): The werewolf figure and its adoption into the Greek political vocabulary. In: Classical World 84, 189–205. Lanahan, William F. (1974/75): Levels of symbolism in the red carpet scene of Agamemnon. In: Classical Bulletin 51, 24–27. Liapis, Vayos (2009): Rhesus revisited. The case for a fourth-century Macedonian context. In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 129, 71–88. Liapis, Vayos (2012): A Commentary on the Rhesus Attributed to Euripides, Oxford. Long, Christopher P. (2015): Who let the dogs out? Tracking the philosophical life among the wolves and dogs of the Republic. In: Jeremy Bell & Michael Naas (eds.), Plato’s Animals. Gadflies, Horses, Swans, and Other Philosophical Beasts, Bloomington, 131–148. Lonsdale, Steven (1990): Creatures of Speech. Lion, Herding, and Hunting Similes in the ‘Iliad’, Stuttgart. Mainoldi, Carla (1984): L’image du loup et du chien dans la Grèce ancienne d’Homère à Platon, Paris. Marcinkowski, Alexandre (2001): Le loup et les Grecs. In: Ancient Society 31, 1–26. Marzano, Annalisa (2013): Harvesting the Sea. The Exploitation of Marine Resources in the Roman Mediterranean, Oxford. McCarthy, Eugene S. (1921): An animal weather bureau. In: Classical World 14, 89–93 and 97– 100. Mori, Masako & Susan E. O’Brien (1997): Husbandry and medical management of African hedgehogs. In: Iowa State University Veterinarian 59 (Issue 2, Article 5). Available online: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/iowastate_ veterinarian/vol59/iss2/5. Mulgan, Richard G. (1974): Aristotle’s doctrine that man is a political animal. In: Hermes 102, 438–445. Naiden, Fred (1999): Homer’s leopard simile. In: Miriam Carlisle & Olga Levaniouk (eds.), Nine Essays on Homer, Lanham, 177–203. O’Hara, James (1993): Medicine for the madness of Dido and Gallus. Tentative suggestions on Aeneid 4. In: Vergilius 39, 12–24. Pappas, Alexandra (2008): Remember to cry wolf. Visual and verbal declarations of LYKOS KALOS. In: E. Anne Mackay (ed.), Orality, Literacy, Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman World, Leiden, 97–114. Philippides, Stamatis N. (1984): A Grammar of Dramatic Technique. The Dramatic Structure of the Carpet Scene in Aeschylus’ ‘Agamemnon’, Diss. University of California Irvine. Ransome, Hilda M. (1937): The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore, London. Ravitch, Diane & Chester E. Finn (1987): What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? A Report on the First National Assessment of History and Literature, New York. Ritchie, William (1964): The Authenticity of the ‘Rhesus’ of Euripides, Cambridge. Rockwell, Kiffin A. (1969): Catullus 83.3: Mule, nihil sentis. In: Classical Journal 65, 27. Schein, Seth L. (2013): Sophocles: Philoctetes, Cambridge. Schnapp-Gourbeillon, Annie (1981): Lions, héros, masques. Les représentations de l’animal chez Homère, Paris. Steadman, S. H. (1945): A note on the Rhesus. In: Classical World 59, 6–8. Suter, Ann (1993): Paris and Dionysos. Iambos in the Iliad. In: Arethusa 26, 1–18. Sutherland, Caroline (2001): Archery in the Homeric epics. In: Classics Ireland 8, 111–120.

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Thomson, James A. K. (1911): Dolon the wolf. In: Classical Review 25, 238–239. Williams, Dyfri (1986): Dolon. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 3.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 660–664. Zarker, John W. (1969): Mule, nihil sentis (Catullus 83 and 17). In: Classical Journal 64, 172– 177.

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Cultured Animals and Wild Humans? Talking with the Animals in Aristophanes’ Wasps Sarah Miles

Abstract: This article focuses on animal characters and choruses as both companions and opponents to human action in Aristophanes’ Wasps (422 B.C.). In the world of Aristophanic comedies that contain animal choruses a unique situation emerges: humans and animals are seen to co-exist in a society where animals can employ human speech and humans may take on animal attributes. This paper explores these points using Aristophanes’ Wasps as its focus because (1) Wasps contains the largest array of animals in extant comedy, (2) Wasps has been noted for its very strong Aesopic elements, and (3) Wasps has received less attention than Birds in the study of animals in comedy. The article explores the variety of ways in which humans and animals are seen to interact within just one comic drama: from Philocleon introduced as a “monstrous creature” (Wasps 4: κνώδαλον) and first appearing on stage disguised under a donkey, to the waspish chorus, the satirical dog-trial, and finally the crab-dance which ends the play. No other extant comedy contains such a variety of animal characters and animalinspired jokes, many of which are orchestrated by the protagonist Philocleon, who appears to possess shape-shifting qualities that see him straddle the thin boundary between human and animal worlds. The article explores how the confrontation between animal and human is played out through the character of Philocleon alongside the use of slapstick, contemporary satire and musical contests in which the human wins out but at the cost of part of their anthropic identity. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-009

1 Introduction Humans love to anthropomorphise animals, where anthropomorphism means attributing human characteristics to non-human things.1 It is one of the many ways that we form bonds with animals, who are often viewed as a distinct category from humans and yet recognisably familiar. However, this marked tension between distinction and familiarity highlights a concern in Human-Animal Studies about the efficacy of the term ‘anthropomorphism’ for understanding human-animal relations, with attempts to move beyond the human/animal bi-

_____ 1 See e.g. Guthrie (1997: 51) on this common definition of anthropomorphism in social science. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-009

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nary that underwrites anthropomorphism.2 Kay Milton’s proposal of egomorphism over anthropomorphism is particularly instructive on this point, arguing “that personal experience, rather than human-ness, is the basis for understanding others, and that understanding is achieved by perceiving characteristics in things rather than, as anthropomorphism implies, attributing characteristics to things.” 3 The individual relationships that humans form with animals are shaped and perceived through their engagement with the world around them. However, cultures create boundaries between human and animal, delimiting one from the other. And it is exactly these kinds of boundaries that various forms of comedy enjoy identifying in order to trample all over them, distorting the familiar and introducing incongruities into our understanding of human and animal. Such a comic distortion can be seen in a recent story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (1 June 2015) of a Dutch hedgehog which consumed the remains of a bottle of advocaat.4 Particularly remarkable was the way that the story played up the humour of a hedgehog drunk on alcohol by using a number of anthropomorphising phrases. The title of the article was “EierlikörExzess: Ein Igel mit Kater” (‘Advocaat-excess: Hedgehog with a Hangover’), while the opening idiom of the article “Voll wie eine Haubitze” is comparable to the English ‘drunk as a skunk’ since these expressions are used to describe inebriated humans. The article detailed how the hedgehog was found lying in the middle of the road; he was so drunk that he could no longer curl up into a ball, and he was now ‘sleeping off his inebriation’ at an animal sanctuary. The piece is filled with the same clichés that are used in reporting drunken human behaviour. The humour comes in part from embellishing this small animal with human characteristics, human culture, and human behaviour. This creates the illusion that the little hedgehog is just like us, but at the same time we recognise

_____ 2 See Alger & Alger (1999: 203): “anthropomorphism is best understood as a distancing concept intended to obscure the real intersubjectivity that exists between human and non-human animals.” See also Knight (2005: 12): “In short, human–animal dualism is problematic not just because it obscures human–animal commonality, but also because it obscures differences between other animals.” Further Varsava (2014: 521): “The ‘human’ and ‘animal’ are mutually constituting concepts: the superiority and entitlement of the first depends upon the inferiority and subordination of the second.” 3 See Milton (2005: 260). Other recent studies have considered how humans make meaning and shape their self-conception through animals: see e.g. Gross & Vallely (2012) and Payne (2010). 4 See http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/tiere/eierlikoer-exzess-ein-igel-mit-kater-13623 618.html (last on-line access: 14 September 2015).

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that since he is a hedgehog, he must be wholly unlike us.5 By drawing attention to these incongruities the article plays the story for laughs based on the transgressions of human-animal boundaries in twenty-first-century mainstream culture. When one comes to look at comedy in another, ancient, Greek culture, it is important to consider how Greek views of animals and humans, and the boundaries between the two, are reflected in contemporary comic drama. Indeed, Greek drama of the late fifth century B.C. both humanises animals and animalises humans in equal measure to create humour and entertainment for its ancient audiences, as we shall explore in connection with Aristophanes’ Wasps (Σφῆκες) of 422 B.C. It is a striking feature of Aristophanes’ comedies of the fifth century B.C. that the comic adventures are always set in an Athens contemporary with that of its audience, and yet within that very familiar space the most fantastical and incredible events take place, such as flying to heaven on a dung-beetle in Peace (Εἰρήνη) to rescue the goddess Peace, or in Wealth (Πλοῦτος) restoring sight to old blind Wealth, or in Birds (Ὄρνιθες) fleeing Athens to construct a city in the sky in the company of the birds. This article, however, focuses on just one aspect of the incredible in Aristophanic comedy: the way in which Aristophanes exploits contemporary understanding of human-animal relationships in order to create the fantastical comedy Wasps. This is a play whose narrative focus is on the attempts of Bdelycleon to free his father, Philocleon, from his unhealthy addiction to jury-service. However, it is also a play in which the lines between human and animal are constantly blurred. This is a point noted by scholarship, as seen in Rothwell’s remark on Wasps: “One might say that instead of an ‘anthropomorphizing’ tendency in this comedy, there is the reverse: a ‘theriomorphizing’ tendency, in which obviously human characters take on the features of animals.” 6 However, the significance of such observations for interpreting Wasps has not been fully examined, and in particular why Aristophanes chose to create such an animal-focused comedy. As we shall discuss below, this blurring of human-animal identity is extensive throughout the comedy, and it becomes most intense at the point when the political satire is at its most biting. There is an animal backbone to this Aristophanic comedy that has been underexplored, and, as we shall see, it provides comic scenes, endless jokes, repeated references to Aesop and his fables, and the irrepressible character of Philocleon,

_____ 5 See Milton’s (2005) egomorphic model cited above. 6 Rothwell (2007: 108–109). See also Pütz (2008: 219–222) and Pütz (2014: 62–64). Lenz (2014: 49 n. 173) lists some of the animal imagery and references in Wasps.

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who takes on multiple animal identities in the play. This information is recorded in the appendix at the end of this paper. This last point, concerning the unique identity of Philocleon, is something partly noted by scholars such as Whitman (1964: 163–165), Bowie (1993: 79–82) and Rothwell (2007: 116), but it is only when placed among these other animal elements that occur throughout Wasps, including references to Aesop, that its full significance emerges, both for the humour and the contemporary satire of this comic drama. In the plot of Wasps, despite the best efforts of Philocleon’s son Bdelycleon to civilise his father, Philocleon is an animal that cannot be tamed. Philocleon’s animalistic identities allow him a freedom of self-expression which jars against the necessary requirements of living in Athenian society. As such, the comedy does not just explore political satire and inter-generational conflict, but it uses animals to highlight, distort and caricature social and political traits in human nature. As Taillardat (21965: 28) long ago noted: “ce qui intéresse Aristophane c’est essentiellement l’homme: la nature humaine d’une part, de l’autre l’activité de l’homme en société, surtout dans ses manifestations politiques et artistiques.” Aristophanic comedy makes a habit of viewing humanity through distorted mirrors, and it seems that animals provided the perfect distortion with which to reflect on human nature and behaviour in the Athens of 422 B.C. All of Aristophanes’ audience was capable of identifying human associations with animals in terms of their behaviour, characteristics, appearance and nature, because animals formed an ever-present part of ancient Greek life. Therefore, Aristophanes’ comedy was constructed purposefully to be accessible to the widest possible audience, something we shall note again in our discussion of Aesop. In Wasps Aristophanes harnesses this awareness of animals and animal stories and pushes it to its extreme in creating his animal-based comedy which is brimming with contemporary political and social satire. Past research into animals in Greek comedy has focused on animal choruses, and their connections with the origins of comic drama, both its cultic roots (see Sifakis 1971), and the recent suggestion that the animal choruses had aristocratic origins in the symposia.7 Other scholars have interpreted the strong presence of animals in some Aristophanic comedies through the associations between Aesop and Aristophanes, but this has not been used for a full interpretation of Wasps (see Schirru 2009 and Hall 2013). In his study of Wasps Bowie considers that the old man Philocleon undergoes a ‘reverse ephebeia’ in the

_____ 7 See Rothwell (2007: 149–150). For reservations about this position, see Rosen’s review (2008: 194–195).

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play, gaining status as a young man which, as Bowie (1993: 81) puts it, is “richly characterised by such symbols of chaos and marginality as the sea and animals”. Bowie’s insightful observations on animals focus on this reverse ephebeia, whereas this article contextualises the role played by animals throughout Wasps. More recently, Corbel-Morana’s survey of the use of animals in Aristophanic comedy has emphasised the human-animal hybridity of the chorus in Wasps, but Birds plays a dominant role in the book (Corbel-Morana 2012: 154–167). Pütz (2008) has considered human-animal boundary transgression through an interesting comparison of Wasps and Birds, but only selected scenes are analysed from each play, and it is hard to follow Pütz’s conclusion that animals help to break the comic illusion in these comedies when it is questionable whether there is any comic illusion to be broken.8 Interest in Wasps will no doubt be re-ignited by the commentary of Biles and Olson (2015), although their extensive introduction has little to say on animals, and so this article hopes to contribute by raising the profile of animals in this lively comedy. Moreover, the following discussion seeks to demonstrate the distinctive qualities of the use of animals in Wasps, which is exceptional in extant Aristophanic comedy, and to examine the way in which Aristophanes exploits animals so as to observe humans more closely.

2 Wasps: a distinctive animal chorus Let us start by contrasting Wasps with Aristophanes’ other extant animalchorus comedies, Birds and Frogs, in order to appreciate the distinctive qualities of each chorus and to understand how unusual Wasps is in its employment of an animal chorus.9 Firstly, Aristophanes’ Birds (414 B.C.) involves a whole-scale metamorphosis into birds by the two human characters who open the play, Peisetaerus and Euelpides. This occurs under the watch of Tereus, the hoopoe, himself a former human who had already undergone an avian transformation along with his wife Procne who became a nightingale. The bird-presence in this comedy begins in the opening scene as Peisetaerus and Euelpides enter the stage with a crow and jackdaw as their guides (Birds 5–8: κορώνη … κολοιός).

_____ 8 See also Ruffell (2011: 215–238, 312) for a careful discussion of metadrama in comic drama. 9 See Imperio (2015: 60) who argues that the chorus of Wealth is not animal-based, but in the parabasis the old Attic farmers “regress to an animal state”.

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Next the audience and our comic actors meet with a bird-servant (Birds 61), then Tereus (92) and Procne (222), and finally the bird-chorus enters (268–305). Therefore, as the play progresses, the visual space becomes filled with increasing numbers of birds and bird noises. There is much use of bird-noises in the speech and song of Birds, so that visual and acoustic stimuli in the play have a distinctly avian flavour. The birds in this comedy set the scene, the tone, the sound and the environment for the ensuing comic action. By comparison, in Aristophanes’ Frogs (405 B.C.) the frog-chorus occupies only a single scene of this comedy. The frogs appear as soon as Dionysus starts to row across “a large, entirely bottomless lake” (Frogs 137–138: λίμνην μεγάλην … πάνυ ἄβυσσον) on board Charon’s ferry-boat bound for the palace of Pluto in Hades. It is during this ferry-crossing that the frogs emerge, and Dionysus engages with them in a contest of animal noise as they cry βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ. Dionysus is able to overcome the frogs in this croaking competition only by playing the frogs at their own game. Dionysus is forced to mimic the frogs via their distinct (and quite unique) form of metrical croaking, and the contest ends when Dionysus gives a resounding βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ (Frogs 267) and receives no response from the frogs. This is a musical contest based around animal noise and rhythmic rowing, but Dionysus overcomes his amphibian adversaries by taking on their animal attributes. This scene is also important because it offers a primitive prefiguring of the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides in which each poet imitates the tragic sound of the speech and lyrics of the other in order to try and overcome his adversary. Beyond Frogs Dionysus is a god associated with taking on animal characteristics and animalistic form in myth. For example, at Euripides’ Bacchae 616–621 and 920–922, Dionysus is described as assuming the form of a bull, whereas at line 100 he is ταυρόκερων θεὸν (“bull-horned god”), and at lines 1017–1020 the chorus calls on Dionysus to appear in the form of a bull, a snake, a lion and a wild beast. In the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (v. 44) Dionysus takes the form of a lion, and he also conjures a bear and turns the sailors into dolphins.10 However, in Aristophanes’ world of comic frogs, Dionysus must take on the animalistic characteristics of these musical frogs in order to rival and beat them. Dionysus shows his mastery of his adversary by taking on their characteristic animal features and behaviour of leaping rhythms and croaking sounds. Dionysus surpasses the frogs at their own game only by imitating them.

_____ 10 See Aston (2011: 277) on Dionysus’ connection with metamorphosis and mixanthropy.

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Overall, in both Birds and Frogs animal noises and costumed animal choruses take pride of place as soon as these animals appear on stage.11 However, in the case of the earlier play Wasps, we find neither of these two features when the wasps first appear: there are no buzzing noises from the chorus to match the bird-calls and croaking of Birds and Frogs, and neither are the chorus members represented straightforwardly as wasps in their appearance and costume. Instead, our chorus first appears as a group of citizen-jurors dressed in cloaks. Prior to their entrance they are described as waspish. According to Bdelycleon, they are old men possessing wasp-like qualities without being identified as actual wasps (Wasps 223–227; all translations, here and below, are my own): ἀλλ᾽, ὦ πόνηρε, τὸ γένος ἤν τις ὀργίσῃ τὸ τῶν γερόντων, ἔσθ᾽ ὅμοιον σφηκιᾷ. ἔχουσι γὰρ καὶ κέντρον ἐκ τῆς ὀσφύος ὀξύτατον, ᾧ κεντοῦσι, καὶ κεκραγότες πηδῶσι καὶ βάλλουσιν ὥσπερ φέψαλοι. “Look, you idiot, if ever someone angers that tribe of old men, it’s like a wasps’ nest! They’ve got a sting coming out of their backside, a very sharp one, which they use to sting, and with a shriek they leap and they strike at you like burning embers.”

At line 224 the chorus behaves “like a wasps’ nest”, but the simile is then developed so that the chorus members actually possess a sting in their backsides. Their wasp-like qualities begin to move from the metaphorical to the actual. But are they wasps or not? It is unclear at this point. Rather than making the identity of his chorus apparent, as in Birds and Frogs, here we find Aristophanes purposefully obfuscating. Only later in the play do the chorus members remove their cloaks and reveal their wasp costume (Wasps 408, 420, 423–425). At this point, the slave Xanthias observes that now we can see the stings in the tail of these wasps (420), and much later in the parabasis the chorus itself makes reference to its stings and thin wasp-waists (1071–1121). These two characteristic features in the chorus’ costume help the audience to identify the changing form of this chorus, but it is most notable that Aristophanes chose to put in these two directorial comments from the slave and chorus which help to draw the audience’s attention to the costume of the wasp-jurors and its changing function in the comedy. In comparison to the animal choruses of Birds and Frogs we can see already that Wasps is no ordinary animal-chorus drama.

_____ 11 There is general consensus now that the frog-chorus did appear to the audience, a point concisely argued by Dover (1993: 56–57).

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In the world of Aristophanes’ comedies, a unique situation emerges: humans and animals co-exist in a comically distorted society where animals use human speech and humans can take on animal attributes. And frequently it is not possible to distinguish clearly the human from the animal. As we are already beginning to see, in Wasps Aristophanes is purposefully blurring the line between metaphor and metamorphosis in his use of animals. Nowhere is this clearer than in the paradoxical comment from the wasp-chorus itself at Wasps 1090, which comes emphatically at the end of the epirrhema (i.e. just before the start of the lyrics of the anteode): μηδὲν Ἀττικοῦ καλεῖσθαι σφηκὸς ἀνδρικώτερον. “Nothing is manlier when compared to an Attic wasp!”

The juxtaposition of the substantive σφήξ (“wasp”) and the adjective ἀνδρικός (“manly”, with its root in the noun ἀνήρ) draws out a confusing situation in which an insect, a wasp, is described as more like a man than anything else. The juxtaposition emphasises the human-animal contrast while at the same time syntactically blurring the distinction between the two (think back to our intoxicated Dutch hedgehog). Note also that the surprise use of this comparative adjective ἀνδρικώτερον is left to the final word in the line. Elsewhere Aristophanes employs this common comic technique of delaying the punch-line, or in this case punch-word, of his joke, and it always indicates where the power of surprise lies in the line.12 But Wasps 1090 is not just an example of the irreverent humour and incongruous joking of which comedy is so beloved. Rather, this contradictory comment that “nothing is manlier than an Attic wasp” reflects the interconnected nature of human and animal that Aristophanes explores and exploits to the full for its comic potential throughout his play Wasps. This is a fact that can only be appreciated by reading the animal antics of the play as a whole. Before we move on from this quotation, it is important to note that this line is spoken by the chorus of wasp-jurors as they praise their own natures. This forms part of the parabasis in which the chorus of Attic jurors takes time to ex-

_____ 12 E.g. Aristophanes, Thesm. 130 where the relative starts his praise of Agathon’s servant’s song: ὡς ἡδὺ τὸ μέλος ὦ πότνιαι Γενετυλλίδες. See also Eupolis, Maricas fr. 207 (Schol. Aesch. Pers. 65): πεπέρακεν μὲν ὁ περσέπτολις ἤδη Μαρικᾶς (in which Eupolis quotes Aeschylus, Pers. 65, but alters the final word). In both examples the last word which completes the metrical line provides the comic surprise.

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plain to the audience its wasp-nature and its wasp-like costume.13 It is notable that Aristophanes devotes space in his comedy to explain the dual citizen/wasp nature of his comic chorus. This is a distinctive animal chorus. In fact, the relationship between human and animal throughout this comedy is anything but clear-cut, and this is something to which the comic action frequently draws attention. With these observations on the chorus in mind, we must now turn to the full animal delights of Wasps.

3 Aesop, Philocleon κνώδαλον and a carnival of animals It is common to summarise Aristophanes’ Wasps as a play of searing satirical wit against Athens’ law-court system, which is matched in its brilliance only by the comic attacks on the political figure Cleon for his manipulation of those same law-courts. The fictional setting focuses on our protagonist, Philocleon, an old man with a severe addiction to jury-service, who is weaned off this uncouth habit by his own son Bdelycleon. The satirical vein runs deep in this comedy, but it has not been sufficiently acknowledged that prior to, during and after the satire of Cleon and law-courts there is a constant stream of jokes, puns, references and comparisons between human and animal identities. This occurs throughout the whole play, as can be seen in the appendix. There is an animal undercurrent to this most cultured of comedies, and this is matched by the onstage presence of the wasp-juror chorus, the animalistic protagonist Philocleon, a trial in which the prosecution is led by a talking dog, and finally a tragic dance-contest of Philocleon vs. the crablike sons of Carcinus (whose name Καρκίνος means “crab”). Aristophanes has designed a comedy, built around animals, that plays out on stage various metaphorical links between human and animal. We shall explore each of these animal episodes in Wasps below, but first it is important to note that amid this animal mayhem we also find that references to Aesop and his fables recur throughout Wasps. Vaio long ago noted that references to Aesop link the symposium scene to the earlier scenes, and the significance of Aesop and the fable tradition in Wasps has received recent interest

_____ 13 Wasps 1090 emphatically forms the last line of a section of spoken trochaic tetrameters, before the chorus reverts to sung trochees in the parabasis.

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from various scholars.14 Schirru (2009: 56) describes Wasps as “‘commedia esopica’, caratterizzata, cioè, dalla presenza costante di riferimenti alle diverse declinazioni della σοφία tradizionalmente associata alla figura di Esopo”, while Hall (2013: 289) declares that “(i)n Wasps is to be found the most extended Aristophanic engagement with Aesop”. Indeed, Wasps contains the highest number of references to Aesop and Aesop-style stories in all Aristophanic comedy, many – but not all – of which involve animals. Notably, references to Aesop occur throughout Aristophanic comedy when a comic character is trying to talk their way out of trouble or persuade another character of their argument. In each case the character uses an Aesopic joke, story, or a story involving Aesop to support or illustrate his/her point.15 In his wide-ranging study of the Greek fable tradition, van Dijk (1997: 113) summarises fable as “a fictitious, metaphorical narrative”. Certainly the Aesopic stories which involve animal characters present a situation analogous to that of humans. This enables the stories to gain meaning within a human context. However, in Wasps Philocleon twice tries to tell an Aesopic tale and twice fails

_____ 14 See Vaio (1971: 342), Rothwell (1995), van Dijk (1997: 188–229), Schirru (2009), and Hall (2013). 15 Aristophanes, Wasps 566: Philocleon explains the various strategies which speakers use in order to sway the jurors: οἱ δὲ λέγουσιν μύθους ἡμῖν, οἱ δ᾽ Αἰσώπου τι γέλοιον (“some tell us stories, others tell us a joke from Aesop”). Cf. Wasps 1259: Bdelycleon explains that Philocleon can escape prosecution by telling “an urbane Aesopic or Sybaritic joke” (ἢ λόγον ἔλεξας αὐτὸς ἀστεῖόν τινα, / Αἰσωπικὸν γέλοιον ἢ Συβαριτικόν). See further Wasps 1182: During the scene in which Bdelycleon teaches Philocleon about the symposium, Philocleon begins a story about a mouse and a weasel, and Bdelycleon cuts him off; the οὕτω in v. 1182 clearly introduces a fable, which may well be Aesopic. Wasps 1401–1405: Philocleon insults the bread-seller by telling a story of Aesop meeting a dog on his way home from dinner. Wasps 1446–1449: As Philocleon is manhandled offstage, he tells the story of how Aesop narrated the fable of a dungbeetle when he was accused by the Delphians of stealing a phiale. Cf. Peace 129–130: Trygaeus’ daughter questions her father about why he is using a dung-beetle, and Trygaeus replies that according to the stories of Aesop only dung-beetles can reach the gods. His daughter rejects the truth of this tale outright, but Trygaeus insists. Birds 466–475: Peisetaerus attempts to persuade the birds to challenge the gods for power, and he tries to convince them that their power pre-dates Cronus, the Titans and Earth. When the birds express disbelief, Peisetaerus counters: “Well, you were born ignorant and not restless, nor have you pored over Aesop” (Birds 471: ἀμαθὴς γὰρ ἔφυς κοὐ πολυπράγμων, οὐδ᾽ Αἴσωπον πεπάτηκας), and then Peisetaerus recounts a story involving a lark and the origins of Earth. Birds 651–653: Peisetaerus refers to a tale involving a fox and eagle to illustrate his concerns, which he says is by Aesop. Lysistrata 694–695: The women use the story of the eagle and dung-beetle as a word of warning to men (elsewhere the story is ascribed to Aesop). Schirru (2009) provides analysis of these and other Aristophanic passages.

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to connect his animal tale suitably to the human context. Instead, Philocleon recounts stories of animals that are irrelevant and unhelpful to the given situation, and their inappropriateness is what creates humour (Wasps 1182, 1446– 1449). Our information on the actual Aesop and his work is notoriously tricky to interpret, as we are reliant on later sources, but some details appear in fifthand fourth-century B.C. authors.16 Most significantly, Herodotus calls Aesop λογοποιός (“story-writer”), and the Aesop of Aristophanes is certainly represented as a creator of tales.17 The fable tradition associated with Aesop is understood by scholars to be popular and accessible, so that these stories (and stories in this style) would be known to a wide audience.18 Therefore, this provides the perfect comic vehicle for Aristophanes to create a social satire while also focusing his attack on Cleon and other contemporary figures (e.g. Cleonymus) in which the humour would reach the largest possible target audience. The accessibility of Wasps to its audience is something of which Xanthias reassures his audience at the very start of the comedy (Wasps 64–66): ἀλλ᾽ ἔστιν ἡμῖν λογίδιον γνώμην ἔχον, ὑμῶν μὲν αὐτῶν οὐχὶ δεξιώτερον, κωμῳδίας δὲ φορτικῆς σοφώτερον. “Instead, we have a sensible little tale; it’s not more intelligent than you lot, but it is cleverer than a vulgar comedy.”

The phrase λογίδιον γνώμην is noteworthy both because Herodotus calls Aesop λογοποιός, and because of the focus on Aesop and story-telling amid the political satire in Wasps. This combination of satire and Aesop is observable in a fourth-century B.C. anecdote about Aesop with a decidedly political flavour, and this too appears to reflect a side of Aesop which correlates with the animal-

_____ 16 For a recent summary discussion and a useful list of sources, see Lefkowitz (2014). 17 Herodotus (Hist. 2.134) offers a story of Aesop as a slave of Iadmon where he mentions that the Delphians were commanded by an oracle to ask anyone to claim compensation for the death of Aesop, and Iadmon’s grandson came forward. Aesop is said to be a fellow-slave with the courtesan Rhodopis. Socrates while in prison says that he tried to put Aesop into verse (Plato, Phaedo 61b). Demetrius of Phalerum in the late fourth century B.C. is said to have created a collection of Aesop’s fables (Diogenes Laertius 5.80). The mid-to-late fourth-century B.C. comic dramatist Alexis wrote an Aesop (see especially fr. 9), indicating Aesop’s continued presence in popular, public discourse. 18 The popularity of the fable tradition is discussed further by Adrados (1999: 245–247), and the important contributions of Adrados are helpfully summarised by van Dijk (1997: 11–13).

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political satire of Aristophanes. The anecdote is found in Aristotle (Rhet. 1393b– 1394a) and later in Plutarch (Mor. 790c–d), and it tells of how Aesop defended a demagogue who was put on trial by the Samians by telling the story of a fox, a hedgehog and blood-sucking ticks, the last of which provides an unflattering analogy for demagogues.19 Again it is Aesop the story-teller who plays a key role in this anecdote, just as the characters in Wasps are seen to employ their own style of Aesopic story-telling, or to refer to Aesop as story-teller. In just the same way Aristophanes uses his own animal tales of Attic wasp-jurors, thieving dogpoliticians and dancing human-crabs to create his own Aesopic style story through the medium of Attic comic drama. Here Aristophanes can take full advantage of the visual and musical opportunities offered by live-action performance drama in presenting the mix of human and animal. Certainly narratives about animals litter Wasps. Pütz and Hall note how the scenes at the start of the play in which two slaves interpret each other’s animalbased dreams help prepare the audience for the style of humour in the play.20 This scene indicates how to interpret the constant animal metaphors in a political light. For example, at Wasps 17 the slave Xanthias dreams that an eagle accidentally drops an ἀσπίς (“snake”), but the Greek word can also mean “shield”. This double meaning is used to spring a surprise joke on the audience about a familiar figure: Cleonymus, the infamous shield-dropper who is so often the butt of jokes in Aristophanic comedy (see Sommerstein 1996: 344). Animal stories which carry a hidden meaning are a feature of many stories associated with Aesop, and Aristophanes uses them to provide part of the comic warm-up in this double-act of the two slaves which opens Wasps, and these tales continue to feature throughout the comedy. Whilst scholars have noted the individual features about the blurred identity of the wasp-chorus, as well as Philocleon’s connection to animals and the attention to Aesop, no one has linked together the pieces to indicate how Aristophanes’ Wasps presents the most animal-packed comedy, which he uses to question the very nature of humans and to squeeze as many puns, jokes, setpieces and one-liners as possible out of the topic (see appendix). Aristophanic

_____ 19 Aesop tells the story of a fox who had fallen down a ravine, but refused the help of a passing hedgehog, who had offered to pick off the fleas that were sucking her blood. The fox explained that other blood-suckers would come if these ticks were removed. Aesop therefore urges the Samians not to put to death the demagogue, because others would only emerge to replace him. 20 See Pütz (2008: 221–222) and Hall (2013: 278), the latter of whom compares Artemidorus and the oneirocritical tradition involving animals and using slaves to interpret dreams.

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comedy rarely works on one level of interpretation at once; the jokes are always multivalent and the animals are more than an amusing decoration. They reflect the core interest of the play in human behaviour, human nature and human culture. Aristophanes uses the familiar medium of Aesop’s fables to relay much of the humour and political satire of Wasps. No Aristophanic comedy deserves more attention than his play Wasps for the way in which it creates a comedy out of the constant blurring of human-animal identities. This is used to achieve a vast range of comic effects, to deliver the slapstick and the satire, while also helping to delineate our main comic protagonist Philocleon as a shape-shifting monster whose animalistic nature cannot (and will not) be tamed. Philocleon is introduced to the audience not as a man, but as a “monstrous creature” (Wasps 4: κνώδαλον), who is being held captive using nets. The imagery already suggests the containment of an animal, but the aim of the nets, it emerges, is to prevent Philocleon carrying out the very human activity of juryservice (Wasps 113, 131–132). The stage-building representing Philocleon’s house covered in nets is the first visual impression that the audience receive of Philocleon. This more than justifies the use of κνώδαλον, especially when Philocleon then tries to break out of the house, and is prevented by the slaves and Bdelycleon. Later, at Wasps 368, the chorus even encourages Philocleon to gnaw through the nets, again suggesting that he has animal traits. In the opening scene we see Philocleon is a monster that can barely be contained. In these opening lines Philocleon is compared to a jackdaw, mouse, and donkey-foal, in his attempts to escape (Wasps 129, 140, 189; see appendix for discussion of puns and word-play). Our first introduction to Philocleon prior to his appearance on stage conjures up an array of animal images, suggesting a shape-shifting monster, and indeed this depiction will continue to develop in the course of the play. When Philocleon first appears on stage, he is disguised under a donkey, as he fails to mimic Odysseus’ escape from the Cyclops (Wasps 179–196). It is in keeping with the character of Philocleon established in the opening lines of the play that the audience’s view of him is obscured by an animal, in this case a donkey. Philocleon then resorts to further escape methods, and he is now directly called a roof-mouse and sparrow (Wasps 206–207), whereas before he was only compared to animals. If we recall our earlier discussion of the build-up to the entrance of the wasp-chorus, we can see that the nature and identity of Philocleon is also made unclear to the audience before he steps before them. This is but an introduction to the many animal attributes of Philocleon, and throughout the comedy Philocleon is compared to, and connected with, a vast range of animals (see appendix). Early on in the action of Wasps Philocleon receives help from his waspish juror friends who, as we have already noted, appear as humans in cloaks only to

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reveal that their costume included real wasp-stings and pinched wasp-waists. Most significantly, it is, in fact, Philocleon who first addresses the chorus as wasp-jurors and who orders them to behave like wasps (Wasps 430–432): εἶά νυν ὦ ξυνδικασταὶ σφῆκες ὀξυκάρδιοι, οἱ μὲν εἰς τὸν πρωκτὸν αὐτῶν εἰσπέτεσθ᾽ ὠργισμένοι, οἱ δὲ τὠφθαλμὼ κύκλῳ κεντεῖτε καὶ τοὺς δακτύλους. “Right then, my fellow juror wasps, sharp in spirit, You lot, fly at their bottoms in your rage, The rest: sting them on both eyes and their fingers too!”

By comparison, later in the play (Wasps 1087) the members of the wasp-chorus say that during the Persian Wars they had stung the Persians in the jaws and eyebrows, which again presents the chorus as employing animal behaviour in its human tasks of warfare. Precisely this style of swarm-behaviour is depicted on an Attic black-figure amphora, where it can clearly be seen that a swarm of stinging insects are depicted as attacking a large part of the human anatomy: head, breast, shoulder, arm, backside, penis, leg, and foot (see Figure 1). The status of a swarm of insects as pest and relentless attacker is precisely what the chorus invokes at Wasps 430–432 and 1087. In addition, the connection between wasps and warfare recurs in visual and literary arts. The image of the wasp in Greek literature is of fierce fighters and stalwart defenders of their home and family. It is used in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata 471–477 to depict the women’s ferocious loyalty to Athens, and it also occurs several times in Homer’s Iliad (12.167–170, 16.259–265, 22.66–76). There are also images on pottery which depict a wasp-form emblazoned on a shield, another sign of the martial significance of the wasp to the human warrior.21

_____ 21 E.g. Attic red-figure lekythos found in the Athenian agora (Athens, Agora Museum, P24061); see Davies & Kathirithamby (1986: title page and 75). Further, Attic red-figure cup fragment (Athens, Agora Museum, P6567, 525-475 B.C.; see Moore 1997: Plate 152, 1616), Attic hydria fragment (Athens, Agora Museum P26544, 575-525 B.C.), and Panathenaic amphora fragment (National Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.1045).

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Figure 1: A swarm attacks men. Attic black-figure amphora, 550–500 B.C., BM B177, Vulci, Italy © The Trustees of the British Museum

Wasps 430–432 indicate clearly that Philocleon orchestrates the chorus into becoming more of an animal chorus in their behaviour. In Wasps we have moved from simile, to metaphor, to metamorphosis concerning the identity, behaviour and characterisation of our chorus. This transformation started just before their entrance at Wasps 223–227. Philocleon is in charge of overseeing the visual metamorphosis of the chorus into wasp-jurors, just as he himself has already undergone numerous animal comparisons, while employing animal jokes and later telling Aesopic stories. Philocleon continues to behave in this animalcentred manner through the dog trial, and right up until the end of the play when he wins the dancing contest with the crab-like sons of Carcinus. In Wasps Philocleon is at the centre of all human-animal crossovers. At Wasps 430–432 Philocleon is in charge of the transition of a chorus of old men into Attic wasps, and it is just after the old men have thrown off their cloaks to reveal their stings and their truly waspish form that Philocleon first addresses them as wasps. Therefore, their physical transformation is both one of costume and stage behaviour, but it only reaches completion once the wasps receive confirmation of their identity by Philocleon who does not use simile, but rather he employs the word σφῆκες (“wasps”) to address them directly. Philocleon also employs the epithet ὀξυκάρδιοι (“sharp in spirit”), which is found elsewhere only at Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 907 in choral lyrics that describe the twin-sons of

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Oedipus who have just killed one another. 22 The martial connotations of ὀξυκάρδιοι are clear: Philocleon’s use of this high-style epithet helps to evoke the battle-hardened character of the chorus with their warrior-wasp natures. It is at precisely this point, when the chorus is about to obey Philocleon’s order to attack Bdelycleon and the slaves, that Philocleon makes his appeal to Cecrops (Wasps 438): ὦ Κέκροψ ἥρως ἄναξ τὰ πρὸς ποδῶν Δρακοντίδη (“Cecrops, lord and master, from the waist down you’re like Dracontides”). Cecrops, ancestral first King of Athens was depicted as a snake below the waist, but instead of δρακοντώδης (“snake-like”) Philocleon says Δρακοντίδη, referring to an individual called Dracontides. Therefore, phonetically the word changes from its expected shape to provide another animal-inspired joke, but also this is in connection with the hybrid hero Cecrops, whose mixanthropic identity is a representation of human-animal hybridity, as recently discussed by Aston (2011: 120–126).23 This half-animal, half-anthropoid Attic hero is a very appropriate hero for Philocleon to pray to, given his own mixed human-animal identity in Wasps. Moreover, this follows directly from Philocleon’s first address to the chorus in the form of a human-animal mix (Wasps 430: ὦ ξυνδικασταὶ, σφῆκες ὀξυκάρδιοι). Philocleon’s connection with the divide between human-animal worlds is made explicit in this scene. The idea of Philocleon as an actual shape-shifter is not entertained by scholars, but Bowie (1993: 82 n. 13) comes closest in his observations that Philocleon’s behaviour and condition show some correlation with the shape-shifting disease of lycanthropy, especially in the early representation of Philocleon as diseased and whose treatment has failed (Wasps 114–124). Indeed Philocleon is never compared directly to a wolf in Wasps, but twice at key moments in the drama Philocleon calls upon the hero Lycus (Wasps 389, 819). The explanation for this in the commentaries of MacDowell (1971: 184–185, 241), Sommerstein (1983: 180, 207) and Biles & Olson (2015: 211–212) is simply that shrines of Lycus stood near the law-courts, but this does not allow for the significance of the moments when each mention of Lycus occurs. As Bowie (1993: 91–92) notes, Lycus is a figure whose own Greek name (“wolf”) is reflected in later myths and cult aetiologies involving change between human and wolf-form. Philocleon twice calls upon Lycus at key plot-moments in the narrative of Wasps: firstly,

_____ 22 Cf. the frequent occurrence of ὀξύθυμος in fifth-century drama: Aeschylus, Eum. 705; Euripides, Med. 319; Euripides, Or. 1198; Aristophanes, Kn. 706; Aristophanes, Wasps 455 and 1105. 23 Our understanding of visual representations of Cecrops is limited; see Aston (2008: 492 n. 50). Pan and Acheloios are other Attic hybrid gods, and cf. satyrs and silenoi.

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when he plucks up the courage to escape the nets which cover his house and symbolically leads the animal chorus of wasps; secondly, Philocleon demands that the shrine of Lycus be brought out just before the pivotal dog-trial begins. Only once the shrine is in place (alongside the pig-pen of Hestia) does Bdelycleon start to recount the case of canine misdemeanours. It is in this dog-trial scene that we have the greatest variety of animals alongside humans, and the animals take on the most human characteristics. Again Philocleon is the orchestrator of action which involves the greatest human-animal crossover, as at Wasps 420. Now that we have explored the animalising tendencies of Philocleon, we can move on to the heart of this comic play where we encounter the most surreal scene in Aristophanes: the satirical dog-trial. The trial features a dog Kyon, which is a pun on the name Cleon and κύων, the Greek word for “dog”. Kyon speaks for the prosecution in a domestic trial against the dog Labes (itself a pun on the name Laches and the verb λαμβάνω, “I take, seize”) for stealing Sicilian cheese.24 We also watch as a cheese-grater is interviewed as a witness for the defence. Here Aristophanes invents and stages his own Aesop-inspired tale. Philocleon plays the arbiter of this carnivalesque court, at one point addressing a cock and asking it for its opinion on proceedings (Wasps 933–934). The cock does not reply. However, the dog Kyon’s first words on stage are the animal cry αὖ αὖ (Wasps 903: “bow wow”), and yet he then conducts the prosecution in the eloquent manner of an orator who is more Cleon than Kyon. On stage Aristophanes places the widest array of animals: the dogs Kyon and Labes, the puppies, a cock, the pig-pen of Hestia, the shrine of Lycus and Philocleon as a fitting arbiter for this animal-court. As such this trial forms the most surreal of animal-human interactions in Wasps, and it is the point at which the play makes its most prolonged attack at an on stage Cleon (in dog’s clothing) and his influence over the law-courts. The array of animals on stage and the unreality of a dog-defence lawyer provide the necessary cover for Aristophanes to strike home with a direct hit on Cleon.25 The preceding agon between Philocleon and Bdelycleon had already prepared the way for the focus on Cleon in the dog-trial scene, and as Aristophanes builds to the surreal climax in this animal-packed

_____ 24 Xenophon (Cyn. 7.5) offers a list of names for hounds to huntsmen. Two-syllable names are appropriate for calling your dog; see also Calder (in this volume, p. 65 n. 1). The dog names in Wasps fit this pattern. 25 See Knights 1017–1034 which also compares Cleon to a dog and to Cerberus, and Peace 313–315 to Cerberus. See Corbel-Morana (2012: 118–136) for more discussion of dogs and political figures in Aristophanic comedy.

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comedy, the extended critique of contemporary Athens, its law-courts and Cleon becomes most clear to observe. The animals provide a shield behind which Aristophanes can hide, as he makes his most direct attack on the stagefigure of Cleon/Kyon. We can compare Aristophanes’ extensive engagement with Euripides’ Telephus in his Acharnians in which Dicaeopolis delivers his Telephus-style defence speech wearing the rags in which Euripides clothed his Telephus, and Dicaeopolis then speaks as the comic poet and discusses the causes of the Peloponnesian War while dressed in a tragic costume in a comic play. Again we see the many layers used by Aristophanes when touching on controversial, contemporary issues.26 The impact of this dog-trial scene in the immediate context of 422 B.C. is evident from Aristophanes’ Peace which was performed at the City Dionysia, the year directly following the performance of Wasps at the Lenaea. At Peace 41–49 the two slaves who provide the introduction and warm-up act for Peace are explaining to the audience about the enormous dung-beetle. They suddenly go off-track to imagine what a member of the audience would make of this ridiculously sized insect. The slave imagines the audience asking: τὸ δὲ πρᾶγμα τί; / ὁ κάνθαρος δὲ πρὸς τί; (Peace 44–45: “What is this? What does the dung-beetle mean?”). And then an Ionian man would reply: δοκέω μέν, ἐς Κλέωνα τοῦτ᾽ αἰνίσσεται (Peace 47: “I think it’s a riddle about Cleon”). Of course, the dungbeetle in Peace is mainly there to perform a role in the extended satire of Euripides’ Bellerophon and its use of Pegasus, but Aristophanes uses the animal metaphor to take another pop at Cleon. This brief sketch in Peace about the significance of an over-sized dung-beetle recalls Aesop’s story about a dung-beetle (Wasps 1446–1449), the extensive animal symbolism in Wasps and the representation of Cleon as an actual dog during the trial-scene in Wasps of the preceding year.27 It appears Aristophanes was proud of his play Wasps, and he chose to remind his audience of it at the start of his next play Peace. The animals of Wasps served Aristophanes very well. In the symposium scene, which follows the dog-trial, the animal analogies continue, and Philocleon deploys an Aesopic story inappropriately within the symposium context (Wasps 1181).28 Bdelycleon changes Philocleon’s costume on stage to suit the symposium rather than the law-court, but the old man’s animal

_____ 26 See the very influential discussion of Acharnians and Telephus by Foley (1988). 27 Wasps 1446–1449: Bdelycleon carries Philocleon offstage as he tells an Aesopic tale with a dung-beetle. 28 Aesop clearly held a place within the symposium, as Wasps 1258–1260 indicates, but it seems that certain stories were deemed inappropriate.

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tendencies are not beaten. Philocleon still fails to fit into the cultured world of humans, as becomes clear when Xanthias describes Philocleon’s indecorous behaviour at the symposium, noting that “he leapt up, pranced about, farted, mocked just like a little donkey enjoying himself with roasted barley” (Wasps 1305–1306: ἀνήλατ᾽, ἐσκίρτα, ’πεπόρδει, κατεγέλα, / ὥσπερ καχρύων ὀνίδιον ηὐωχημένον). Then Philocleon is compared to “a donkey who runs off to the bran heap” in his greed and excitement (Wasps 1310: κλητῆρί τ᾽ εἰς ἀχυρὸν ἀποδεδρακότι). It is clear that the animalising tendencies in Philocleon have not been dampened despite his costume change and Bdelycleon’s symposium training-session. This point is underlined by the fact that Philocleon has been repeatedly compared to a donkey throughout Wasps (see appendix). The old man’s animal heart remains despite its urbane, human clothing. This is something which Silk (2000: 252) too has observed in Philocleon’s move from lawcourts to symposia: “This huge transformation is rather like a switch from human perversity to an unleashing of animal spirits – and animal spirits (the mot juste, one can fairly say) constitute a very significant element of Wasps as a whole and a crucial element in Philocleon’s own recreative make-up.”29 Again we see that the multifaceted human-animal identity of Philocleon attracts scholarly attention. Philocleon is depicted in this scene as being constant in his animal nature just as the chorus was presented as wasps in its unflinching loyalty to Athens and a burning desire to defend it to the death. Bdelycleon achieves his aim of uncoupling this fierce loyalty from association with Cleon, but it will be difficult to strike out entirely the animal heart that burns so brightly in his father. Indeed, the chorus makes this observation as it watches Bdelycleon carry the disruptive Philocleon kicking and screaming offstage: “Well, it’s tough for someone to move away from the nature he’s always had” (Wasps 1457–1458: τὸ γὰρ ἀποστῆναι χαλεπὸν / φύσεως, ἣν ἔχοι τις ἀεί). It is when the use of animals and animal imagery from the symposium scene is placed in connection with the satire of Cleon and the law-courts at the centre of this comedy that we can understand its role more fully. However, Wasps does not end on this note, and there is one final animal extravaganza involving Philocleon which visually demonstrates that his animal heart is still alive. In the final scene of Wasps, Philocleon has transferred his energy from law-court service and loyalty to Cleon to hard-drinking, prostitutes and committing common assault, but he is still being compared to animals, notably a donkey, as we have just seen. So much for Bdelycleon’s ‘re-education’ of

_____ 29 See also Whitman (1964: 163–165) and Bowie (1993: 79–82).

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his father. Following this description, our protagonist Philocleon re-emerges on stage dancing like a maniac (Wasps 1486, 1489, 1496), and there is one final scene involving human-animal crossover. For, Philocleon challenges any tragic dancer to a contest, and it is the sons of Carcinus who take up the gauntlet. Carcinus’ name means “crab” in Greek, and Carcinus was a renowned naval general. Aristophanes uses these points to create marine-based humour in this closing scene. Philocleon views the sons as crabs which he intends to eat, and he makes various jokes on this theme (Wasps 1506–1534; see appendix). Just as earlier Philocleon had addressed the chorus directly as wasps, here again he is seen to orchestrate the animal-based scene, and the chorus develops the crab imagery in its final choral ode that closes the play. The scene starts as a contest of tragic dancing, but ends with the crab-like sons of Carcinus dancing offstage with the comic chorus. The text does not make it clear if the sons of Carcinus were dressed as crabs or danced like crabs, which would add a suitably surreal touch to the end of this animalistic comedy. However, this is suggested by the fact that Philocleon mistakes the sons for crabs. The focus on animal-based humour throughout Wasps strongly suggests that this scene devolved into a crabdance which comically distorted tragic dancing so that again animal and human behaviour is merged, just as in the contest of Dionysus and the frogs. Certainly Philocleon, Xanthias and the chorus treat the sons as more than human, as they project an array of other animal imagery onto them, calling them crabs, a flock of birds, brothers of shrimp, buzzards and several other animals (Wasps 1507, 1509, 1513, 1522, 1534), before they all dance offstage.30 It is with these final human-animal metaphors played out on stage that our comic action comes to its jubilant end.

4 Conclusion From this brief exploration of Wasps it is possible to see how the confrontation between animal and human is dramatised through these scenes of slapstick, contemporary satire and musical contests in which the human wins out, but at the cost of part of their anthropic identity. This is bound up in connections to Aesop and Aesopic stories, which are alluded to throughout the play, and which aid the audience in setting up the style of human-animal based humour which

_____ 30 The translation of the animals mentioned in Wasps 1509 is disputed. See appendix.

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dominates the play. In Wasps no humans turn into animals (as we noted earlier happened in Birds), but rather in the course of Wasps the underlying animal nature of human characters is comically revealed, realised and explored: in the world of this comic drama we find that the waspish, angry Athenian jurors really are humanoid wasps; we see that Cleon actually is no more than a lowdown dog serving the table of his master (i.e. the Athenian people); and we are told that Cleon is swindling that master in the process (cf. Knights where Cleon is represented as a Paphlagonian slave cheating his master Demos). On the dangers of a dog in the home, we can recall Priam’s fears in the Iliad that his corpse will be mutilated by his own loyal table-dogs (Homer, Il. 22.66–76).31 In addition to wasps and dogs, we also meet the sons of Carcinus, and their father’s name inspires jokes about crabs and sea-life. In Wasps these sons are actually assimilated to crabs and most probably even danced like crabs. Lastly, and most importantly, amid all this animal-human action, we follow the journey of Philocleon, with his addiction to jury-service, which his son Bdelycleon succeeds in treating, but Philocleon is still associated with countless animals, just as he was first introduced to us as a κνώδαλον. Therefore, we learn that Philocleon really is a bit of an animal for all Bdelycleon’s attempt to inject some higher culture and more civilised behaviour into his father. The indomitable human-animal spirit of Philocleon is as strong as that of the Attic wasp-jurors, who are, paradoxically, the manliest of Attica’s inhabitants, and its most staunch defenders. It is also important to observe that all the animals in Wasps are localised, Atticised, and some even politicised; there are no lions or exotic animals, but rather we find animals used in everyday life alongside common pests and local wildlife of Attica (see appendix). At the centre of this is the constant presence of Philocleon, a character whose endless energy we can admire, but whose animal attributes constantly change throughout the play. He orchestrates the opening scenes of mayhem around his house and the attack of the wasps, he oversees the dog-trial, and he initiates the dance with the three tragic dancing sons of Carcinus, who are repeatedly compared to crabs. This is a character who has a wild animal spirit that cannot be subdued, and that is infectious in many of the characters with whom he interacts. Philocleon represents the many creatures of Attica, both human and animal, in all their variety. And for all the threat that this concoction of human and animal poses in the world of Aristophanes’

_____ 31 Priam fears that once a Greek soldier kills him his own dogs reared in his halls, who feed at his tables and act as guard dogs, will tear him apart and drink his blood, disfiguring his grey hair, his beard and his genitals.

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Wasps, as embodied in the irascible chorus of Attic wasps, Athens could not be the great city that it was without them.32 In the case of the human characters of Wasps, the comic action highlights a connection to an animal element in their nature. This is taken as a comic reflection of the actual human nature of that individual, and moreover it is represented as immutable: Philocleon will remain a monstrous creature to the end, the wasp-jurors will maintain their fighting spirit, and, by association, Cleon will continue to be a servile dog in Athens’ political life, picking at scraps and remaining a latent danger to Athens. That is the power of portraying animals in the vibrant world of Aristophanic comedy.

Appendix: Animal-related jokes and references in Aristophanes’ Wasps Underlined examples concern Philocleon as either the subject or object of the joke. – – – – – – – – – – – –

κνώδαλον (4): Xanthias refers to a κνώδαλον (“monstrous creature”), which turns out to be Philocleon. αἰετὸν … ἀσπίδα (15–17): Xanthias relates his dream of an ἀετός (“eagle”) and ἀσπίς (“snake/shield”). πρόβατα (32): Sosias recounts his dream of πρόβατα (“sheep”) sitting in the ecclesia. φάλλαινα … ὑός (35–36): Sosias describes a φάλλαινα (“whale”) with the voice of a sow aflame with anger (i.e. Cleon). κόρακος (43): Sosias describes Theorus with the head of a κόραξ (“crow”) which sets up a pun with κόλαξ (“flatterer”) and a joke about Alcibiades’ lisp. ἐς κόρακας (51): The punch-line to the crow joke is word-play on the phrase “to hell with you!” (lit. “to the crows!”). See also v. 835. ἀλεκτρυόνα (100): Xanthias says Philocleon accused an ἀλεκτρυών (“cock”) of being bribed to wake him early. ὥσπερ λεπὰς (105): Xanthias says Philocleon clings to the pillar outside the law-court like a λεπάς (“limpet”). ὥσπερ μέλιττ᾽ ἢ βομβυλιὸς (107): Xanthias says Philocleon enters his house like a μέλιττα (“bee”) or βομβυλιός (“bumble-bee”) with wax under his nails. μοχλοῖσιν ἐγκλῄσαντες (113): Xanthias explains that Philocleon is kept locked up (i.e. like a dangerous animal). ὡσπερεὶ κολοιὸς (129): Xanthias explains that Philocleon knocks holes in the wall like a κολοιός (“jackdaw”). μυσπολεῖ (140): Bdelycleon describes Philocleon as running around like a mouse.

_____ 32 On the range of fauna in Attica to this day see Goette (22001: 105–106).

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ὁμοιότατος κλητῆρος εἶναι πωλίῳ (189): Bdelycleon describes his father as “most like the foal of a donkey”, and he finds a suitable pun on the meaning of κλητήρ (“donkey” and “a witness summoned to court”). περὶ ὄνου σκιᾶς (191): Philocleon wittily remarks that he and Bdelycleon will fight about a donkey’s shadow (i.e. nothing). The two donkey-jokes in these lines take advantage of the fact that Philocleon is on stage under a donkey. παράβολος (192): Bdelycleon calls Philocleon “a horse past its foal teeth”, i.e. “you’re no spring chicken!”. μῦς (204–206): Bdelycleon sees a mouse on the roof, which he describes as ἡλιαστὴς ὀροφίας (“a roof-dwelling juror”), i.e. Philocleon. στροῦθος ἁνὴρ γίγνεται (207): Bdelycleon says of Philocleon that “the man’s become a sparrow!”. He calls for nets, and they then shoo Philocleon like a bird (209: σοῦ σοῦ, πάλιν σοῦ). ὅμοιον σφηκιᾷ (224): The chorus is first mentioned as “like a wasp’s nest”. πολλῶν δικαστῶν σφηκιὰν (229): The chorus is called “a wasp’s nest of many jurors”. σίμβλον … χρημάτων (241): The chorus refers to Laches as having “a beehive of money”. ὥσπερ ἀτταγᾶς (257): The boys threaten to leave the chorus walking in the dark “like a francolin” (a partridge). κάτω κύπτων (279): Philocleon is described as lowering his head at a defendant like a bull. ὥσπερ με γαλῆν κρέα κλέψασαν (363): Philocleon says he is being guarded “like a meatstealing ferret”. ὦ μελίττιον (366): The chorus addresses Philocleon affectionately with the diminutive “o little honey-bee”. διατέτρωκται τοῦτό γ᾽ (371): Philocleon, urged on by the chorus, gnaws through the net. ὦ Λύκε δέσποτα (389): Philocleon appeals to the hero Lycus (“wolf”) as he begins to escape from the nets (see also v. 821). τὴν σφηκιάν … κέντρον … κέντρ’ … κέντρον … σμῆνος … ἐγκεντρίδας (404–427): The chorus has the anger of a wasps’ nest (τὴν σφηκιάν), possessing real stings (κέντρ’ and ἐγκεντρίδας) and acting as a swarm (σμῆνος). τὰς χελώνας μακαριεῖν σε τοῦ δέρματος (429): Xanthias threatens to beat the chorus by saying that it will soon be calling tortoises lucky to have shells (see also v. 1292). ὦ ξυνδικασταὶ σφῆκες ὀξυκάρδιοι (430): Philocleon is the first to address the chorus as wasps, or more fully as “fellow-juror-wasps quick to anger”, and he then instructs them to act as wasps. ὦ Κέκροψ ἥρως ἄναξ τὰ πρὸς ποδῶν Δρακοντίδη (438): Philocleon calls on Cecrops, ancestral first King of Athens, and hero, for help. Cecrops was depicted as a snake below the waste, but instead of δρακοντώδης (“snake-like”), Philocleon says Δρακοντίδη, referring to an individual named Dracontides. ὦ κάκιστον θηρίον (448): Philocleon calls one of the slaves “nastiest of creatures”, as he tries to escape. 463–487: The wasp-chorus plays out its metaphorical links to wasps: relentless, angry, impossible to reason with. ὀρνίθων γάλα (508): Philocleon explains to Bdelycleon that he does not want to change his way of life, not even if Philocleon could have some “bird’s milk” (i.e. something very rare). ζῷον (551): Philocleon describes the fortunate life of a juror, calling him a “creature, living entity”.

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Αἰσώπου τι γέλοιον (566): Philocleon notes that some defendants tell something funny from Aesop. ἅμα βληχᾶται (570): The defendant’s children “bleat together”, and in v. 572 there follows a pun on ἀρήν (“sheep”) and ἄρρην (“man”). τοῖς χοιριδίοις (573): This is a recurrence of a common pun in Greek comedy on piglets and female genitalia. ὁ κεκραξιδάμας (596): Cleon is portrayed as an epic monster. He is called a “screechconqueror”. τὸν ὄνον τόνδ’ (616): Philocleon describes how his “donkey” or “wine-flask/cup” gapes, brays and farts. ἀλεκτρυόνος μ᾽ ἔφασκε κοιλίαν ἔχειν (794): Lysistratus said that Philocleon had the stomach of a chicken because he accidentally put fish scales in his mouth. τὸν ὄρνιν (815): Bdelycleon brings on stage a cock to wake Philocleon if he falls asleep during the trial. θἠρῷον εἴ πως ἐκκομίσαις τὸ τοῦ Λύκου (819): Philocleon requests the shrine of Lycus, who is represented with part animal-form (see also v. 329). Note that the crasis of θἠρῷον (τό ἡρῷον) allows for a pun on θηρίον. κύνα (835): This is the first mention of the dog Labes who is about to be put on trial and prosecuted by the dog Kyon. χοιροκομεῖον Ἑστίας (844): Philocleon asks that Hestia’s sacred pig-pen be brought out, and the phrase sets up a joke in v. 845 on the metaphorical meaning of ἀφ᾽ Ἑστίας ἀρχόμενος (“to begin at the beginning”). κύων Κυδαθηναιεὺς (895): Kyon is the canine representation of Cleon, who was from the deme of Cydathenaeus. Kyon’s first utterance is αὖ αὖ (903: “bow wow”), but he uses human language for the rest of his speech. θάνατος … κύνειος (898): Philocleon explains that the punishment for a guilty verdict is “a dog’s death”, which indicates a very unpleasant one. The joke plays with the fact that the two participants in the trial are, of course, dogs. οὐ καὶ σοὶ δοκεῖ, ὦλεκτρυών (933–934): Philocleon asks the court cock if it agrees that Kyon is a good dog. ποῦ τὰ παιδία; (976): Bdelycleon calls for the puppies (“the children”) to be brought on to aid the defence (see also v. 570). Parabasis (1029–1035): Aristophanes takes on Cleon in the manner of Heracles slaying monsters. Parabasis (1064): The chorus says that it is κύκνου τε πολιώτεραι (“more white-haired than a swan”). Parabasis (1071–1121): The chorus draws attention to its wasp costumes and characteristics. Parabasis (1111): Jurors pack the law-courts like grubs in honeycomb (ὥσπερ οἱ σκώληκες ἐν τοῖς κυττάροις κινούμενοι). Parabasis (1114): Some jurors are κηφῆνες (“drones”) with no sting, no military service, deserving no pay. οὕτω ποτ᾽ ἦν μῦς καὶ γαλῆ (1182): Philocleon tries to tell an Aesopic story of a mouse and a pole-cat. οὐκ ἔστιν ἀλωπεκίζειν (1241–1242): Philocleon sings an example of a symposium song to Bdelycleon (“it is not possible to play the fox …”). Αἰσωπικὸν γέλοιον ἢ Συβαριτικόν (1259): Bdelycleon tells Philocleon that he can escape prosecution by telling an Aesopic or Sybaritic joke.

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ἰὼ χελῶναι μακάριαι τοῦ δέρματος (1292): Xanthias praises tortoises for their shells, which protect one from attack, whereas Xanthias has received a beating from Philocleon (see also v. 429). ὥσπερ καχρύων ὀνίδιον εὐωχημένον (1306): Xanthias explains that Philocleon parties hard (leaping about, dancing, farting and mocking), just like a little donkey enjoying roasted barley. κλητῆρί τ᾽ εἰς ἀχυρὸν ἀποδεδρακότι (1310): Xanthias quotes Lysistratus as he compares Philocleon to a donkey who runs off to the bran heap, which (like v. 1306) comments on Philocleon’s uncouth behaviour. πάρνοπι τὰ θρῖα τοῦ τρίβωνος ἀποβεβληκότι (1311–1312): Philocleon returns the insults to Lysistratus in this game of comparisons by likening him to a locust without wings. χρυσομηλολόνθιον (1341) and ὦ χοιρίον (1353): Philocleon addresses his girl as “golden mini-beetle” and “piglet”. θρασεῖα καὶ μεθύση τις ὑλάκτει κύων (1402): Philocleon makes up a story of Aesop addressing a woman as a “rude, drunken dog” (where referring to a woman as a dog would imply she was a prostitute). ὡς ὁ κάνθαρός ποτε (1448): Bdelycleon carries Philocleon offstage while the old man attempts to tell an Aesopic tale about a dung-beetle. πτήσσει Φρύνιχος ὥς τις ἀλέκτωρ (1490): Philocleon says that Phrynichus the tragedian cowers for fear like a cock. This is also an adaptation of a line from an unidentified tragedy, and ἀλέκτωρ is poetic vocabulary. ὠψώνηκ᾽ (1506): Philocleon remarks “I have bought fish” when Carcinus’ second son emerges on stage. καρκίνους (1507): Philocleon draws out the pun on καρκίνος (“crab”) and ‘Carcinus’ the naval general, whose sons Philocleon here calls “crabs”. ὀξίς, ἢ φάλαγξ or ὦτος ἢ σφάλαξ (1509): The text here is uncertain, but it is clear that Philocleon is having trouble identifying Carcinus’ youngest son, Xenocles the tragedian, and so he asks whether Xenocles is “a crayfish or tarantula” (Sommerstein 1983: 247; Wilson 2007: 273; Biles & Olson 2015: 508–509) or “an owl or mole” (MacDowell 1971: 247). Borthwick (1968) first proposed ὦτος ἢ σφάλαξ. ὁ πινοτήρης (1510): Philocleon calls Xenocles “mini-crab”. τὸ πλῆθος … τῶν ὀρχίλων (1513): Philocleon then describes Carcinus’ sons as “a flock of birds”, which enables a pun on ὀρχέομαι (“I dance”). See also v. 1534 below. ἅλμην κύκα τούτοισιν (1515): Philocleon calls on Xanthias to stir the salt water for cooking these crabs. καρίδων ἀδελφοί (1522): Philocleon calls Carcinus’ sons “brothers of shrimps”. παισὶ τοῖς τριόρχοις (1534): The chorus describes the three sons of Carcinus as “buzzards”, but the word allows for one final pun: “three dancers” (τρεῖς: “three” + ὀρχέομαι: “I dance”). v. 1537 (ὀρχούμενος ὅστις ἀπήλλαξεν χορὸν τρυγῳδῶν) is the final line of the play. Therefore, the animal jokes, puns and references continue to the very end of the play.

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Bibliography Editions, commentaries and translations Biles, Zachary P. & S. Douglas Olson (2015): Aristophanes: Wasps. Edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford. Dover, Kenneth J. (1993): Aristophanes: Frogs. Edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford. Lenz, Lutz (2014): Aristophanes: Wespen. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert, Berlin & Boston. MacDowell, Douglas M. (1971): Aristophanes: Wasps. Edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford. Sommerstein, Alan H. (1983): Aristophanes: Wasps. Edited with translation and notes, Warminster. Wilson, Nigel, G. (2007): Aristophanis Fabulae. Vol. 1: Acharnenses, Equites, Nubes, Vespae, Pax, Aves, Oxford.

Secondary literature Adrados, Francisco Rodríguez (1999): History of the Graeco-Latin Fable. Vol. 1: Introduction & From the Origins to the Hellenistic Age. Translated by Leslie A. Ray, revised and updated by the author and Gert-Jan van Dijk, Leiden. Alger, Janet M. & Steven D. Alger (1999): Cat culture, human culture. An ethnographic study of a cat shelter. In: Society & Animals 7, 199–218. Aston, Emma (2008): Hybrid cult images in ancient Greece. Animal, hybrid, god. In: Annetta Alexandridis, Markus Wild & Lorenz Winkler-Horaček (eds.), Mensch und Tier in der Antike. Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung, Wiesbaden, 481–502. Aston, Emma (2011): Mixanthrôpoi. Animal-Human Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion, Liège. Beta, Simone (1999): Madness on the comic stage. Aristophanes’ Wasps and Euripides’ Heracles. In: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40, 135–158. Borthwick, Edward K. (1968): The dances of Philocleon and the sons of Carcinus in Aristophanes’ Wasps. In: Classical Quarterly 18, 47–51. Borthwick, Edward K. (1992): Observations on the opening scene of Aristophanes’ Wasps. In: Classical Quarterly 42, 274–278. Bowie, Angus M. (1993): Aristophanes. Myth, Ritual and Comedy, Cambridge. Corbel-Morana, Cécile (2012): Le bestiaire d’Aristophane, Paris. Davies, Malcolm & Jeyaraney Kathirithamby (1986): Greek Insects, London. Davies, Mark I. (1990): Asses and rams. Dionysiac release in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Attic vase-painting. In: Mètis 5, 169–183. Foley, Helene P. (1988): Tragedy and politics in Aristophanes’ Acharnians. In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 108, 33–47. Goette, Hans R. (22001): Athens, Attica and the Megarid. An Archaeological Guide, London & New York.

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Gross, Aaron & Anne Vallely (eds.) (2012): Animals and the Human Imagination. A Companion to Animal Studies, New York. Guthrie, Stewart Elliott (1997): Anthropomorphism. A definition and a theory. In: Robert W. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson & H. Lyn Miles (eds.), Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals, Albany, 50–58. Hall, Edith (2013): The Aesopic in Aristophanes. In: Emmanuela Bakola, Lucia Prauscello & Mario Telò (eds.), Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres, Cambridge, 277–297. Imperio, Olimpia (2015): Men or animals? Metamorphoses and regressions of comic attic choruses. The case of Aristophanes’ Wealth. In: Skene 1, 57–74. Knight, John (2005): Introduction. In: John Knight (ed.), Animals in Person. Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies, Oxford, 1–13. Lefkowitz, Jeremy B. (2014): Aesop and animal fable. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 1–23. Long, Timothy (1976): The parodos of Aristophanes’ Wasps. In: Illinois Classical Studies 1, 15–21. Milton, Kay (2005): Anthropomorphism or egomorphism? The perception of non-human persons by human ones. In: John Knight (ed.), Animals in Person. Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies, Oxford, 255–271. Moore, Mary B. (1997): The Athenian Agora. Results of Excavations conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Vol. 30: Attic Red-Figured and White-Ground Pottery, Princeton. Olson, S. Douglas (1996): Politics and poetry in Aristophanes’ Wasps. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 126, 129–150. Payne, Mark (2010): The Animal Part. Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination, Chicago. Pütz, Babette (2008): Schräge Vögel und flotte Wespen. Grenzüberschreitungen zwischen Mensch und Tier bei Aristophanes. In: Annetta Alexandridis, Markus Wild & Lorenz Winkler-Horaček (eds.), Mensch und Tier in der Antike. Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung, Wiesbaden, 219–241. Pütz, Babette (2014): Good to laugh with. Animals in comedy. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 61–72. Reckford, Kenneth J. (1977): Catharsis and dream-interpretation in Aristophanes’ Wasps. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 107, 283–312. Rosen, Ralph M. (2008): Review of Kenneth S. Rothwell, Nature, Culture, and the Origins of Greek Comedy (Cambridge 2007). In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 128, 194–195. Rothwell, Kenneth S. (1995): Aristophanes’ Wasps and the sociopolitics of Aesop’s Fables. In: Classical Journal 90, 233–254. Rothwell, Kenneth S. (2007): Nature, Culture, and the Origins of Greek Comedy. A Study of Animal Choruses, Cambridge. Ruffell, Ian A. (2011): Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy. The Art of the Impossible, Oxford. Schirru, Silvio (2009): La favola in Aristofane, Berlin. Sifakis, Gregory M. (1971): Parabasis and Animal Choruses. A Contribution to the History of Attic Comedy, London. Silk, Michael S. (2000): Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy, Oxford. Sommerstein, Alan H. (1996): How to avoid being a komodoumenos. In: Classical Quarterly 46, 327–356. Storey, Ian C. (1985): The symposium at Wasps 1299ff. In: Phoenix 39, 317–333.

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Taillardat, Jean (21965): Les images d’Aristophane. Études de langue et de style, Paris. Vaio, John (1971): Aristophanes’ Wasps. The relevance of the final scenes. In: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 12, 335–351. van Dijk, Gert-Jan (1997): AINOI, LOGOI, MYTHOI. Fables in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greek Literature. With a Study of the Theory and Terminology of the Genre, Leiden. Varsava, Nina (2014): The problem of anthropomorphous animals. Toward a posthumanist ethics. In: Society & Animals 22, 520–536. Whitman, Cedric H. (1964): Aristophanes and the Comic Hero, Cambridge, Mass. Wilkins, John (2000): Edible choruses. In: David Harvey & John Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes. Studies in Athenian Old Comedy, London, 341–354. Wright, Matthew (2013): Comedy versus tragedy in Wasps. In: Emmanuela Bakola, Lucia Prauscello & Mario Telò (eds.), Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres, Cambridge, 205– 225.

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Human-Animal Interactions in Plutarch as Commentary on Human Moral Failings | 233

Stephen T. Newmyer

Human-Animal Interactions in Plutarch as Commentary on Human Moral Failings Stephen T. Newmyer Human-Animal Interactions in Plutarch as Commentary on Human Moral Failings

Abstract: In his animal-related writings, Plutarch employs anecdotal and highly anthropomorphised examples of human-animal interactions, in a comparative framework, derived from his regular use of the σύγκρισις in his Lives, to argue that animals act in a manner that, if observable in the actions of human beings, would be judged to be moral and upright. Human beings, in contrast, whose superior mental faculties allow them to contravene their better instincts, prove ironically to be morally deficient when their conduct is viewed beside that of non-human species. They thereby violate the covenant of kinship and affiliation that all animals naturally share because of their common possession of reason. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-010

1 Introduction One of the most striking features of the biographies that constitute the Parallel Lives of Plutarch, classical antiquity’s indefatigable chronicler of the lives of the worthy and not so worthy, is the σύγκρισις (“comparison” or “side-by-side judgement”) that follows all but four of the paired lives contained in Plutarch’s biographical oeuvre. These comparisons, devoted to an evaluation of the ethical qualities of his subjects as these are revealed through their behaviour, have been closely studied by critics and frequently disparaged as trivial and unilluminating. In his survey work on Plutarch, Robert Lamberton charges that in some instances the author’s attempts to draw parallels between his subjects seem far-fetched and strained, although he does acknowledge that the συγκρίσεις in any case provide the “glue, the equal signs of the equation” for the paired lives (Lamberton 2001: 65). Tim Duff, in his study of the Lives, argues that the συγκρίσεις encourage the reader to draw challenging moral comparisons on his own from the material presented in the biographies (Duff 1999: 243). In his recent analysis of the συγκρίσεις, David Larmour maintains that this feature of the paired lives, although on the whole “rather uninspired”, is nevertheless useful in pointing out substantive differences between the two personages under consideration more so than their similarities, and provides the Greek Plutarch an opportunity to “apply Greek moral and philosophical standards to the Roman equivalents” (Larmour 2014: 406; similarly van der Stockt 2014: 322–324). Larmour points out further that the narrative technique of “compare and contrast” by juxtaposition is by no means restricted in Plutarch DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-010

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to the Lives, but is employed as well in a number of treatises included in the collection of more than seventy works that make up the generically-named Moralia of Plutarch. Among these he cites, without commenting on its use in the work, one of Plutarch’s animal-related treatises, that conventionally known by the Latin title De sollertia animalium, but whose original Greek title (Πότερα τῶν ζῴων φρονιμώτερα τὰ χερσαῖα ἢ τὰ ἔνυδρα) translates more revealingly as Whether Land or Sea Animals Are More Clever (see Larmour 2014: 408). More than half of that work (De soll. anim. 9–37 965e–985c) is devoted to an elaborate σύγκρισις of the intellectual endowments of land- and sea-dwelling creatures as these are revealed through their behaviours and lifestyles. In that work, Plutarch’s interlocutor Aristotimus defends the position that land-dwelling animals demonstrate a greater degree of reason than do sea-dwellers while the interlocutor Phaedimus argues the opposite position. At the outset of his defence of sea-dwellers, Phaedimus makes the intriguing observation, apropos of the topic of our study, that he is at a disadvantage, since, while land-dwellers afford human beings numerous examples of their actions that we may evaluate with our senses, sea-dwellers afford us few such opportunities (De soll. anim. 23 975e). Because land-dwellers live in such close proximity to human beings, they have even taken on some human characteristics from their association. The life of sea-dwellers, in contrast, “is kept far away from interaction with men and [is] alien” (De soll. anim. 23 975f: τῆς πρὸς ἀνθρώπους ἀπωκισμένος ὁμιλίας ἐπείσακτον).1 The impulse to categorise, differentiate, compare, and, most often, contrast pairs of individuals or even whole classes and groups that eventually manifested itself in the formal literary σύγκρισις that Plutarch cultivated so extensively seems to have been deep-seated in the Greek psyche and may be observed in Greek discussions of such pairs as “Greeks vs. barbarians”, “men vs. women”, “free vs. slave”, “citizen vs. alien”, and “human vs. animal”.2 Classical

_____ 1 Greek quotations from Plutarch have been taken from the Loeb edition (Cherniss & Helmbold 1957) for De sollertia animalium and Bruta animalia ratione uti, and from Defradas’ edition (1954) for the Convivium septem sapientium. All translations are my own. For an analysis of the “comparative” aspects of De sollertia animalium, see Newmyer (2006: 41–43). 2 The fascination of the Greeks with comparison and contrast has been much studied. The classic examination of the Greek urge to classify remains Lloyd (1966). Vegetti (1979) focuses on the development of the art of classification in Greek natural science, especially in biology. Cartledge (1993) contains chapters on all of the classes mentioned in our list with the exception of “human vs. animal”. Sassi (2001: 43–53) includes Greek contrasts between humans and animals among the sets of opposed groups that she examines, giving special attention to the use of non-human species as exemplars of human character types. Heath (2005: 17–24) pro-

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rhetoricians recommended the use of comparison, especially in encomiastic speeches, and they were included among the προγυμνάσματα (“preliminary exercises”) required of students by their grammarian instructors. Aristotle held that comparison is a useful rhetorical device if it makes one’s subject appear better than personages of nobility and worth to whom they are compared (Rhet. 1349a19–26), and Quintilian concurred that comparison is a helpful tool for pointing out the merits and failings of one’s subjects (Inst. orat. 2.4.41).3 Plutarch’s own manner of composition and his choice of subject matter are generally acknowledged to have been influenced by his own study of and passion for rhetoric, which may help to explain his predilection for argument by compare and contrast.4 While scholars like Larmour have called attention to the use of σύγκρισις in De sollertia animalium, other treatises of Plutarch included in the Moralia contain no less striking accounts of human-animal interactions. These frequently take the form of anthropomorphising anecdotes designed to teach, through comparison and contrast of human and animal behaviours, the same sorts of moral lessons that figure prominently in the Lives. Through fanciful and at times amusing encounters between humans and animals, Plutarch demonstrates that, when interactions between species are viewed without anthropocentric prejudice, it emerges that the lives of animals at times exhibit virtues especially admired in Greek philosophy more clearly and completely than do human beings, while the moral failings of humans stand out in stark contrast to

_____ vides a helpful analysis of the Greek urge to categorise, while expressing some concern that modern studies of this Greek fascination with “otherness” have perhaps exaggerated the importance of the phenomenon. A brief study of animals as non-linguistic “others” is offered in Kleczkowska (2014). 3 Similar instruction is provided by Menander Rhetor’s treatise on epideictic speeches, in which the author recommends comparing one ruler’s reign against another’s in terms of the relative prosperity and good fortune of the kingdoms compared (2.377.9–11). This technique might have been suggested to him by Plutarch’s procedure in the Lives. 4 For a helpful summary of thought on Plutarch’s relation to the schools of rhetoric, see Schmitz (2014). On the place of declamation and the προγυμνάσματα in Plutarch’s work, see Beck (2003). Long ago, Schuster (1917: 22–65) argued that the references to schools, pupils and class lectures in De sollertia animalium supported the thesis that Plutarch himself conducted a school in his native Chaeronea in which philosophy and rhetoric were taught. Russell (1973: 13) agrees with Schuster that Plutarch conducted “a kind of philosophical school, nothing very formal perhaps, but a place where young people from a wide area of Greece could pursue philosophy and rhetoric.”

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the natural virtues of animals.5 The didactic value of this comparison is markedly enhanced when Plutarch allows it to be made not, as in the case of De sollertia animalium, by two human beings who take for granted the intellectual superiority of humans, however much they may admire other species whose behaviour they discuss, but when he depicts either an anthropomorphised animal that interacts in conversation with a human being and draws its own conclusions from the encounter, or when he allows a human observer to comment on the moral significance of an interaction between a human being and animals recounted in an anecdote no less fanciful and blatantly anthropomorphising. This study examines Plutarch’s employment, in his depictions of non-human behaviours in the Gryllus and in the Convivium septem sapientium, of a style of argument, influenced by the comparative element inherent in the σύγκρισις, that is designed to prove that virtue and vice may be found in unexpected places, when humans and animals interact.

2 The Gryllus: A pig as paragon The Plutarchan treatise in which human and animal character and behaviour are most elaborately compared and contrasted through direct interaction of the species risks being undervalued as a philosophical statement because of the jocular and light-hearted nature of the literary parody that lends the work its particular charm. In his dialogue Gryllus, more often cited by the Latin version of its title Bruta animalia ratione uti (Whether Beasts Are Rational), Plutarch offers a reworking of the famous scene in Homer (Od. 10.203–574) wherein the hero Odysseus petitions the witch Circe to reconvert his comrades into human

_____ 5 Neither in the Gryllus nor in his other animal-related treatises does Plutarch offer evidence that he has given any thought to the enormously complex question of whether animals can in fact act “morally”, and can therefore be considered “virtuous”. The issue of moral agency in non-human species is at the forefront of current philosophical and ethological debate on the potential ethical dimension of non-humans, with both ethicists and animal behavioural scientists expressing some hesitation to judge the actions of animals morally significant unless it can be demonstrated that they intend to act in a manner that can be judged to have moral weight. This question is treated at length in Steiner (2008) and Rowlands (2012). Both philosophers and animal behaviourists point out the danger of imputing moral value to anecdotal accounts of animal behaviour. Plutarch, like a number of current ethologists, is quite willing to consider acts on the part of non-human species that are revealed in the course of anthropomorphising anecdotes as valid indicators of morally relevant behaviours in other animal species.

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beings from their magic-induced porcine form. Plutarch’s Circe warns Odysseus that the task may not be so simple, and she encourages him to ask one of her pig-converts if he is at all interested in living again as a human being (Brut. anim. 1 986a). She endows one representative porker with speech, and instructs Odysseus to call him “Gryllus” (“Grunter” or “Oinker”), as good a name as any, she observes, for a talking pig (Brut. anim. 1 986b). In the human-animal interaction that ensues, which takes the form of a “nose to snout” lecture by the pig to the hero, Plutarch imagines the pig, armed with a knowledge of Greek ethical commonplaces and examples, proving to the abashed Ithacan the preferability of the animal estate, which boasts all the virtues revered by Greek philosophers without any of the vices that they condemn.6 In response to Odysseus’ offer of life again in human form, Gryllus counters that the cardinal virtues of justice (δικαιοσύνη), wisdom (φρόνησις), courage (ἀνδρεία), and indeed all the other virtues that the Greeks revere,7 exist to a superior degree in animals because “the soul of beasts is more naturally disposed and perfectly formed towards the production of virtue” (Brut. anim. 3 987b: τὴν γὰρ θηρίων ψυχὴν εὐφυεστέραν εἶναι πρὸς γένεσιν ἀρετῆς καὶ τελειοτέραν). This natural excellence arises from the fact that animals cannot act against their natures, unlike human beings who constantly devise perverse behaviours that con-

_____ 6 Recent scholarship on the Gryllus, which has focused on the debt of the work to the several Greek philosophical schools, has shown that the diminutive treatise may be more complex than might initially seem to be the case. In the introduction to his edition of the treatise, Indelli (1995: 21–34) stresses the debt of the work to Epicurean and Cynic ideas and underplays its anti-Stoic elements. Bréchet (2005) argues that the work is indebted to Stoic, Epicurean and Cynic thought, and that its debt to Plato has been overlooked. He concludes (2005: 60) that Plutarch intends to demonstrate that a correct understanding of the intellect of animals must depend on elements drawn from all philosophical schools. Konstan (2010/11) maintains that Plutarch is mocking the intellectual pretensions of the “philosopher-pig” Gryllus to any claim to rationality. 7 Gryllus does not mention here the fourth of the so-called cardinal virtues frequently isolated in Greek philosophical discourse, that of prudence or moderation (σωφροσύνη), but he treats it at some length later on in the dialogue (Brut. anim. 5–9 988f–992c). The text breaks off before any discussion of justice has taken place. The origin of the four cardinal virtues in Greek philosophy is uncertain. Plato (Rep. 427a–434c) outlines how wisdom, courage, justice and prudence manifest themselves in the constituent populations of a city, and the grouping seems to appear there for the first time. Aristotle (Rhet. 1366b1–4) states that the component parts of virtue (ἀρετή) include, besides the four, magnificence (μεγαλοπρέπεια), greatness of soul (μεγαλοψυχία), liberality (ἐλευθερία), and gentleness (πραότης). In Book 1 of De officiis, Cicero provides a lengthy if rather diffuse discussion of the four virtues and of how they function in human life. North (1966) offers a helpful discussion of the various appearances of the cardinal virtues in Greek and Roman thought.

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travene their better instincts, seeking out luxuries and debaucheries that the more limited intellectual endowments of non-human species cannot envision and therefore do not covet. Gryllus proves this assertion when the behaviours of human beings and those of non-humans are compared in the σύγκρισις that he undertakes in the body of the dialogue. The comparisons and, most importantly, the contrasts that emerge in the course of Gryllus’ cross-examination of Odysseus fascinate on multiple levels. While ostensibly a lowly beast,8 Gryllus has the advantage of first-hand experience of both the human and animal estates, which the Greek hero cannot claim. Gryllus shows himself familiar with the details of Odysseus’ life and family situation, and can reflect on the ironic contrast between the Greek’s pretensions to virtue and valour and his infinite capacity for self-deception that supports them. Moreover, when the dialogue is viewed purely as an example of human-animal interaction in a literary-philosophical document, it becomes clear that Odysseus’ interactions with others of his own species are corrupt and hypocritical in a manner impossible for animals. Part of the humour of the Gryllus lies in the ease with which the pigphilosopher manipulates the tenets of Greek philosophical schools in his attempt to prove that the lives of animals are superior to those of human beings, not least because non-human species are incapable of acts contrary to their natures. In so doing, Gryllus playfully inverts the Stoic doctrine that the goal of life consists in living in accord with nature, for the Stoics intended human beings as the subject of this injunction. Diogenes Laertius reports that Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was the first of that school to hold that “the goal of life [is] to live in accord with nature” (7.87: πρῶτος … τέλος εἶπε τὸ ὁμολογουμένως τῇ φύσει ζῆν).9 Since the nature of man is to be rational, in Stoic teaching, the pursuit of virtue is essential to that life goal, since virtue, Diogenes Laertius reports, is in the view of the Stoics “in itself worth choosing” (7.89: δι᾿ αὑτὴν εἶναι αἱρετήν). Human beings, however, because they are endowed with the fullness of reason, can choose vice over virtue. Animals, in Stoic teaching, are irrational and there-

_____ 8 Part of the irony involved in the narrative device of allowing Gryllus to lecture Odysseus lies in the fact that the pig was especially reviled in Greek thought. Cicero recounts that the Stoic Chrysippus maintained that the gods gave a soul to the pig that acted as a sort of preservative, like salt, merely to keep the animal until humans could eat it (De nat. deor. 2.160). 9 The exact meaning of the Stoic injunction to “live in accord with nature” is debated. For a detailed analysis of the possible meanings of the concept, see Brennan (2005: 134–153). On Plutarch’s position that animals live in accord with nature as part of his anti-Stoic polemic against the Stoic view that animals are devoid of reason, see Newmyer (2006: 38–39).

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fore cannot act contrary to their natures. Ironically, it emerges that animals, unlike human beings, always live in accord with nature and thereby naturally attain to the Stoic goal of life. In the course of his lecture to Odysseus, Gryllus proves to his own satisfaction both that animals in fact have a share of reason and understanding, the proposition that informs the title of the dialogue and that is extensively argued in Plutarch’s De sollertia animalium, and that they have chosen the life of virtue that humans reject. At the outset of the conversation between Odysseus and Gryllus, Plutarch subtly plays with the concept of human-animal interaction, allowing the two characters to fall imperceptibly into a habit of regarding the other as almost a member of the species opposite to that in which he appears in the presence of the other. Odysseus comments that Gryllus seems to have lost not only his shape but to have undergone a perversion of his intellect as well, i.e. he regards him as still rather human (Brut. anim. 2 986e), while Gryllus remarks that he senses that Odysseus, at that very moment, is already in fear of assuming animal form under the spell of Circe, indicating that he views the Ithacan as approaching the status of an animal (Brut. anim. 2 986d).10 This “species-bending” exchange sets the scene for Gryllus’ σύγκρισις of the hero’s conduct with that of animals, in which he proves to the hero that Odysseus only seems to be what he thinks he is, while animals are, in fact, what he wrongly thinks he is himself. Gryllus opens his cross-examination with a comparison of human and animal courage (ἀνδρεία). He notes that Odysseus has earned the epithet of “sacker of cities” (Il. 2.278: πτολίπορθος) only because of his deceitful conduct, which is in fact the opposite of courage, while animals fight without tricks and subterfuge and, unlike humans, they never seek to escape the consequences of their own defeat (Brut. anim. 4 987c–d). This makes it obvious that courage is innate in animals, but is in human beings “contrary to nature” (Brut. anim. 4 987f: τοῖς ἀνθρώποις … καὶ παρὰ φύσιν). Human courage is merely prudent cowardice (Brut. anim. 4 988c: ὑμῖν ἡ μὲν ἀνδρεία δειλία φρόνιμος οὖσα). The female of the species in animals is invariably just as courageous as is the male, and fights beside him, while Odysseus’ own wife sits at home offering no resistance to those who plunder Odysseus’ home and his property, even though Penelope

_____ 10 Konstan (2010/11: 372–375) offers a fascinating analysis of the problem that the reader of the dialogue faces in attempting to understand how Gryllus is to be viewed in terms of the classical notion of metamorphosis since, in ancient thought, one cannot be a human and an animal simultaneously. The vexed issue has no impact, however, on Plutarch’s agenda in the Gryllus of commenting on human moral failings.

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was born a Spartan and might have been expected to demonstrate at least a modicum of courage. Odysseus remains silent when Gryllus pauses to allow him to rebut his charges. Ironically, the hero renowned for his quick tongue has himself become the “dumb animal”, overwhelmed by the flow of the pig’s eloquence, a further instance of the sort of “species-bending” that Plutarch works into his account of the interactions of the two figures. Gryllus therefore turns to the virtue of moderation (σωφροσύνη), hinting that Penelope, presuming herself now a widow, cannot compete in the category of chastity with the crow who, when her mate dies, remains a widow for nine generations of a human’s life.11 Gryllus defines moderation as the abridgement and ordering of desires (Brut. anim. 6 989b), and he presents Odysseus with a classification of desires that mirrors the Epicurean division into those that are natural and necessary, those that are natural but unnecessary, and those that are unnatural and unnecessary.12 As Gryllus contends, animals have souls that are not at all receptive to desires that are unnatural and unnecessary, like perfumes, fancy garments and riches, all of which allure humans (Brut. anim. 6 989c). Animals (like good Epicureans) desire foods and scents that are acquired easily and without cost, while humans spend fortunes on such useless luxuries. The sexual conduct of non-human species is likewise exemplary for its restraint and moderation, when viewed against the perversions of human beings, since, unlike human beings, other animals desire sexual unions only during their mating season and, unlike humans, they never enter into homosexual unions (Brut. anim. 7 990d).13 Indeed, Gryllus charges, “even human beings agree that animals can more justly claim moderation in conduct than can humans them-

_____ 11 Extraordinarily long lives were ascribed to crows in classical sources, and their faithfulness to their dead mates was proverbial. Plutarch (De def. or. 415c) quotes a verse from Hesiod stating that crows live for nine generations of the life of a human being. Aelian (De nat. anim. 3.9) reports that crows love their mates intensely, and that when one dies, the other remains widowed. 12 For the classification, see Epicurus, Ep. Men. 127–128 (= Diogenes Laertius 10.127–128) and RS 29–30 (= Diogenes Laertius 10.149–150). In De fin. 1.45, Cicero provides a short exposition of the Epicurean classification. 13 Plato (Leg. 836c) agrees with Gryllus that animals do not mate with members of their own sex. In contrast, Pliny the Elder (Nat. hist. 10.166) states that hens join with each other in a sort of sexual union, and Aelian (Var. hist. 1.15) mentions that female pigeons will mate with each other if they cannot locate a male. Homosexual unions in several hundred animal species are discussed in Bagemihl (1999). Balcombe (2006: 106–124) would likewise disagree with Gryllus on the sexual practices of animals. He cites ample evidence in support of the view that animals do indeed engage in sexual activity “just for the fun of it” (Balcombe 2006: 108). Nor, he notes, do other species limit their sexual activity to the mating season, as Gryllus contends.

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selves, and a lifestyle that does not violate nature in their pleasures” (Brut. anim. 7 990e–f: οὕτω καὶ παρ᾿ αὐτῶν ἀνωμολόγηται τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὅτι μᾶλλον τοῖς θηρίοις σωφρονεῖν προσήκει καὶ μὴ παραβιάζεσθαι ταῖς ἡδοναῖς τὴν φύσιν). Animals care nothing for pleasure, the primary motivating factor in human sexual conduct, since for non-human species “nature is everything” (Brut. anim. 7 990d: τὸ δ᾿ ὅλον ἡ φύσις). Gryllus’ σύγκρισις of wisdom (φρόνησις)14 in humans and animals is somewhat truncated by the interposition of a lacuna at its outset (Brut. anim. 9 991d), but it is clear that the pig intended to argue that non-human species have a greater natural inclination towards wisdom than do human beings because in non-humans, wisdom appears in full bloom at birth and requires no period of apprenticeship. While humans all specialise in one branch of knowledge, other animals are at the same time hunters, physicians, even musicians, “as each is inclined to it by nature” (Brut. anim. 9 991e: ὅσον ἑκάστῳ προσηκεί κατὰ φύσιν). Gryllus demands of Odysseus that “if you do not suppose this may be called reason or intelligence, you must now look for a finer and more honourable name for it” (Brut. anim. 9 991f: ἣν εἰ μὴ λόγον οἴεσθε δεῖν μηδὲ φρόνησιν καλεῖν, ὥρα σκοπεῖν ὄνομα κάλλιον αὐτῇ καὶ τιμιωτέραν). Whatever one chooses to call this intellectual faculty in animals, Gryllus contends, it is more remarkable than the intellect of human beings because in other animals it is innate, untaught and complete in itself (Brut. anim. 9 992a). Gryllus concludes that an enumeration of sundry animal behaviours would prove that non-human species “are not without reason and understanding” (Brut. anim. 10 992c: ὡς λόγου καὶ συνέσεως οὐκ ἔστιν ἄμοιρος). Once again, Odysseus offers no rebuttal to Gryllus’ arguments other than to suggest that one cannot call a creature rational that has no knowledge of god (Brut. anim. 10 992e). The text breaks off before Gryllus can reply to the charge, but since his focus had turned to the in-

_____ 14 Identification of the intellectual qualities entailed in the concept of φρόνησις is a complex problem, although it was at times acknowledged to reside in non-human species. Aristotle (Met. 980b1–981a3) is willing to attribute it to animals. He further allows that some animals may be judged to be “more prudent” (φρονιμώτερα) than others if they possess memory. Certain animals, he maintains (Eth. Nic. 1141a26–28), may be considered to possess φρόνησις because they exercise some degree of forethought in the conduct of their own lives. Labarrière (1990: 405) notes that, while Aristotle is willing to ascribe φρόνησις to other species, he is not clear in what he means by the term, although scholars have been in agreement that the concept entails some sort of understanding that exceeds mere sensation. Gryllus appears to have a somewhat Aristotelian understanding of φρόνησις since he argues that animals naturally know how to conduct their lives fully in accord with nature, thereby demonstrating the forethought essential to the concept.

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tellectual capacities of non-human species, he might well have argued that, since comprehension of the divine entails the exercise of reason and since he has shown that non-humans have a share of reason, Odysseus must acknowledge that they have some comprehension of the divine and have a share of the divine in themselves.15 It is no coincidence that Plutarch has assigned the virtue of wisdom (φρόνησις) the final place in Gryllus’ elaborate argument since the pig’s intent all along has been to prove that animals are not only endowed with a share of reason, but that they put their reason to better use than do their human counterparts and do not countermand its promptings. If Plutarch had carried out in this section of his σύγκρισις the same manner of argument followed in the case of the other cardinal virtues, Homer’s hero might once again have found himself with no reply to offer if man’s vaunted claim to the unique possession of reason among animals had been called into question by the eloquent pig.

3 The Convivium septem sapientium: Dutiful dolphins Plutarch’s symposiastic dialogue Convivium septem sapientium incorporates a type of human-animal interaction that is both closely akin to that observable in the Gryllus in its heavy reliance upon anthropomorphising anecdotes and unlike that in the Gryllus in depicting one or another third party, in each case now a human being, who interprets the ethical dimensions of the interactions delineated. At the same time, just as in the Gryllus, where the force of Plutarch’s ethical message is enriched by the reader’s familiarity with the Homeric scene upon which Plutarch’s parody is based, so too in the Convivium the ethical content of the human-animal interactions is thrown into higher relief for the reader when the behaviour of Plutarch’s animals, in this instance dolphins, is viewed in the tradition of anecdotal accounts of human-dolphin encounters. In Plutarch’s dialogue, dolphins serve as exemplars of disinterested kindness and cooperation in effecting rescues of human beings at sea, as Plutarch develops the narrative motif of interventions by dolphins that rescue drowning humans into

_____ 15 For a detailed discussion of the teleologically grounded ancient claim that only human beings can know the divine because of their unique rationality and their upright stance that affords them a glimpse of the heavens, see Newmyer (2003), where classical texts that assert that animals may in fact have religious sensibilities are also examined.

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heavily moralised “teachable moments” in which, as in the Gryllus, human virtues are ascribed to non-human species. Unlike the case of the Gryllus, human-animal interactions in the Convivium septem sapientium are incidental, if not indeed almost “accidental” in the manner of their introduction into the narrative. Since they occur in the context of an imaginary conversation among legendary Greek “Sages”, the presence of animals in the discussion is in itself noteworthy because so unexpected. Plutarch hints at the significance of the theme of human-animal interaction, in the context of an otherwise rigorously anthropocentric work devoted to religious and political themes, by his inclusion among the interlocutors of the fabulist Aesop who was not reckoned among the Seven Sages of Greece in any classical account.16 In her study of the Convivium, Judith Mossman calls attention to Plutarch’s fondness for inclusion in the dialogue for what she aptly terms “halfand-half things” (Mossman 1997: 129), i.e. creatures that mingle human and non-human elements as, for example, the centaur that is brought by a herdsman into the presence of the banqueters for their examination (Conv. 3 149c–e). Although Aesop does not figure in this episode, he appears in several discussions of animals that prepare the way for the most developed and ethically significant example of human-animal interaction in the Convivium. In his first contribution to the discussion, Aesop recounts that on one occasion, a mule saw his reflection in a pond and thereupon abandoned his former pride when he “became aware” (Conv. 4 150a: συμφρονήσας) that he was in fact a hybrid creature, the offspring of a horse and an ass. Plutarch’s word choice here is significant since he appears to suggest that animals possess some of the intellectual capacities seen to a greater degree in human beings. This idea would form the thesis of the work that constitutes Plutarch’s most elaborate examination of the question of the intellectual capacities of non-human species, De sollertia animalium. In her study of the Convivium, Mossman (1997: 128) dismisses the centaur episode as merely an example of the tendency in symposium literature to mingle the lighthearted with the serious, but it might more correctly be viewed as the first of a series of human-animal interactions that lead, in the manner of the Plutarchan σύγκρισις, to a comparison of human and animal

_____ 16 Recent scholarship has tended to concentrate on the presence of religious and political themes in the dialogue. See, for example, Aalders (1977), Mossman (1997), van der Stockt (2005), and Leão (2009). Animal themes in the work are treated in detail in Newmyer (2009). A useful overview of ancient thought on who was believed to constitute the Seven Sages is offered in Defradas’ commentary on the Greek text of the Convivium septem sapientium (1954: 16– 23). For a more extensive discussion of the identity of the Sages, see Fehling (1985).

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conduct in which the non-human exemplars, as in the Gryllus, come off as ethically superior. The question of animal intellect is touched upon as well in the next episode in which Aesop appears when the Sage Solon alludes to the fabulist’s ability to comprehend the language of animals, calling Aesop “clever at understanding ravens and jackdaws” (Conv. 7 152d: σὺ δὲ δεινὸς εἶ κορακῶν ἐπαΐειν καὶ κολοιῶν).17 Aesop disappears from the narrative after the Sage Anacharsis reminds the fabulist that an anthill or a bird’s nest may be viewed as a source of happiness to the animals that inhabit them if they “have mind and discretion” (Conv. 12 155c: νοῦν ἔχουσι καὶ σωφρονοῦσι).18 Anacharsis’ mention of the complex homes of animals, though left undeveloped by the Sage, hints at the ancient debate on the question of whether such structures are evidence of some degree of intellectual activity in other species and specifically of some traces of “technological skill” (τέχνη) in animals.19 In the final narrative episode that precedes the most extensive example of human-animal interaction in the dialogue, the Sage Solon raises an issue that seems consciously chosen to prepare the way for the succeeding discussion of this interaction. Solon expresses himself dismayed at the fact that the human diet necessarily compels one to act unjustly, for whether one consumes plants or animals, a human takes away another being’s life to sustain his own (Conv. 16 159b–c). He envisions an ethical relationship between a human and other beings that cannot be gainsaid and an inescapable moral dilemma that a human cannot resolve.20 These few examples are in themselves sufficient to illustrate the fact that human-animal interactions constitute at least a secondary theme in a dialogue in which topics including man’s relation to the divine and the nature of good government predominate. They suggest that Plutarch has taken pains to allow

_____ 17 The complex issue of animal language is not developed further in the Convivium. On ancient views on the communication skills of non-human species, see Newmyer (1999), where ancient testimonies that attribute or deny the capacity for meaningful communication to nonhumans are discussed. See also Fögen (2014) for a helpful summary of ancient views on the topic, with bibliography. 18 Dickerman (1911) discusses stereotypic enumerations of the building activities of ants, bees, spiders and swallows that were cited in Greek and Roman authors as evidence of intelligence in non-human species. 19 On the topic of technological prowess in animals, see Newmyer (2005). 20 The injustice towards animals that meat-eating entails for human beings is treated at length in the two parts of Plutarch’s treatise De esu carnium. On Plutarch’s views on justice towards other species, see Newmyer (1992) and Newmyer (2006: 48–65).

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his introduction of the theme of interspecies affection and co-operation to appear more natural through his delineation of a series of lesser human-animal interactions that precede it. The animal that Plutarch now chooses to illustrate his theme that animal conduct may reveal itself to be superior to that of human beings is the dolphin, a creature whose apparently human-friendly behaviour never ceased to fascinate classical authors, and when his retelling of the familiar tale of the rescue by dolphins of the singer Arion is viewed beside other ancient versions, it becomes obvious that Plutarch intended to imbue his version of the anecdote with ethically charged content not in evidence in other classical accounts of this perennially fascinating human-dolphin encounter.21 The banquet that forms the setting for Plutarch’s Convivium septem sapientium takes place at the court of the tyrant Periander of Corinth, who was numbered among the Seven Sages in some ancient accounts. In Plutarch’s dialogue, Periander’s brother Gorgus tells the assembled guests that on one occasion he observed a group of dolphins carrying to shore a man whom the other witnesses recognised as the famous singer Arion of Methyma (Conv. 18 161a). The reader is reminded at once of Herodotus’ account of how the dithyrambic poet Arion was forced overboard when the sailors whom he had hired to convey him back to the court of Periander at Corinth robbed him after a successful and lucrative concert tour and sought to conceal their crime by compelling the singer to drown (Herodotus, Hist. 1.23–24). After playing one last song, the singer jumped into the sea and was picked up by a dolphin. In Herodotus, no motivation is ascribed to the dolphin’s actions, and Arion makes no comment on the behaviour of the animal. The historian’s interest in the tale seems to be mainly aetiological, as he ends his account with a mention of a statue of a man on a dolphin located in a temple at Taenarum that was believed to have been a gift of the singer to the temple.

_____ 21 Although the rescue of Arion by dolphins is by far the most familiar ancient tale of humandolphin interaction, it is not the only tale of this sort in classical literature. Bowra (1963: 131– 132) catalogues and briefly discusses other anecdotes of sea rescues of human beings by dolphins. Nor are such tales merely the stuff of fable, for numerous documented instances of such behaviours have been recorded by scientists. Ethologist Donald R. Griffin (1992: 214) details the “aiding behaviour” of dolphins. See also de Waal (2009: 127–129) on “animal altruism”, of which he cites a number of examples involving dolphins. White (2007: 163) notes instances of dolphins swimming around humans who have been cast overboard from their ships, apparently attempting by their presence to alert potential rescuers to the location of the humans who are adrift. Conversely, Safina (2015: 369–373) records instances of dolphins in distress at sea from fishhooks and netting approaching humans for aid.

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A similarly unadorned retelling of the tale of Arion is included in Pliny the Elder (Nat. hist. 9.28). Slightly earlier, Pliny had observed that the dolphin is “an animal friendly to man” (Nat. hist. 9.24: homini … amicum animal) and one attracted by music, perhaps a carryover from Herodotus’ mention of Arion’s last performance before entering the sea. One might suppose that the animal’s fondness for music and its affection for humans contributed equally to its rescuing behaviour, although Pliny himself says nothing about any possible motive on the part of the animal. Aelian (De nat. anim. 12.45) picks up on the motif of love for music in dolphins in his version of the anecdote, and he states that Arion composed a hymn to the dolphins in gratitude for his rescue, but Aelian likewise does not speculate on the potential motivation on the part of the dolphin in rescuing the singer.22 In the accounts of Herodotus, Pliny and Aelian, the element of humananimal interaction is not developed beyond the simplest plot details of the rescue. Neither the egregious cruelty and greed of the sailors nor the kindness of the dolphins towards Arion is commented on by any of these authors, beyond Pliny’s general observation on the friendliness of dolphins towards human beings. Plutarch, in contrast, relates that the sailors plotted for several days to throw the singer overboard, and that they drew swords and covered their heads when rushing towards him, forcing him to jump into the sea, unwilling to wait any longer to bring about his death (Conv. 18 161b–d). Moreover, only Plutarch records the reaction of the singer on being picked up by the animals at the very moment when he was about to be submerged. His choice of words detailing Arion’s emotions at the point at which the human-animal interaction at the heart of the anecdote commences is striking. The singer, when lifted upward by the dolphin, is described as “being at first full of perplexity and incomprehension and confusion” (Conv. 18 161d: μεστὸς ὢν ἀπορίας καὶ ἀγνοίας καὶ ταραχής). Such emotions seem natural in a human being who has been the victim of the worst sort of behaviour of which his own species is capable and who finds himself now the beneficiary of kind ministrations of another species whose actions he cannot fully comprehend. Plutarch relates, however, that Arion soon came to feel at ease on the animal’s back.

_____ 22 Bowra (1963) attempts to ascertain to what poetic genre the hymn that Aelian quotes may be ascribed. He makes no comment on any ethical aspects of the tale, and he maintains rather that Aelian’s interest in the tale lies in the evidence that it provides for the love of flute music attributed to dolphins. Fögen (2009: 50) reminds us that Aelian often seeks to ascribe ethical qualities to animals.

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While the emotions that Plutarch ascribes to the singer are what might be expected under the circumstances, the vocabulary that he chooses to delineate the actions and motivations of the dolphins is extraordinary in that language appropriate to describe virtuous actions by human beings is applied to the actions of animals. This narrative device is all the more effective in an account in which virtuous behaviour on the part of human beings is conspicuously absent. When the behaviour of animals is set beside that of human beings, the nonhuman species comes off as morally superior to its human counterparts. Plutarch recounts that, once Arion was safely seated on the back of one dolphin, he observed other dolphins gathering about him “in a manner kindly-disposed” (Conv. 18 161d: εὐμενῶς), and the singer interpreted their behaviour to mean that the animals intended to take turns in carrying him, thereby “relieving each other as if this were a duty incumbent upon them all in turn” (Conv. 18 161d: διαδεχομένους ὡς ἀναγκαῖον ἐν μέρει λειτούργημα καὶ προσῆκον πᾶσιν). It is noteworthy that Plutarch allows Arion, the recipient of both the cruelty of human beings and the kindness of other species, to form this interpretation, thereby highlighting both the theme of human-animal interaction and that of the superiority of animal conduct to that of human beings observable when both are viewed in side-by-side comparison as in Plutarch’s elaboration of the tale of Arion. One might question whether such actions on the part of animals are properly classified as instances of animal altruism or animal co-operation or, in classical parlance, as animal φιλανθρωπία, which seems most appropriate in light of the common ancient acknowledgement that dolphins are friendly towards human beings.23 While, as we have noted, modern ethologists have recorded instances of rescues of human beings by dolphins, scientists are loathe to describe animals as moral creatures on the basis of such human-animal interactions (see n. 5, above). The final human-dolphin encounter described in the Convivium septem sapientium suggests that Plutarch had no such hesitation. Following the narration of the dolphin’s encounter with Arion, Solon recounts that the body of the poet Hesiod, who had been murdered and whose body

_____ 23 Van der Stockt (2005: 19) views human-dolphin encounters as evidence of Plutarch’s belief that the gods, man and other animal species all take care of each other. The behaviour of the dolphins thus illustrates how one part of animal creation looks after another. Smith (2014: 203– 207) stresses the eroticism that human-dolphin encounters may have in classical accounts, with special reference to instances in Aelian. This element is absent from Plutarch’s accounts of human-dolphin encounters. On the topic of how helping behaviours of animals are to be classified in the context of ethical philosophy, see Rowlands (2012).

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had been cast into the sea by his killers, was carried to shore by dolphins. Solon remarks that one can scarcely be surprised that the dolphins rescued Arion since they “act in such a kindred and human-loving manner towards the dead” (Conv. 19 162f: οὕτως ἔχουσιν οἰκείως καὶ φιλανθρώπως πρὸς τοὺς ἀποθανόντας). Plutarch wishes his reader to understand that dolphins are capable of deeds prompted by some sense of obligation and duty towards human beings, deeds that, if performed by humans, even the most sceptical twentyfirst-century ethologist or philosopher of ethics would not hesitate to call the actions of moral beings.

4 The kinship of animal reason: Shared and betrayed Plutarch’s employment of the adverb οἰκείως (“in a kindred manner”) to describe the behaviour of the dolphins towards the body of the slain Hesiod in the Convivium septem sapientium (Conv. 19 162f) makes clear that he has in mind there the Stoic concept of οἰκείωσις, that recognition of kinship, attachment, affiliation or belonging that the Stoics maintained human beings sense towards other humans. Animals share it with other non-human species but not with human beings because, in the view of the Stoics, animals are in their nature unlike humans in being devoid of reason.24 Plutarch’s central thesis in his animal-related writings is that all animals, contrary to the position of the Stoics, are to some degree rational. All animals are consequently “akin” to human be-

_____ 24 Diogenes Laertius (7.85), in his account of the life of the Stoic Chrysippus, offers what is considered to be the classic exposition of the concept of οἰκείωσις as defined in Stoic ethics. An animal’s initial impulse (πρώτη ὁρμή) at birth is towards self-preservation, an impulse that arises from a creature’s recognition that it has a kinship to itself (οἰκειούσης αὑτῷ τῆς φύσεως ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς). This recognition leads a creature to bring close to itself that which it recognises as akin (τὰ οἰκεῖα προσίεται) and to repel that which it recognises as injurious to itself (τὰ βλάπτοντα διωθεῖται). With the passage of time, a creature recognises such a kinship with other creatures, in a widening circle of affiliation. Human beings recognise this affiliation with other humans that share a common rationality, but not with other animals that do not demonstrate this rationality. Other animal species are therefore permanently alien (ἀλλότρια). The literature on the concept of οἰκείωσις is vast. Helpful studies include Brink (1955/56), Pembroke (1971), and Striker (1983). On Roman Stoicism’s incorporation of the concept, see ReydamsSchils (2002). Engberg-Pedersen (1990: 16–35) demonstrates how Aristotle’s theory of happiness influences Stoic ideas of human kinship, as human beings reach out to other humans in a quest for happiness in life achieved through affiliation with other rational beings.

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ings in their intellectual faculties, i.e. that they in fact do participate with human beings in that affiliation and attachment that the Stoics termed οἰκείωσις. The human-animal interactions delineated in the Gryllus and the Convivium septem sapientium seek to provide evidence of this interspecies kinship and affiliation, and to suggest at the same time that animals make better use of their reason than do human beings who ignore its promptings. By engaging in the sorts of moral outrages depicted anecdotally in the Gryllus and the Convivium septem sapientium, they betray their kinship with other species. Near the beginning of De sollertia animalium, Plutarch’s most elaborate theoretical examination of the intellectual capacities of animals, one of the dialogue’s participants reminds his comrades that on the previous day of their deliberations, they had “asserted that all animals in some manner have a share of understanding and reason” (De soll. anim. 2 960a: ἀποφηνάμενοι γὰρ ἐχθές, ὡς οἶσθα, μετέχειν ἁμωσγέπως πάντα τὰ ζῷα διανοίας καὶ λογισμοῦ). Nowhere in his animal-related writings does Plutarch claim that the reasoning faculties of non-human species are equal to those of human beings. On the contrary, he maintains, in De sollertia animalium, that animals as well have a rational faculty that is implanted by nature (De soll. anim. 4 962c: λόγος μὲν γὰρ ἐγγίνεται φύσει), but only through education and practice, which lie open to human beings alone, can the perfection of reason be attained (De soll. anim. 4 962c: λόγος καὶ τέλειος ἐξ ἐπιμελείας καὶ διδασκαλίας). Even so, humans do not avail themselves of these advantages, and no man is found to possess the fullness and perfection of reason (De soll. anim. 4 962c). Plutarch’s interlocutor Autobulus advances the thesis in De sollertia animalium that non-human species are rational, while the Stoic position that animals are irrational is advanced by the interlocutor Soclarus who asserts that, in comparison with the lives of human beings, animals do not appear to progress towards or have any innate inclination for virtue, the attainment of which is the natural purpose of reason (De soll. anim. 4 962a: τῆς ἀρετῆς πρὸς ἣν ὁ λόγος γέγονε μηδὲν᾿ ἐμφανῆ στοχασμὸν αὐτῶν μηδὲ προκοπὴν μηδ᾿ ὄρεξιν). Autobulus counters that, while we cannot expect the fullness of reason in animals, we do not find that even in human beings, for it is they who, despite their intellectual advantages, do not aim at perfection. The anecdotal interactions in the Gryllus and the Convivium septem sapientium serve to prove Autobulus’ position that animals attain to the full degree of their intellectual and moral powers, as the share of reason that nature has allotted them enables them to do so in their capacity as animals akin to and affiliated with human beings. The De sollertia animalium furnishes a particularly moving example of human-animal interaction, again with a dolphin, that elucidates Plutarch’s conception of interspecies kinship. Once, he relates, a dolphin that had grown ac-

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customed to bearing a youth on its back and had come to enjoy its encounters with the human, had, in the course of a storm, allowed the youth to slip from his back and drown. The dolphin thereupon carried the body of the youth to shore and beached itself, thereby causing its own death, “considering it just to share in the death for which it thought itself responsible” (De soll. anim. 36 984f: δικαιώσας μετασχεῖν ἧς συναίτιος ἔδοξε γεγονέναι τελευτῆς). It is noteworthy that Plutarch chooses here, near the end of the treatise, a form of the verb μετέχειν (“to share”) that he had employed at the outset of De sollertia animalium to characterise his belief in the kinship of all animal life that arises from the fact that they share the faculty of reason, a verb that evokes the notion of interaction upon which Plutarch’s comparative examination of human-animal relations is built. Ironically, in Plutarch’s view, it is animals whose interactions with their human brethren illustrate most nobly the Stoic concept of belonging in the circle of animal life founded on the kinship of shared reason.

Bibliography Critical editions, translations and commentaries Babbitt, Frank Cole (1928): Plutarch: Moralia. With an English translation. Vol. 2 (Loeb Classical Library 222), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Cherniss, Harold & William C. Helmbold (1957): Plutarch: Moralia. With an English translation. Vol. 12 (Loeb Classical Library 406), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Defradas, Jean (1954): Plutarque: Le banquet des sept sages. Texte et traduction avec une introduction et des notes, Paris. Indelli, Giovanni (1995): Plutarco: Le bestie sono esseri razionali. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento (= Corpus Plutarchi Moralium 22), Napoli.

Secondary literature Aalders, Gerhard J. D. (1977): Political thought in Plutarch’s Convivium septum [sic] sapientium. In: Mnemosyne 30, 28–39. Bagemihl, Bruce (1999): Biological Exuberance. Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, New York. Balcombe, Jonathan (2006): Pleasurable Kingdom. Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good, New York. Beck, Mark (2003): Plutarch’s declamations and the Progymnasmata. In: Bianca-Jeanette Schröder & Jens-Peter Schröder (eds.), Studium declamatorium. Untersuchungen zu Schulübungen und Prunkreden von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, Munich, 169–192. Bowra, Maurice (1963): Arion and the dolphin. In: Museum Helveticum 20, 121–134.

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Bréchet, Christophe (2005): La philosophie de Gryllos. In: Jacques Boulogne (ed.), Les Grecs de l’Antiquité et les animaux. Le cas remarquable de Plutarque, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 43– 61. Brennan, Tad (2005): The Stoic Life. Emotions, Duties, and Fate, Oxford. Brink, Charles O. (1955/56): Οἰκείωσις and Οἰκειότης. Theophrastus and Zeno on nature in moral theory. In: Phronesis 1, 123–145. Cartledge, Paul (1993): The Greeks. A Portrait of Self and Others, Oxford. de Waal, Frans (2009): The Age of Empathy. Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society, New York. Dickerman, Sherwood Owen (1911): Some stock illustrations of animal intelligence in Greek psychology. In: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 42, 123–130. Duff, Tim (1999): Plutarch’s Lives. Exploring Virtue and Vice, Oxford. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels (1990): The Stoic Theory of Oikeiosis. Moral Development and Social Interaction in Early Stoic Philosophy, Aarhus. Fehling, Detlev (1985): Die sieben Weisen und die frühgriechische Chronologie. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Studie, Berlin. Fögen, Thorsten (2009): The implications of animal nomenclature in Aelian’s De natura animalium. In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 152, 49–62. Fögen, Thorsten (2014): Animal communication. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 216–232. Griffin, Donald R. (1992): Animal Minds, Chicago. Heath, John (2005): The Talking Greeks. Speech, Animals, and the Other in Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato, Cambridge. Kleczkowska, Katarzyna (2014): Those who cannot speak. Animals as others in ancient Greek thought. In: Maska 24, 97–108. Konstan, David (2010/11): A pig convicts itself of unreason. The implicit argument of Plutarch’s Gryllus. In: Hyperboreus 16/17, 371–385. Labarrière, Jean-Louis (1990): De la phronesis animale. In: Daniel Devereux & Pierre Pellegrin (eds.), Biologie, logique et métaphysique chez Aristote, Paris, 405–428. Lamberton, Robert (2001): Plutarch, New Haven & London. Larmour, David H. J. (2014): The Synkrisis. In: Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch, Malden, Mass. & Oxford, 405–416. Leão, Delfim (2009): The tyrannos as a sophos in the Septem sapientium convivium. In: José Ribeiro Ferreira, Delfim Leão, Manuel Tröster & Paila Barata Dias (eds.), ‘Symposion’ and ‘Philanthropia’ in Plutarch, Coimbra, 511–521. Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. (1966): Polarity and Analogy. Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought, Cambridge. Mossman, Judith M. (1997): Plutarch’s Dinner of the Seven Wise Men and its place in symposion literature. In: Judith M. Mossman (ed.), Plutarch and His Intellectual World. Essays on Plutarch, London, 119–140. Newmyer, Stephen T. (1992): Plutarch on justice toward animals. Ancient insights on a modern debate. In: Scholia 1, 38–54. Newmyer, Stephen T. (1999): Speaking of beasts. The Stoics and Plutarch on animal reason and the modern case against animals. In: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 63, 99– 110. Newmyer, Stephen T. (2003): Paws to reflect. Ancients and moderns on the religious sensibilities of animals. In: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 75, 111–129.

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Newmyer, Stephen T. (2005): Tool use in animals. Ancient and modern insights and moral consequences. In: Scholia 14, 3–17. Newmyer, Stephen T. (2006): Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics, Oxford. Newmyer, Stephen T. (2009): Animal philanthropia in the Convivium septem sapientium. In: José Ribeiro Ferreira, Delfim Leão, Manuel Tröster & Paula Barata Dias (eds.), ‘Symposion’ and ‘Philanthropia’ in Plutarch, Coimbra, 497–509. North, Helen (1966): Canons and hierarchies of the cardinal virtues in Greek and Latin literature. In: Luitpold Wallach (ed.), The Classical Tradition. Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan, Ithaca, 165–183. Pembroke, Simon J. (1971): Oikeiȏsis. In: Anthony A. Long (ed.), Problems in Stoicism, London, 114–149. Reydams-Schils, Gretchen (2002): Human bonding and oikeiōsis in Roman Stoicism. In: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 22, 221–251. Rowlands, Mark (2012): Can Animals Be Moral?, Oxford. Russell, Donald A. (1973): Plutarch, London. Safina, Carl (2015): Beyond Words. What Animals Think and Feel, New York. Sassi, Maria Michela (2001): The Science of Man in Ancient Greece, Chicago. Schmitz, Thomas A. (2014): Plutarch and the Second Sophistic. In: Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch, Malden, Mass. & Oxford, 32–42. Schuster, Max (1917): Untersuchungen zu Plutarchs Dialog De sollertia animalium. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lehrtätigkeit Plutarchs, Augsburg. Smith, Steven D. (2014): Man and Animal in Severan Rome. The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus, Cambridge. Steiner, Gary (2008): Animals and the Moral Community. Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship, New York. Striker, Gisela (1983): The role of oikeiosis in Stoic ethics. In: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 1, 145–167. van der Stockt, Luc (2005): Plutarch and the dolphins. Love is all you need. In: Jacques Boulogne (ed.), Les Grecs de l’Antiquité et les animaux. Le cas remarquable de Plutarque, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 43–61. Vegetti, Mario (1979): Il coltello e lo stilo. Animali, schiavi, barbari e donne alle origini della razionalità scientifica, Milano. White, Thomas I. (2007): In Defense of Dolphins. The New Moral Frontier, Oxford.

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Fish or Man, Babylonian or Greek? Oannes between Cultures | 253

Jeremy McInerney

Fish or Man, Babylonian or Greek? Oannes between Cultures Jeremy McInerney Fish or Man, Babylonian or Greek? Oannes between Cultures DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-011 Abstract: This paper deals with one type of interaction between humans and animals, namely the blending of both human and animal into a single hybrid figure that combines elements of both. Some hybrids assume a higher-than-human status that is embodied in, or evoked by, their very animality. One clear example is the Babylonian fish-man known as Oannes. An analysis of Berossus’ treatment in Book 1 of the Babyloniaca reveals that a traditional figure from Babylonian myth has been reworked for a Greek audience. By taking a traditional apkallu (“sage”), who is both a fish (from the primordial sea) and a human (and an essential culture hero responsible for law, language and order), Berossus manufactures a figure whose animality underscores his status. Emphatically not-Greek, by nature not-man, Oannes’ animal qualities connect him to the very waters from which we come, powerfully authenticating his authority in a way that is at odds with the clear separation of titanic, primordial forces and Olympian divinity in the traditional (Hesiodic) pantheon. Berossus goes further: his culture hero, whose deeds are described in Greek, is presented as responsible for the sum total of all human culture. All subsequent developments are presented as exegesis on the founder hero’s deeds. How are we to read this human-animal interaction? Berossus’ Oannes should be read then as the redeployment of a figure combining human and animal natures to convey a new message to the Greeks: their military and political conquest is re-configured as an opportunity to learn, and to participate in, an older, more venerable culture. In much the same way as the Ptolemies were incorporated into an Egyptian world-system of thought, belief and practice by the priests of Memphis, so too Berossus took a figure with one set of cultural associations expressed through his animal and human selves and reworked it, explaining it to the Greeks and offering them the opportunity to incorporate it into their interactions with Babylon. The animal-human interaction in this way prefigures and analogises the human-human interaction of cultures linguistically and culturally distinct from each other but forced to fashion a modus vivendi typical of the Hellenistic world.

1 Introduction A volume dedicated to interactions between animals and humans may seem an odd place for a paper devoted to the work of historiography produced by a Babylonian priest early in the Hellenistic age, so a word of explanation is in order. As will become apparent, the most distinctive feature of Berossus’ work is the prominence of a figure known as Oannes, a fish/man hybrid who is presented as a culture hero. The category of culture hero is not novel; a blend of man and overgrown goldfish is. In what follows, I take the animality and even more the humanimality of the figure as the principal vector into reading this DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-011

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Babylonian culture hero. The oddity and uncanniness of the figure is critical to how he is read both by Babylonians and Greeks. In cultural exchange, particularly at times of disjunction where war, conquest and anxiety are giving way to new modes of accommodation, humanimality ‒ an unsettling but ultimately unthreatening blend of animal and human ‒ may allow both sides to find a middle ground, if not for understanding each other, then at least for accommodating each other. Early in the Seleucid era a Babylonian priest named Berossus produced a history of Babylon, the Babyloniaca, recounting the earliest history of Babylon before the Flood. Berossus’ name is a Hellenised version of a theophoric Babylonian name *Bel-rē’ûšu, meaning “Bel is his shepherd” (Komoróczy 1973: 125), or alternatively Bel-rē’ûshunu, meaning “the Lord is their shepherd” (van der Spek 2008: 277). It is quite possible that Berossus was the šatammu (“temple administrator”, “high priest”) of Esagila, since the name is attested in tablets from the period of 258–253 B.C., which would place his floruit in the reign of Antiochus II (261–246 B.C.) (see van der Spek 2000: 439). In common with other ancient Near Eastern cosmogonic texts, the Babyloniaca included accounts of both the creation and the flood. In Book 1 Berossus appears to have dealt with the reigns of the ten primeval kings of Babylon and listed the sage figures, known as the Apkallū, who were the advisers of these kings.1 The Apkallū were semi-divine, widely associated with royal authority, but also viewed as benign spirits capable of offering protection to both individuals and households. Depictions of them on amulets and reliefs show that they were thought to be a blend of human and fish, specifically purādu (“carp”). Above their human head was the head of a fish, and behind their feet was a fish tail. A fish skin is draped around them, like a cloak, but they clearly possess human arms and feet. Their apotropaic powers were appropriated by Achaemenid rulers, who adorned entry ways at Pasargadae with monumental depictions of the Apkallū, an iconographic borrowing that may have been inspired by equally monumental representations from the temple of Ninurta, Nimrud (see Fig. 1).

_____ 1 Generally, lower-case apkallu (singular) and apkallū (plural) refer to a range of hybrid spirits including fish, bird and human winged figures, while upper-case Apkallū are specifically the Seven Sages.

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2 Greek history and Babylonian chronography Despite these exotic and, from a Greek point of view, wildly strange elements, Berossus’ Babyloniaca is primarily of interest to Greek historians because it was written in Greek, and, it would seem, in only the first generation after the conquest of Babylon by Alexander and its subsequent takeover by the first Seleucids. It is also remarkable since Berossus was a priest in the Esagila, the ziggurat and precinct sacred to the supreme god of Babylon, Bel-Marduk. Although there is a great deal of similarity in terms of content and context between Berossus’ Babylonian history and Manetho’s treatment of Egyptian history ‒ also composed in Greek, also by a priest from the non-Greek elite ‒, the existence of texts whose content is emphatically not Greek in origin, but whose composition is Greek, has meant that Berossus’ work is rightly seen as a remarkable product of the synthesis, fusion or blending (one can choose one’s preferred metaphor) that characterises Hellenism (see Murray 1972: 208–209, Verbrugghe & Wickersham 1996, and Dillery 2015). Because the work comes down to us in fragments and snippets, attempts to analyse the extant portions suffer from the inevitable problem that they give priority to the portions that survive (see van der Spek 2008). Nevertheless, the extant fragments serve as a kind of epitome of Berossus, allowing us to glimpse the larger outlines of the complete work and also to see what particularly caught the eye of his Greek readers. Notable here is his account of the figure known in Greek as Oannes. In brief, this is a culture hero. One day Oannes, a figure who is both human and fish ‒ not a merman, but a human with a fish’s head above his human head and a fish’s tail beneath his human feet ‒ walked out of the sea. He spoke to humankind, explaining the motion of the stars and announcing laws. Having given humankind many of the benefits of civilisation, he stopped speaking and returned to the water. From that day until the present, observes Berossus, there has been no addition to the sum of human knowledge. Furthermore, writes the priest, Oannes interacted with humans at a time when there were many human-animal hybrids, monsters who shared the earth with humans, and whose existence was confirmed on the walls of the temple of BelMarduk in Babylon, for any visitor to see. Berossus’ account goes on to treat incidents of a more strictly historical nature. From Josephus’ references to his work it is clear that he dealt, for example, with the Jewish captivity in Babylon. It is interesting to note, however, that despite the detailed correspondences between his treatment of both antediluvian kings and postdiluvian kings and chronographic texts such as the Uruk King List, the latest attested king in the Babyloniaca is Artaxerxes Ochus (F12), suggesting that he did not venture into the muddy waters of Alexander’s conquest of Babylon

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or the even murkier business of the Wars of the Diadochoi and the establishment of the Seleucid dynasty. This may be an accident of transmission, but had these episodes been described, one might have expected some mention of these events by those authors who subsequently drew on Berossus. In general, however, it seems that Berosssus’ work, though written in Greek, was not very Greek in terms of content or genre, certainly not if measured against the investigative history writing of Herodotus and Thucydides (see Burstein 1978: 9). In any case, despite the fact that most modern readers first encounter Berossus through the pages of Jacoby’s Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, a closer look at the transmission of Berossus’ text suggests that the classification of his text as history is a postHellenistic development. Vitruvius cites Berossus in a note on astrology (T1a [= De arch. 9.6.2]).2 Whether or not his report that Berossus opened a school on Cos is accurate, and most modern experts have dismissed it (see Kuhrt 1987: 55), the earliest mention of his work has nothing to say about historiography. Subsequent references in Vitruvius similarly point to Berossus as an expert in astronomical lore (T1b–c [= De arch. 9.2.1–2 and 9.8.1–2]).3 Seneca associates Berossus with the astrological doctrines of Belus (T2 [= Nat. quaest. 3.29.1]). Pliny the Elder rates Berossus as an outstanding astrologer (T3a–b [= Nat. hist. 7.123 and 7.193]). Josephus discusses Berossus in the context of Chaldean writings regarding the Jews and relates that Berossus mentions such early events as the Flood and catalogues the reigns of the descendants of Noah (T4 [= Ap. 1.128–131]). Pausanias names Berossus as the father of one of the Sibyls (T5 [= Per. 10.12.9]). All subsequent testimonia, from Tertullian to the Suda (T6–12), fall broadly under the heading of Christian polemic and cite Berossus as a more or less authoritative source on Babylonian matters. George Syncellus’ lengthy note is typical: having given Berossus’ floruit (“… a contemporary of Alexander”), the Byzantine monk goes on to report that Berossus used the records of those who had settled Babylonia, records covering a period of some 150,000 years. He drew on these records “and provided records about the sky, the earth and the sea, about the ancient history of the kings and their deeds.”4

_____ 2 Unless otherwise stated, references to testimonia and fragments of Berossus are to the edition of Verbrugghe & Wickersham (1996), who list them in chronological order, pertinent to the argument made here. A revised edition of Jacoby’s FGrHist 680 has recently been compiled by de Breucker (2012). 3 On references to Berossus in Vitruvius’ De architectura, see Fögen (2009: 135, with n. 77) and Fögen (2016: 964). 4 T11a: περιέχειν δὲ τὰς ἀναγραφὰς ἱστορίας περὶ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ θαλάσσης καὶ πρωτογονίας καὶ βασιλέων καὶ τῶν κατ᾽ αὐτοὺς πράξεων. See FGrHist 680 F1b (quoted below).

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It is in the pages of Jewish and Christian writers that Berossus’ work comes to be seen as a history of Babylon, a history that vies with other traditions, particularly scriptural, to establish the venerability of a culture in competition with others. Perhaps Berossus wanted to make such claims, to “prove and demonstrate that the Chaldean people are the oldest of all”, as Syncellus puts it, although it is hard to imagine a Babylonian seeing the deep antiquity of Babylonian lore in any sense challenged by Macedonian power (or Jewish anxieties, or Christian fears). Those are likely to be retrojected interpretations. What Berossus was doing was writing to a Graeco-Macedonian audience with an entirely different frame of reference when it came to history, antiquity and the deep past. Of even more immediate importance is that the testimonia give scant support to the view that Greeks of the early third century B.C. or any time shortly thereafter saw his work as a history in the sense of a work like Herodotus, Thucydides or Xenophon. Nor does the Babyloniaca resemble any examples of either universal history by Timaeus of Tauromenium or Diodorus Siculus, or local history by Ephorus of Cyme or Callistratus of Heraclea or his fellow countryman, Memnon. It is important to classify Berossus’ work correctly because there has been a tendency to find his work interesting, but utterly alien when viewed from a Greek perspective. For example, Murray (1972: 209) asserts that he left a necessary component of a decent ethnography by omitting an excursus on the customs of Babylonia: “a native perhaps could not distance himself enough to be able to describe his culture from the outside, as a foreigner would see it.” Recently Clark (2008) has similarly drawn attention to the gulf between a Greek audience and fantastic elements of Berossus’ work. Citing Burstein (1978), she argues that “there were few concessions made to Greek readers in terms of conceptual framework, and the difficulty of accepting the existence of Oanne (sic), a sea-creature living 432,000 years before the flood, was almost insurmountable” (Clark 2008: 160 n. 250). But this is a flawed approach. There is really no reason to classify Berossus’ Babyloniaca as historiography, and certainly not as Greek history writing. It does not correspond to Herodotean or Thucydidean notions of the careful scrutiny of recent or contemporary events in order to explicate causality or the impact of culture on the choices made by historical actors. Nor does it appear to attempt the multi-strand narrative of universal history, and it is local history only in the sense that it deals with a discrete locality, but one would be hard pressed to find similarities between this and the work of Memnon on Heraclea Pontica or any of the earlier Atthidographers with their attention to topography, epichoric myth and toponymy. Instead his work stands much more firmly in a Near Eastern tradition of chronicle writing that drew on astronomical diaries, epics, hymns, such as the Enuma Eliš, and oracular texts (see de Breucker 2003). Within that range of lit-

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erary texts, the class that superficially resembles Greek historiography is the Babylonian Chronicle Series, since it deals with the record of the past, but it is a genre which served a very different purpose from historiography. As Caroline Waerzeggers (2012: 14) has recently noted, “in Babylon chroniclers were not much interested in ancient history.” The Nabonidus Chronicle, for example, was concerned with the loss of native kingship in the recent past and displays a Babylonian-centred world view. But the Babylonian Chronicles do share a number of features with the chronicles composed in Borsippa: like other Mesopotamian texts, the Chronicles have to be set in a context of temple literature that was broadly theogenic. Second, the Chronicles have to be read in relation to portents and astronomical literature, in which observation of the skies provides a key to determining order and disorder. Personal considerations such as Alexander’s πόθος or his drinking, themes and tropes we might find in Greek histories of the Hellenistic period, are simply irrelevant to a genre focusing on what the king did or failed to do. Third, as temple documents, the Chronicles are part of the repertoire of texts created by and available to priestly elites, a repertoire which also includes incantations, spells, and hymns. Chronicles were created in a very different environment, and the nexus of composition, audience, and delivery are all markedly different. The Chronicles ought to be read with these criteria in mind. The total effect of these Chronicles and the other literary products of Babylonia including Berossus’ Babyloniaca was to create an epistemologically complete and coherent thought-world, in which divine and royal order, reinforced by the exegetical and cultural authority of Esagila (i.e. the clerical elite of Babylon), engaged in the constant battle with disorder and malevolence. In some cases, it is possible to identify generic correspondences between Berossus’ work and other chronographic texts. For example, both Berossus and the Babylonian Chronicles tend to record the deaths of kings in similar terms. With Chronicle ABC on the death of Nabonassar, one can compare Berossus’ description of the death of Nebuchadnezzar (F10a; transl. Geert E. E. de Breucker): Ναβουχοδονόσορος μὲν οὖν μετὰ τὸ ἄρξασθαι τοῦ προειρημένου τείχους ἐμπεσὼν εἰς ἀρρωστίαν, μετήλλαξε τὸν βίον, βεβασιλευκὼς ἔτη μγ, τῆς δὲ βασιλείας κύριος ἐγένετο ὁ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ Εὐειλμαράδουχος. “After beginning the above-mentioned wall, Nabouchodonosoros fell ill and died, having reigned for 43 years. His son Eueilmaradouchos became master of the kingdom.”

As van der Spek (2008: 293) notes, there are notable similarities with Chronicle ABC 1, I, 11–13 on the death of Nabonassar:

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“The fourteenth year: Nabonassar became ill and died in his palace. For 14 years, Nabonassar held the kingship of Babylon. Nadinu, his son, ascended the throne in Babylon.”

Furthermore, de Breucker has recently drawn attention to chronographic works that confirm Berossus’ place within what he calls “cuneiform culture”. One is a list of Babylonian sages and the kings they served, and the second is a king list running from the mid-seventh century B.C. to as late as the 250’s (de Breucker 2003: 15). All this goes to demonstrate that Berossus’ work arose within an evolving tradition of temple-based Babylonian literature profoundly concerned with modulating just and orderly kingship by association with the authority and prestige of the temple. In addition to his interest in the traditional matter of royal chronicles, describing who reigned well and who badly, and the omens that went with their reigns, he also evinces a strong interest in astronomical phenomena. A number of later writers, such as Vitruvius (F16 [= De arch. 9.2.1–2]), Aëtius (F17a–c [= De plac. rel. 2.25.12, 2.28.1 and 2.29.2]) and Cleomedes (F18 [= De motu 2.4]), attribute to Berossus teachings regarding the nature of the moon, its appearance and the light we see from it. Some scholars, such as Amélie Kuhrt (1987: 39–40), have dismissed these references as Hellenistic embellishments, suggesting that later Hellenistic Greek writers employed Berossus’ name to add authority to their own or others’ scientific views. This may be so, and there does appear to be some creativity in the traditions that he retired to Cos where he taught astronomy and that he was awarded a statue in Athens. Nevertheless, the importance of astronomical observation to Babylonian chronography cannot be dismissed, and it is at least likely that he reported astronomical data relevant to his narrative. If we lay aside the notion of reading Berossus’ work as (bad) Greek historiography, we open up other avenues for investigation, for Berossus’ work is nothing less than Babylonian sacred history, more akin to Hesiod’s Theogony than Thucydides. Read as a theogony, Berossus’ Babyloniaca takes on a quite different valence. With this in mind, and given Berossus’ background, we should read his account of Oannes through two lenses: what does this figure mean in a Babylonian context, and what would the same character mean to a Greek audience? In a Babylonian framework, as we shall see, the figure is authoritative, venerable, and a perfect cultural signifier for formulating a model of clerical authority and royal power. From the Greek point of view, on the other hand, we shall see that Oannes fits at least two deeply embedded paradigms: the hybrid whose humanimality marks him as superior, and the law giver whose coming brings order but who must cement that order by leaving. In Oannes we may have the finest example of the applicability of Middle Ground Theory in a Hellenistic con-

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text: two cultures forced into potentially deadly conflict, finding, by reference to their separate cultural repertoires, a symbolic point of meeting.5

3 Apkallū To understand Oannes the fish-man, we begin with the Apkallū, traditional figures of Babylonian myth and culture. First, let us consider the Babylonian setting for these figures. The complex world of Babylonian demons, human-animal hybrids, monsters and gods is far too complex and rich a topic to be treated adequately here, but a few salient points can be made. Examining Berossus’ account from the point of view of the Babylonian context, one cannot help being struck by the fact that the very feature which makes Oannes most peculiar and perhaps frightening from a Greek standpoint, namely the fact that he is a monstrous hybrid of fish and man, is the very quality that makes him so familiar and benign in a Babylonian setting. It is worth exploring the cultural associations of the fish-man a little more, in order to understand Berossus’ Babylonian frame of reference. In the second place the name Oannes is clearly a rendering into Greek of the Babylonian name U’an, one of the Seven Sages known collectively as the Apkallū (for the various Akkadian and Sumerian versions of the name, see Streck 2003). Across Mesopotamia more broadly apkallū appeared in different forms, and in incantations and reliefs it is possible to distinguish anthropomorphic, winged figures (ūmu-apkallū), bird-apkallū, and fish-apkallū. The bird-apkallū may have originated in Assyria as apotropaic spirits, but the fish-apkallū are regarded as genuinely Babylonian and do not display the combative character of the other groups. Altogether they occur frequently in Mesopotamian literature of the second and first millennium B.C., and the fish-apkallū seem to have particularly strong associations with the southern cities of Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larak and Sippar. Wiggermann (21992: 76), responsible for the most detailed study of their history in text and iconography, asserts that they are not fishgarbed priests, “but mythological figures, man and fish”. They are human figures with a fish skin or cape enveloping them, so that they have a fish tail behind their feet and a fish head behind and above their human head, somewhat

_____ 5 On Middle Ground Theory see White (1991), and for an example of reading Hellenistic culture through this lens, see Moyer (2011).

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like a hoodie. The fish component of their nature, evoked by their name, comes from the carp, the purādu fish as it is called in Babylonian texts. They are often categorised as creatures from the Apsu, and are thus water spirits, but carp are fresh water fish, capable of flourishing in brackish waters, and are not deep water fish. Accordingly, they are not associated with Tiamat, the deep salt waters which in Babylonian cosmology was the realm of chaos from which monsters arose. Furthermore, unlike the many monsters and hybrid creatures that threatened mortals, the fish-apkallū were seen as benevolent beings who could be enlisted through incantation and spells to protect houses and even help exorcise demons. In rituals designed to avert evil from houses, clay statuettes of the fish-apkallū were placed within the house facing east, after having been blessed, and were invoked in an elaborate blessing that culminated in the words “Evil go out!”. Handbooks containing various spells and incantations, sometimes referred to as the “Exorcist’s Vademecum”, classified these figurines as “statuettes repelling Evil Ones, of Ea and Marduk”, and they appear to have been conceived of as attendants or junior helpers of the principal gods of justice, order and protection. Marduk himself, in fact, is referred to as an Apkallu in some incantatory texts (see Geller 2016: 14). Similarly, iconographically the Apkallū were often depicted holding two objects, the banduddû buckets and mullilu cones that were used in aspergation rites as part of exorcisms. In his study of the demons and monsters of Babylonian myth, Wiggermann (21992: 158) presents the Babylonian cosmos as a set of clear oppositions, embodied by gods and monsters. He classifies these polarities as follows: Monster

God

composed

anthropomorphic

supernatural freak

representative of normal order

intervenes in human affairs

affords background stability

unpredictable associate

master

rebel, pest

rightful ruler

defeated enemy

victor

associated with distant lands

associated with lowlands

associated with mountain/enemy

associated with rule from lowlands

associated with sea

associated with dry land

limited cosmic functions

cosmogonic responsibility

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In the light of these oppositions, the Apkallū emerge as an even more significant class of creatures. They are not wholly anthropomorphic, as are the gods, but neither are they really composed, or composite. Such a creature would be a kind of merman, and such a figure exists in Babylonian lore: the kulullû, but this figure is distinct and different from the Apkallū. Unlike the kulullû merman, the Apkallū are both entirely human and fish: a hybrid, but not a composite figure. Freakish they may be, but they clearly operate in the realm of order and benevolence, not chaos and malevolence. They intervene in human affairs, but only in the same way as apotropaic deities, i.e. when called upon, rather than as threats or disruptive forces. They are neither unpredictable associate nor master, but superior beings, nevertheless below the level of deities; their names lack the divine element (see Wiggermann 21992: 76). One can go through the list of Wiggermann’s binaries and in virtually every instance the Apkallū fit neither extremity, but exist either in between or on their own. Fittingly, if the cosmos is divided between gods associated with lowlands and dry lands, and monsters with distant lands, mountains or the sea, the Apkallū come from the shallows, the fresh water and coastal waters of the Persian Gulf. Carp remain the largest component of Iraq’s commercial fisheries (see Etheredge 2011: 37, and Kitto & Tabish 2004). Asserting the importance of Oannes as culture hero clearly then brings with it a wealth of positive associations for anyone at all familiar with Babylonian cosmology. Furthermore, any Greek exposed to Berossus’ account could scarcely avoid inquiring about this unusual figure. The hybrid, any hybrid in fact, is a source of amazement, and Oannes’ peculiar qualities cry out for some further explanation of his Babylonian pedigree. In short, his exoticism or oddity provoke a fuller engagement, doubtless in the form of exegesis. This is the case however one understands the text’s audience ‒ real, royal, imagined, ideal. The text is Greek; therefore, the audience must be Greek. But the strangeness of the culture hero who is not envisaged like Lycurgus or Solon or Prometheus, fixes him firmly in an Urwelt of Mischwesen, attesting the deep antiquity of the Babylonians, a point on which Greeks and Babylonians could surely agree (see FreyAnthes 2007). We can go further. In addition to describing the fantastic accomplishments of Oannes, Berossus also records the names of seven antediluvian Babylonian kings. Such king lists are not unusual in Babylonian records, but Berossus is unusual in matching the kings with corresponding sages. Such a list, but from Uruk not Babylon, was published in the early 1960s and points to the climate in which Berossus composed his work, since the Uruk list also dates to the Seleucid era (see van Dijk 1962). It preserves the names of seven antediluvian kings and pairs each with a corresponding sage. Then, following a break, the list of

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postdiluvian kings continues with more sages. The antediluvian kings have as their advisers Apkallū, while the postdiluvian kings are matched with scholars (ummanus). The list and the notion of pairing king and vizier appears to go back to Neo-Assyrian times, but Dillery (2015: 66) insists that Berossus is the first to meld king list and sage list in Babylon. If we align Berossus and the Uruk list, it emerges that the early Seleucid period was a creative and fertile period during which traditional genres such as king lists and accounts of the antediluvian world were being reshaped. It is to Berossus that we owe a systematic chronological treatment that anchored Babylonia in a clear and comprehensive narrative line from antediluvian times to the present ‒ or perhaps more accurately from the present back to antediluvian times. Like his Egyptian equivalent, Manetho, to whom we owe the dynastic framework of Egyptian history, Berossus appears to have rendered the earlier chronological traditions of Babylon into an orderly narrative. There are at least three significant features of his programmatic treatment of the Babylonian past. First, that, as formidable as Macedonian power was, Babylon could claim an antiquity that was just as culturally authoritative, if not more so, but was also immensely older. Babylon had staying power, a cautionary note to be grasped hopefully by the new rulers. Furthermore, there was a pattern in the dynastic history of Babylon, and that is that royal power was always ideally matched by the wisdom of an expert adviser. This was anchored in primordial time and affirmed by the existence of creatures whose hybrid humanimality created both a connection to mankind while also affirming their priority. The primordial collapses past and future, pointing to what is and has been alien while offering a teleology and a path forward. And what makes this so interesting, given the audience of Berossus’ work, is that there is no hint that the chronicle tradition in Berossus or even prior in any way marked the Macedonian presence as alien. When one thinks of the anti-Hellenic sentiments expressed in so many apocryphal texts, one might have expected some comparable sentiment of resistance in the recording of historical narrative, no matter how perfunctory the texts are in other ways. Yet this is manifestly not the case. The chronicles treat first Alexander and then his successors as they would any other dynasty. The Babylonian world created by Oannes is available to anyone.

4 Greek hybridity and lawgiving A comparison with other Babylonian texts illustrates both the resonances of Berossus’ Oannes and the creativity of the Babylonian priest’s treatment of tra-

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ditional motifs. What of the Greek reading? As we have seen, approaching the work as historiography, despite the testimonia of later periods, is not a useful guide to capturing the Greek response. To the extent that the Babyloniaca resembles anything Greek, the closest analogy is surely Hesiod’s Theogony, since it is here that the Greek reader encounters a treatment of the deep past and a concern with the origins of the entire world as we know it. Hesiodic echoes are not unexpected. It is now well established that stories such as Kingship in Heaven and the Song of Ullikumi are substrates below Hesiod’s treatment of the triumph of the Olympian deities under Zeus (see López-Ruiz 2010). Accordingly, it is uncontroversial to note that Hesiod shows a familiarity with key tropes and mythemes of ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies. Yet aside from the distinctive patterns of gods devouring their children or castrating their fathers, some broader associations are also detectable in Archaic Greek sources. When Zeus battles Typhoeus and blasts him with his thunderbolt, he instantiates yet another sky god defeating a monstrous hybrid demon from the nether world, as does Marduk when he shoots his arrow into the belly of Tiamat, mother of monsters. At a deep level the Greek imaginaire had already been hard-wired since the eighth century B.C. to view the world as one of primordial chaos out of which order is won by divine action, a cosmic battle that prefigures and endorses the actions of human kings as Zeus ordained (see West 1997). The thematic echoes, however, that may have operated more deeply involve the narratological patterns associated with Greek stories regarding lawgivers. Andrew Szegedy-Maszak (1978) has identified a series of topoi that recur in accounts of early Greek lawgivers and it is worth investigating how these pertain to the figure of Oannes. Szegedy-Maszak (1978: 208) notes these common features to the stories of Lycurgus, Solon, Zaleucus and Charondas: – Their work transforms the state from a position of anomia to eunomia. – They are remarkable for their probity of character. – They travel widely to gain experience. – They frequently enjoy divine assistance. – Their code is tested once it has been completed. – The lawgiver then departs in order to help cement the law code. When applied to Oannes, Szegedy-Maszak’s schema produces some interesting results. For example, Oannes arrives at a time when people live in a disorderly and savage state. Before speaking of the monster that arose from the Red Sea, Syncellus writes (FGrHist 680 F1b; transl. Geert E. E. de Breucker): ἐν δὲ τῆι Βαβυλῶνι πολὺ πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων γενέσθαι ἀλλοεθνῶν, κατοικησάντων τὴν Χαλδαίαν, ζῆν δὲ αὐτοὺς ἀτάκτως ὥσπερ τὰ θηρία.

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“In Babylon there was a great crowd of men of different races, who had settled in Chaldea. They lived without order, like wild animals.”

Oannes’ character is not explicitly discussed by Berossus, but the observation that he took no sustenance while among men (οὐδεμίαν τροφὴν προσφερόμενον) hints at an asceticism appropriate for a moderate and selfcontained sage. And while he is not a traveller in the way that characters like Pythagoras or Solon travel, the fact that he comes from the Sea and returns to it each night means that he does not belong among humankind. Instead, he is said to have appeared from the Red Sea (φανῆναι ἐκ τῆς ᾽Ερυθρᾶς θαλάσσης κατὰ τὸν ὁμοροῦντα τόπον τῆι Βαβυλωνίαι ζῷον), in a spot adjacent to Babylon. His visits are restricted to the daytime, and at night he returns to the water (τὴν μὲν ἡμέραν διατρίβειν μετὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, … τοῦ δὲ ἡλίου δύνοντος τὸ ζῷον τουτονὶ ᾽Ωάννην δῦναι πάλιν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, καὶ τὰς νύκτας ἐν τῶι πελάγει διαιτᾶσθαι). He is a creature whose hybridity then mirrors the balance of the cosmic elements, and in terms of these elements ‒ night and day, sea and land ‒ he is capable of existing in our world, but clearly is not of it entirely. As Syncellus pithily remarks, “this creature was amphibious” (εἶναι γὰρ αὐτὸ ἀμφίβιον). While the correspondences with Szegedy-Maszak’s schema are by no means complete, they suggest that the Greeks will have recognised in Oannes with his fishy exterior a figure both exotic and yet uncannily familiar: a founder hero. This familiarity becomes apparent when we consider that, more than just a lawgiver, Oannes is described as the founder of all civilised life (FGrHist 680 F1b; transl. Geert E. E. de Breucker): παραδιδόναι τε τοῖς ἀνθρώποις γραμμάτων καὶ μαθημάτων καὶ τεχνῶν παντοδαπῶν ἐμπειρίαν καὶ πόλεων συνοικισμοὺς καὶ ἱερῶν ἱδρύσεις, καὶ νόμων εἰσηγήσεις καὶ γεωμετρίαν διδάσκειν, καὶ σπέρματα καὶ καρπῶν συναγωγὰς ὑποδεικνύναι, καὶ συνόλως πάντα τὰ πρὸς ἡμέρωσιν ἀνήκοντα βίου παραδιδόναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ χρόνου ἐκείνου οὐδὲν ἄλλο περισσὸν εὐρεθῆναι. “It gave men the knowledge of letters and sciences and crafts of all types. It also taught the founding of cities, the establishment of temples, and the introduction of laws and land-measurement, and showed them seeds and the gathering of fruits. In general, it taught men everything that is connected with a civilised life. From that time nothing further has been discovered.”

It is impossible not to notice the similarities here between the fields in which Oannes operates ‒ giving law, land measurement, establishing temples and founding cities ‒ and Hellenistic aretalogies of Isis and Artemis, as well as

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Ptolemaic claims regarding the founding of cities. In Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis, for example, there are repeated references to Artemis’ rule over thirty cities, echoing the Ptolemaic claim to have made Egypt a land of cities (see McInerney 2017). In Theocritus’ panegyric to Ptolemy (Id. 17.82–85), we encounter a similar claim. Theocritus uses a striking amplificatio equating Ptolemy’s power with three hundred cities, then three thousand and three myriads. These references to city-building are not an especially pharaonic or “Egyptian” element. City-building is a specifically Ptolemaic claim. Accordingly, when Oannes is said to have done precisely this, we are encountering claims that speak to a Hellenistic Greek audience both with respect to earlier cultural structures such as the topoi of lawgiving, and with respect to contemporary ideological claims of dynastic legitimacy. And in the light of a narratological pattern according to which the Lawgiver’s code is often tested under conditions of imminent social breakdown, does the statement ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ χρόνου ἐκείνου οὐδὲν ἄλλο περισσὸν εὐρεθῆναι (“from that time, nothing further has been discovered”) not take on a certain minatory quality? It is as if history is over. The Seleucid era, just begun, can never really witness the introduction of anything new, only a replaying of a drama whose script has already been written. In fact, Oannes’ amphibious quality, so important as a marker of his otherness, resonates in very particular ways for Berossus’ Greek readers; Greek attitudes towards the sea were ambiguous (see Lindenlauf 2003). Both Isthmia and Delphi wove into their aetiological narratives aquatic transformations that helped shape later cult practice. At Delphi, the god was hymned as Delphinius, having transformed himself into a dolphin to bring his first acolytes from Crete to the Gulf of Crisa and thence to Delphi. Moreover, it was the rising of his eponymous constellation, the Dolphin, that marked the beginning of the season of truce leading up to the celebration of the god’s Pythian Games. Similar elements were deployed at Isthmia where the story of Ino-Leucothea and Melicertes-Palaemon similarly revolved around metamorphosis situated in the waters near the sanctuary. A reference in the Odyssey demonstrates that the transformation of Ino was known as early as the seventh century B.C. (Homer, Od. 5.333–335; transl. Walter Shewring): τὸν δὲ ἴδεν Κάδμου θυγάτηρ, καλλίσφυρος Ἰνώ, Λευκοθέη, ἣ πρὶν μὲν ἔην βροτὸς αὐδήεσσα, νῦν δ᾽ ἁλὸς ἐν πελάγεσσι θεῶν ἐξέμμορε τιμῆς. “Cadmus’ daughter, slender-ankled Ino who is also Leucothea; once she had been a mortal and spoken with human voice, but now she lives in the salt seas and the gods give her the honour that is her due.”

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Pausanias also gives an explanation of how Ino’s metamorphosis took place. Pursued by her enraged father she dived into sea and was transformed into the sea goddess, Leucothea. Her son, Melicertes, was also transformed into the god or hero Palaemon (Pausanias, Per. 1.44.8; transl. William H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library): τότε δὲ φεύγουσα ἐς θάλασσαν αὑτὴν καὶ τὸν παῖδα ἀπὸ τῆς πέτρας τῆς Μολουρίδος ἀφίησιν, ἐξενεχθέντος δὲ ἐς τὸν Κορινθίων ἰσθμὸν ὑπὸ δελφῖνος ὡς λέγεται τοῦ παιδός, τιμαὶ καὶ ἄλλαι τῷ Μελικέρτῃ δίδονται μετονομασθέντι Παλαίμονι καὶ τῶν Ἰσθμίων ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ τὸν ἀγῶνα ἄγουσι. “Then it was that she fled to the sea and cast herself and her son from the Molurian Rock. The son, they say, was landed on the Corinthian Isthmus by a dolphin, and honours were offered to Melicertes, then renamed Palaemon, including celebration of the Isthmian games.”

It is quite possible that all sorts of false etymologies are at work in these stories. Delphi’s name is likely to derive from the word for “womb” (δελφύς), and Melicertes’ name points to a Phoenician origin (Melqart), so that the traditions recorded both early and late have been subjected to a great deal of manipulation already, but in both cases we find a significant (land-based) panhellenic sanctuary looking to the sea as an affirmation of the sanctuary’s origins. Since the sea was also a place from which one often did not return and was a place of mystery and threat, the figure of a hybrid walking out of the sea to mingle with humans will have been tinged with more than a little anxiety for a Greek audience. When Thracian fishermen chanced upon a wooden statue of Hermes Peripheraeus, their first instinct was to throw it back into the sea, not knowing what to do with it (see Lindenlauf 2003: 420). For a Greek audience, Oannes’ aquatic origins brought with them just the right blend of familiarity and distance from the ordinary to emphasise his special status. A number of figures in Greek myth offer particularly interesting analogies to Berossus’ Oannes. One is Chiron, the wise centaur who serves as mentor to a number of important Greek heroes. The centaur is a true hybrid, unlike Oannes, who is both fully human and yet fish-cloaked, but each is an instructor. As the teacher of Jason and Achilles, the man-horse hybrid acts as a conduit between the realm of the human and the divine, uttering prophecy and in some accounts even conferring immortality on Heracles in exchange for his own death (see Pindar, Pyth. 4.101–109; Nem. 3.43–52; Philostratus, Imag. 2.2; see Mackie 1997). From him Asclepius learns the art of healing, and another of his pupils is Aristaeus, who is responsible for introducing bee-keeping, olioculture and animal husbandry to humans (see Homer, Il. 4.215–216; Pindar, Pyth. 3.43–45; Apollo-

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nius Rhodius, Arg. 2.512–520). As a figure widely known in myth, Chiron habituated the Greeks to the notion of a hybrid whose human nature allows him to act within the human realm, but whose animal nature fixes his power in a realm above (or below) and beyond the human domain. Conceptually, therefore, Oannes is not as entirely alien to Greek sensibilities as often thought. Another figure who shows how Greeks could be receptive to elements in the Oannes story is Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea. This figure may be even closer to Oannes than Chiron, since in his multiple transformations he frequently takes on fish form. He is strongly associated with truth, justice and the skills necessary for civilised life, as Hesiod’s description shows (Theog. 233–236; transl. Hugh G. EvelynWhite, Loeb Classical Library): Νηρέα δ᾽ ἀψευδέα καὶ ἀληθέα γείνατο Πόντος πρεσβύτατον παίδων· αὐτὰρ καλέουσι γέροντα, οὕνεκα νημερτής τε καὶ ἤπιος, οὐδὲ θεμίστων λήθεται, ἀλλὰ δίκαια καὶ ἤπια δήνεα οἶδεν· “And Sea begat Nereus, the eldest of his children, who is true and lies not: and men call him the Old Man because he is trusty and gentle and does not forget the laws of righteousness, but thinks just and kindly thoughts.”

The other figure known as the Old Man of the Sea is Proteus, whose encounter with Menelaus, told in Book 4 of Homer’s Odyssey, deploys a number of elements that echo Berossus’ Oannes. Each day he comes out of the sea to tend his flock of seals, and it is by means of lying under seal skins that Menelaus and his men are able to get close to the seer, in order to receive truthful answers regarding their fate. The elements are not identical, to be sure, but the associations of truth, skins, transformation, hybridity, sea-creatures and a figure of unerring wisdom surely suggest resonances. It is not impossible that Berossus knew Homer’s poems and was therefore aware that his Babylonian Apkallu would suggest a figure like Proteus to his Greek audience. The connections between the elemental domain of the sea and human concerns with justice, order and culture are further developed in Hesiod’s treatment of the daughters of Nereus, who are seen by the Greeks as kindly escorts for those crossing the sea (see Barringer 1995). Some are named for the sea as the element from which they come: Halia (“Sea-Girl”) and Kymothoe (“SwiftWave”) have what we might call elemental names. Some of their sisters have names that seem to evoke the sea as seen by travellers: Nesaia (“Island-Girl”) and Aktaia (“Peninsula-Girl”) evoke an entire seascape as much as the sea itself. A third class of names, however, associates the sea voyage with the human actions that must follow the colonial journey, namely the foundation of a just,

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equal community. For this reason, the last group of Nereids are known by names that represent a hortatory evocation of the social contract that follows from the sea-voyage: Eukrante (“Good-Ruler”), Leiagore (“Addressing the People”), Themisto (“Justice”), and Nemertes (“Truth”). If, as I have argued elsewhere (McInerney 2004), the colonial voyage and ensuing foundation of colonies based on equal lots (ἰσόμοιροι κλῆροι) shaped Archaic notions of equality, then we must look to the sea in Greek thought as a profoundly important element bound up with Greek conceptions of its opposite: the land-based, human community. Once again, the fish-man’s connection with lawgiving and the establishment of culture is not inherently alien to the Greek world-view. Different seas, perhaps, but similar associations and mental structures are deployed by the archaic Greek poet and the Hellenistic Babylonian priest.

5 Berossus’ Babylon It is apparent, then, that Oannes will have appeared to a Greek audience as just odd enough to be only vaguely comprehensible: alien to be sure, hybrid certainly, but not wholly unlike a large number of Greek hybrids and culture heroes. His fish cloak is not identical to Nereus’ coiling fishtail, nor is it the same as Heracles’ lion skin, although it appears to mark his wisdom just as the lion skin stands metonymically for Heracles’ strength, but the differences are outweighed by the more profound similarities (on the symbolism of animal skins see Harden, in this volume). In that equation, where similarity and familiarity are more significant than difference and horror, Greeks and Babylonians found a middle ground. Yet, it was not just two cultures coming into alignment through this episode. The Greek side in this confrontation was the royal power of the Seleucid dynasty, and the Babylonian side was the priestly elite of Babylon’s principal temple. At stake here were the interactions between the two most significant and powerful groups within Babylon in the third century B.C. A hybrid figure, with associations of authority and beneficence, stands in the middle ground between both sides, giving each a figure to which they could relate. The notion that Greek and Babylonian might have shared Oannes is perhaps a novel interpretation of cultural relations, but suggests that the human-animal interaction in some ways models the confrontation of cultures. The specific conditions under which Berossus produced his work are not completely clear. There has been a tendency in scholarship on the Seleucids to see Babylon as suffering neglect under the Macedonian dynasty and in particular to link the supposed decline of Babylon with the new dynasty’s preference for fresh foundations, such

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as Seleucia-on-the-Tigris. Under such conditions Berossus’ work would seem like a forlorn attempt to win the good will of his Macedonian masters, who were, in turn, supremely uninterested in adapting their rule to bring it into line with traditional Babylonian mores. But recent work has tended to change our view of Seleucid Babylonia. Van der Spek, for example, has scrutinised the Astronomical Diaries and concluded that, despite the frequent references to raids by Parthians and Arabs in the late Hellenistic period, the walls of Babylon still protected the city two hundred years after the founding of Seleucia, and that the royal palace was still standing and was visited frequently by kings, governors and generals. He cites an entry from October/November 91 B.C. which shows that the city continued to serve as a safe haven for those in the countryside directly affected by raids (van der Spek 1997/98: 174): “That month, the people of the land who before had entered Babylon for fear, [returned?] to their villages.” In a similar vein, Geller (1997) has suggested that Babylon continued to serve as a centre of learning long past the Hellenistic period and into the time of Sassanid control, in the middle of the third century A.D. The theme of continuity is also stressed by Joannès (2006), who notes that despite some real innovations, such as the introduction of a more thoroughly monetised economy, the general tendency of Seleucid rule was to privilege continuity, and to uphold the institutions of royal control: economic exploitation, gifts, the irrigation system and land division were all used by the Achaemenids and by indigenous rulers before that as key instruments in shaping royal power. To the extent that there was the potential for a power struggle between temple and palace, suggests Joannès (2006), the early Seleucid period was not a time in which the clerical elite was in a position to assert real authority. Indeed, it is surely in that climate of vulnerability that a priest of Bel-Marduk undertook the extraordinary step of writing a handbook for his Seleucid masters in their own language, offering the hybrid Apkallū as both an affirmation of Babylonian cultural authority, but also as a script for the playing out of royal and priestly roles in the new Babylon. As Oannes blended fish and human, elemental and superhuman, so too Greek and Babylonian cultures might blend. Such a view of the importance of contemporary conditions is especially attractive if we contrast the position of the Babylonian elite at the beginning of the Seleucid era with their fortunes under the Achaemenids. In recent years an older argument, namely that Babylon was the centre of a series of revolts early in the reign of Xerxes, has been revived, and Jursa (2004: 193) has gone so far as to claim that “the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the temples were a seat of anti-Achaemenid activity, prompting Xerxes to have at least the upper echelon of the temple administration removed after his victory” (see also van der Spek 2006 and Waerzeggers

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2003/04). In such a climate the change of dynasty afforded a fresh opportunity for the priestly families of Babylon to reassert their status. As such, the Greekness of the Seleucids was functionally irrelevant. What mattered was that a new dynasty understood, or be made to understand, that the Babylonian priesthood was a necessary partner. It is in the light of these historical conditions that we should see Berossus and his strange story of the sage Oannes. Inhabiting the middle ground between Greek and Babylonian, Oannes represents the assertion that Babylonian culture was a match for Macedonian power, that the sage complemented the king, perhaps as Berossus could guide Antiochus. The medium for that message was the fish-man ‒ not a monster, but a hybrid.

Bibliography Aston, Emma (2011): Mixanthrôpoi. Animal-Human Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion, Liège. Barringer, Judith M. (1995): Divine Escorts. Nereids in Archaic and Classical Greek Art, Ann Arbor. Burstein, Stanley M. (1978): The Babyloniaca of Berossus, Malibu. Clarke, Katherine (2008): Making Time for the Past. Local History and the Polis, Oxford. de Breucker, Geert E. E. (2003): Berossos and the Mesopotamian temple as centre of knowledge during the Hellenistic period. In: Alaisdair A. MacDonald, Michael W. Twomey & Gerrit J. Reinink (eds.), Learned Antiquity. Scholarship and Society in the Near-East, the Greco-Roman World, and the Early Medieval West, Leuven, 13–23. de Breucker, Geert E. E. (2012): De Babyloniaca van Berossos van Babylon. Inleiding, editie en commentaar, Diss. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Dillery, John (2015): Clio’s Other Sons. Berossus and Manetho, Ann Arbor. Etheredge, Laura S. (ed.) (2011): Iraq. Middle East: Region in Transition, Chicago. Fögen, Thorsten (2009): Wissen, Kommunikation und Selbstdarstellung. Zur Struktur und Charakteristik römischer Fachtexte der frühen Kaiserzeit, München. Fögen, Thorsten (2016): Roman responses to Greek science and scholarship as a cultural and political phenomenon. In: Georgia L. Irby (ed.), A Companion to Science, Technology and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome, Malden, Mass. & Oxford, 958–972. Frey-Anthes, Henrike (2007): s.v. “Mischwesen”. In: Bibelwissenschaft.de (http://www.bibel wissenschaft.de/stichwort/27841/). Geller, Markham J. (1997): The last wedge. In: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 87, 43–95. Geller, Markham J. (2016): Healing Magic and Evil Demons. Canonical Udug-hul Incantations. With the assistance of Luděk Vacín, Berlin & Boston. Joannès, Francis (2006): La Babylonie méridionale. Continuité, déclin ou rupture? In: Pierre Briant & Francis Joannès (eds.), La transition entre l’empire achéménide et les royaumes hellénistiques (vers 350–300 av. J.-C.), Paris, 101–134. Jursa, Michael (2004): Accounting in Neo-Babylonian institutional archives. Structure, usage, and implications. In: Michael Hudson & Cornelia Wunsch (eds.), Creating Economic Order. Record-Keeping, Standardization and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, Bethesda, Maryland, 145–198.

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Kitto, M. Rufus & Mohammad Tabish (2004): Aquaculture and food security in Iraq. In: Aquaculture Asia 9.1, 31–33. Komoróczy, Géza (1973): Berosos and the Mesopotamian literature. In: Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 21, 125–152. Kuhrt, Amélie (1987): Berossus’ Babyloniaka and Seleucid rule in Babylonia. In: Amélie Kuhrt & Susan Sherwin-White (eds.), Hellenism in the East. The Interaction of Greek and NonGreek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander, London. Lenzi, Alan (2008): Secrecy and the Gods. Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel, Helsinki. Lindenlauf, Astrid (2003): The sea as a place of no return in ancient Greece. In: World Archaeology 35, 416–433. López-Ruiz, Carolina (2010): When the Gods Were Born. Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East, Cambridge, Mass. Mackie, Christopher J. (1997): Achilles’ teachers. Chiron and Phoenix in the Iliad. In: Greece & Rome 44, 1–10. McInerney, Jeremy (2004): Nereids, colonies and the origins of Isegoria. In: Ralph M. Rosen & Ineke Sluiter (eds.), Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, Leiden, 21–40. McInerney, Jeremy (2017): Callimachus and the poetics of the diaspora. In: Greta Hawes (ed.), Myths on the Map. The Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece, Oxford (in press). Moyer, Ian S. (2011): Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism, Cambridge. Murray, Oswyn (1972): Herodotus and Hellenistic culture. In: Classical Quarterly 22, 200–213. Streck, Michael P. (2003): s.v. “Oannes”. In: Dietz Otto Edzard (ed.), Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (vol. 10), Berlin & New York, 1–3. Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew (1978): Legends of the Greek lawgivers. In: Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 19, 199–209. van der Spek, Robartus J. (1997/98): New evidence from the Babylonian astronomical diaries concerning Seleucid and Arsacid history. In: Archiv für Orientforschung 44/45, 167–175. van der Spek, Robartus J. (2000): The Šatammus of Esagila in the Seleucid and Arsacid periods. In: Joachim Marzahn & Hans Neumann (eds.), Assyriologica et Semitica. Festschrift für Joachim Oelsner anläßlich seines 65. Geburtstages am 18. Februar 1997, Münster, 437–446. van der Spek, Robartus J. (2006): Size and significance of the Babylonian temples under the successors. In: Pierre Briant & Francis Joannès (eds.), La transition entre l’empire achéménide et les royaumes hellénistiques (vers 350–300 av. J.-C.), Paris, 261–307. van der Spek, Robartus J. (2008): Berossus as a Babylonian chronicler and Greek historian. In: Robartus J. van der Spek (ed.), Studies in Ancient Near Eastern World View and Society. Presented to Marten Stol on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Bethesda, Maryland, 277– 318. van Dijk, Jan (1962): Die Inschriftenfunde. In: Vorläufiger Bericht über die von dem Deutschen Archäologischen Institut und der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft aus Mitteln der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft unternommenen Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka 18, 43–52. Verbrugghe, Gerald P. & John M. Wickersham (1996): Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated. Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, Ann Arbor. Waerzeggers, Caroline (2003/04): The Babylonian revolts against Xerxes and the ‘End of Archives’. In: Archiv für Orientforschung 30, 150–173 Waerzeggers, Caroline (2012): The Babylonian chronicles. Classification and provenance. In: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 71, 285–298.

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West, Martin L. (1997): The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, Oxford. White, Richard (1991): The Middle Ground. Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, Cambridge. Wiggermann, Franciscus A. M. (21992): Mesopotamian Protective Spirits. The Ritual Texts, Groningen.

Illustration

Figure 1: Apkallu wearing a fish cloak. Temple of Ninurta, Nimrud Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin (reproduced with permission)

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Fighting Animals: Human Self and Animal Otherness on Attic Vases | 275

Claudia Beier

Fighting Animals: An Analysis of the Intersections between Human Self and Animal Otherness on Attic Vases Claudia Beier Fighting Animals: Human Self and Animal Otherness on Attic Vases Abstract: Fighting as interaction between two or more beings is a frequent theme on painted Attic ceramics, especially in the Archaic period. Along with hoplitomachies, amazonomachies, and the combats of Heracles and Theseus against numerous opponents, animals too are shown as contestants. These fight scenes bring together visualisations of different identities: humans, gods, heroes, animals and mixed beings are presented as literally opposed to each other. These scenes offer depictions of the human self, struggling against various degrees of otherness and likeness, in which the boundaries between different identities are tested or confirmed and hierarchies of presentation are established or questioned. In this paper, fight scenes are used as a vehicle to explore how ideas about the essence of animals, humans and mixed beings are constructed through the representation of differences and similarities in their bodies and interactions. The main criteria for this comparison are the body postures of the different beings and their respective physical contact. The questions discussed are how and why they differ from or resemble each other. In addition to focusing on mythical and non-mythical animals as challengers of the human (heroic) self, beings with animal parts are also analysed, as they combine both animal and human elements in one body (human-animal hybrids). In order to minimise potential stylistic variations which might diminish the instructive value of a comparison, I will focus on vases attributed to the oeuvre of the so-called Edinburgh Painter, which is rich in scenes of fights between different beings. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-012

1 Introduction Scholars working within the field of human-animal studies describe animals as constructed “others”, different from the essence of human beings. Their identity is used to create a specific idea about human identity through comparisons and contrasts.1 The concept of “the other” has been rethought because of the problematic idea of a singularised “other” and a monolithic self (see Hölscher 2000: 12). As Derrida (2010: 111) has shown, there is diversity not just within human identities, but also within otherness. The line drawn between human self and animal otherness is not a firm one, but changes according to perspective, time

_____ 1 See Alexandridis, Wild & Winkler-Horaček (2008: 1–2) and Agamben (2003: 39). DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-012

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and space.2 The question, however, remains how these differences between identities are formulated in representations of animals within a specific material culture. The aspect of material culture considered here is that of Attic painted vases, because it is rich in depictions of animals, humans and other entities such as gods and a variety of mixed beings. The examination of depictions of animal bodies in contrast to human ones follows a recent imperative within the research field of human-animal studies to shift the perspective from animal history towards a comparative analysis of bodies in general.3 Attic art is known for its strong focus on bodies and therefore offers particularly suitable material for this study.4 In order to explore how animal otherness is formulated and normalised through the creation of body images,5 it is necessary to compare depictions of animals with different beings presented within a common context. But the interest of fight scenes as a vehicle is not only because these interactions are a common theme for different identities (humans, gods, heroes,6 animals and mixed beings); they are also a distinctive kind of interaction that shows different or similar identities in opposition, sometimes even in contests for life and death. Consequently, defeat may imply the destruction of an identity. Scenes of combat provide us with an opportunity to analyse the hierarchies of identity that are apparent in the depiction of winners and losers. In Attic vase painting it is usually easy to identify the victor, as in the majority of cases he or she is shown on the left side of a fight group. This strict principle illustrates the need to create images in which there is no doubt about the identity of the victor. This paper will explore the painted Attic vases which have been attributed to the so-called Edinburgh Painter (henceforth abbreviated as ‘EP’), who flourished around 500 B.C.7 According to Beazley (1956: 476–480, 695, 700) and

_____ 2 See Alexandridis, Wild & Winkler-Horaček (2008: 3) and Möhring (2014: 249). 3 See Möhring (2014: 251) and Eitler (2014). There has been increased interest in the analysis of “the body” since the turn to philosophical concepts of materialism; see Porter (1999: 1–4), Ferrari (2009: 1–4), Thommen (2007: 9–11), and the short research bibliography put together by Fögen (2009). For a brief discussion of the term “body”, see Funke & Brück (1999: 7–11). For examples of comparative analyses of human and animal bodies, see Alexandridis (2009) and Keesling (2009). 4 See Hölscher (2003) and Thommen (2007: 13) on the political and social implications of the strong focus on bodies in Greek art. 5 See Haug (2012: 6–8) on the relation of bodies and body images in connection with normativity and idealisation. 6 In this paper “hero” and “heroes” are defined as beings between gods and humans who have one godly parent. 7 This conventional name is derived from a vase in the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, Inv. 1956.436.

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Haspels (1936: 86–89), his workshop is known for painting mostly white-ground lekythoi in the black-figure technique. I have chosen this corpus for three main reasons: – First, the depictions include a range of different beings and are therefore suited to a broad comparison of different types of figure. – Second, the workshop of the EP was active for a comparatively short period. Therefore, stylistic deviations on the basis of chronological variation should be minimal by comparison with the wider context of Attic vase painting. – Third, the oeuvre of the EP comprises 230 vases according to the pottery database of the Beazley Archive Online. This quantity of objects is sufficient to provide answers to the questions posed. Before concentrating solely on scenes of combat and focusing on animals in particular, it is necessary to contextualise these depictions within the complete oeuvre of the artist, in order to avoid unjustified assumptions about the importance of fight scenes and the role of animals in them. The pottery database of the Beazley Archive Online will be used as the material basis of this research. The numbers used here with a ‘B’ prefix (e.g. ‘B 44412’) refer to the vase numbers of the database.8 The results presented are not to be taken as conclusive for depictions of Attic vase painting in general; rather, they should be seen within the specific scope of the oeuvre of the EP. This paper introduces methods derived from theories of human-animal studies in order to interpret presentations of different beings. It is part of a more extensive project which will include a diachronic examination of humans, animals and human-animal hybrids on Attic vases.

2 Combat scenes within the oeuvre of the so-called Edinburgh Painter The term “combat” is understood here as involving two or more beings that are shown as about to be engaged or already engaged in physical conflict. It is im-

_____ 8 See www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/xdb/ASP/dataSearch.asp (accessed on 6 October 2015). This database provides further information on the objects referred to in this paper (collection, publication record, etc.) as well as pictures.

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portant that both parties are represented as taking part in the contest. Table 1 shows the subjects and number of depictions of objects with fighting scenes according to this definition. The list is sorted according to whether the overall physique of the contestants is human, animal or something in-between. Overall physical appearance of contestants

Subject

Quantity of objects

Beings with human physique vs. mythical animal

Theseus vs. bull of Marathon

2

Heracles vs. Cretan bull

2

Heracles vs. Nemean lion

3

Heracles vs. Erymanthian boar

1

Theseus vs. Crommyonian sow

1

Beings with human physique vs. game animals

Huntsman vs. boar

1

Huntsmen vs. deer

1

Beings with human physique vs. human-animal hybrids

Theseus vs. Minotaur

79

Heracles vs. Achelous

1

Heracles vs. centaurs

3

Hoplitomachies

28

Beings with human physique vs. beings with a human physique

Wrestling

1

Boxing

4

Gigantomachies

7

Heracles vs. Amazon(s)

4

Hoplites vs. Amazons

3

Heracles vs. Apollo Heracles vs. Nereus/Triton (?)

2 10

1

_____ 9 The search tool of the Beazley Archive Online gives only six minotaurs, because B 380862 is wrongly labelled as Theseus vs. bull. Even though the picture is fragmentary, there is clearly a human neck and torso attached to the bull’s head. 10 The identification of Nereus or Triton for B 41225 is proposed by the Beazley Archive Online. However, the identity of this figure remains very uncertain, especially because the being is presented with a human physique, instead of the typical combination of fish and human. See Muth (2008: 588 n. 141).

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Overall physical appearance of contestants

Subject

Quantity of objects

Heracles vs. Geryon

2

Heracles vs. Eurytus/Cycnus (?)

1

Theseus vs. Sciron/Cercyon (?)

1

Heracles vs. Antaeus

1

“Cockfight”

11

1

Table 1: Objects with fight scenes

When we take a closer look at the nature of the varying contestants, it is often difficult to define their affiliation to a concrete “class” or “family” of entities. Beings with a human physique can be definitely human, like hoplites, or definitely Olympian gods, like Athena. But by contrast with these unambiguous entities, there are many which are not so easily determined and oscillate between a human and godly essence, like the heroes Heracles and Theseus, who share a mixed human and divine parentage. Even more confusing are beings like the giants born from Gaia through the blood of the castration of Uranus. They are described in the Odyssey as closely related to the Olympian gods (see Homer, Od. 7.200–201), but are a somewhat distinct category of beings. Another being that is hard to define is the threebodied warrior Geryon, whose parents were Oceanus’ daughter Callirrhoe and Chrysaor (see Hesiod, Theog. 979–981), son of the Gorgon Medusa and Poseidon (see Hesiod, Theog. 278). For the present analysis, therefore, it is necessary to concentrate on the overall physical appearance of the contestants, as their body postures and the manner of their individual physical contact may indicate some ideas about their nature, when seen in comparison with other more clearly defined entities. There is an argument about the identity of heroes fighting bulls within the literature on Attic painted vases, because often the attributes needed to identify a specific hero are too ambiguous.12 For the purpose of this paper, however, the question of whether the hero opposing the bull represents Theseus or Heracles is not directly relevant. Both belong to the identity group of heroes, defined as

_____ 11 For further discussion of “cockfights”, see the end of the second section of this paper. 12 See Tamm (2008: 195–203) and Todisco (1990: 66).

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intermediate beings between gods and humans. A more specific identification does not concern us here.13 A number of objects depicted by the EP will not be considered here, although their subjects suggest scenes of combat in view of the literary sources of the myths. On B 303369, for example, there is a depiction of Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides plucking the golden apples from a tree in which a small snake is concealed, which is known from literary sources as Ladon. Contrary to the suggestions of the (comparatively late) literary sources, Heracles is not shown in the act of killing the serpent,14 but as rather gingerly trying not to disturb it while stealing the apples. In Attic art there are no depictions of an actual fight between them. Only on rare occasions is Heracles shown raising his weapon against the serpent (see Kokkorou-Alewras 1990: 110). Another episode familiar from literary sources is the labour of Heracles fetching Cerberus, the dog who guards the gates of Hades. It seems likely in this case that some fighting might have occurred, for according to literary sources the hero needed the help of gods to conquer the beast (see Homer, Od. 11.623–626); but the visual depictions of the myth on Attic vases show no fight taking place, but often a rather tame Cerberus following Heracles as a domestic dog would do (see Smallwood 1990: 96–100). This is also true of the four presentations in the oeuvre of the EP. Although two depictions show some reluctance on Cerberus’ part,15 no actual fight is presented. Two other mythical scenes do not display actual physical combat and are therefore omitted, although the parties involved are represented as adversarial to each other: a depiction of Odysseus tied to a mast between two sirens playing the lyre and pipes (B 303367), and a scene with a draped man and a sphinx, identified in the Beazley Archive Online as the Sphinx of Thebes (B 303391). The latter may indeed be the riddle contest of the Sphinx of Thebes, but there is no sign of a physical contest.16 Two vessels with hunting scenes where a physical combat occurs are included in the analysis (B 380852 and 6807), but four other scenes labelled with “huntsman”

_____ 13 It was possible for painters of Attic vases to make a clear distinction between the two heroes by using specific attributes. It seems that sometimes there was no need to distinguish them. Instead, it was of interest to show a hero combating a bull. 14 E.g. Sophocles, Trach. 1099–1100, Euripides, Herc. 397–399, and Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 4.1390–1392. McPhee (1992: 176) believes that Heracles’ slaying of Ladon was invented 500–450 B.C. by Panyassis of Halicarnassus in his Heracleia. 15 On B 9864 Heracles raises his club in the direction of Cerberus, who indicates no sign of resistance. On B 303408 Heracles pulls the leash of Cerberus, whereby the two-headed dog appears to resist this pull. 16 A physical fight against the Sphinx of Thebes is rare in Attic vase painting. See Kourou, Komvou & Raftopoulou (1997: 1160).

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or “huntsmen” show only dead prey being carried on the back of huntsmen (B 7480, 306700, 303377, 360869) and are therefore not included. Five further objects labelled “Heroes quarrelling” (B 4686, 5606, 303382, 330815, 330818) are omitted because they show only the prevention of a fight, not the fight itself. Two objects with scenes from the Iliupersis are not discussed here, because in the attack shown by Neoptolemus on Priam, the king of Troy does not fight back; in fact, he is not even armed (B 370004, 380864). The same is true for two objects which display Heracles as an opponent of King Eurystheus, who imposed the famous twelve labours on him, including the capture of the Erymanthian boar. In these two depictions of the myth Heracles is shown using the captured boar as a “weapon” against Eurystheus, who is so frightened that he hides in a storage jar.17 In the Archaic period the theme of carrying the boar is far more common than the actual fight against the beast (see Felten 1990: 47). Overall physical appearance

Number of objects

Beings with a human physique vs. mythical or “real” animals

11

Beings with a human physique vs. human-animal hybrids

11

Beings with a human physique vs. other beings with a human physique

56

Table 2: Physical appearance of beings in fight scenes

In total there are seventy-five objects that display physical fight scenes according to the definition of “fight” set out above, which is approximately 32.6% of all objects of the EP (230 in total).18 Only eleven objects show fight scenes of beings with a human physique against animals (mythical or “real” game). On one vase (B 303385) there is a “cockfight”, which at first sight is the only example of animals fighting against each other. However, there is also a human figure behind each rooster, which indicates that the animals are not fighting of their own accord. They should, therefore, be seen rather as surrogates in a combat between humans.19 For that

_____ 17 See B 44412 and 380860. For further discussion of animals as “weapons”, see the fifth section of this paper. 18 The following objects present more than one fight scene belonging to different categories: B 11321 (Theseus vs. sow, Minotaur and Sciron/Cercyon), 303401 (Theseus vs. Minotaur and amazonomachy), and 303410 (gigantomachy and hoplitomachy). 19 For further discussion of cockfights as status contest of human against human, see Hoffmann (1974), with references to Geertz (1973).

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reason the cockfight is included in the category “Beings with a human physique vs. beings with a human physique” in Tables 1 and 2 and later in this paper.20 A further eleven objects represent the fights of beings with human physique against human-animal hybrids, whereas fifty-six vases depict beings with human physique battling other beings that are human in appearance. The latter figure includes two cases of Geryon, the opponent of Heracles, although Geryon’s threefold body, even if consisting entirely of human parts, is clearly exceptional by comparison with the other human-looking contestants. Beings which appear in a human physique are shown to be fighting other humanoids more than two and a half times as often as humanoid beings fighting animals or human-animal hybrids. This may indicate that there was not so much a need to explore the boundary between human self and animal otherness, but that it was more interesting to investigate the boundaries between human self and “divine” otherness, or, as with the many hoplitomachies shown (twenty-eight in all), to depict the struggle between one human self and another human self, at least for this particular period of time within the oeuvre of the EP.

3 Animals and human-animal hybrids within the oeuvre of the so-called Edinburgh Painter At least 126 of the 230 objects in the oeuvre of the EP display animals or humananimal hybrids. This is an estimate, because not all objects in the pottery database of the Beazley Archive Online are stored with sufficient pictorial material. Furthermore, the database information concerning the description of pictures is very vague in some cases, and especially when animals are not the focus of the depictions, they do not appear in the description field.21 Aside from this uncertainty about the overall number of objects, it is safe to say that more than half of the painted vases of the EP display animals or human-animal hybrids (approximately 55%). The following list shows which animals and human-animal hybrids are on display, arranged in order of frequency:22

_____ 20 For further discussion on animals as “weapons”, see the fifth section of this paper. 21 For example, the Beazley Archive Online gives no pictures of B 360869, and the description field states only “Huntsmen returning”. The individual animals are not identified. 22 The amount refers to the quantity of objects showing animals and hybrid human-animal forms, not to the number of individual instances.

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–

–

Animals: Horse (63), dog (15) + Cerberus (4),23 bull (10), sow or boar (6), goat (4), hare (4), lion (4), snake (2), rooster (2), deer (2), panther (2), fox (2), bird (1) Human-animal hybrids: Satyr (12), centaur (8), minotaur (7), siren (1), Achelous (1), sphinx (1)

The majority of animals depicted on vases of the EP are not shown as adversaries to humans, but in positive modes of interaction, particularly horses and dogs, which are also signs of the high status of their owners. Out of 104 objects with representations of animals, only twenty depict animals in an adversarial attitude (19.2%). Eleven of these are actual fight scenes, which are listed in Table 1. The other nine scenes are described in the second section of this paper. There are thirty objects displaying human-animal hybrids. Thirteen objects show them confronting beings with a human physique (43.3%), of which eleven are actual fight scenes. The other two show the sirens and sphinx mentioned above. The fact that the proportion of adversarial animals to non-adversarial animals is remarkably small compared with the high proportion of adversarial human-animal hybrid forms to non-adversarial human-animal hybrids may indicate that human-animal hybrids were seen as more problematic than animals “pure” in body. “Problematic” here means that if human-animal hybrids were chosen to be presented on vases, they were more likely to be shown in a fight than was the case for animals.24 Nonetheless, less than half of the human-animal hybrids are adversarial to beings with a human physique. The non-adversarial beings are satyrs, shown on twelve objects, and the centaur Chiron, displayed on five. Interestingly, these non-adversarial mixed beings consist of more human than animal parts in relation to their bodies, compared with the appearance of the other adversarial mixed beings. In the satyrs the animal features are simply appendages, their large pointed ears and long, beastly tail, whereas their actual body is of human appearance. In this respect the depictions of the centaur Chiron are particularly striking: in contrast with more combative fellow centaurs who are shown with a human torso and head joined to the body of a horse, Chiron is represented with a complete human body, including clothes, whereas the middle and rear parts, belonging to a horse, are merely attached. It is no coincidence that Chiron, as a

_____ 23 Cerberus is listed in this group, because he is not shown as a mixed being consisting of human and animal parts, but as an animal with two dog-heads. See Woodford & Spier (1992: 31) on Cerberus acting like a “normal” dog. 24 For references to problematic hybrids, see the final section of this paper.

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respected and esteemed being, is shown as more humanised than his wild and rampant fellow centaurs (see Padgett 2003: 4–5).

4 Comparison of the body postures of fighting entities The seventy-five objects with fight scenes within the oeuvre of the EP display eighty-six individual scenes. Only seventy of them can be included in the following analysis, because either there are no pictures published25 or the vases are too fragmentary.26 The following summary lists the range of fight scenes depicted: – Beings with a human physique vs. mythical animal: Theseus vs. the bull of Marathon (2), Heracles vs. the Cretan bull (3), Heracles vs. the Nemean lion (2/3), Heracles vs. the Erymanthian boar (1), Theseus vs. Crommyonian sow (0/1) – Beings with human physique vs. hunt animals: Huntsman vs. boar (2), huntsmen vs. deer (1) – Beings with human physique vs. human-animal hybrids: Theseus vs. Minotaur (6/7), Heracles vs. Achelous (1), Heracles vs. centaurs (3) – Beings with a human physique vs. beings with a human physique: Hoplitomachy (21/29), wrestling (1), boxing (4/5), “cockfight” (1), gigantomachy (10), Heracles vs. Amazon(s) (4), hoplites vs. Amazons (2/4), Heracles vs. Apollo (2), Heracles vs. Nereus/Triton (?) (1), Heracles vs. Geryon (1/2), Heracles vs. hoplite/Cycnus and Eurytus/Ares (?) (1), Theseus vs. Sciron/Cercyon (?) (0/1), Heracles vs. Antaeus (1) These scenes can roughly be classified as showing three different categories of body postures: – Approaching an opponent (Fig. 1) – Trying to get away from an opponent, e.g. fleeing (Figs. 4 and 5) – Falling to the ground/lying on the ground defeated

_____ 25 B 380861 (lion), 303404, 303463, 360867, 360871, 390240, 390250, 390251 (hoplitomachies), 303403 (boxing), and 390231 (Geryon). 26 B 11321 (sow, Minotaur, Sciron/Cercyon), 390249 (hoplitomachy), 44566, and 9017121 (amazonomachy).

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The second and third categories are body postures, which clearly show the opponent as inferior. There are also approaching body postures which can be regarded as inferior, for example if the approach is reluctant as indicated by a bent or tilted body posture, which leaves the opponent far below the eye level of the other contestant (Fig. 2). Such inferior body postures are usually found on the right-hand side of a fight scene. Fifty-seven of the seventy fight scenes, or around 81.4%, can be classified as asymmetrical, with the left-hand side of the fight scene clearly recognisable as the victorious party. Fights can be categorised as asymmetrical if they satisfy at least one of the following conditions: – One opponent is far below the eye level of the other contestant. This is often the case with animals (e.g. Figs. 2 and 3). – There are more combatants with inferior body postures on one side of the fight scene than on the other. All of the thirteen fight scenes defined as symmetrical belong to the category of “beings with a human physique vs. beings with a human physique”: Apollo vs. Heracles (1/2), hoplitomachies (8/21), wrestling (1), boxing (2/4), and the “cockfight” (1/1).27 The other two boxing scenes (B 360906 A and B) are only slightly asymmetrical, because the boxer on the right is tilted a little. Except for the fight between Apollo and Heracles, the symmetrical contests are between beings who can be clearly defined as human. This suggests that only identities thought to be equal are represented symmetrically. It seems that it was an important consideration to show sporting and gambling events such as wrestling, boxing and cockfights as encounters where beings of the same status meet. Strikingly, 38% of the hoplitomachies (eight out of twenty-one) are displayed as symmetrical contests, a fight between one human self and another human self. The scene of Heracles opposing the god Apollo needs to be explained, for, unlike the hoplitomachies, this is not represented as a scene where the life of one contestant is at stake. It is merely the mythical struggle for the tripod of Apollo. Heracles is shown on the left-hand side of the scene, indicating that he is the winner of the struggle. On vase B 14682 Zeus is portrayed as the mediator of the conflict.28 The other example (B 8253) shows Heracles also on the left side of the struggle, indicating his winning status in this “fight”, but his body posture is am-

_____ 27 B 14682 (Apollo vs. Heracles), 8389, 44978, 302367, 303410, 303495, 306702A, 360866, 360886 (hoplitomachies), 46891 (wrestling), 3318, 303416 (boxing), and 303385 (cockfight). 28 For further information on mediator figures marking a fight as confrontation which should not be happening according to divine order, see Muth (2008: 42–43).

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biguous: his upper body and head are turned towards his opponent, whereas the legs are shown as moving in the opposite direction, away from Apollo. It cannot be defined as an inferior body posture although it is partly averted nor as an approaching one. In view of the identities clashing in this struggle, it is interesting to see a being half-human and half-god triumph over an Olympian god. This may indicate an interest on the part of the Attic audience in contemplating about the proximity and similarities of human identity in relation to divine identity through the medium of the hero Heracles, who combined both identities. After looking at fight scenes where entities have similar body postures, I shall now compare the different body postures of the contestants taking part in asymmetrical fights. For this examination, it is necessary to know how many individual fighters exist in the oeuvre of the EP. Thus the number of entities taking part in the fight scenes is listed below, distinguished by the overall physique of the contestants: – Animals (11): Bull (5), lion (2), boar (3), deer (1) – Human-animal hybrids (12): Minotaur (6), Achelous (1), centaur (5) – Beings with a human physique (163): Huntsman (4), hoplite (75), wrestler (2), boxer (8), human with rooster (2), Amazon (10), Theseus (7), Heracles (20), giant (16), Geryon (1), Eurytion (1), Eurytus/Ares (?) (1), hoplite/Cycnus (?) (1), Antaeus (1), Nereus/Triton (?) (1), Athena (9), Ares (2), Apollo (2) Table 3, arranged according to the overall physique of the contestants, shows how often the three categories of body postures defined above are represented. The category “Beings with a human physique” is divided into sub-categories, because there are considerable distinctions between the different groups. Entities (amount)

Averted Approaching Falling/lying body postures body postures body postures

Inferior body postures

Animals (11)

18.2% (2)

81.8% (9)

–

45.5% (5)

Beings with animal parts (12)

33.3% (4)

58.3% (7)

8.3% (1)

50% (6)

Beings with a human physique (163)

7.6% (13)

82.5% (141)

9.9% (17)

24.5% (42)

–

100% (13)

–

–

Olympian Gods (13)

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Entities (amount)

Averted Approaching Falling/lying body postures body postures body postures

Inferior body postures

Heroes (27)

3.7% (1)29

96.3% (26)

–

–

Hoplites (75)

5.3% (4)

74.7% (56)

20% (15)

25.3% (19)

Huntsmen (4)

–

100% (4)

–

–

Amazons (10)

20% (2)

70% (7)

10% (1)

50% (5)

Giants (16)

31.5% (5)

31.5% (5)

37.5% (6)

75% (16)

Opponents of Heracles with a human physique30 (6)

– (0/5)31

40% (2/5)

60% (3/5)

66.7% (4/6)

0

100% (12)

0

16.7% (2)

Sports and games (wrestling, boxing and “cockfighting”)

Table 3: Body postures

The comparison of the body postures of animals with those of beings with a human appearance seems at first sight a futile exercise, because the body

_____ 29 This is the ambiguous body posture of Heracles in the struggle for the tripod (B 8253) mentioned above. It cannot be defined as an inferior body posture, although Heracles is shown as being partly turned away from his opponent. 30 This is a very heterogeneous subgroup of complex entities. They have in common that they are opponents of Heracles and do not belong to other groups. Included are the following individuals: Geryon (B 380859), whose specific body posture is difficult to define because of his threefold body; he is classified here as “approaching” because two of his three bodies approach their adversary, whereas one is partly turned away. Eurytion (B 380859) is the guardian of the cattle of Geryon. Eurytus/Ares (?) and hoplite/Cycnus (?) (390229) are included here because it is not clear which myth is represented, so their identities remain unsure. Antaeus (B 390227) is the son of Poseidon and Gaia and sometimes described as a giant (Apollodorus, Bibl. 2.5.11; Hyginus, Fab. 31); he is included here because he is not the typical giant of the gigantomachies (Olympian gods vs. giants). Nereus/Triton (?) (B 41225) is included here, although it is very unclear whether the sea god is shown in this scene (see Muth 2008: 588 n. 141). 31 Antaeus is too fragmentary to define his concrete body posture, so he is not included in the second, third and fourth columns of the table. But as it is surely an inferior body posture, he is included in the fifth column.

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physique of the two groups is very different. But there are some similarities, and in addition it is also valuable to consider the differences, because they indicate how far one identity is thought to be distinguished from another one. There are far fewer averted body postures of animals by comparison with human-animal hybrids and some groups of beings with a human physique, like giants. Perhaps this indicates that animals were not thought of as fleeing from a fight as often as other groups of identities. There is a basic structure in fleeing body postures which can be found in all three categories of identities: the body posture displays a body running away from the opponent, while the head is turned back towards him or her. This structure is the basis of all fleeing body postures of beings with animal parts, hoplites, Amazons and giants alike. Strikingly, only one of the two fleeing animals is shown with this body posture (bull: B 303398B; see Fig. 4). The other is displayed with head and body turned away from the opponent (bull: B 306432), which makes it the only entity in the oeuvre of the EP with this specific behaviour (see Fig. 5). This may indicate two opposing tendencies in the representation of animals. On the one hand, there is an anthropomorphised body posture of a bull, which glances back at his pursuer, as all beings with a human physique or partly human body do, while fleeing from an enemy. On the other hand, there is a bull that runs away without glancing back, which may indicate a more appropriate animal behaviour while fleeing. Approaching body postures are common in all categories of entities and their sub-groups. There is no group of entities where there is not at least one case of an approaching body posture showing the individual actively attacking his or her opponent(s). Some entities are shown solely with approaching body postures, which often defines them as superior in a fight. This is not surprisingly the case for the Olympian gods. But all four huntsmen are also represented in such a manner. It is thus important which identity is fighting against which; for example, humans are not shown with approaching and superior body postures in all scenes of combat, but are always presented in such a manner when they are fighting animals. The body postures are clearly used to determine hierarchies between the different identities of beings. Heroes come slightly below the supreme divine figures in terms of approaching body postures, with Heracles, as mentioned above, shown in an ambiguous body posture while contesting a god, a being of usually superior status (see n. 27). Heracles and Theseus are always displayed on the left, the victorious side of contests, regardless which entity they fight. This cannot be said for the Olympian gods, as there are at least two cases where Apollo is shown on the losing side of the fight

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scene (see above).32 These ambiguous findings illustrate the position of heroes as beings between gods and mere humans and indicate their status as mediators, who are sometimes even allowed to challenge the supremacy of the gods in limited circumstances. A closer look at the approaching body postures of animals reveals that these occur in a surprisingly high percentage at 81.8%, which is even slightly higher than that of the hoplites. It seems that even in hunting scenes animals were thought to be charging (see Fig. 3), as they are seldom shown running away. Interestingly, only bulls are depicted as fleeing; the other animals always approach their opponents (boar, lion and even deer). Yet, although animals are presented as bravely approaching their opponents, their small bodies mark them as inferior beings. Regarding the fights of Heracles against the Nemean lion, there is again a tendency to anthropomorphise the animal through its body posture. The lion is shown standing while wrestling with Heracles (see Fig. 6), very similar to the wrestling scene of two humans. On the other hand, it seems to have been considered important to mark the lion as inferior by depicting it with a smaller body size in addition to its position on the losing side of the fight scene. There was a need to clearly determine the hierarchies between the identities of animals and beings with human physique. Two approaching body postures are reserved solely for individuals of a few sub-groups within the category of beings with human physique: – The approaching fighter is shown to be leaping in the direction of his opponents as if to step on them (see Figs. 1 and 2). This aggressive body posture implying supremacy is found in only four of the seventy-five hoplites (5.3%), nine of the twenty-seven heroes (33.3%) and three of the fourteen gods (21.4%).33 The shared use of these body postures links the three groups of identities and emphasises their proximity to each other. – There is the body posture of bending down towards the opponents, which also implies supremacy. These bodily postures occur five times solely within the identity group of the heroes, interestingly while fighting animals (three bulls) or human-animal hybrids (minotaur and centaur),34 marking them as hierarchically below the identity of heroes.

_____ 32 There may be another case: if the fight of B 390229 represents Heracles against Cycnus, it would be highly probable that there was an Ares approaching from the right-hand side of the combat and directly confronting Heracles. 33 B 46920, 306702B, 360872B, 9022370 (hoplites); 46905, 303401, 22731, 41225, 390227, 303397, 303401, 360884, 380851 (heroes); 303410, 390256B, and 303410 (gods). 34 B 28956, 303398A, 303398B (bulls), 303379 (Minotaur), and 817 (centaur).

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What is striking is that there are no animals represented with body postures which show them as dead or completely fallen to the ground. The percentage is also comparatively low within the group of human-animal hybrids (8.3%, one minotaur; B 303379). Most cases of fallen or horizontal body postures can be found in the category “beings with human physique”, whereas there is a large number of variants: the hoplites are shown to have fallen to the ground with a percentage of 20%, while the highest rate can be found within the group of the giants (37.5%) and the opponents of Heracles with human physique (60%). There are six dead animals in the oeuvre of the EP in hunting scenes where huntsmen are shown carrying their dead game. They consist of three dead hares and three foxes, game animals which are not shown in scenes of combat.35 In this context it is worth noting that these fallen or horizontal body postures, if they concern hoplites, giants and Amazons, are found in scenes where there are more than two opponents involved in a fight; when a fallen body is shown, there is also an approaching body posture on the same side of the fight which offers resistance. It therefore seems likely that it was considered important to present a range of possibilities within the body postures (see Muth 2008: 62). This is only possible if there are more than two opponents involved in a fight, which is never the case in animal fights or in the majority of combats involving human-animal hybrids (the exceptions being centauromachies). Interestingly, animals always fight on their own. This may be because they are often involved in contests against mythical individuals: Theseus does not fight just any bull, but the bull of Marathon, just as he fights the Minotaur. The mythical animal is an exception, although there are no visual differentiations between this mythical bull and “normal” bulls, considering the presentations of non-fighting bulls in the oeuvre of the EP.36 Game animals also fight on their own. This may indicate that fighting animals were always thought to be exceptions. Because they fight on their own, it is not possible to show a variation of body postures on the losing side. It seems that the creators of the pictures were coping with the difficulty of showing one of the fighting parties as the loser, while simultaneously holding up the tension of a suspenseful fight; a fight is not exciting if the opponent is too clearly marked as the loser (see Muth 2004: 9). Strikingly, while there seems to be a need to show the animals as not too heavily defeated, there was no such interest in the case of one minotaur and two opponents of Heracles with a human physique (Antaeus and “Nereus/Triton” [?]).37 These three are shown

_____ 35 B 7480, 306700, 360869 (hares), 306700, 303377, and 360869 (foxes). 36 B 19027, 7485, 302365, 303393, 303399A, 303399B, 303386A, and 303386B. 37 B 303379 (Minotaur), 390227 (Antaeus), and 41225 (Nereus/Triton [?]).

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as lying prone without contrasting body postures. This may indicate that it was necessary to mark beings with an uncertain identity, such as a human-animal hybrid like the Minotaur or the questionable “Nereus/Triton”, clearly as inferior by using unambiguous body postures,38 whereas beings such as animals, with a pure unmixed identity and a settled position within the system of identity hierarchies, could be shown in more daring and actively engaged body postures. A comparison of the percentage of inferior body postures (see Table 3), according to the definition above, suggests that the treatment of animals is very similar to that of human-animal hybrids, both groups reaching 50%. Within identity groups of humans fighting against each other, the demand to show inferior body postures is only half as high, with 25.3% in hoplitomachies and only 16.7% in sporting and gaming events. In amazonomachies the inferior body postures of Amazons is comparable to that of animals with 50%, whereas in gigantomachies it seems to be of considerably greater importance to mark the opponents of the gods as clearly inferior (75%). The opponents of Heracles with human physique also reach a high proportion of about 66.7%. Body postures are connected to the use of weapons. As animals do not possess hands, they cannot wield weapons as humans can. Instead, animals incorporate “natural” weapons like claws, teeth, antlers and horns. However, these potential weapons are not often displayed as such, although in most fights the animals are depicted as approaching their opponents. On B 7677 the teeth and claws of the lion wrestling with Heracles are not shown. This is also the case on B 390243, where Heracles is even presented as putting both hands in the mouth of the lion. The deer is represented without antlers (B 6807), and the boars’ tusks are small and not aimed at the opponents, as is the case with most bulls and their horns. Only one depiction of a bull seems to show the animal aiming its horn at the hero (B 46905). Eight out of twelve human-animal hybrids are armed with natural weapons like stones or branches in their hands.39 By contrast, beings with human physique, with just three exceptions, do not use such materials.40 The four weaponless human-animals are minotaurs. However, it is possible that in the depiction of two of them (B 303401 and 360873), the horns are meant to be weapons, which connects them closely to the bull as an opponent.

_____ 38 On the fragility and instability of hybrid bodies, see Hughes (2010). 39 B 390233, 390248, 22731, 817, 12920, and 303375. 40 There is a hoplite with a stone on B 44978 and a huntsman on B 380852B. On B 9031594 Heracles is displayed fighting with a stone and his club against the boar.

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There are also some beings with a human appearance who wield no weapons. They belong to the identity groups of heroes, sporting and gambling humans, and once Apollo wields no weapon during the struggle for the tripod (B 8253). The heroes without weapons are only depicted in cases of fighting animals and human-animals. The two fights of Heracles and the lion closely resemble a wrestling contest. There is also one unarmed bullfight, and in three out of six battles against the Minotaur the heroes do not wield a weapon in their hands (see e.g. Fig. 2).41

5 Physical contact between fighting contestants After comparing the body postures, the last part of this paper will focus on the examination of the physical contact between the contestants, which can be divided into contact through limbs and contact through weapons. Table 4 lists the cases of body contact between the contestants: Overall physical appearance of contestants

Type of combat represented

Beings with human physique vs. mythical animal 7/11 (63.6%)

Hero vs. bull Heracles vs. lion

2/2

Beings with human physique vs. human-animals 8/12 (66.7%)

Theseus vs. Minotaur

6/6

Heracles vs. Achelous

1/1

Heracles vs. centaur

1/3

Wrestling

1/1

Gigantomachy

1/10

Heracles vs. Amazons

2/4

Heracles vs. Geryon

1/1

Heracles vs. Nereus/ Triton?

1/1

Heracles vs. Antaeus

1/1

Beings with human physique vs. beings with a human physique 7/163 (4.3%)

Table 4: Physical contact via limbs of the contestants

_____ 41 Weaponless: B 28956 (bull), B 303379, 303401, and 360873 (Minotaur).

Proportion of all such scenes 5/5

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In all there are twenty-two cases of bodily contact. Twenty of these are performed by the identity group of the heroes who often seize their opponents with one hand, while aiming a sword at them (15); contact is seldom with both hands (5) (see Fig. 2). Apart from the heroic contests, there is only one gigantomachy, which shows Athena seizing a giant and one human wrestling match.42 Heroes in particular are represented as having the ability to break through the boundary of their opponents’ bodies, thus marking them as inferior. All of the combats in which heroes oppose animals involve bodily contact, as do most of the fights against human-animal hybrids (8/12). There is a large variation in the way in which bodily contact is represented. The superior contestants seize different body parts of their opponents. The location most often touched is the area of or around the opponent’s head, especially horns, if there are any. Seven out of the twelve horned beings are seized by their horns (Achelous [1], Minotaur [5], bull [2]; see Fig. 2).43 Additionally, nine opponents are seized by the head, mouth, plume, neck, beard or throat (lion [2], bull [1], Nereus/Triton? [1], Antaeus [1], Amazons [2], Geryon [1], giant [1]).44 By gripping the horn or mouth, the heroes seize the potential weapons of the animals or human-animal hybrids and are shown as touching the most dangerous body part of the beings (B 390243; see Fig. 6). This manner of seizing the opponent is very different from a typical wrestling match and so distances the hero of the fight against the lion from a human sporting contest. Four of the six humanoid opponents with body contact are seized by their plume (Amazons [2], Geryon [1], giant [1]). This is not a direct body-to-body contact as in the cases of animals and human-animals, but a more distanced approach. Antaeus, who is gripped by the beard, and Nereus/Triton (?), who is seized at the back of his head, do not wear helmets with plumes. Only the two lions reciprocate the bodily contact, by standing with two paws on Heracles’ right leg (see Fig. 6). Strikingly, there is no body contact in fights between equal identities, except for the wrestling match, and in that case the body contact is mutual. By contrast, one-sided body contact can be described as showing “violability”, a feature of objectification according to Martha Nussbaum (1995: 257): the treating

_____ 42 B 46921 (gigantomachy) and 46891 (wrestling). 43 B 22731 (Achelous), 303379, 303401, 360873, 390233, 390248 (Minotaur), 306432, and 303398B (bull). 44 B 390243, 7677 (lions), 46905 (bull), 41225 (Nereus/Triton?), 390227 (Antaeus), 303397, 380851 (Amazons), 380859 (Geryon), and 46921 (giant).

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of an “object as lacking in boundary integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash, break into”, or, one might add, to touch or grip. The affected are acted upon by the objectifier. Animals and human-animal hybrids are more affected by a lack of “boundary integrity” than beings with a human physique. The second way of violating the “boundary integrity” of bodies is physical contact by means of weapons. Table 5 presents the cases of this type of contact within the oeuvre of the EP: General physical appearance of contestants

Type of combat

Numbers of examples of contact by weapons

Numbers of instances of blood shown

Relative frequency

Beings with human physique vs. animals (11)

Boar vs. huntsmen

2 (B 380852A, 380852B)

2

18.2%

Beings with a human physique vs. humananimals (12)

Theseus vs. Minotaur

–

1 (B 390233)

25%

Heracles vs. Achelous

–

1 (B 22731)

1 (B 12920)

1

Hoplitomachy (75)

2 (shield) (B 306702B, 9024738)

2 (B 44978, 46920)

5.3%

Gigantomachy (16)

1 (shield) (B 390256B)

2 (B 390256B, 390259)

12.5%

–

2 (Geryon and his herdsman on B 380859)

33.3%

Heracles vs. centaur Beings with human physique vs. other beings with human physique

Opponents of Heracles with human physique (6)

Table 5: Physical contact by means of weapons

The artist can sometimes depict blood to indicate contact by weapons without showing a direct hit and can show weapon contact without any indication of blood. The various identity groups differ in the frequency and manner of the weapon contact. One third of the opponents of Heracles who have a human physique are shown with blood-stained wounds. They are followed in frequency by human-

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animal hybrids and animals. It should be noted that of the animal fights only the two hunting scenes are depicted with weapon contact and blood. With a frequency of only 5.3% there is seldom weapon contact and/or blood shown in hoplitomachies. Strikingly, there is no direct contact between weapon and body, but the weapon is shown as penetrating the shield of hoplites in two cases.45 The same phenomenon is found in one gigantomachy, but here the penetration of the shield is combined with blood, marking clearly a contact of weapon and body. It seems to have been considered important to present the impenetrability of the bodily boundaries of hoplites as greater than that of animals, human-animal hybrids, giants and opponents of Heracles with human physique. The reason may be that hoplitomachies show the contest of one human self against another. By presenting a lesser degree of corporal “boundary integrity” in animals and human-animal hybrids, the artist shows these groups as more often objectified than humans. In some cases animals are even themselves used as weapons in fights, which can also be described as a feature of objectification which Nussbaum (1995: 257) calls “instrumentality”, with the objectifier treating the “object as a tool of his or her purposes”: three hoplitomachies and one gigantomachy involve chariots where horses are shown to trample opponents, using the hooves as weapons.46 In two hunting scenes dogs are used to kill the boars in addition to the spears of the huntsmen (B 380852A and B; see Fig. 3). Further instances of such instrumentality are the cockfight, in which roosters are set against each other by human antagonists, and the two cases of Heracles using the Erymanthian boar as a weapon to frighten his opponent King Eurystheus.47 There is only one comparable case where a human is used as a weapon on vases of the EP: the child Astyanax is literally wielded like a sword by Neoptolemus against King Priam (B 380864).

6 Conclusion Scenes of combat, highlighting the clash of identities between the combatants, are popular themes in the oeuvre of the EP; they constitute one third of his

_____ 45 For a further discussion about the penetration of shields in hoplitomachies, see Muth (2008: 190–193). 46 B 9673, 380865, 390238 (hoplitomachies), and 303414 (gigantomachy). 47 B 303385 (“cockfight”), 380860, and 44412 (Erymanthian boar).

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vases. 80% of these fights display a need for clear hierarchies between the contestants. There has to be a clear winner. Animals and human-animal hybrids are always on the losing side. Most of the fights show beings with a human physique fighting each other; fights between equal identities like hoplitomachies are particularly favoured. The boundary between humans and animals does not seem to be so highly contested – perhaps because this boundary is thought to be more secure than hierarchies between various humanoid beings, which also look very similar. Often gods, humans, giants and hoplites are differentiated only through details or context. Most animals within the oeuvre of EP are not adversarial to humans, and, if they are, they are often special beings: singular mythical exceptions, engaged in single combat by heroes, not mere humans. This paper has analysed how differences are formulated within the bodies of different kinds of human, animal and hybrid beings and whether it is possible to infer from these differences considerations about the constructed essence of beings, especially animals in their interaction with humans. Physical size is an important distinguishing feature: a small body is often found in animals. Small beings can never be at the eye level of their contestants, and therefore cannot be equal opponents. Bent body postures accentuate the inferiority of the figure, especially in the case of humanoid figures. A second important distinguishing feature is the attitude towards the opponent, which is also described by body postures. Is a being generally shown as fleeing, approaching or already fallen and defeated? Some body postures are reserved for particular kinds of being, which may indicate something about their essence. One could formulate the following framework: not all beings of that kind are alike, but only beings of that kind are thought to act in a specific way. For example, the body posture of a bull is only found for animals of this species: the flight without a glance back at the opponent. This singularity detaches this animal from body postures of other identities. Does this indicate that its identity is thought to be further away from human identity than others? By contrast, lions wrestle like humans standing on two legs. Does this suggest that their identity in this case is thought to be closer to humans than that of other animals? In fact, there is diversity in how animals were constructed, as Derrida (2010) has argued. Another example is that fleeing body postures of animals exist only in bullfights. However, there are far more approaching body postures of animals than those of human-animal hybrids and some groups of beings with human physique, such as giants. There are also no animals that are completely defeated. This may indicate that animals could be shown in more daring and actively engaged body postures because of their unmixed identity and stable position within the system of identity hierarchies. The fact that they are not shown as using their “natural” weapons marks their approaches as wild and senseless charges.

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It is evident from the representation of body and weapon contact that the bodies of animals and human-animal hybrids are more often affected by a lack of “boundary integrity” than beings with human physique (with the exception of the small group of humanoid enemies of Heracles). Animals are objectified more often than beings with human physique; this is particularly apparent in cases where they are portrayed as being used as weapons. These distinguishing features may be used to examine beings with more complex identities, like the human-animal Achelous. He is actually a minor god;48 however, he is not depicted like an Olympian god, but rather like an animal or human-animal hybrid with a clearly inferior body posture, body and even weapon contact suggested by blood. This may indicate that the animal parts of his body define his identity more than his godly parentage, at least in scenes of combat against Heracles. The identities fighting each other in this scene can be described as god/human vs. god/animal. It seems that the animal part of Achelous’ body is dragging him down to a hierarchically lower level of identity in relation to Heracles. There is an observable tendency to depict bodily human-animal hybrid beings or certain beings with a complex demigod parentage (like giants or humanoid enemies of Heracles) as being punished harder than “pure” animals, which may indicate less tolerance for beings crossing an identity boundary in a certain direction. On the other hand, heroes who are also intermediate beings between divine and human identities are not punished for crossing the boundary towards divinity. On the contrary, Heracles and others are celebrated for mediating between human and godly identities. By contrast, the transgression towards animal wildness is unwanted. These “problematic” human-animal hybrids were more likely to be shown in a fight than was the case for “pure bodied” animals. They are transgressors and therefore dangers to solid identity categories and borders, which are essential to secure hierarchy and the power of the ruling identities. The destruction of these hybrids is therefore seen as a heroic act to maintain supremacy.49

_____ 48 See Isler (1981: 12). Achelous is generally shown as mixed being with the head or upper body of a human and the body of a bull. He also has horns. 49 For further discussion of the meanings of hybrids/monsters, see Cohen (1996: 5–8, 14) and Haraway (1991: 180). Haraway (1991) celebrates her hybrid, the cyborg, as a transgressor of the borders between human-animal and human-machine, and therefore of physical and nonphysical. The cyborg is described as a dangerous possibility uniting all suppressed and marginalised identities which threaten the ruling dominance of the white heterosexual male capitalist identity.

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Superior beings are not displayed with mixed bodies. This is also evident beyond the oeuvre of the EP in the case of the goddess Thetis, who, according to literary sources, transforms herself into animals during her wrestling match with Peleus.50 Alexandridis (2009: 278–279) observes that the deity preserves an anthropomorphic physique in depictions of the fight. Her mythical “transformation” is sometimes indicated by the mere attachment of small-sized animals to her body. In contrast, Alexandridis (2009: passim) also shows that in the case of mere human beings it is possible to present human-animal hybrid bodies which fuse animal and human parts together. This is apparent in images of transformations of Actaeon into a deer and of the companions of Odysseus, whom Circe turned into pigs and other animals. These cases display the need to portray superior divinity by depicting an intact human body with clear “boundary integrity”. When presenting the boundary between human and animal, visual representations appear to have different requirements than spoken and written verbal media, because visualisations of mixed bodies mark identities as inferior in fight scenes. All these cases demonstrate how important the visual compositions of bodies are for the determination of identities and that there was a strong interest in depicting confrontations of identities in order to confirm hierarchies within the great chain of being.

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio (2003): Das Offene. Der Mensch und das Tier, Frankfurt am Main (transl. by Davide Giuriato. Italian original: L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale, Torino 2002). Alexandridis, Annetta, Markus Wild & Lorenz Winkler-Horaček (2008): Einleitung. In: Annetta Alexandridis, Markus Wild & Lorenz Winkler-Horaček (eds.), Mensch und Tier in der Antike. Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung, Wiesbaden, 1–9. Alexandridis, Annetta (2009): Shifting species. Animal and human bodies in Attic vase painting in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. In: Thorsten Fögen & Mireille M. Lee (eds.), Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Berlin & New York, 261–282. Beazley, John Davidson (1956): Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters, Oxford. Cohen, Jeffrey J. (1996): Monster culture (Seven theses). In: Jeffrey J. Cohen (ed.), Monster Theory. Reading Culture, Minneapolis, 3–25. Derrida, Jacques (2010): Das Tier, das ich also bin, Wien (transl. by Markus Sedlaczek, ed. by Peter Engelmann. French original: L’animal que donc je suis. Édition établie par MarieLouise Mallet, Paris 2006). Eitler, Pascal (2014): Animal history as body history. Four suggestions from a genealogical perspective. In: Body Politics. Zeitschrift für Körpergeschichte 4, 259–274.

_____ 50 See for example Pindar, Nem. 4.62–63, and Sophocles, TrGF IV F150 (from Achilles’ Lovers).

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Felten, Wassiliki (1990): s.v. “Herakles. D. Herakles and the Erymanthian Boar”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 5.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 43–48. Ferrari, Gloria (2009): Introduction. In: Thorsten Fögen & Mireille M. Lee (eds.), Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Berlin & New York, 1–10. Fögen, Thorsten (2009): The body in antiquity. A very select bibliography. In: Thorsten Fögen & Mireille M. Lee (eds.), Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Berlin & New York, 11–14. Funk, Julika & Cornelia Brück (1999): Fremd-Körper: Körper-Konzepte. Ein Vorwort. In: Julika Funk & Cornelia Brück (eds.), Körper-Konzepte, Tübingen, 7–18. Haraway, Donna J. (1991): A cyborg manifesto. Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In: Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, London, 149–182. Haspels, Caroline H. Emilie (1936): Attic Black-Figured Lekythoi, Paris. Haug, Annette (2012): Die Entdeckung des Körpers. Körper- und Rollenbilder im Athen des 8. und 7. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Berlin & Boston. Hoffmann, Herbert (1974): Hahnenkampf in Athen. Zur Ikonologie einer attischen Bildformel. In: Revue Archéologique 2, 195–220. Hölscher, Tonio (2000): Einführung. In: Tonio Hölscher (ed.), Gegenwelten zu den Kulturen Griechenlands und Roms in der Antike, München, 9–18. Hölscher, Tonio (2003): Körper, Handlung und Raum als Sinnfiguren in der griechischen Kunst und Kultur. In: Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, Jörn Rüsen, Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp & Heinrich Theodor Grütter (eds.), Sinn (in) der Antike. Orientierungssysteme, Leitbilder und Wertkonzepte im Altertum, Mainz, 163–192. Hughes, Jessica (2010): Dissecting the Classical hybrid. In: Katharina Rebay-Salisbury (ed.), Body Parts and Bodies Whole. Changing Relations and Meanings, Oxford, 101–111. Geertz, Clifford (1973): Deep play. Notes on the Balinese cockfight. In: Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York, 412–453. Isler, Hans Peter (1981): s.v. “Acheloos”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 1.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 12–36. Keesling, Catherine M. (2009): Exemplary animals. Greek animal statues and human portraiture. In: Thorsten Fögen & Mireille M. Lee (eds.), Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Berlin & New York, 283–319. Kokkorou-Alewras, Georgia (1990): s.v. “Herakles. N. Herakles and the Hesperides”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 5.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 100–111. Kourou, Nota, Maya Komvou & Stella Raftopoulou (2009): s.v. “Sphinx. IV Theban sphinx”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Suppl. 1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 165–187. McPhee, Ian (1992): s.v. “Ladon I”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 6.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 176–178. Möhring, Maren (2014): Andere Tiere. Zur Historizität nicht/menschlicher Körper. In: Body Politics. Zeitschrift für Körpergeschichte 4, 249–257. Muth, Susanne (2004): Das Grausen des Minotauros. Eine Gratwanderung der MonsterIkonographie in der klassischen Bildkunst Athens. In: Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst 55, 7–31. Muth, Susanne (2008): Gewalt im Bild. Das Phänomen der medialen Gewalt im Athen des 6. und 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Berlin & New York. Nussbaum, Martha C. (1995): Objectification. In: Philosophy and Public Affairs 24, 249–291.

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Padgett, J. Michael (2003): The Centaur’s Smile. The Human Animal in Early Greek Art, New Haven. Porter, James I. (1999): Introduction. In: James I. Porter (ed.), Constructions of the Classical Body, Ann Arbor, 1–18. Smallwood, Valerie (1990): s.v. “Herakles. M. Herakles and Kerberos”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 5.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 85–100. Tamm, John (2008): Heroes and bulls. A black-figure oinochoe in Winnipeg. In: Mouseion. Journal of the Classical Association of Canada 8, 185–208. Thommen, Lukas (2007): Antike Körpergeschichte, Zürich. Todisco, Luigi (1990): s.v. “Herakles. H. Herakles and the Creatan Bull”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 5.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 59–67. Woodford, Susan & Jeffrey Spier (1992): s.v. “Kerberos”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 6.1), Zürich, München & Düsseldorf, 24–32.

Illustrations

Figure 1: Heracles fighting Amazon (B 303401B) © Rogers Fund, 1921 New York (NY), Metropolitan Museum: 21.88.92 (www.metmuseum.org)

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Figure 2: Theseus fighting the Minotaur without weapon (B 303401A) © Rogers Fund, 1921 New York (NY), Metropolitan Museum: 21.88.92 (www.metmuseum.org)

Figure 3: Huntsman and his dog combating a boar (B 380852A) © Lindenau-Museum Altenburg: 207a

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Figure 4: Typical fleeing body posture with head turned back to opponent (B 303398) Drawing by Claudia Beier

Figure 5: Fleeing bull, not glancing back (B 306432) Drawing by Claudia Beier

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Figure 6: Heracles wrestles the Nemean lion, gripping its mouth (B 390243) Drawing by Claudia Beier

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Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Keeping and Displaying Royal Tribute Animals in Ancient Persia and the Near East Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Keeping and Displaying Royal Tribute Animals in Ancient Persia and the Near East

DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-013 Abstract: The Achaemenid dynasty (559–331 B.C.) ruled the biggest empire the ancient world had ever seen. Commanding lands from India to Ethiopia and Libya to Afghanistan, the Great Kings of Persia demanded loyalty and tribute from the conquered peoples who made up their vast realm, and the walls of their ceremonial capital at Persepolis in the heart of Iran abound with images of foreign delegations carrying tribute to their monarch. Amidst the gold, silver, textiles and precious stones brought to the ruler is a rich abundance of exotic wildlife: Asiatic lions, Bactrian camels, zebu, wild asses, and Arabian horses. Textual evidence alerts us to the presence of parrots, peacocks, and wild jungle fowl at the Iranian court as well as the probability that the Achaemenid Persians were familiar with rhinoceroses, tigers, and even okapi. The exotic fauna were living offerings from the four quarters of the empire, breathing symbols of the Great King’s power and his control of his vast dominions. By examining a variety of Near Eastern and Greek sources, this paper explores the rich variety of exotic species imported into Persia to satisfy the monarch’s pleasure and his public image; it explores evidence for royal menageries in the Near East, as well as offering some cross-temporal comparisons with the Chinese Ming Dynasty, in order to question how the ancient Iranians interacted with exotic animals and to question how they were displayed and treated by their human captors and owners.

1 Introduction One day, in Beijing, in the latter part of the sixteenth century A.D., Shen Defu, a bureaucrat serving the imperial Chinese court, walked around the gardens of the Ming palace which abutted the northwest walls of the Forbidden City in order to go and see for himself the famed imperial collection of big cats. His account of what was clearly an exciting experience makes for fascinating reading. He describes first the leopard compound where there were three leopards who “swung their tails and raised their heads to look up” when people appeared above, “as if [the animals] wanted to attack but were unable to get at [the people].” Next he saw the tiger enclosure where a single male tiger, “the size of a large donkey (…), prowled along the base of the entire compound ceaselessly [and] periodically let forth a roar that shook the compound walls” (cited in Robinson 2013: 337). When visitors lowered fowl or lumps of fatty pork over the walls, Shen Defu noted how the tiger would leap up into the air to seize the meat. From the big cat enclosure, Shen Defu visited the great Western Gardens and his memoirs offer a vivid description of the animals he observed there too (Robinson 2013: 337–338): DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-013

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“We saw a number of rather exotic animals being raised in cages: it was all quite entertaining. There were, for example, several score of tigers and leopards, all being kept in cages. The rank stench offended the nose, and their claws and eyes were fearsome looking. It seemed a loathsome [place]. There was also [another] (…) tiger enclosure, which looked exactly like an outpost beyond the frontier [of the Ming Empire]. At the front and back were two iron gates, tightly closed. Two tigers, a male and a female, were there (…). Successive generations [have] given birth and were raised in the compound; they did not lack daily provisions (…). When the tigers raised their heads to look up, they seemed like they were begging for food. People looking for entertainment often throw them [fighting] cocks or dogs. As the cocks instinctively go forward to peck at [a tiger’s] eye, the tiger just snorts and the cock’s feathers flatten from fear. When a dog is first thrown in, it is at once petrified with fear and just lets itself be gnawed to bits.”

Finally, just south of the tiger and leopard compounds was the Ming imperial mew. “From peacocks and blue phoenixes down to the various kinds of birds”, Shen Defu observes, “these were all kept in stock” (Robinson 2013: 338). He goes on to mention the most unusual birds: five-coloured parrots, brocade fowl, fire fowl, silver pheasants, silver swallows, and silver eagles. Shen was fully alive to the exotic origins of the mew’s denizens, noting carefully that the fire fowl, for instance, were received by the emperor from the mountains of the south west regions of Guizhou. As a closing thought he noted that “there is not a single precious animal from overseas that is not kept [here]. It is truly astounding” (Robinson 2013: 338). Of course, imperial collections of exotic animals were not unique to the Ming court, nor to China either. Assemblages of living exotica have been a common feature of many royal courts across the continents and throughout the ages.1 Mary Helms (1993: 163–171) has noted the significance of captured exotic animals in the outward articulation of rulers’ power, observing that “(f)ar from being mere curiosities, these animate (…) exotics from the ends of the known earth or from its most sacred centres were repositories of power and symbols of the distant, potent regions known to, and ‘controlled’ by, the lords of the realm.” Thomas Allsen has similarly highlighted how control of distant regions as shown through menageries distinguished rulers from all competitors. Citing a letter sent by the king of Siam to a Safavid shah in the 1680s, wherein the former offers to send elephants to Iran as a symbol of his “power of state and world rule”, Allsen (2006: 235) notes that, “in exchanging unusual animals, rulers quite consciously (…) helped to solidify each other’s regimes through a kind of

_____ 1 See Necipoğlu (1991: 203–204), Hahn (2004), Mikhail (2014), Plumb (2015), and Jackson (2015).

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professional courtesy.” In his discussion of elephants in the Hellenistic world, Andrew Bell (2004: 114–150) has also shown that exotic animals, by their very presence, indicate the lands to which the displayer had imperial access. Shen Defu’s account of the Ming menagerie is certainly replete with a keen understanding of how the exotic animals sent to, or reared within, the emperor’s court acted as living evidence of dynastic imperial strength.2 David Robinson’s meticulous study of the imperial Ming menagerie is replete and fulsome in the richness of sources he has at his disposal. These include the personal observations on the nature of keeping exotic animals by courtiers, officials (like Shen Defu), poets, diplomats, and even emperors, as well as their reports on the practical details of how the wildlife was maintained in an acceptable – if not necessarily healthy – state of captivity. As a comparative model, and in terms of perceptions, ideologies, practicalities, as well as emotional responses, the extraordinarily rich and fulsome Chinese material offers exciting potential for thinking through similar issues of human interactions with captive animals in more ancient times where the sources are, frustratingly, less complete, the evidence not so bounteous, and the rich individuality of observation almost (but not completely) non-existent. The Ming sources (and others like them, for they do exist) offer routes into thinking about human-animal interactions in ancient Iran, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Indeed, Allsen’s study of the royal hunt and the human-animal interactions of the chase has already benefitted from taking such a broad approach to the source materials, and he utilises the ancient sources alongside more recent counterparts to his significant advantage. Following Braudel’s notion of la longue durée, Allsen’s ambition was “to understand the growth of the forest, not just the trees” (Allsen 2006: 22; see also 2006: 265–277). Across the ancient Near East, gifts of horses, falcons, parrots, peacocks, lions, giraffes, bears, tigers, zebu, camels, and many other forms of faunal exotica occurred in the context of a ruler’s relationship with foreign lands – be those lands conquered vassal states obliged to pay tribute, semi-autonomous satellite states tactfully proffering gifts, or super-powers engaging in status competition through lavish gift-displays – the very appearance of those animals heralded the cosmic significance of Near Eastern monarchy.

_____ 2 But the courtier also allows us to access something of the personal feelings evoked in viewing the animals. They are impressive curiosities and fearsome entertainers, with their capacity to maim and kill. They create repulsion in the stench that rises from their confined cages, but there is a hint of sadness in what Shen has to say too. For him, the big cat compound “seemed a loathsome [place]”.

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One may, for instance, consider the Persian ruler Darius I’s bold assertion that the earth (Old Persian būmi) was bestowed on him by the supreme creator deity Ahuramazda. Of course, the Persian Great King was master of the Empire, and thus the conquered lands ipso facto came under his authority (in fact, būmi has the implication of ‘land under royal right’) and as such the king demanded payment of tribute and taxes from his subject peoples. These fiscal obligations to the throne, ‘the king’s share’, were called bāji (Old Persian) and baziš (Elamite) and were made up from a portion of produce from lands under the king’s jurisdiction.3 The people of central Iran, or Parsa (Fars), as the ‘insiders’ of the Empire, had a unique relationship with their king, and although they nonetheless honoured him with gifts of local produce, they did not come under the same ‘taxation bracket’ as foreign peoples of the provinces who were otherwise, on an annual basis, locally taxed in the form of weighed silver or in local produce or sometimes specialised produce – or what Pierre Briant has labelled “over and above the tribute”. Egypt was thus obliged to send the king fish, flour and corn, Cappadocia sent horses, mules, and sheep, while Babylonia was required to send to Persia five-hundred castrated boys, bound for the royal court (see Briant 2002: 403–405). Animal gifts certainly fall into this ‘over and above’ category although it is worth citing Lindsay Allen (2005: 120) who sensibly notes that “the terminology distinguishing gifts from tribute (…) may have been the result of diplomatic rhetoric (…). The boundaries between the concepts of landobligations, tithes, tribute, and gifts were likely to be very fluid.”

2 King of Lands, Master of Animals With the Great King’s earthy inheritance came, ipso facto, the peoples, lands, animals, and plants of the earth; the world was the king’s domain, bestowed on him by god, and thus in an inscription from Susa Darius can state with confidence that “Ahuramazda is mine; I am Ahuramazda’s” (Darius’ Susa Inscription k [= DSk]). At Susa, Darius was clearly so proud of his newly-built fortifications and palace that he instructed the creation of a fine text to testify to the multiethnic labour-of-love which went into its construction:

_____ 3 See Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1989), Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1998: 33), and Briant (2002: 398, 439).

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“This palace (hadiš) which I built at Susa, from afar its ornamentation was brought (…) the sun-dried brick was moulded, the Babylonian people performed these tasks. The cedar timber, this was brought from a mountain named Lebanon. The Assyrian people brought it to Babylon; from Babylon the Carians and the Yaunâ [= Greeks] brought it to Susa. The yakâ-timber was brought from Gandara and from Carmania. The gold was brought from Lydia and from Bactria, which here was wrought. The precious stone lapis lazuli and carnelian which was wrought here, this was brought from Sogdia. The precious stone turquoise, this was brought from Chorasmia, which was wrought here. The silver and the ebony were brought from Egypt. The ornamentation with which the wall was adorned, that from Yaunâ was brought. The ivory which was wrought here, was brought from Nubia and from India and from Arachosia. The stone columns which were here wrought, a village named Abirâdu, in Elam – from there were brought. The stone-cutters who wrought the stone, those were Yaunâ and Lydians. The goldsmiths who wrought the gold, those were Medes and Egyptians. The men who wrought the wood, those were Lydians and Egyptians. The men who wrought the baked brick, those were Babylonians. The men who adorned the wall, those were Medes and Egyptians. Darius the King says: At Susa a very excellent work was ordered, a very excellent work was brought to completion.”4

Darius’ palace at Susa was a physical manifestation of the vastness and diversity of his empire.5 Likewise, the famed Persian paradeisoi, which were an essential part of Achaemenid cultural expression throughout the Empire, were carefully cultivated gardens, forests, and estates that served as living symbols of Persian dominance. It is clear that the parks and woodlands were well stocked with all sorts of wild animals, and that small- and big-game hunting chiefly took place in the safety of the land designated by the borders of these vast game reserves. But beyond the thrill of the hunt and the obvious sensual hedonism offered by royal gardens, the paradeisoi were encoded with a rich political symbolism: the royal parks were an empire in miniature, and flora and fauna from every area of the king’s dominion were resettled and replanted within their confines. This was a longstanding Near Eastern tradition and Egyptian pharaohs and Mesopotamian kings had boasted of cultivating and populating their gardens with foreign plants and animals. Thutmose III had established a botanic garden and menagerie at Karnak following his Syrian campaign, and Tiglath-pileser I bragged how he “took cedar (…) [and] oak from the lands over which I had dominion (…) and planted [them] in the orchards of my land”, thereby emphasising that an exotic garden symbolised the monarch’s control of a huge territory (see Grayson 1996: 290). Most famously, according to the

_____ 4 Trilingual inscription f of Darius I at Susa (= DSf) §§ 7–14, after Llewellyn-Jones (2013: 162– 163). 5 On the conception of Achaemenid imperial space, see Murray (2016).

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Graeco-Babylonian priest-cum-historian Berossus (F8 §141), Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon built high stone terraces, “and planted them with trees of every kind (…) and completed the so-called ‘hanging paradeisos’, because his wife, who had been born and raised in Media, longed for mountain scenery.” In the Achaemenid era we hear of Persian monarchs enriching their paradeisoi with foreign shrubs and fruit trees, and there is even mention of royal vine-cutters (or grafters) who are charged with carefully pruning precious grape vines from Lebanon and transporting and replanting them in Persian soil. The idea of the king creating a fertile garden – displaying both symmetry and order – constituted a powerful statement symbolising monarchic authority, fertility, legitimacy, and divine favour, so much so in fact that as a potent symbol of resistance to Persian rule, the rebellious citizens of Sardis completely destroyed the royal park “in which Persian kings took their relaxation” (Diodorus Siculus, Hist. 16.41). Near Eastern monarchs prided themselves on the meticulous attention they provided for the cultivation, care, and nourishment of their crown lands. Thus in Assyria, a cylinder text commemorating the founding of Dur-Šarrukin, Sargon II’s capital city, enthusiastically praises the king for the care he shows the city’s surrounding acreage: “The sagacious king, full of kindness, who gave his thought to (…) bringing fields under cultivation, to the planting of orchards, who set his mind on raising crops on steep slopes whereon no vegetation had grown since days of old; whose heart moved him to set out plants in waste areas where the plough was unknown in the former days of kings, to make these regions ring with the sound of jubilation, to cause the springs of the plain to gush forth, to open ditches, to cause waters of abundance to rise high (…) like the waves of the sea.”6

An effective Near Eastern ruler was not just a warrior and sportsman but a gardener-king too. He was also a shepherd, a herdsman, and overlord of all animals. This later notion is expressed in a very popular iconographic series found from throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean known as the ‘Master of Animals’ motif (alternatively, the female version is called the ‘Mistress of Animals’). A god, goddess, hero, or hero-king (as shown on the Achaemenid Persian seal represented here; see Figure 1) is shown grasping the tails, throats or hind-legs of animals which flank him on two sides.7 Most typically, a caprid

_____ 6 Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon II § 119; cited in Tomes (2005: 76–77). 7 For Achaemenid representations, see Garrison & Root (2001).

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(wild goat, antelope, ibex, stag) is represented in duplicate, but lions, horses, scorpions, and ostriches are also common, together with a host of hybrid monsters (see Keel & Uehlinger 1998 and Arnold & Counts 2010). An alternative image of a human placing his foot upon a weaker animal is also to be found (see Keel 1978: 58–59). A Hebrew Psalm (8.4–8) employs this particularly vivid image to stress humankind’s uniqueness in the order of creation, their place in the hierarchy of the divinely created cosmos and their lordship over, and distance from, the animals: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.”

The image of mankind with “everything under their feet” is not necessarily an image of dominance. Kings, as lords of all, were more guardians of nature than overlords of it. This idea was adopted throughout the Near East; a ruler from Anatolia named Azatiwata (c. 700 B.C.) therefore proclaims that he brought peace and order to his realm and that his guardianship was successful because “I placed them under my feet” (see Hallo & Younger 2003 [vol. 2]: 21). In the iconography, the connection between the deity/hero/king and the grasped animal is clearly important, and it is possible that the creature served as a symbol of the deity’s presence. As Brian Doak (2014: 202) notes, “in this iconography (…) the deity and the animal cannot be separated; the deity’s association with the animal is a picture of the cosmos, that is, of the ongoing status of divine control and the divine attributes needed to create that control.” Bettina Arnold and Derek Counts (2010: 16) take this notion further, however: “In some cases, adversarial representations of hunts, heroic contests, and antithetical compositions featuring a central human figure grasping one or more animals unequivocally signify the physical prowess of the protagonist and his or her supernatural control over the forces of nature. In other cases, these same qualities are embodied in attributes (…). In both its female and male iterations, animal mastery passed from the uncanny, celestial realm to the earthly sphere, where its iconography became an elite ‘calling card’ associated with a range of concepts, from divine ancestry and sacral kingship to the most basic symbols of absolute authority.”

As a symbol of that divinely bestowed authority, Achaemenid monarchs prided themselves on their animal collections. Lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, Bactrian and dromedary camels, giraffes/okapi, peacocks, red jungle fowl and parrots are all attested in the diverse sources needed to reconstruct an empire-wide map

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of animal tribute-distribution.8 Best known perhaps are the animals found amongst the foreign delegates on the Apadana reliefs (north and east staircases) at Persepolis. Fine and expensive stallions are the most commonly depicted giftanimals, their quality as royal mounts and chariot teams are clear to see and, given the importance of the horse in Iranian culture, their presence is easy to understand. But we must regard even the apparently ‘humble’ gifts of donkeys, bulls, rams, and goats as representing the finest of their species too. We might classify these, following Ralph Kauz (2012: 119), as “useful animals”. However, other animals on the staircase are more obviously exotic, although (sadly) the really glamorous species (with the exception of a magnificent African okapi; see the discussion below), such as tigers, peacocks, parrots, chickens, and rhinos, are only mentioned in the literary sources.

3 “Statue zoos”? Just how we should interpret the Apadana tribute scenes is a matter of conjecture. For instance, Richard Stoneman (2015: 41) has recently asked the following: “Can we really imagine the delegations arrived with all these gifts, giraffes, bulls and camels, trekking for thousands of miles across desert and plain to fill a zoo of which there is no trace? (…) It is better to interpret the reliefs as symbolic, representing the distinctive products of every region and symbolizing the variety and extent of the Persian dominion.”

_____ 8 Lions: van der Toorn (1998), Root (2003), Strawn (2005), with further discussion below; tigers: Ctesias, FGrHist 688F45dβ (= Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.21); rhinoceroses: Ctesias, FGrHist 688F45q (= Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.52; see below); camels: discussion in Llewellyn-Jones (2013: 85–86, 176). It should be remembered that for the Persians the camel was a status-enhancing animal: camels are not native to Iran and were therefore considered exotica by the Achaemenids (the Assyrians and Babylonians had the same perception). At Persepolis, Bactrian camels are included in the representations of several delegations from the north-eastern provinces of the Empire as high-status gifts, and single-humped dromedaries are depicted with the Arab delegation too. One seal-image shows the Great King in a chariot pulled by a team of dromedaries, and another illustrates the Great King spearing a lion whilst seated on a dromedary, suggesting that camels could be used in the royal hunt. This suggests that the camel was very much regarded as a prestigious animal fit for the monarch’s usage, in war, in sport, and in royal procession. Giraffes/okapi: see discussion below; peacocks and red jungle fowl (chickens): see discussion below; parrots: Ctesias, FGrHist 688F45 [= Photius, Bibl. 72 45a21 T10]); see below).

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He suggests that the Apadana reliefs functioned like the neo-classical paintings of the early eighteenth century which depict the four continents, each with its presiding goddess or female personification surrounded by the flora and fauna of that continent in “a picturesque but impossible assemblage”.9 I am more convinced though of the reality of the Apadana images and of the picture they present of an important use of living animals in empire-maintaining diplomacy. Of course, one should not suppose that all of the animal exotica encountered in the staircase sculptures were presented on one occasion, or even on an annual basis. The staircase reliefs are a composite of tribute gifts presented on various occasions, although in an ideological sense they reactivate that exotic giftgiving on a kind of iconographic temporal loop. Moreover, the Apadana scenes do not present a full picture of the variety of animal life brought to Persia as tribute, and as I have noted, tigers, rhinoceroses, peacocks, roosters and hens are only located in the indigenous Iranian texts or in the Greek observations of Persian court life, while species which one might expect to form royal Iranian animal collections, such as bears, cheetahs and elephants (all of which have significant presence in other Near Eastern sources), are oddly absent from the evidence of the Achaemenid period. The Apadana’s animal imagery constitutes what Allison Thomason (2005: 197) has appropriately termed a “statue zoo”, that is to say a collection of animals crafted from stone or other natural materials in order to memorialise the grandiose prowess of rulers. The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (see Figure 2) typifies this tradition by glorifying the achievements of the Assyrian king through scenes of animal tribute which includes the gifting of foreign horses, an elephant, apes, and other exotic animals as well as a scene of deer hunting (British Museum 118885; see Völling 2006: 112). Found at Nimrud where it had been set up in a very public space, the obelisk shows that the king received exotic Bactrian camels, a single rhinoceros, a water buffalo, a lone antelope, female elephants, as well as female monkeys and apes. The obelisk also depicts the diplomatic gifting of animal parts such as leopard pelts and ivory elephant tusks (seen also on the Apadana east staircase) which, as Thomason (2005: 193) reminds us, is in itself an important aspect of royal display, a kind of imperial cabinet of curiosities. This is the best way to categorise, for instance, a painted and gilded rhinoceros horn seen by the Greek doctor-turned-author Ctesias during his time at the Achaemenid court (FGrHist 688F45q [= Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.52]; transl. Alwyn F. Scholfield, Loeb Classical Library):

_____ 9 Nineteenth-century maps of the British Empire adopt a similar iconography. See, for instance, Smith, Brown & Jacobi (2015: 34–37).

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(…) τὸ μὲν κάτω μέρος τοῦ κέρατος εἶναι λευκόν, τὸ δὲ ἄνω φοινικοῦν, τό γε μὴν μέσον μέλαν δεινῶς. ἐκ δὴ τῶνδε τῶν ποικίλων κεράτων πίνειν Ἰνδοὺς ἀκούω, καὶ ταῦτα οὐ πάντας, ἀλλὰ τοὺς τῶν Ἰνδῶν κρατίστους, ἐκ διαστημάτων αὐτοῖς χρυσὸν περιχέαντας, οἱονεὶ ψελίοις τισὶ κοσμήσαντας βραχίονα ὡραῖον ἀγάλματος. “(…) the lower part of the horn is white, the upper part is crimson, while the middle is jetblack. From these variegated horns, I am told, the Indians drink, but not all, only the most eminent Indians, and round them at intervals they lay rings of gold, as though they were decorating the beautiful arm of a statue with bracelets.”

Stoneman’s reluctance to accept that living animals (and not just animal parts) were transported over many thousands of miles in gift exchange is to do a disservice to a wider knowledge of diplomatic history; it would seem odd to write the Achaemenid employment of tribute animals out of a world history of gift exchange and the longue durée of human exploitation of the animal world for status display and political negotiation. Evidence for the human employment of animals in this capacity started early. A third-millennium seal discovered in Akkadian Eshnunna (see Figure 3) shows a crocodile, an elephant, and a rhinoceros – strange animals which could only have been known in Mesopotamia if they had been sent there from the Indus Valley (Melhuhha, India). Texts even refer to Melhuhha-birds, possibly chickens or francolins, as exotic imports (see Foster 2015: 100). An Old Babylonian poem known as Nanše and the Birds refers to a haja-bird – an onomatopoeic name for an Indian peacock perhaps (Nanše and the Birds 49–53; after Veldhuis 2004): “The haja-bird keeps the watch at dawn. The pure bird calls ‘Haja! Haja!’ at dawn. A bird red from carnelian, blue from lapis lazuli, white from chalcedony, with all kinds of gold for leather-with-gold inlay that is how the sculptor fashions a ‘peacock’ [haja-bird].”

One particularly fascinating Neo-Babylonian votive text is a copy of a much earlier document of Neo-Sumerian date originally carved on a now-lost sculpture of an exotic animal. It speaks of “a dappled dog” from India received as tribute by the king of Ur (Votive Inscription of Ibbi-Sin; after Hallo & Younger 2003 [vol. 2]: 395): “For Nanna, the impetuous bullock of Heaven, the lord who is first-born son of Enlil, his master, Ibbi-Sin, the god of his nation, the mighty king, the king of Ur, the king of the four heavenly quarters – (of) a ‘dappled dog’ of Meluhha (India) that had been brought to him as tribute from Marhashi (in Iran) he fashioned its image and made a votive offering of it to him (Nanna) for the sake of his (Ibbi-Sin’s) (long) life. Of the ‘dappled dog’ – ‘Let him catch (the enemy)!’ is its name.”

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It is possible that the animal referred to here was a leopard (Akkadian dumāmu, nimru) since large felines were often ascribed in Sumerian times to the taxonomic category that would now be regarded as canine (see Hallo & Younger (2003 [vol. 2]: 395). While ‘leopard’ is feasible, given the animal’s Indian origin and the fact that it was transported into Mesopotamia from Iran, a cheetah (Akkadian mindinu, senkurru) is far more likely. The name of the treasured animal, ‘Let him catch (the enemy)’, suggests a feline that could be trained to hunt; this idea suits the cheetah more than the leopard.10 A relief dated to the Fifth Dynasty is the earliest visual evidence of the vogue for importing foreign animals into Egypt (see Figure 4). Three Syrian bears, together with a high-necked Syrian flask, represent some of the gifts or trophies obtained during a sea trip to the trading port of Byblos, on the coast of Phoenicia. Patrick Houlihan (1996: 195) notes that “the large, stocky build and peculiar posture of these carnivores has been rendered with prodigious skill and is surely the product of direct observation of the living species.” Bears were only known to the Egyptians through importation, and their appearance in Egyptian art is highly sporadic (contra Herodotus, Hist. 2.67). Most of the eight known examples date from the Eighteenth Dynasty, during the height of the Egyptian empire when the vogue for exotica was at its peak. Bears are always shown wearing collars and leashes and even tethered to the ground (see Osborn & Osbornová 1998: 81–83). These bears are clearly on display and are meant to be looked at.

4 Royal collecting: capture It should be noted, however, that the earliest large-scale animal collections in the Near East were formed not through diplomacy or trade, but as a consequence of hunting expeditions when, instead of killing animals, monarchs began to capture living species with the express purpose of returning them, in health, to their capital cities as living display trophies. For the Middle-Assyrian kings, lions were the ideal living trophies, and the necessity of keeping a ready supply of healthy lions for the ritual slaughter of the arena drove the rulers to procure prides by the dozen. But Tiglath-pileser I went further than taking living

_____ 10 In modern Persian, the word for ‘cheetah’ (youz palang) can confusingly be translated literally as ‘greyhound-leopard’ or ‘hunting-leopard’. See Humphreys & Kahrom (1995: 89).

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lions back to Assyria and captured live Syrian elephants too and returned them to the imperial homeland. Tiglath-pileser also claims that he obtained “live sheep whose wool is dyed purple-red, flying birds of the sky whose wings are dyed blue-purple” and tells also of a crocodile “and other large sea animals” brought from Egypt (see Thomason 2005: 187–188). These animals served no apparent ritual or practical purpose and were captured only to be put on display. This notion flourished, and in the Neo-Assyrian period ambitious kings like Ashurnasirpal II had extended their hunting repertoire to include the capture of ostriches and other wild game encountered when on military expedition.11 So successful were his trophy hunts that in one palace inscription he was able to boast: “I formed herds of wild bulls, elephants, lions, ostriches, male monkeys, female monkeys, wild asses, deer, aialu-deer, female bears, panthers (…), beasts of the mountain and plain, all of them in my city of Kalhu (Nimrud). I displayed them to all the people.”12

This is a key text in the history of understanding royal animal collections, and Ashurnasirpal’s use of the word ‘display’ is important: instead of killing animals, the king captures them, forms them into groups (‘herds’), and purposefully shows them to his people. Thomason (2005: 190) suggests that this action transforms the Assyrian monarch from “protector and soldier [into] creator”. In other words, the careful capturing, corralling, and moving of animals to the imperial capital was “a way for the king to bring the live periphery to the centre, and thus ‘create’ the world anew for the inhabitants of Assyria.” But what form did that public ‘showing’ of the captured animals take? Must we think of a procession of wild animals winding its way through the city of Nimrud, like a royal circus parade, such as the one famously exploited

_____ 11 See Cohen (2010: 210). Mesopotamian peoples had some difficulty classifying the exotic crocodile, which was not indigenous to their lands. The Akkadian word kušu was sometimes used; it was also used for some kind of aquatic demon. The Akkadian corresponds to two Sumerian words, kušú with a determinative ku6 (‘fish’), which seems to refer to a terrifying creature living in the marshes, and kud.da referring to an animal hide. In the Neo-Assyrian period the Akkadian for crocodile was namsuḫu, clearly an Egyptian loan word. A fragmentary relief in the British Museum (135844) shows a man (apparently) carrying a crocodile. The fragment has been broken off from an obelisk which depicted several rows of men carrying tribute gifts of exotic animals to an Assyrian monarch. See Llewellyn-Jones & Lewis (forthcoming: s.v. ‘Crocodile 5’). 12 See Grayson (1991: 226). Shalmaneser III and Tiglath-pileser III also mention receipt of exotic animals in their royal inscriptions.

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by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Alexandria in 275 B.C. (see Shelton 2007: 112– 116)? At Persepolis did the tribute animals form part of a similar parade, perhaps as an element of the Persian New Year celebrations? Or in his inscription does Ashurnasirpal mean that he established some kind of royal menagerie, a permanent (or temporary) site (or sites) where these animal rarities could be exhibited and observed? Did processions inevitably end with the caging and long-term display of the animals? After all, cages must have been used for animal capture, transportation as well as for display. An Old Kingdom Egyptian relief from the tomb of Ptahhotep, for instance, shows a caged leopard and a lion being drawn along on sledges (see Figure 5), and cages (and nets) were certainly employed by the Assyrians in their hunting exploits (see Kisling 2000: 10). The Hebrew prophet Ezekiel (19:7–9) describes the capture of a fierce young lion: “They spread their net for him, and he was trapped in their pit.13 With hooks they pulled him into a cage and brought him to the king of Babylon. They put him in prison, so his roar was heard no longer on the mountains of Israel.”

The Hebrew text of Ezekiel uses the word sūgar (‘cage’) for the pen into which a captured lion might be placed, such as the two depicted in Ptahhotep’s tomb, but an alternative meaning of sūgar is ‘neck-stock’ or ‘wooden collar’ (Akkadian šigaru). Indeed, it seems that both cages and stocks were used by the Assyrians to transport and display wild animals. Fortunately, Ashurnasirpal’s inscriptions describe how the animals, having been safely transported to the imperial centre (by cage or stock), became part of his subsequent breeding programme. He had fifteen captive lions and lionesses breed together, and fifty of their cubs were thereafter reared in captivity in Kaleh and at locations elsewhere in Assyria. In addition, lions sent to the capital from Syria were bred in large numbers too, ‘herded’ and ‘placed in cages’ within the city and its many palaces (see Grayson 1991: 226). He purports to have been gifted male and female monkeys also and that he subsequently “bred herds of them in great numbers” at Nimrud. Sennacharib highlights as well the fact that

_____ 13 The most common method of lion capture was that of a pit (Akkadian šubtu; see Grayson 1964) dug into the earth. In fact, this was a standard practice in the hunting of animals and Near Eastern and Egyptian texts often talk of animal pits, although they are never represented in art. Ashurnasirpal II, for instance, records ‘throwing’ (i.e. driving) wild asses and even elephants into pits.

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within the royal gardens “the wild swine and stags brought countless offspring into the world.”14 Interestingly, the Akkadian royal texts are often specific in their attribution of the sex of the tribute animals as well as enumerating gendered pairs of animals, but they also referred frequently to the capture or gifting of the young of many species, including male and female wild calves and lion cubs. In this respect, we can better understand the image of a snarling, unhappy lioness and her two agitated cubs which are brought to the Persian Great King at Persepolis by the official delegation from Elam. One Elamite, a lion-keeper perhaps, wields a stick to control the three unruly animals (see Figure 6). The two cubs and their mother are either newly captured specimens or successful products of a captive breeding policy. The lioness is shown with full teats hanging low under her belly; these cubs have clearly not yet been weaned.15 This careful attribution of sex and age to the animals implies that Persian kings, like their Assyrian predecessors, acquired the individual specimens that were necessary for the captive maintenance and increase of the species. It is easy to imagine that the lion cubs gifted to the Persian Great King by the Elamites ended up as victims of ritual slaughter, for, more than any other animal in the Near East, lions indicated a ruler’s worth. That is why some monarchs, like Ramses II and Ashurbanipal III, reared tame lions from their youths as favoured pets. But it was the killing of lions that best demonstrated kingly authority, indicating a sovereign’s possession of near supernatural powers. The ferocity and legendary supremacy of lions over other animals were qualities particularly attractive to rulers who aspired to the same sort of ascendancy over their rivals. Any controlled contact with these impressive creatures – whether they were hunted and killed in ritual slaughter, captured and held in imperial menageries, or displayed next to the throne as a privileged pet – was held to have a similarly positive impact on rulers who could claim to both have assimilated the animals’ vitality into their own bodies and to have suppressed the chaos which lions also represented. Lions were superior to other wild animals, just as kings were superior to other men (see further Llewellyn-Jones 2013: 129– 133, 197–198). It is little wonder that Near Eastern sources speak so frequently of

_____ 14 See Thomason (2005: 193). The Ming evidence for imperial animal breeding programmes is plentiful, and Shen Defu specifically notes that some of the leopards, tigers, and lions he encountered on his menagerie walk were third- or fourth-generation descendants of the original gifted animal. 15 In fact, the lioness is the only female of any species represented at Persepolis. See further Root (2003) for a full discussion of this fascinating scene.

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lions being accepted as diplomatic gifts, or else of being captured and subsequently bred and then slaughtered in such numbers. Thomason (2005: 190) has noted how Akkadian royal inscriptions tend to use the singular case of nouns to indicate not only that groups of animals were brought to Assyria, but that single specimens of rare and exotic species were received there too. Ashurnasirpal received one large female monkey from Unqi in north Syria, which he put on public display. A corresponding relief from his northwest palace at Nimrud shows two Syrian tribute bearers carrying monkeys (wearing collars and leashes) on their shoulders to present them to the waiting king (see Figure 7, British Museum 124562). The artist of the Nimrud panel seems to have had difficulty with his depictions of the two monkeys, and both animals have disturbingly human-looking faces but are otherwise well-rendered (see Ataç 2010: 22–28); their ability to scamper onto the shoulders and head of their keeper is an affectionately observed detail on the part of the artist. If this is a ‘real moment’ in the diplomatic life of the Assyrian court, as it purports to be (and I have no cause to doubt that), then we should regard the Persepolis Apadana reliefs as representing similar real-life moments in Achaemenid court history, as I suggested earlier.

5 Royal collecting: wonders Carved into the bottom corner of the eastern staircase of the Apadana at Persepolis is a depiction of a strange animal being led on a bridled tether by a delegation of Nubians, who also carry ivory tusks, as they pay their tribute to the Persian Great King (see Figure 8). Several details might point to it being a giraffe: its tail is accurately rendered and the horns are in the correct position, though they are short and pointy (perhaps indicating its youth). The animal has a face like a giraffe’s, but the body seems too heavy, the limbs and neck too short, the hoofs too large. The artists who carved this relief might have been unfamiliar with the giraffe and were forced to improvise; they also were required to fit the tall and graceful creature into a very limited space at the bottom of the staircase. This would explain the unusually short neck.16 It is more probable though that

_____ 16 It has been suggested by some, however, that the animal is a nilgai, an Indian antelope which certainly has many of the physical features (horns, ears, mane, tail) included on the Persepolis bas-relief. But why would African delegates bring with them an Indian animal as tribute? Valdez & Tuck (1980 and 1989) suggest, somewhat fancifully, that the Nubian dele-

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the animal represented here is an okapi, although it must be conceded that this very shy and highly elusive creature is (still) extremely difficult to capture, transport, and maintain in captivity.17 Unknown to westerners before its ‘discovery’ in 1901, we now know that in antiquity the okapi was found in Uganda and possibly even further north, making it feasible that Nubians got hold of this rare (and beautiful) animal as a fittingly exotic tribute for the Persian ruler. Scholarly debate has still reached no consensus as to the Persepolis animal’s identity, but given the confident artistic rendering of the animal’s silhouette and details, an okapi is by far the best candidate. The presence of an okapi at Persepolis is remarkable. How might the appearance of this living animal, so very strange in aspect, in the company of equally unfamiliar black-skinned Nubians, have been understood in the context of the meaning of diplomatic gifts? Here a comparison with Ming modes of thought might reveal a way of thinking about the reception of the most unusual of all the exotic animals to be received at court. In A.D. 1414 a foreign ruler presented a giraffe from far-off Africa as a diplomatic gift to the Ming Dynasty’s Yongle Emperor. This was the first recorded giraffe in any Chinese source and when it was seen by the Ming court it was presumed by all to be the mythical beast known as the qilin, which, according to the ancient writings of Confucius, would only appear when a wise and just man sat upon the throne of China. So the arrival of the giraffe was taken as a sign of the emperor’s good governance and the divine approval of his reign.18 Allsen (2005: 235) reminds us that, after all, across the pre-modern world, “a giraffe (…) was more than a rarity, it was a wonder.”19

_____ gates purchased a local Asian animal for tribute, while Sehm (1991) argues that nilgai bones have been found in Jordan and that the Ethiopians may have come to Iran via the Red Sea coast of Arabia, where the nilgai could have been found. 17 See Sprague de Camp (1963), Hampe (2001), Valdez & Tuck (1980), and Valdez & Tuck (1989). 18 A poem of praise for the Yongle Emperor written by Shen Du in A.D. 1414 on a silk scroll showing a giraffe with its foreign handler reads: “When a sage possesses the utmost benevolence so that he illuminates the darkest places, a qilin appears. This shows that Your Majesty’s virtue equals that of Heaven; its merciful blessings have spread far and wide so that its harmonious vapours have emanated a qilin, as an endless bliss to the state for a myriad, myriad years.” For further discussion see Clunas & Harrison-Hall (2014: 260–261) and Kauz (2012: 118– 119). 19 For further discussions of the giraffe as a diplomatic gift, see Behres-Abouseif (2014: 140– 142).

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In China the phenomenon of the auspicious appearance of all magical creatures – ruiying in Chinese – was seen as a signal of the heavenly mandate to rule and therefore throughout his reign the Yongle Emperor actively encouraged the finding of exotic animals to help strengthen his right to rule and signal his dominance over his realm. Might there have been a similarly active programme of exotic animal acquisitions instituted by the Achaemenid kings and their Assyrian and Egyptian predecessors? As was certainly the case in Chinese thought, the Near Eastern mind might also have placed a connection between foreign embassies and the acquisition of strange animals. Outlying areas hoping to initiate or enhance good relations with the imperial centre may well have searched out rare beasts and odd birds to improve their prestige and standing with the monarch and his court. Ancient kings were receptive to such novelties, for, after all, the Near Eastern conception of the structure of nature straddled familiarity and the unknown in what might be termed ‘shifting zones of reality’. As empires expanded, the unknown and mythical lands, flora, and fauna became increasingly known and tangible. As zones of reality shifted, broke down, or merged, so too the unknown became the known. There is no doubt in my mind that for the peoples of the Near East, human-headed bulls, scorpion-tailed men, sphinxes, and griffins existed; they just had not yet been captured and brought back home as living specimens, although these creatures did form parts of the stone menageries of royal palaces and temples. One may, for instance, consider the animals encountered in Ctesias’ Indica, a work that belongs to the Greek genre of writing known as Thaumata (‘Things to Marvel At’ or ‘Wonders’), collections of remarkable information on rarities, abnormalities, and marvels of the natural or man-made world (usually categorised as ‘paradoxography’). The Indica was probably written in Persia and India’s close proximity to the Persian heartland, and the fact that its northern regions were, at times, part of the empire itself suggests that Ctesias actually drew upon indigenous Persian traditions about its semi-mythical neighbour. From the fantastical India of the Persian imagination Ctesias describes pygmies, dogheaded men, and eight-fingered warriors. Ctesias is also the first author in western literature to describe the tiger (a man-eater at that) as well as the rhinoceros, and his description of this remarkable beast gave birth to the fabled unicorn of the medieval imagination. He noted the following (FGrHist 688F45q [= Aelian, De nat. anim. 4.52]; transl. Alwyn F. Scholfield, Loeb Classical Library): Ὄνους ἀγρίους οὐκ ἐλάττους ἵππων τὰ μεγέθη ἐν Ἰνδοῖς γίνεσθαι πέπυσμαι. καὶ λευκοὺς μὲν τὸ ἄλλο εἶναι σῶμα, τήν γε μὴν κεφαλὴν ἔχειν πορφύρᾳ παραπλησίαν, τοὺς δὲ ὀφθαλμοὺς ἀποστέλλειν κυανοῦ χρόαν. κέρας δὲ ἔχειν ἐπὶ τῷ μετώπῳ ὅσον πήχεως τὸ μέγεθος καὶ ἡμίσεος προσέτι (…).

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“I have learned that in India are born wild asses as big as horses. All their body is white except for the head, which approaches purple, while their eyes give off a dark blue colour. They have a horn on their forehead as much as a cubit and a half long (…).”

Ctesias’ claims to have seen these ‘Indian things’ for himself may mean that he had viewed the living animals, or parts of the dead animals (rhino hides and horns, tiger skins and teeth), and perhaps met Indian diplomats at the Persian court. Such autopsia is not unfeasible. It is also possible that Ctesias came in contact with animal handlers from India, those charged with the transportation and maintenance of animal gifts. This might explain his description of, and wonderment at, a parrot. In his Indica, he recalls the following (FGrHist 688F45 [= Photius, Bibl. 72 45a21 T10]); transl. following Nigel G. Wilson, with slight modifications): (…) γλῶσσαν ἀνθρωπίνην ἔχει καὶ φωνήν, μέγεθος μὲν ὅσον ἱέραξ, πορφύρεον δὲ πρόσωπον, καὶ πώγωνα φέρει μέλανα. Αὐτὸ δὲ κυάνεόν ἐστιν ὡς τὸν τράχηλον ὥσπερ κιννάβαρι. Διαλέγεσθαι δὲ αὐτὸ ὥσπερ ἄνθρωπον ἰνδιστί, ἂν δὲ ἑλληνιστὶ μάθῃ, καὶ ἑλληνιστί. “(…) it has a human voice and language, and is about the size of a hawk; it has a purple head and a black beard. Its body is dark blue, but it is the colour of red cinnabar round the neck. It speaks Indian like a human being, but if it learns Greek then it also speaks Greek.”

We must be grateful to Ctesias for preserving mythological aspects of the maneating tiger (the ‘manticora’, with its scorpion-sting tail) and the Indian ‘unicorn’ (the fabled horn of which was used by kings as a drinking cup), two creatures which were obviously a part of the Persian imagination. But India was also the land of a speaking bird whose description by Ctesias at least matches our own knowledge of the parrot. Out of the fantastical, it seems, might come the verifiable.20 An animal as unfamiliar and as visually unusual as an okapi could feasibly be thought to straddle the real and tangible and the unseen and exotic. How an animal like an okapi might have been intellectually conceived of by its Persian viewers is hard to qualify, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility to think that it was heralded by the Iranian court as a good omen. The liminality of the African tribute animal meant that it was simultaneously a wonder to

_____ 20 On Ctesias’ parrot, see further Bigwood (1993). On the ancient conception of speaking birds, such as parrots, see Fögen (2007: 46–49, 55, 57–58, 61–65).

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behold and a living symbol of the Persian mastery of the world – known and (as yet) unknown; it was an omen of conquests yet to come. We should also keep in mind, as Doris Behres-Abouseif (2014: 145) points out, that “the value of the animals lay not only in their exotic or rare nature, but also in the material value of bringing them to the recipient (…) it was not unusual that animals and slaves died on their way, which enhanced the value of those that arrived.”21 Catherine Breniquet (2002: 167) has noted that the animals depicted on Shalmaneser’s Black Obelisk had “no artistic stereotype” and that “artists caught sight of them at a specific event. The image the artists tried to reconstruct from memory is far from nature, as these animals appear more monstrous than natural.” Breniquet is quite right. There is something disturbingly Brueghelesque about the contorted images of the Obelisk’s beasts, lacking the correct scale and proportions; the monkeys, with their humanoid hands and faces, are quite ghoulish, and the elephant’s head is gawkily small, and its ears are tiny and badly shaped.22 But the animals by the Persepolis artists are a different matter. These craftsmen have created very accurate renditions of the physical appearances of the wildlife; the okapi itself is a miniature masterpiece in high-relief. The Persepolis artists clearly had the time to carefully observe the animals in life – in movement and in repose; these are not creatures seen at a fleeting glance. This must mean that the tribute animals were around long enough to be studied. Evidence of this practice of careful observation survives from elsewhere in the ancient world. A damaged Nineteenth Dynasty frieze from the temple of Armant in Upper Egypt depicts a rhinoceros which was captured alive on one of Ramses II’s campaigns into Nubia. It was carefully brought back to Egypt to be put on display; the ropes which kept it restrained are clearly shown (see Figure 9). The animal must have been the centre of considerable study, as can be ascertained from the artist’s detailed and accurate rendering. Remarkably, the hieroglyphic captions which accompany the depiction recount specific scientific facts about the animal’s dimensions, which are consistent with those of living African rhinoceroses.23 The transportation of a fully grown, alive specimen from

_____ 21 According to MacKinnon (2006: 12–14), animal death through the trauma of separation and transportation must have been very high. 22 See Ataç (2010: 22–28) who discusses in particular the odd appearance of monkeys and apes on the Black Obelisk. See also McDermott (1938: 18–20). 23 Its length was one cubit, one palm (60 cm); the height of its foreleg was five and a half cubits (288 cm); the foreleg’s circumference was three cubits, five palms (2 m); the foot’s circumference

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Nubia to Egypt was nothing short of heroic and the presence of a living rhino at the Egyptian court deserved commemoration in stone.

6 Royal collecting: confinement Did the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian monarchs create menageries or zoological gardens?24 The differentiation between the two terms lies merely in the degree of access which each afforded. Thomas Veltre (1996) has identified several different stages in the development of animal collections around the world from proto-menagerie to menagerie to zoo, and contends that menageries were primarily private institutions, intended for the enjoyment of a king and his inner circle. Zoos, however, were more public institutions which did not theoretically exist until the nineteenth century, and therefore, he says, to use the term ‘zoo’ in the context of ancient Near Eastern civilisations must be regarded as anachronistic. Veltre (1996: 30) has argued, however, that zoos do nonetheless “reflect a culture’s ideas about political power and ultimately the place of animals and human-beings in the universe.” Furthermore, he suggests that zoos “epitomized western man’s command of a global natural world.” Allison Thomason has used this notion to argue that since modern zoos collect animals from distant and exotic places, they can be seen as manifestations of imperial control in the manner encountered in the ancient Near East.25 Evidence suggests, she argues, that ancient zoos, like modern ones, were supplied from royal coffers and royal travels and were intended for display to an audience (see Thomason 2005: 187). But much depends, I think, on the extent to which royal tribute animals were displayed to a public audience. When Shen Defu took his walk around the animal enclosures within the gardens of the Forbidden City, he was still within the rarefied world of ‘the Great Within’, a closely guarded city-within-a-city accessible to only a small proportion of Beijing’s population. The animal assemblage might best be described as a menagerie in that case, and this is probably the correct term for the Near Eastern animal collections too. The pharaoh Thutmose III, for instance, is known to have established a botanical garden of exotic foliage and a small menagerie of

_____ was two cubits one palm (112 cm); the circumference of the belly was 13 cubits, two palms, two fingers (7 m); its back leg had a circumference of five cubits, three palms (285 cm). 24 This is a question raised by Kisling (2000). 25 See further the discussion of the Ptolemaic ‘zoo’ at Alexandria by Trinquier (2002).

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exotic and unusual animals for his own pleasure and for edifications of priests and artists, and for the leisured amusement of a very select number of his court. Representations of this exclusive menagerie show 275 specimens of floral exotica and fifty-two faunal images – mainly birds, but also rare cattle and even a Persian gazelle (see Figure 10). Excavations of the palace at Pi-Rameses in the later Egyptian New Kingdom have revealed the remains of a large African elephant and the bones of a lion as well as skeletons of gazelle and antelope (see Beaux 1990). These remains were discovered within the palace grounds where public access must have been sharply curtailed. Access to Mesopotamian and Iranian animal collections was not quite so restrictive, perhaps, but I cannot envisage any Near Eastern ruler allowing full public access to their palace gardens, let alone to their precious and costly animal collections. What were the logistics of menagerie maintenance in the Near Eastern courts? Where were these animals kept? Who maintained them? Specialised labour must have been needed for the keeping of wildlife, and Ming documentation is replete with this kind of information. Chinese records, it transpires, are often unexpectedly critical of the imperial zoological collections, especially of the costs involved with maintaining the animals – in particular the amount of money spent to pay the foreign trainers and handlers who were needed to care for them. One source penned by an aggrieved Ming courtier reveals that some Central Asians on the imperial payroll were given the equivalent of a senior official’s salary for looking after the lions which had been sent to Beijing from Herat and Samarkand. One particularly vociferous critic of the imperial penchant for foreign lions, a man named Lu Rong, complained that every day, each lion consumed a live goat and a bottle of sour milk and honeyed milk. The lion keepers, he moaned, all held official salaried posts and received daily allotments of food and drink from the Court of Imperial Entertainments. Lu remarked that no one wondered about who was responsible for preparing sweet and sour milk when lions were in the wild, so why should they need such delicacies now? He concluded that barbarians were taking advantage of the court and were having fun at the emperor’s expense (see Robinson 2013: 227–230). Across the ancient Near East, fishermen, bird keepers or fowlers, and shepherds cared for the domestic and temple animal stocks, but animal-keepers were certainly needed to maintain the health and security of captured animals and, where appropriate, to ensure their transportation and release (at the appropriate time and place) for royal hunts – if that indeed was their eventual fate. We know of veterinarians, the so-called ox and ass doctors, who dealt primarily with domestic and military livestock, but just how capable they were of tending to sick exotic wildlife is impossible to ascertain (see Gordon & Schwabe 2004 and Gordon 2007). We know, for instance, that in the Neo-Babylonian Mesopo-

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tamia there were special personnel for the maintenance of royal monkey ‘herds’ (the standard terminology, as we have noted, in the texts), and ration lists from Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Babylon refer to food provided for a ‘keeper of monkeys’ named Pusamiski – probably an Egyptian who may have been responsible for bringing a troop of monkeys from Egypt to Babylon in the first place. In terms of feeding the various faunal exotica, the Persepolis Fortification Texts (PFT) note how Darius the Great’s flock of exotic basbas-birds were carefully maintained by a man named Maryaddada and his colleagues and careful tallies of their food rations were documented. In PFT 280 a basbas is described as ‘Egyptian’, suggesting that the bird was imported into Iran from that important satrapy to the west. At some point the exclusive flock became big enough to be sub-divided, and Darius gifted male and female birds to his favourite wife Irtaštuna (Herodotus’ Artystone) who likewise appointed her own overseer of basbas-birds to maintain the well-being of this precious coup.26 Middle-Assyrian evidence from the full and illuminating Akkadian cuneiform archive of Mutta the Animal-Fattener shows that of the many sheep, goats, lambs, and kids which poured into royal palaces bound for the royal table or sacrificial altar, a number of the small-cattle were destined for the royal lion enclosures to feed the adult animals (ni-še) and lion cubs (şaḫ(ḫ)arāte, lit. ‘the sons of lions’). The royal household fed its lions on a regular basis, and on average they received a sheep (or its equivalent) every two days. One entry in the archive stands out for comment, as we read that king Ninurta-Tukal-Aššur ordered that an ox be gifted to Samu, a eunuch, “as the lion seized him”. In other words, the court eunuch seems to have received compensation for having been attacked by one of the king’s lions (see Postgate 2014: 191–192).

_____ 26 Exotic birds, known as basbas, are attested in Achaemenid Iran; they are found in over forty of the Fortification tablets from Persepolis (e.g. PFT 280, 697–698, 1722–1723, 2014). Christopher Tuplin (1996: 108 n. 93) has demonstrated that the basbas-birds receive the finest grain in plentiful measure; the males get more than the females. Basbas has thus been interpreted by some as ‘peacock’, the exotic Indian bird, but chickens, especially red junglefowl, would suit the bill equally well. The male junglefowl with its rich red and gold feathers is every bit as impressive as the peacock, and with its aggressive behaviour it could well stand to represent kingship. The junglefowl was certainly an exotic feature of pharaonic menageries, and it is possible that the Persians came to known them via Egypt, although India must also have been a source. On balance basbas is perhaps best translated ‘chicken’; compare the Hebrew barburim (lit. ‘fowl’) and the Arabic birbir. The bird certainly appears in glyptic art of the GraecoPersian school, and several Achaemenid seals from Iran depict pairs of cockerels in combat, suggesting that perhaps cockerels were valued in Persia for this sport. Of course, it must be conceded that the Greeks called the peacock ‘the Persian bird’ (Περσικὸς ὄρνις; see e.g. Aristophanes, Birds 485 and 707).

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Does evidence exist for the types of compounds and enclosures which Shen Defu describes so vividly in his account of the Ming royal menagerie? It is possible, I think, to trace some evidence of such structures in the Near East, although it is not as forthcoming as might be hoped and what might be gleaned about the real-life practicalities of animal captivity is only fleeting. The simple morality tale that makes up much of the Hebrew Book of Daniel, for instance, belies the many complex questions surrounding the book’s composition, part of which has its origins in the genre of court stories of the NeoAssyrian period while other sections are later (probably early Hellenistic) recreations of Achaemenid stories and court practices (see Holm 2013 for further discussion). Whatever underscores its complex structure, for our purpose Daniel (6:16–24) memorably tells the story of a royal ‘lion’s den’: “So the king [Darius] gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions’ den. The king said to Daniel, ‘May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!’ A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that Daniel’s situation might not be changed. Then the king returned to his palace and spent the night without eating and without any entertainment being brought to him. And he could not sleep. At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, ‘Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?’ Daniel answered, ‘May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me, because I was found innocent in his sight. Nor have I ever done any wrong before you, Your Majesty.’ The king was overjoyed and gave orders to lift Daniel out of the den. And when Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him, because he had trusted in his God. At the king’s command, the men who had falsely accused Daniel were brought in and thrown into the lions’ den, along with their wives and children. And before they reached the floor of the den, the lions overpowered them and crushed all their bones.”

While the story gives every indication that the lions are to be understood as real animals, and not symbols of any divine force, scholars have questioned whether the story is in fact accurate in its description of a den of lions as maintained by Persian Great Kings. Karel van der Toorn (1998) has argued that the author of Daniel has in fact altogether misunderstood what was originally a metaphorical description; a courtier might refer to his enemies at royal court as ‘a lion’s den’, and thus the expression found in Daniel must not be taken literally. His key supporting evidence is a very fragmentary Akkadian letter dated to c. 664 B.C., written by one Urad-Gula (see Parpola 1993: no. 294, obverse 39–41):

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“(…) Day and night I pray to the king in front of the lion’s pit (… which …) are not (…) with morsels (…) my heart amidst my colleagues (…).”

But the metaphor of the court as a dangerous place only works if the reality of a lion pit is understood. Urag-Gula does not maintain that the court is a pride of lions; no, for him it is within the enclosed space of the palace – the ‘pit’ – where the danger lies. It is true, however, that the tale of Daniel in the lion’s den (pit) has no exact parallels in any other ancient Near Eastern source. According to Louis Hartman and Alexander Di Lella (1985: 199), there is “no ancient evidence for the keeping of lions in underground pits”, although they compare the lion pit of Daniel 6 to the later hypogeum of the Roman circus – that is, the place in which lions were held before being brought up to the arena. But to think of a lion ‘pit’ as a cramped hole in the ground, or as some kind of subterranean prison, gets us nowhere. Better to regard the ‘pit’ or ‘den’ as a sunken pen of the type seen by Shen Defu in Beijing. In fact, a stone block from the Aten temple at Karnak in Upper Egypt provides some help for picturing sunken pens for lions (see Anus 1971). The block has a relief representation of a garden containing different kinds of animals, including lions, in pens which can be overlooked from terraces or balconies at various points and from a central large pavilion with a second-floor viewing area. On this carved relief, the perspective of the garden is that of a bird’s eye view, looking down from above, but with significant features in profile: people, animals, trees, as well as architectural elements such as columns, stairs, and windows. To the left of the scene is a compound with trees which houses antelopes that feed from a trough; cattle and calves are penned in and accompanied by an overseer. At the right of the scene, however, near the enclosure wall, there are two domed pens touching each other – one with a seated male lion below and (probably) a lioness above (although only her feet are preserved); the other pen has a reclining lioness, but there is room at the top of the pen for other felines too, although they are not preserved (see Figure 11). There is a flight of stairs of different heights for each pen, one outside the enclosure wall and the other inside it, leading to what has been interpreted as wooden doors in each pen and to what is probably a high-raised balcony of lattice-work, specifically used for viewing the animals. The pens are made to look like domed houses, but this may be a stylisation of the sunken cages or pits. It is difficult to determine the depth of any of the pens or the height of a viewing area, although Rosalind and Jack Janssen (1989: 57) compare the Amarna lion pens to medieval and Renaissance bear pits such as the one that survives in Berne,

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which in itself is reminiscent of the big cat enclosures described at the Forbidden City’s animal park.

7 Conclusion Texts and iconography from across the ancient Near East demonstrate that royalty had a keen interest in keeping exotic animals in captivity and that they wanted to show off these beasts to an appreciative public, whether in the context of ritual hunts or in menageries where the elite of the court could gaze their fill at the living exotica. Animals gifted as tribute contributed towards royal political display and status display. They served as curiosities, entertainment, and as objects of study. Conquered peoples expressed their submission to the imperial centre through gifts of lions, leopards, cheetahs, bears, tigers, giraffes, okapi, elephants, rhinoceroses, crocodiles, fine horses, and a myriad of birds including peacocks, parrots, and red jungle fowl. While the presentation of these auspicious animals is highlighted in the texts and iconography of the court, the sources are largely silent on the animals’ fate. What happened to these creatures in the long term is difficult to know. Were they slaughtered as royal sport or even as royal sacrifice? Did they even grace the royal banqueting table? Many entered into the imperial menagerie, and no doubt the more exotic and the more beautiful of the species were displayed with some considerable show, but as we found with the Ming sources, animal gifts were not always regarded as appropriate or practical gifts, being economically draining. As to issues of cruelty, or simply inappropriate containment and treatment of the beasts, we hear next to nothing. Curiously, the annals of Ashurbanipal describe the capture and humiliation of a rival potentate. The monarch records that, “to demonstrate that Ašur and the great gods, my lords, (are worthy of) the (highest) praise, I imposed (the following) heavy punishment [on my prisoner]: I put a pillory on his neck together with a bear and a dog, and made him stand on guard (duty) at the gate of Nineveh” (see Pritchard 1969: 298). Was this a public entertainment? Was the bear chained up to be mocked alongside the bound human prisoner, or was the bear a symbol of the monarch’s prowess, terrifying the human tied up alongside it? The fact that a dog was chained up with the traitorous ruler and with the captive bear suggests that all there were there as objects of scorn, derision, and mockery. Human interactions with exotic tribute animals, as with all animals, were clearly complex. These special animals solicited mixed emotions and contradictory experiences, and no doubt the ideological importance of an animal was

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sometimes out of sync with its lived reality.27 Needless to say, the notion of the ancient menagerie and ancient attitudes towards animals in captivity warrants much further attention.

Bibliography Allen, Lindsay (2005): The Persian Empire, London. Allsen, Thomas T. (2006): The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History, Philadelphia. Anus, Pierre (1971): Une domaine thébain d’époque ‘amarnienne’. Sur quelques blocs de remploi trouvés à Karnak. In: Bulletin de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale 69, 69–88. Arnold, Bettina & Derek A. Counts (eds.) (2010): The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography, Budapest. Ataç, Mehmet-Ali (2010): The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art, Cambridge. Beaux, Nathalie (1990): Le cabinet de curiosités de Thoutmosis III, Leuven. Behres-Abouseif, Doris (2014): Practicing Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate. Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World, London. Bell, Andrew (2004): Spectacular Power in the Greek and Roman City, Oxford. Bigwood, Joan M. (1993): Ctesias’ parrot. In: Classical Quarterly 43, 321–327. Breniquet, Catherine (2002): Animals in Mesopotamian art. In: Billie Jean Collins (ed.), A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, Leiden, 145–168. Briant, Pierre (2002): From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire. Winona Lake. Clunas, Craig & Jessica Harrison-Hall (eds.) (2014): Ming. 50 Years that Changed China, London. Cohen, Ada (2010): Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II. A Cultural Biography, Hanover & London. Doak, Brian R. (2014): Consider Leviathan. Narratives of Nature and Self in Job, Minneapolis. Fögen, Thorsten (2007): Antike Zeugnisse zu Kommunikationsformen von Tieren. In: Antike & Abendland 53, 39–75. Foster, Benjamin R. (2015): The Age of Agade. Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia, London. Garrison, Mark & Margaret C. Root (2001): Seals on the Persepolis Fortification Tablets. Images of Heroic Encounter (2 vols.), Chicago. Gordon, Adrian H. (2007): The observation and use of animals in the development of scientific thought in the ancient world with especial reference to Egypt. In: Linda Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity, Oxford & New York, 127–150. Gordon, Adrian H. & Calvin W. Schwabe (2002): The Quick And The Dead. Biomedical Theory in Ancient Egypt, Leiden. Grayson, A. Kirk (1991): Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods (RIMA) 1/2: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC (1114–859 BC), Toronto.

_____ 27 See especially the comments by Robinson (2013: 330–331) on shifting attitudes towards captive lions in the Ming menagerie.

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Grayson, A. Kirk (1996): Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods (RIMA) 2/3: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC (859–745 BC), Toronto. Hahn, Daniel (2005): The Tower Menagerie. The Amazing True Story of the Royal Collection of Wild Beasts, London. Hallo, William W. & K. Lawson Younger (2003): The Context of Scripture (3 vols.), Leiden. Hartman, Louis F. & Alexander A. Di Lella (1985): The Book of Daniel, New York. Helms, Mary (1993): Craft and the Kingly Ideal. Art, Trade, and Power, Austin. Holm, Tawney L. (2013): Of Courtiers and Kings. The Biblical Daniel Narratives and Ancient Story-Collections, Winona Lake. Houlihan, Patrick F. (1996): The Animal World of the Pharaohs, London. Humphreys, Patrick N. & Esmail Kahrom (1995): The Lion and the Gazelle. The Mammals and Birds of Iran, Abergavenny. Jackson, Christine (2015): Menageries in Britain 1100–2000, London. Janssen, Rosalind & Jack Janssen (1989): Egyptian Household Animals, Aylesbury. Kauz, Ralph (2012): Gift exchange between Iran, Central Asia, and China under the Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644. In: Linda Komaroff (ed.), Gifts of the Sultan. The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts, New Haven & London, 114–123. Keel, Othmar (1978): The Symbolism of the Biblical World. Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms, Winona Lake. Keel, Othmar & Christoph Uehlinger (1998): Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, Minneapolis. Kisling, Vernon N. (2000): Ancient collections and menageries. In: Vernon K. Kisling (ed.), Zoo and Aquarium History. Ancient Animal Collections to Zoological Gardens, Boca Raton, 1– 47. Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd (2013): King and Court in Ancient Persia 559–331 BCE, Edinburgh. Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd & James Robson (2010): Ctesias’ History of Persia. Tales of the Orient, London. Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd & Sian Lewis (forthcoming): The Culture of Animals in Antiquity. A Sourcebook and Commentary, London. MacKinnon, Michael (2006): Supplying exotic animals for the Roman amphitheatre games. New reconstructions combining archaeological, ancient textual, historical and ethnographic data. In: Mouseion III.6, 1–25. McDermott, William C. (1938): The Ape in Antiquity, Baltimore. Mikhail, Alan (2014): The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, Oxford. Murray, Donald (2016): The waters at the end of the world. Herodotus and Mesopotamian cosmic geography. In: Elton Barber, Stefan Bouzarovski, Christopher Pelling & Leif Isaken (eds.), New Worlds From Old Texts, Oxford, 47–60. Necipoğlu, Gülru (1991): Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power. The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, New York. Osborn, Dale J. & Jana Osbornová (1996): The Mammals of Ancient Egypt, Warminster. Parpola, Simo (1993): Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (State Archives of Assyria 10), Helsinki. Plumb, Christopher (2015): The Georgian Menagerie, London. Postgate, Nicholas (2014): Bronze Age Bureaucracy. Writing and the Practice of Governance in Assyria, Cambridge. Pritchard, James B. (1969): Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton. Robinson, David M. (2013): Martial Spectacles at the Ming Court, Cambridge, Mass.

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Root, Margaret C. (2003): The lioness of Elam. Politics and dynastic fecundity at Persepolis. In: Wouter Henkelman & Amélie Kuhrt (eds.), A Persian Perspective. Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Leiden, 9–32. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Heleen (1989): Gifts in the Persian Empire. In: Pierre Briant & Clarisse Herrenschmidt (eds.), Le tribut dans l’empire perse. Actes de la Table Ronde de Paris (12– 13 décembre 1986), Paris, 129–146. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Heleen (1998): Bāji. In: Maria Brosius & Amélie Kuhrt (eds.), Studies in Persian History. Essays in Memory of David M. Lewis, Leiden, 23–34. Scholfield, Alwyn F. (1958–1959): Aelian: On the Characteristics of Animals. With an English translation (3 vols.), London & Cambridge, Mass. Sehm, Gunther G. (1991): Persepolis bluebuck out of the blue. In: Cryptozoology 10, 121–124. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2007): Beastly spectacles in the ancient Mediterranean world. In: Linda Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity, Oxford & New York, 97–126. Smith, Alison, David B. Brown & Carol Jacobi (2015): Artist and Empire. Facing Britain’s Imperial Past, London. Stoneman, Richard (2015): Xerxes. A Persian Life, New Haven & London. Strawn, Brent A. (2005): What is Stronger than a Lion? Leonine Imagery and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible and the Near East, Göttingen. Thomason, Allison Karmel (2005): Luxury and Legitimation. Royal Collecting in Ancient Mesopotamia, Aldershot. Tomes, Roger (2005): ‘I Have Written to My Lord the King’. Secular Analogies for the Psalms, Sheffield. Trinquier, Jean (2002): Localisation et fonctions des animaux sauvages dans l’Alexandrie lagide. La question du ‘zoo d’Alexandrie’. In: Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité 114, 861–919. Tuplin, Christopher (1996): Achaemenid Studies, Stuttgart. Valdez, Raul & Robert G. Tuck Jr. (1980): On the identification of the animals accompanying the ‘Ethiopian’ delegation in the bas-reliefs of the Apadana at Persepolis. In: Iran 17, 156–157. Valdez, Raul & Robert G. Tuck Jr. (1989): Persepolis. Nilgai, not okapi. In: Cryptozoology 8, 146–149. van der Toorn, Karel (1998): In the lions’ den. The Babylonian background of a biblical motif. In: Catholic Biblical Quarterly 60, 626–640. Veldhuis, Niek (2004): Religion, Literature and Scholarship. The Sumerian Composition ‘Nanše and the Birds’. With a catalogue of Sumerian bird names, Leiden. Veltre, Thomas (1996): Menageries, metaphors, and meanings. In: Robert J. Hoage & William A. Deiss (eds.), New Worlds, New Animals. From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century, Baltimore, 19–32. Völling, Elisabeth (2006): Die Goldschale im kulturellen Kontext. Eine archäologische Betrachtung. In: Hermann Born & Elisabeth Völling (eds.), Gold im Alten Orient. Technik, Naturwissenschaft, Altorientalistik, Würzburg, 93–118. Wilson, Nigel G. (1994): Photius: The Bibliotheca. A selection translated with notes, London.

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Illustrations

Figure 1: The Great King as Master of Animals; Achaemenid cylinder seal; Iran, c. 500 B.C. (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 56.157.2) Drawings and illustrations here and below by the author Kapitel_13_Bild_01.tif

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Kapitel_13_Bild_02.tif Figure 2: The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, depicting foreign princes paying homage to the Assyrian king, tribute animals (Bactrian camels), a hunting scene, and tribute bearers. Other reliefs on the corresponding three sides include depictions of tribute horses, apes, and an elephant.

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Kapitel_13_Bild_03.tif Figure 3: Indus Valley seal found in Mesopotamia depicting exotic Indian animals, c. 3000 B.C.

Kapitel_13_Bild_04.tif Figure 4: Egyptian painted relief of three captive Syrian bears; from the mortuary temple of Sahure at Abusir, Fifth Dynasty

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Kapitel_13_Bild_05.tif Figure 5: Egyptian tomb relief depicting a captive leopard and lion; Mastaba of Ptahhotep at Saqqara; Fifth Dynasty

Kapitel_13_Bild_06.tif Figure 6: Elamites bring tribute gifts to the Achaemenid Great King, including a lioness and her two male cubs; eastern staircase of the Apadana, Persepolis, Iran

Kapitel_13_Bild_07.tif Figure 7: Tribute bearers from north Syria bring live monkeys to king Ashurnasirpal; gypsum wall panel from Nimrud (Kalhu), Iraq, North West Palace of Ashurnasirpal

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Kapitel_13_Bild_08.tif Figure 8: Ethiopians bring tribute gifts to the Achaemenid Great King, including ivory tusks and a living okapi; eastern staircase of the Apadana, Persepolis, Iran

Kapitel_13_Bild_09.tif Figure 9: Captive rhinoceros; damaged frieze from the temple of Armant, Upper Egypt; Nineteenth Dynasty

Kapitel_13_Bild_10.tif Figure 10: Persian fallow deer; Egyptian wall relief from the Botanical Garden of Thutmose III at Karnak; Eighteenth Dynasty

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Kapitel_13_Bild_11.tif Figure 11: Lion pits and other animal enclosures; talatat block from the Aten temple at Karnak, Eighteenth Dynasty

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Edmund Thomas

Urban Geographies of Human-Animal Relations in Classical Antiquity Edmund Thomas Urban Geographies of Human-Animal Relations in Classical Antiquity Abstract: Understanding of the urban space of ancient cities has been subject to an anthropocentric bias with public and private space considered almost exclusively in terms of interactions between its human inhabitants. Yet, for example, even the grandiose House of the Faun at Pompeii, universally interpreted by modern archaeologists as an opulent residence designed for the comforts and social entertainments of its human residents, had the bones of two cows in it close to its principal peristyle. Ancient cities were, in fact, inhabited by a wide assortment of species, even wider than modern cities, which were vital for the utility, sustenance and entertainment of ancient communities and had a major impact on the perception of urban spaces. This complex urban ecology produced similar conflicts to those today regarding the competition for urban spaces and raised fundamental questions about which animals were allowed where and under what conditions. Urban animals in antiquity, as today, were difficult to discipline, frequently transgressed legal and cultural ordering systems, and roamed the city, sometimes uncontrollably. Just as modern geographers consider human beings too as “animals”, and part of the urban “zoo” that comprises the modern city, so in the ancient world the boundaries between human and non-human animals were sometimes transgressed. It has been said that ‘hunter-gatherer’ cultures generally view the distinction between human and animal as permeable and easily crossed, part of a cosmology in which humans and animals are supposed to co-exist in a relation of trust, so that, if humans behave well towards animals, animals can be trusted to provide for humans, to give their lives for human sustenance. Other kinds of society, by contrast, are characterised by a relation of enmity, distrust and domination, which creates rigid orthodoxies about the distinctions drawn between humans and animals and presupposes a need to live a life of ‘being against’ animals, rather than being ‘with’ them. This paper considers the transgressions in urban space in Rome and other cities in the Roman world and assesses the emergence of positive and negative attitudes towards animals through the street experiences of antiquity. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-014

1 Introduction Over the last twenty years the anthropocentric character of twentieth-century urban theory has been modified by a steady stream of writings in urban geography, anthropology and zoology which have brought animals back into the city. In the late 1990s, in the wake of a rising focus on the sociology of animal-human relations across different cultures by scholars from a range of disciplines including the social anthropologist Tim Ingold, the philosopher Mary Midgley and the animal welfare expert James Serpell, animals also started to enter the urban theory agenda when the urban scientist Jennifer Wolch started to show ‘why DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-014

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animals matter (even in cities)’. The historical geographer Peter Atkins highlighted the role of animals in urban history with a conference session in 2006 which developed into his 2012 book Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories. The urban geographers Christopher Philo and Chris Wilbert have investigated more closely the spaces where human-animal relations (or ‘humanimal relations’ for short) are played out in the contemporary city (see Philo & Wilbert 2000). The American feminist Donna Haraway (2008) interrogated more closely the meetings between human and non-human animals in city spaces, and this work has been taken further by the Swedish sociologist Tora Holmberg, whose recent book Urban Animals (2015) considers how modern communities function as “zoocities”. Ancient urban studies, however, remain steadfastly anthropocentric, and only the zoo-archaeologist Michael MacKinnon (2014), taking forward the older work of Rosemary-Margaret Luff (1984), has started to reconstruct more closely the role of animals in ancient city spaces.1 In this paper I shall tentatively start to consider how the extensive recent work in other disciplines might help to provide a theoretical framework for reconsidering animal-human relations in the urban geographies of classical antiquity. In studies of ancient urbanism, the anthropocentric bias is also prevalent; thus Ray Laurence’s study of “Street activity and public interaction” at Pompeii (1994: ch. 6) is concerned with exclusively human interaction. My focus will be mainly on the Roman world, but I will also consider evidence from Greece and the Near East. Understandings of what is meant by an animal here are variable, but I take this in the widest sense to include all non-human species, including birds, fish, amphibians and insects, as well as mammals. As Peter Atkins (2012) argues, the conceptualisation of the presence of animals in human cities has been driven by a human perspective. Animals are classified in four categories: (a) useful animals, for traction or meat; (b) animals for human enjoyment, such as wild garden song birds; (c) animals that are desirable, for example as companions; (d) transgressive species, such as rats, cockroaches, and pigeons, regarded as “vermin” or “animals out of place” in the city. The anthropocentric bias in the viewing of animals in the city has led Holmberg in her recent book to look instead at “the multi-species experiences and politics of living in a city” (2015: 119). As Nigel Clark (2003: 188) has written:

_____ 1 For studies of specific sites, see, for example, Cocca & al. (1995), De Cupere (2001), and Peters (1998).

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“For by far the larger part of urban history, our species has willingly shared its urban spaces with the animals we prefer to feed on. In ancient and medieval cities, the proximity of pigs, fowl, goats, cattle and densely packed human bodies offered disease organisms the perfect conditions to make the leap between species – and from there to surge through urban populations, to spread from town to town and across whole continents.”

In this paper I want to argue that ancient cities too were inhabited by a wide assortment of species, far wider in fact than modern cities, which contributed to urban life and had a major impact on the perception of urban spaces. This complex urban ecology produced similar conflicts to those today regarding the use of urban spaces and questions such as which animals were allowed where and under what conditions. Urban animals in antiquity, as today, were difficult to discipline, frequently transgressed legal and cultural ordering systems, and roamed the city, sometimes uncontrollably. And, just as it is fundamental to Holmberg’s approach that human beings too should be considered as “animals”, and part of the urban “zoo” that comprises the modern city, so in the ancient world the boundaries between human and non-human animals are sometimes transgressed. Indeed, it has been said that ‘hunter-gatherer’ cultures generally view the distinction between human and animal as permeable and easily crossed, part of a cosmology in which humans and animals are supposed to co-exist in a relation of trust, so that, if humans behave well towards animals, animals can be trusted to provide for humans, to give their lives for human sustenance. Other kinds of society, by contrast, are characterised by a relation of enmity, distrust and domination, which creates rigid orthodoxies about the distinctions drawn between humans and animals and presupposes a need to live a life of ‘being against’ animals, rather than being ‘with’ them (see Ingold 1994). Along these lines Philo and Wilbert (2000) have suggested that in the modern world the rationalisation of human-animal relations is played out differently in its various geographical spaces and zones: the city is the zone for pets, the countryside for livestock, and the wilderness for more exotic animals. Such schemes are, of course, simplistic. The sociologist Mike Michael (2006: 124) has noted that these zones are far from fixed and can become hybridised, for instance when exotic spaces are seen in the urban spaces of the zoo, defined as a space for animals no longer in the wild (see Philo & Wilbert 2000: 13), or transgressed, when animals travel into spaces where they do not ‘belong’ and become subject to what Adrian Franklin (1999) has called the “zoological gaze”, making the urban the potential saviour of the wild (see Kendall 2011: 129–130). Not all animals fit easily into the binary scheme “nature/culture: wild/domestic” which conditioned ancient understandings of the non-human animal kingdoms as much as it still does modern thought. Haraway (2008: 216–220) has referred to overlapping “contact zones”.

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2 Boundaries in urban space between animal and human How far these divisions in animal occupation of human spaces can be considered appropriate to the ancient world is a matter of debate. Doubt has been cast over whether the most famous ancient example of a zoological garden in the Graeco-Roman world, that allegedly established by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the royal quarter of Ptolemaic Alexandria and famed, among other things, for its collection of exotic birds, can in fact be considered a “zoo” in the modern sense intended for scientific observation (BNJ 234 F2a [= FGrHist 234 F2, taken from Athenaeus, Deipn. 14 654b–d]; my translation):2 Πτολεμαῖος ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐν τῶι [ι]β τῶν ῾Υπομνημάτων περὶ τῶν ἐν ᾽Αλεξανδρείαι βασιλείων λέγων καὶ περὶ τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς ζῴων τρεφομένων φησίν· «τά τε τῶν φασιανῶν, οὓς τετάρους ὀνομάζουσιν, [οὓς] οὐ μόνον ἐκ Μηδίας μετεπέμπετο, ἀλλὰ καὶ νομάδας ὄρνιθας ὑποβαλὼν ἐποίησε πλῆθος, ὥστε καὶ σιτεῖσθαι· τὸ γὰρ βρῶμα πολυτελὲς ἀποφαίνουσιν.» αὕτη τοῦ λαμπροτάτου βασιλέως φωνή, ὃς οὐδὲ φασιανικοῦ ὄρνιθός ποτε γεύσασθαι ὡμολόγησεν, ἀλλ᾽ ὥσπερ τι κειμήλιον ἀνακείμενον εἶχε τούσδε τοὺς ὄρνιθας. εἰ δὲ ἑωράκει ὡς ἡμῶν ἑκάστωι εἷς ἐστι παρακείμενος (…) προσαναπεπληρώκει ἂν ταῖς πολυθρυλήτοις ἱστορίαις τῶν ῾Υπομνημάτων τούτων τῶν εἰκοσιτεσσάρων καὶ ἄλλην μίαν. “King Ptolemy, in the twelfth [emended by Jacoby to ‘second’: see BNJ F2b] book of his Notebooks, speaking about the palace at Alexandria and the animals reared in it, says, ‘Concerning the pheasants which are called tetaroi, he [Ptolemy II] not only sent for these from Media, but bred them with Numidian birds and produced a large number to be eaten, for they produce expensive food. These are the words of that most distinguished king, who admitted that he never even tasted a Phasian bird, but kept as a treasure these birds that are here.’ If he [Ptolemy VIII] had seen what is available to each one of us [a phrase of elaboration deleted], he would have filled up another book in the well-known narratives of his Notebooks with its 24 books.”

Jean Trinquier (2002) has preferred to consider this simply a collection of exotic animals publicly displayed at royal festivals. Even so, the intrusion of the wild and exotic into the urban space of Alexandria several times a year should make us think very differently about how the relations between humans and animals were manifested in urban space. Trinquier’s answer, however, sidesteps the question of how these animals fitted into the human world on a daily basis.

_____ 2 Discussed by Fraser (1972 [vol. 1]: 15), based on FGrHist 234 F2. Further details in Fraser (1972 [vol. 2]: 30 n. 76, 743 n. 181). See also Hubbell (1935).

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Outside these limited festival contexts, the location of these animals foreign to the normal experience of the inhabitants of Alexandria and far removed from their own natural habitats raises questions about the variability of humananimal interaction. The attraction of these exotic, savage animals, captured and purchased at great expense and displayed to the people and royal guests, lay not just in their novelty, but because they belonged to an unknown, dangerous world. Apart from Dumont (2001: 332), who questions the existence of a zoo at Alexandria altogether, most historians have assumed that these exotic animals were kept in a zoological garden proper, but there are other kinds of places in which they might have been kept. Zoos as such have a restricted sense, developed only in the early nineteenth century and adapting the earlier tradition of menageries to the new requirements of the aesthetics of the picturesque garden;3 animals here are presented both for public curiosity and for scientific observation, in the form of a park with cages, enclosures and basins reserved for the animals. While the modern concept of zoo is defined in terms of a unified and permanent location with purpose of display for pedagogical, didactic or scientific motives, the animals of Ptolemaic Alexandria belong to a different context. Callixenus’ account of the procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus describes a re-enactment of the Triumph of Dionysus, with the god shown lying on an elephant ornamented with gold and followed by donkeys, and carts drawn by elephants, billy-goats, hornless antelopes, oryxes, bubales, ostriches, ‘onelaphoi’, and onagers, then 2,400 Indian dogs, Molossians, Hyrcanians, and other breeds, sheep from Ethiopia, Arabia, Euboea, zebus, Ethiopian cows, a white bear, leopards, wildcats, caracals, a giraffe, and a rhinoceros (see Athenaeus, Deipn. 5 200d–201c). Although Ptolemy Philadelphus is depicted by Strabo as having a passion for science (Geogr. 17.1.5: φιλιστορῶν), this was not profound scientific interest, but a desire to be seen as having discovered the unknown: bringing a giraffe into the streets of Alexandria gave him the not inconsiderable prestige of a πρῶτος εὑρετής. As Trinquier (2002: 872) observes, the animals brought to Alexandria have the appearance of the dramatis personae of a mythological theatre performance rather than the elements of a scientific collection. Yet they gained their greatest impact from the transgressive effect of passing through the stadium and the streets of the peopled city. In the Roman world this sense of ‘transgression’ is evident in the accounts of prodigies defined by the unfamiliar intrusion of both wild and domestic ani-

_____ 3 See, for example, Hoage & Deiss (1996) and Baratay & Hardouin-Fugier (1998).

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mals into areas of urban space from which they were normally excluded. Predatory wolves are particularly singled out as dangers for the modern city (see Clark 2003: 188) and were also a menace in ancient Rome. In 269 B.C. wolves ran into the centre of Rome with a corpse which they had ripped apart; in 207 B.C. a wolf entered the town of Capua and mangled a sentry (see Livy 27.37.3 and Orosius, Hist. 4.4.1–2). To some extent such prodigies can be viewed in terms of ‘liminality’, violating the boundary between wild and civilised (see Rosenberger 2007: 295). Yet such occurrences were very real epiphenomena of ancient existence, and similar prodigies feature domestic creatures in unfamiliar but plausible settings. Thus the terrifying prodigies of the winter of 218 B.C., after the disastrous military defeat at Trebia, included not only the rumour of a wolf in Gaul grabbing a sentry’s sword from its scabbard and running off with it, but also, strikingly, an ox seen on the third floor of a house in the Forum Boarium (see Livy 21.62.3). What is most notable about this text, however, is that it encourages the reader to see the intervention of this animal in urban space not solely from a human, ‘transgressive’ viewpoint, but from the perspective of the animal itself: not only did it climb to that height “of its own accord” (sua sponte), implying an intentionality usually applied only to humans, but, once it became marooned at the top of the building, it was “alarmed by the noise of the human occupants” more than the shrieking humans were by the appearance of the animal, and its resulting fall from that level (sese deiecisse) contains more than a hint of tragedy or Stoic self-immolation. If this seems counter-intuitive, there are other instances of non-human animal intuition in the experience of urban space. One of the most notorious is the Elder Pliny’s account (Nat. hist. 8.208) of how pigs were considered, not just on one occasion, but apparently in general, to have been smart enough to learn their way to the forum for sale in the market and back home again – assuming, of course, that they made it back. A similar perspective is found with regard to the pack animals of Late Antique Antioch, of whom the Emperor Julian writes (Mis. 26 355b–c; my translation): οὐδὲ ἀπέβλεψας ὅση καὶ μέχρι τῶν ὄνων ἐστὶν ἐλευθερία παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς καὶ τῶν καμήλων; ἄγουσί τοι καὶ ταύτας οἱ μισθωτοὶ διὰ τῶν στοῶν ὥσπερ τὰς νύμφας· οἱ γὰρ ὑπαίθριοι στενωποὶ καὶ αἱ πλατεῖαι τῶν ὁδῶν οὐκ ἐπὶ τούτῳ δήπου πεποίηνται, τῷ χρῆσθαι αὐταῖς τοὺς κανθηλίους, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκεῖναι μὲν αὐτὸ δὴ τοῦτο κόσμου τινὸς ἕνεκα πρόκεινται καὶ πολυτελείας, χρῆσθαι δὲ ὑπ᾽ ἐλευθερίας οἱ ὄνοι βούλονται ταῖς στοαῖς, εἴργει δὲ αὐτοὺς οὐδεὶς οὐδενός, ἵνα μὴ τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἀφέληται· οὕτως ἡ πόλις ἐστὶν ἐλευθέρα. “Have you not seen how much independence there is in the citizens, right down to the asses and camels? The renters lead them through the porticoes as though they are brides, for the unroofed alleys and broad highways have certainly not been made for the use of

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these pack animals, but are provided merely for show and indulgence; but in their independence the asses prefer to use the porticoes, and no one keeps them out of any one of these, so as not to rob them of their independence; so independent is our city!”

Navigating one’s way through a Roman town, then, was not just a human concern. Such accounts provide an important corrective to the prevailing distinctions in perceptions of human-animal relations, in both modern and ancient urban contexts, between ‘civilised’/’rational’ and ‘animal’/’bestial’ (see Philo & Wilbert 2000: 15). More typical are the reverse experiences of urban space, from a human perspective, a human world in which animals provide not just a beneficial means of transportation, but also sometimes an impediment. Thus Ausonius, in his Epistle to Paulus, complains of “a mucky sow in flight, (…) a mad dog in fell career, (…) [and] oxen too weak for the waggon” (Epist. 6.25–26). The first two images are echoes, virtually word for word, of Horace’s “mad dog” and “mud-bespattered sow” (Epist. 2.2.75). This picture of urban life goes back to the Republic when Plautus evokes soldiers leading donkeys through “the busy streets” (Epid. 208–209). Such inconveniences belong among the animal nuisances which, as Peter Atkins (2012: 21–46) has shown, contributed to perceptions of urban space in nineteenth-century London. Many of these are recognisable in pre-industrial cities, including ancient Rome, for which Alex Scobie (1986) has set out the textual evidence. Particularly prevalent was the dung on the streets, not just ‘matter out of place’ contravening the implicit established order of human urbanism (Douglas 1966: 35), but with a positive and constructive value in urban farming, as both modern writers and ancient texts have indicated; non-human animal excrement had a utility, not just rotten fish to make garum, but potions made from wild boar’s dung (see Beard 2010: 56–57; MacKinnon 2013: 126; Kyle 1998: 190). If the noises that Seneca imagines outside his house in Rome (Epist. 56.1– 2) are human irritants, the barking of guard dogs and the bellowing of animals brought to market or sacrifice also contributed to the incessant noise of the ancient city (see Howe 2014: 144–145). Yet this urban noise and dirt had a value (see Atkins 2012: 33). As Libanius reminds the reader in his Fiftieth Oration (For the peasantry: About forced labour), pack animals had an important worth as property, hired out for income (see also Libanius, Autob. 259). In Egypt too it was common for the inhabitants of metropoleis to own or hire animal stables, with members of the ‘urban middle class’ regularly involved in buying and selling donkeys (see Adams 2007: 100). Yet these aspects of animals as nuisance and as display of the savage and exotic in the world of the city are not incompatible. Thus even in the Grand Procession of the Ptolemies the triumphal and warlike aspects of Dionysus are satirised and made ironic by the donkeys’ braying (see Pàmias 2004 on Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Cat. 11).

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Urban animals included not just those that were of instrumental or utilitarian value, but others that can be considered pests. Vermin such as rats and mice were a frequent menace. Juvenal writes of “Irish mice gnawing at divine poems” (Sat. 3.207); Cicero refers to decaying shops abandoned not just by the tenants, but even by the mice (Ad Att. 14.9). Gregory Aldrete (2007: 127) imagines hordes of rats, displaced by floods, entering buildings from the river. Such animals had no respect for the boundaries of religious precincts. Mice were also found gnawing at gold in the temple of Jupiter at Cumae and at a gold crown in Antium (see Livy 27.23.2 and 30.2.10). What is interpreted as prodigious was a common consequence of the insanitary nature of the ancient city. The late Republican levels associated with the Temple of Apollo alongside the forum at Pompeii yielded the remains of several mice (see King 2002: 435). Feral cats and dogs also wandered freely through the streets and open spaces of ancient towns as in modern urban spaces. Cat bones have been found in the forum excavations at Pompeii, as have the skulls of a weasel, which before the widespread introduction of the cat played a similar role in catching vermin (see King 2002: 426, 436). The find spots, including the precinct of the Temple of Apollo, suggest that these creatures may not have been domestic pets, but feral cats, analogous to those common in modern urban space like the notorious cats of the Largo Argentina in Rome (see Holmberg 2014). The guard dogs of Pompeii are celebrated, such as the imposing species painted on a pillar in the front hall of the Caupona of Sotericus. If collared guard dogs were tied to their post, hunting hounds might accompany their owners through the streets, like Arrian’s dog escorting its master to the gymnasium and back, running on ahead but turning round intermittently to check that he had not deviated from the route (Cyn. 5.1–6; see Fögen, in this volume). So they exhibited a familiarity with urban space as the pigs mentioned by Pliny the Elder (see above). Funerary reliefs that show the deceased with their dogs, such as the young Moschion from Classical Attica, are supported by the evidence of actual burials going back to the Mesolithic Period.4 Bone and dental remains from Pompeii also

_____ 4 Relief: Malibu 73.AA.117; see Grossman (2001: 18–20 no. 5). On Mesolithic burials at Skateholm in Sweden, see Larsson (1993: e.g. 53): “A red deer antler was laid along [a dog’s] spine and three flint blades were placed in the hip region, in precisely the same fashion as that in which such objects appear in male human graves (…) a decorated antler hammer was laid on the dog’s chest”. See also Larsson (1991) and Larsson (1994). On Mesolithic animal burials more generally, see Grünberg (2013).

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attest lapdogs, alongside the larger breeds used for hunting, sentries, and shepherding (see Zedda & al. 2006). But the less memorialised stray dogs were probably just as common.5

3 Animal dangers It is a feature of human-animal relations in the modern city that places can be perceived as dangerous because of the presence of animals (see Gillespie, Leffler & Lerner 1996). In some urban locations human interactions are altered by the presence of dogs perceived to be aggressive, which problematises ordinary conceptions of safe and unsafe places and of public and private space. This human perspective finds further support from cases outside Rome where human injuries are blamed on animal violence. Accidents involving donkeys, a species considered particularly unresponsive to human demands, were especially common. A petition submitted by a lady called Thermouthion to the strategos of Oxyrhynchus gives a graphic account of a road accident involving her slave-girl, Peina (P. Oxy. L 3555, in Bowman & al. 1983: 142–145; republished by Llewelyn 1994: 163–164; his translation, with slight modifications): (unintelligible) ⟦Κλαυδίῳ⟧ Ἀσκληπε( ) στρατηγῷ παρὰ Θερμουθίου τῆς Πλουτάρχ(ου) τῶν ἀπʼ Ὀξυρύγχων πόλεως. θεραπαινίδιόν μου οἰκογενέ[ς], οὗ ἔστιν ὄνομα Πεῖνα, ἠγάπησα καὶ ἐτημέλησα ὡς θυγάτριο(ν) ἐπʼ ἐλπίδι τοῦ ἡλικίας γενόμενον ἔχειν με γηροβοσκόν, γυναῖκα ἀβοήθητον οὖσαν καὶ μόνην. τοῦτο δὲ διάγων τὴν πόλιν τῇ ιθ τοῦ διελθόντος μηνὸς πρὸς μάθησιν ᾠδήσεώς τε καὶ ἄλλων, παιδαγωγούσης αὐτὴν Εὐχαρίου

5

10

_____ 5 The archaeological evidence is best for Roman military settlements in Germany, e.g. at Vindelicum just west of Augsburg (see Peters 1998: 186–187) and at Künzing (Quintana) in lower Bavaria (see Pöllath 2010: 254–256), where probably stray dogs were interred in the disused wooden amphitheatre of a military settlement; many of the dogs found died young.

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τινὸς ἀπελευθέρας Λογγείνου, ἥτις ὑπὸ τὴν ὥραν τῆς ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας μου ἀφείξεως εἰσεκόμισεν τὴν Πεῖναν ἔχουσαν δεδεμένην τὴν δεξιὰν χεῖρα, καὶ πυθομένῃ παρʼ αὐτῆς τὸ αἴτιον ἀπήγγειλέν μοι ὑπό τινος παιδαρίο(υ) Πολυδεύκους ἀκολουθοῦντος ὄνῳ καταβεβλῆσθαι ταύτην, ὡς ἐκ τούτου ὅλην αὐτῆς τὴν χεῖρα συντετρεῖφθαι καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα μέρη λελωβῆσθαι, τὰ δʼ ἄλλα ἀχανῆ εἶναι. καὶ τότε μὴ ἔχουσα τὸν προιστανόμενον τῆς στρατηγί(ας) κατεχώρισα ἀναφόριον περὶ τούτου, οἰομένη παροδικὸν εἶναι τὸ ἕλκος, ἀνίατον δὲ ὂν καὶ μὴ φέρουσα τὴν περὶ τῆς θεραπαίνης ὀδύνην, τῷ αὐτὴν μὲν κινδυνεύειν τῷ ζῆν, ἐμὲ δὲ δυσθυμίᾳ τοῦ ζῆν περιεχομένην ὅπερ ἐκ τῶν φανερῶν καὶ σὺ ἐποψόμε\νο̣ ς̣/ ἀγανακτήσεις ἀναγκαίως οὖν καταπεφευγυῖα ἐπὶ σὲ τὸν ἀντιλήμπτορα ἀξιῶι βοηθῆναι καὶ τυχεῖν τῆς ἀπὸ [σ]ο̣ ῦ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣[ ̣ ̣] ̣[ – ca.? – ]

15

20

25

30

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40

“To Asclep…, strategus, from Thermuthion, daughter of Plutarchus, from the city of Oxyrhynchus. My home-born slave, whose name is Peina, I loved and looked after as a daughter in the hope that when she is of age I will have her to tend my old age, being myself a woman without help and alone. She (was) crossing the city on the 19th day of the past month to learn singing and other things with Eucharion, a certain freedwoman of Longinus, accompanying her, who at the time of their departure from my house brought Peina in with her right arm bound, and when I asked her the reason she told me that she had been thrown down by a certain slave (of?) Polydeuces whilst driving a donkey so that as a result of this her whole arm had been crushed, very many parts (of her body) injured and for the rest she has become dumb. As at that time I did not have an official in charge of the strategia (to appeal to), I did (not?) lodge a petition concerning this matter, thinking that the wound was passing, but as it is incurable and I do not bear up under grief for the slave because of her being at risk of her life and me encompassed by despair of her life – by which clearly you also, when you see it, will be troubled – necessarily therefore having fled to you my defender I ask to be helped and to receive your [beneficence] (…).”

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The girl had been walking to a music lesson and was trampled by donkeys, injuring her right arm. As with many legal disputes, what exactly happened is unclear. The petitioner blamed the slave Polydeuces who had been driving the donkeys, but her petition had been delayed since the incident, and it is not clear why. The editors of the text (Bowman & al. 1983: 144–145) suggest that the girl may have got in the way of the donkey, which consequently trod on her hand. If this was the case, it again provides an instance of situations focalised from a human perspective where an alternative non-human animal perspective can be easily imagined. Cases like this were so frequent in urban situations that Roman lawyers devised a particular way of dealing with damage caused by animals to persons or property. Such damage was considered to be pauperies (“impoverishment”), defined as “damage done by a four-footed animal” or as “damage done without any legal wrong on the part of the doer”, because an animal is considered devoid of reasoning and therefore incapable of committing a legal wrong.6 A statute in the Twelve Tables provided that, “if a four-footed animal is said to have committed pauperies, (…) either that which has caused the offence (that is, the animal which caused harm) should be handed over, or compensation should be offered for the harm” (Dig. 9.1.1 pr.). When a horse kicked someone, it did so because its wildness had been excited (commota feritate); a mule did damage “because of excessive fierceness” (propter nimiam ferociam); and when a dog broke free of its lead and harmed a passer-by, it did so from its “wildness” (Dig. 9.1.1.5: asperitate sua). Yet if it could have been better restrained by someone else, the animal’s owner was liable to pay the victim compensation. The underlying wildness of the animal gave it a certain agency. A similar case occurred at Parium in north-western Asia Minor, where a six-year-old boy was killed by a horse “in a built-up street”. The inscriptions provide details of the event.7 In large letters at the top is recorded the memorial to a lady and her family (my translation): ‘Yπόμνημα· Π(όπλιος) Ναίβιος Μαξιμος Φλ(αβίᾳ) Κλυμένῃ θρεψάσῃ καὶ τοῖς προενκειμένοις πτώμασιν κατεσκεύασεν τὴν σορόν· εἰ δὲ τις ἕτερον σῶμα τολμήσει βαλεῖν ἢ τὴν σορὸν ματακεινῆσαι, δώσει ἰς τὸ ἱερώτατον ταμεῖον προστείμου (δηνάρια) ,β καὶ τῆι Παριανῶν πόλει (δηνάρια) ,α.

_____ 6 Paul., Fest. 220 M.: Pauperies damnum dicitur, quod quadrupes facit. See further Dig. 9.1.1.3: damnum sine iniuria facientis datum. 7 SEG 15.765 (Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 4449). See also Frisch (1983: 37–41, no. 52).

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“Memorial. P(ublius) Naevius Maximus built the sarcophagus for Flavia Clymene his foster-mother and those who died before her; if someone dares to lay another body or to move the sarcophagus, he will pay as punishment 2,000 denarii to the imperial treasury and 1,000 denarii to the city of Parium.”

Among those who predeceased her, an epitaph in elegiac couplets, added below in smaller letters, singles out a young child (my translation): Κωφὴ μὲν λίθος εἰμί, βοῶ δ’ ὑπό γράμμασι τοῖσδε σοί, παροδεῖτα, μαθεῖν ὅντιν’ ἔχω λαγόσιν· ‘Ηλείου τόδε σῆμα, τὸν ἥρπασε νηλεόθυμος Μοῖρα καὶ εἰς Ἀΐδεω πέμψε τάχιστα δόμους, ὅν ποτε κουρίζοντα κατ’ εὐδώμητον ἀγυιάν ἵππος ἀελλοπόδης μέρσε φίλοιο φάους. Μοῖρα με νηλειὴ καὶ λοίγιος ἵππος ἀπέκτα, ὅν κατ’ ἐμεῖο φάους ἤγαγον Αἰνεάδαι. ‘Ηλεῖος δ’ ὄνομα ἔσχον, ἄγων δὲ ἕβδομον λυκάβαντα αἴλινος ὠκύμορος ἤλυθον εἰς Ἀΐδαν. Ξεῖνε, μαθὼν παρόδευε τίνος τόδε σῆμα τέτυκται γράμμ’ ἀναλεξάμενος ἐν πλακὶ ληινέῃ· ἓξ μὲν ἄγων λυκάβαντας ἀπέστιχον· οὔνομα δ’ ἦν μοι ‘Ηλεῖος, Μοίρης δ’ οἰκτροτάτης ἔτυχο[ν]. ἵππος γὰρ μ’ ἔκτεινε καὶ εἰς ἀδίαυλον ἔπεμψ Ἅιδαν καὶ Λήθης πικρὸν ἔγευσεν ὕδωρ. Χαῖρε, ‘Ελλησποντιανέ.

“I am a dumb stone, but with these letters I call on you, passer-by, to learn what I hold within my flanks. This is the monument of Heleius, who was snatched away by ruthless Fate and very speedily sent to the halls of Hades, who once as a young man was robbed of dear daylight by a storm-footed horse on a built-up street. I was killed by cruel Fate and a deadly horse driven against my life by sons of Aeneas. Heleius was my name, and in my seventh year I came tragically and prematurely to Hades. Stranger, go on our way knowing whose monument has been constructed here, reading the letters on this stone slab. Spending six years of my life I have passed away; my name was Heleius, and I met a most pitiful fate. A horse killed me and sent me to Hades from where there is no return and made me taste Lethe’s bitter water. Farewell, Hellespontianus.”

The epitaph relates the death of a six-year-old boy, Heleius Hellespontianus, and behind the plaintive tragic language can be understood the circumstances of a dreadful road accident: a horse driven by Romans appears to have struck

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the little boy on a busy street of the Hellespontine town of Parium.8 Yet what may seem remarkable here is that there is no apparent bitterness against the human drivers. Indeed, although it seems strange to identify them as Romans on a tomb built by a man with fine colonial tria nomina for a child who may also have been considered Roman, this identification is made in a heroising language: the patronymic Aeneadae (“sons of Aeneas”) is an intertextual echo of archaic epic and appropriate enough as a denomination for Romans in a town that was still sometimes considered to be part of the Troad.9 Nor, as with other accidents memorialised in funerary inscriptions, is the responsibility attributed to a divine agency, the “Fate of the Streets” (Μοίρας Εἰνοδίης) or the victim’s own actions.10 Instead, the repeated structure of the text, three times bitterly giving the victim’s gentilician name and the chilling fact of his killing, assigns responsibility for that event to the horse. Swift of foot (ἀελλοπόδης, literally “storm-footed”), but also “deadly” (λοίγιος), the horse is both a divine force of epic – the epithet “storm-footed”, in the variant form ἀελλοπός, is used in archaic epic of Iris (Homer, Il. 8.409, 24.77 and 24.159) and of the horses of the messenger Argeiophontes (Hom. Hymn. Aphr. 217) – and an instrument of death. The human agents are similarly absent from the pictorial record of the boy’s death on his sarcophagus. The low-relief images inscribed over the text (see Fig. 1) visualise and memorialise this incident as a confrontation between boy and horse, who both stand on pedestals. The boy is shown nude and recoiling from the horse, which rears towards him on its hind-legs with the bit between its teeth. The pair is flanked by standing images of a veiled woman and a man, also on pedestals, at the edges of the sarcophagus. The texts are both carved around these reliefs, suggesting that the latter were carved first onto the sarcophagus before it was inscribed for the specific deceased.

_____ 8 The hapax legomenon εὐδώμητον emphasises that this was no rural accident, but a very urban situation. 9 Hom. Hymn. Aphr. 200–201: “from your stock the most godlike of mortal men in form and physique”. For Parium as the start of the Troad region, see Strabo, Geogr. 13.1.4, citing Damastes of Sigeum (FGrHist 5). 10 See the other epitaphs from the same region of north-western Asia Minor cited by Robert (1955: 280–282): a young man who left only tears for his wife and child after “the threads of the Fate of the Streets brought me to destruction from my carriage”; another who “collapsed suddenly in my haste chasing a horse”; another, Isidorus, “thrown from a carriage away from the horses”, escaped and dedicated his “lucky footprint” in a sanctuary near Alexandria; a threeyear-old at Rhodes was crushed under a heavy wagon after taking out the fork which held the pole in place, but horses seem to have played no part in this accident.

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The attitude here, whereby the horse has a clear agency in the boy’s death and is presented on the relief as his principal adversary, is very different from that in a similar incident which occurred in central Rome and was presented by the jurist Alfenus in terms of potential liability (Dig. 9.2.52.2; my translation): In clivo Capitolino duo plostra onusta mulae ducebant: prioris plostri muliones conversum plostrum sublevabant, quo facile mulae ducerent: inter superius plostrum cessim ire coepit et cum muliones, qui inter duo plostra fuerunt, e medio exissent, posterius plostrum a priore percussum retro redierat et puerum cuiusdam obtriverat. “Some mules were pulling two loaded carts up the Clivus Capitolinus. The front cart had tipped over, and its muleteers were trying to lift it up so that the mules could pull it easily. Meanwhile, the cart that was higher up the slope gradually began to move, and when the muleteers, who were between the two carts, had moved out of the way, the cart at the back had been hit by the front cart and gone backwards down the hill and had crushed somebody’s slave boy.”

Here Alfenus overlooks the agency of the mules themselves and focuses on the responsibility of the driver to restrain the animals he was driving. Even in the next case he cites, of oxen striking the slave of a buyer, animal agency is completely rejected (Dig. 9.2.52.3). These vignettes presented by textual and visual evidence are supported by inferences that can be made from the archaeological evidence of ancient streets. Ruts in the paving stones hint at the potential pitfalls of daily transportation. While some carts would have been hauled by human porters, many, like the carriage of the House of the Menander, found complete with harness, were pulled by an animal, or more frequently a pair of animals; so the ruts testify indirectly to the high volume of animal-human interaction in the very heavy traffic of the Roman town (see Tsujimura 1991 and Beard 2008: 53–67). Mary Beard has imagined that the harness bells found with the House of the Menander cart may have served to warn oncoming traffic to avoid collisions in the town’s narrow streets. The evidence of tethering holes on street-side walls leads her also to envisage “the delivery man’s donkeys, tethered to the edge of the narrow street, being forced to join the pedestrians on the pavement in order to clear the way for a cart squeezing its way through” (Beard 2010: 70). One may recall the young colt which Jesus’ disciples found tied to a doorway on a street corner.11

_____ 11 Vulgate, Mark 11.4: Et abeuntes invenerunt pullum ligatum ante ianuam foris in bivio: et solvunt eum.

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The sarcophagus image of the murderous horse at Parium finds an unexpected correlate in the domestic sphere on a famous relief in the Capitoline Museums (see Fig. 2). Again, an animal is shown in human posture, on its hind legs, but this time a cat in a less disturbing situation.12 This is usually interpreted as depicting a lady training a cat, “clearly (…) being taught to dance to the music of the lyre” in the garden or courtyard of a house (Engels 1999: 98; following Toynbee 1973: 90); but that may be to impose too anthropocentric a reading, assuming that the animal’s rearing on its hind legs is a specific interaction with, and premeditated by, the human instructor on the left, rather than an independent response to the game hanging above.13

4 Animals in Rome and Pompeii But there are also more unexpected appearances of animals in the domestic space of the city. At the House of the Faun at Pompeii, the skeletons of two oxen were found with four human skeletons, which show that agricultural animals were stabled close to the peristyle of this luxurious mansion.14 Horses are even more common. One of the distinctive bestial features of Pompeian houses are their stables. The House of the Menander, the ninth largest house in the city at 1,835 m2, had a vast stable area (169.53 m2) in the south-east corner. A variety of ramp forms still visible in the town – inclined paving off the street, ruts made through the kerbstones, or parking areas along the side of a street – provided access to commercial properties, inns, houses, and public buildings including baths and theatres (see Poehler 2011). Over half of these areas are found on the edges of the ancient town, in the immediate vicinity of the city gates. But what is most striking from the point of view of human-animal interaction is the direct juxtaposition of these stables with residential spaces. At the House of the Chaste Lovers (Casa dei Casti Amanti, IX.12.6), the triclinium with banqueting paintings was directly next to the stable where skeletons of three

_____ 12 Musei Capitolini, inv. Albani, C 40. See Jones (1912: 271–272 no. 120, pl. 63), Keller (1909: 80, fig. 26), and Pietrangeli (1964: 57). 13 See also Keller (1908: 65, fig. 11). Donalson (1999: 132) suggests that the cat “probably learned to raise itself to the two-legged posture to obtain a bit of duck, or perhaps other meat or fowl”. See also Donalson (1999: 100–101), for a terracotta lamp in the British Museum with cats climbing an urn (shown in Clayton 1997: 176). 14 See Sogliano (1900: 31), Jashemski (1979: 216), and King (2002: 409).

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mules and two horses were found (see Cocca & al. 1995 and Nuviala 2014). Closer study of their anatomical characteristics have suggested that these animals were intended for use in the adjacent bakery, and such industrial uses are attested elsewhere in Pompeii. The House of the Baker (VI.3.3), an old residence with a Tuscan atrium and some refined paintings, was partially converted after the earthquake of A.D. 62 to the baker’s business; and the reception room off the peristyle garden (room M) was used as a stable for the animals pulling the mills, as indicated by a fully harnessed mule skeleton found in the space (see Gros 2001: 110 fig. 103). There is little evidence, however, of such stables in houses in central Rome. A few spaces indicated on the Severan Marble Plan show the possible location of stables or animal enclosures in areas away from the city centre. The Vicus Stab(u)larius in the south-western Campus Martius may have been so called after the stables of the city’s chariot teams (FUR fr. 37f Stanford). If so, they still had some way to go through the marbled porticoes of the Circus Flaminius district and the animal chaos of the Forum Boarium to reach the Circus Maximus where they would have raced. At the start of the Via Appia, the Mutatorium Caesaris, where the imperial staff changed from a litter to a carriage when leaving Rome, was characterised by a large colonnaded area (fr. 1a–e) which was perhaps used as stables for horses. Apparently further out, along the river, the enclosures depicted on other fragments (fr. 121a–c) would have been suited for livestock or stables. On the unidentified fr. 567 the large enclosure centre right may also be a stable, with the small square to its right perhaps a watering basin for the horses. Michael MacKinnon’s estimates for animal numbers in imperial Rome (2013: 122), based on dietary contributions and comparisons with other pre-industrial cities, are vast, testifying to their centrality and value to the ancient city, as well as to their prominence in urban space: an “absolute low” of 60,000 pigs, 2,000 sheep and goats and 7,500 cattle, up to a high estimate of ten times those numbers; about 5,000–10,000 horses, donkeys, mules and traction oxen; the same number of “personal animals”; on average, 1,000 exotic animals a year; 20,000–50,000 sacrificial animals a year. But Suetonius reports that Caligula sacrificed 160,000 in just three months (Cal. 14.1). On top of that should be added all types of birds, game animals and fish. MacKinnon (2013) surmises that most of the horses and traction animals were stabled in the suburban areas of Rome, while only essential mill animals and horses for special purposes were kept in the city. Yet, as with Pompeii, the situation in ancient cities does not reflect so starkly as modern cities that “strong human sense of the ‘proper places’ which animals should occupy physically” identified by urban geographers (Philo & Wilbert 2000: 10). Unlike

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modern cities, animals beyond domestic creatures such as cats and dogs were not overwhelmingly restricted to the marginal spaces in and around towns (see Philo & Wilbert 2000: 10–11, 21). One area where one might have expected an exception was with feral animals, which were considered not to belong naturally to the urban sphere. There was a perception of such animals, particularly predatory species such as wolves, as dangers, which had the potential of penetrating into the city centre (see Clark 2003: 188). Yet even such species could sometimes be observed entering the city limits, with fatal results. In 23 B.C. and 16 B.C., people were killed when wolves entered the city (see Cassius Dio, Hist. 53.33, 54.19). In A.D. 211 wolves were found on the Capitol, one of which was killed in the Forum and the other outside the pomerium, presumably after it had been chased beyond that important urban boundary (see Cassius Dio, Hist. 78.1). But other, equally dangerous wild species were welcomed into the city. This was, of course, the case with the elephants, lions, bears, and bulls which from the Middle Republic onwards were famously paraded in increasing numbers at the venationes presented in venues within the city, and from the last years of the Republic into the Empire more exotic species were added, including crocodiles, rhinoceroses, and tigers.15 These seem to have been exceptional intrusions of the wild into the city and, after the displays, they were either publicly killed in a demonstration of imperial power, as in 2 B.C. for the dedication of the Temple of Mars Ultor, or they returned to marginal spaces outside the city, including the imperial game enclosure at the ager Laurens, where in the later imperial period camels, elephants and other creatures were curated by imperial officials.16 Yet by the sixth century A.D. a purpose-built enclosure existed outside the Porta Praenestina, “where undomesticated (μὴ χειροήθη) animals are looked after”, enclosed by a short wall extending from the city walls.17 This may have already ex-

_____ 15 Starting with elephants in 252 B.C. For details, see Ville (1981: 88–90) and Coleman (1996: 60–68). 16 See Coleman (1996: 61). On Mars Ultor, see Cassius Dio, Hist. 55.10.8. On the ager Laurens, see AE 1955.181. For T. Flavius Stephanus (praepositus camellorum) and Ti. Claudius Speclator Aug. lib. (procurator Laurento ad elephantos), see Kolendo (1969: 291–292) and Epplett (2003: 79); Stephanus is also called a praepositus herbariarum (“herbivores”, such as antelopes, elephants and camels, as opposed to the carnivorous, and thus more dangerous, ferae bestiae). For the enclosure at ager Laurens, see Epplett (2002: 67–70). 17 Procopius, Bell. Goth. 1.22.10 and 23.16–17. La Regina (1999a: 208) unconvincingly identifies this with the Amphitheatrum Castrense of the Sessorian Palace. Although Lanciani (1897: 385–387; 1990: 277–278) infers from the discovery in 1547 of wall paintings of exotic animals in an underground chamber near the Castra Praetoria (known from the later Middle Ages as the

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isted in A.D. 241, as suggested by an inscribed dedication to the huntress Diana by two venatores immunes and a custos vivari of the Pretorian and Urban Cohorts.18 Situated just outside the Porta Praenestina, and just on the outer boundary of the Sessorian Palace with its amphitheatre, the vivarium was emblematic of that marginality of animals identified in modern cities. Yet if the Roman amphitheatre brought something of the exoticism of novel animal species that was sought by the Ptolemies of Alexandria, the vivarium outside Porta Praenestina was also no zoo. If the purpose of the vivarium was to keep wild animals at the margins of the city – in John Chrysostom’s words, “in the city we take so much care, as to shut up the wild beasts in solitary places and in cages, and neither at the senate house of the city, nor at the courts of justice, nor at the king’s palace, but far off somewhere at a distance do we keep them chained” (Hom. 59) – it was only partially successful. As Tertullian wrote, “how often have wild beasts escaped from their cages and devoured men in the middle of cities!” (Ad Mart. 5). Paul the Deacon recorded how an elephant escaped from its stall at night and killed many people, wounding others (Hist. misc. 16 [PL 95 991b]). Libanius noted how, “when a long-starved ravenous creature finds itself at liberty, the mere sight of it spreads panic – everyone seeks shelter and locks his door” (Orat. 14; quoted by Jennison 1937: 174). That this was an issue at Rome itself is suggested by the concern of Roman lawyers for the control of animals. The edict of the curule aediles placed responsibilities on the keepers of dogs and wild animals (Dig. 21.1.40– 42, passage in square brackets added by Paulus; my translation): [Ulpian:] ne quis canem, verrem vel minorem aprum, lupum, ursum, pantheram, leonem, [et generaliter aliudve quod noceret animal, sive soluta sint, sive alligata, ut contineri vinculis, quo minus damnum inferant, non possint,] qua vulgo iter fiet, ita habuisse velit, ut cuiquam

_____ Vivarium) that a rectangular enclosure with a similar purpose existed on the south side of the Castra Praetoria which was known in late medieval documents as a Vivariolum or “little Vivarium”, it is not clear that it served this function in antiquity. Jennison (1937: 175) mentions a similar painting under the Via Tiburtina and suggests that these belonged to the keepers’ rooms of different vivaria. Yet, as indicated by the mosaic from Castelporziano near the ager Laurens of venatores with their prey (see Helbig 1969: 241–242 no. 2322), such images suggest no more than proximity to vivarium sites, rather than their actual location. For further discussion, see Epplett (2002: 70–74) and Epplett (2003: 81–84), who, however, argues for more than one vivarium outside the city walls. 18 See ILS 2091 = CIL VI 130 (“disseppelita in Roma tra i confini del castro pretorio e dell’aggere di Servio”). La Regina (1999b: 209) attaches this inscription to Lanciani’s hypothetical vivarium adjoining the Castra Praetoria. Epplett (2003: 84) suggests that the vivarium mentioned on the inscription was replaced in the fourth century by the one described by Procopius.

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nocere damnumve dare possit. si adversus ea factum erit et homo liber ex ea re perierit, solidi ducenti, si nocitum homini libero esse dicetur, quanti bonum aequum iudici videbitur, condemnetur, ceterarum rerum, quanti damnum datum factumve sit, dupli. “Nobody should keep a dog, wild boar or lesser boar, wolf, bear, panther, lion, [and generally any animal which might do harm, whether these animals are free or bound or tied up so that they cannot be confined with chains to stop them doing injury,] in a place where public passage is made, in such a way that it might harm anyone or cause damage. If this is contravened and a free person has been killed, the penalty will be 200 solidi; if a free person is said to have been injured, it will be as much a judge considers good and fair; and for all other cases, double the value of the damage that has been done or caused.”

However, while, in general, the animal’s owner could be sued for any damage, a distinction was made between domesticated animals, for which this was universally true, and wild animals such as bears, for which the owner could be said to be no longer responsible after it had escaped.19 This mirrors the differentiation between wild and domesticated animals in Roman medical literature: wild animals were considered “lighter” and less nutritious than domesticated creatures, yet the bites of dogs could be as much a source of danger to humans as wounds caused by wild animals.20 The Urban Prefect is thought to have acquired jurisdiction over wild animals as part of his responsibility for disciplina spectaculorum.21 But perhaps gladiators would have to be sent by the contractor or official in charge of the entertainment. Where real animals were lacking, bestial images filled the open spaces of the city. The painting of a venatio at the House of the Ceii in Pompeii brings an intrusion of the wild. In Rome, the nemus of Agrippa, perhaps the same as the Platanon, was adorned with statuary of animals, as can be seen from the following epigram (Martial 3.19; my translation): Proxima centenis ostenditur ursa columnis, exornant fictae qua platanona ferae.

_____ 19 See Dig. 9.1.1.10. Robinson (1992: 207) speculates as to who might have been considered responsible in case of such damage, whether the magistrates or emperor who imported the animals or the head keeper, but guesses “that a person who actually found a bear loose in the park probably screamed for the Urban cohorts”. 20 Von Staden (2012: 184–190) discusses the “repeated division into ‘wild’ and ‘domesticated’” in Celsus’ De medicina. 21 See Robinson (1992: 108). The Urban Prefect’s responsibility for disciplina spectaculorum is mentioned at Dig. 1.12.1.12.

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Huius dum patulos adludens temptat hiatus pulcher Hylas, teneram mersit in ora manum: vipera sed caeco scelerata latebat in aere vivebatque anima deteriore fera. Non sensit puer esse dolos, nisi dente recepto dum perit. O facinus, falsa quod ursa fuit! “A she-bear is exhibited near the hundred columns, where images of wild animals adorn the Plane Grove (Platanon). While the handsome Hylas, playing close by, was exploring its gaping jaws, he sank his tender hand into its mouth; but a wicked viper was lurking in the recesses of the bronze and the bear was brought to life with a more deadly breath. The child did not notice the deceits there, until he was dying from the bite he received. Oh, what a crime, that that was a false bear!”

Many such marble images, either reworked from antique objects or made completely new, now fill the “Sala degli Animali” of the Vatican, a “marble zoo” of which the core was collected under Pius VI in the eighteenth century and worked by the sculptor Francesco Antonio Franzoni (see Spinola 1996: 125–188).

5 The search for “zoopolis” Philo and Wolch (1998), reacting against the exclusion of animals from modern cities and the consequent emotional distancing between humans and animals and concomitant practices of extermination of species and habitat destruction, seek to recreate small-scale urban sites where people and animals might interact on a daily basis, a “zoopolis” where residents can adopt “animal standpoints” and networks of friendship to break down city-country dualisms destroying animal life-chances. In ancient Rome one area that has some claim to be such a “zoopolis” are the horti, those aristocratically and later imperially owned domains. In this “landscape of property” studied by Nicholas Purcell (2007: 292), private plots were penned in by high walls, not just to protect the produce from theft or damage by animals, but also, surely, to keep in the animals themselves. The archetypal instance of such horti, yet extreme in both its centrality and its spatial extent, is Nero’s Golden House (Suetonius, Nero 31.1; my translation): rura insuper arvis atque vinetis et pascuis silvisque varia, cum multitudine omnis generis pecudum ac ferarum.

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“on top of that [there were] rural areas landscaped in a variety of arable fields, vineyards, pastures, and forests, containing a vast number of every kind of animal, both domestic herds and wild creatures.”

Purcell (1987: 200) has stressed how Tacitus’ description of the same complex (Ann. 15.42.1: “fields and pools and, in the fashion of wildernesses, woods here and open spaces and vistas there”) distinguished between wild and tame landscapes (both forests and empty spaces, groves inhabited by rustic divinities, and agricultural plots with plantations). But this dualism also extends to the non-human animals there, both flocks of sheep and herds of cattle (pecudes) and also undomesticated beasts (ferae). The “zoopolis” of Nero’s Golden House broke down these binary oppositions by juxtaposing not only city and country, but domesticated and wild animals. Centuries later, when Nero’s project was only a memory, the twelfth-century writer Richard of St Victor used the unique juxtaposition of humans and other animals in a “Golden House” to compare their diverging intellectual capabilities (Benjamin Minor [Book of the Twelve Patriarchs] 16, p. 132.9–14; see Palmén 2014: 97; my translation): Rationalis autem est illa, quando ex his quae per sensum corporeum novimus, aliquid imaginabiliter fingimus. Verbi gratia: aurum vidimus, domum vidimus, auream autem domum nunquam; auream tamen domum imaginare possumus, si volumus. Hoc utique bestia facere non potest, soli rationali creaturae hoc possibile est. “The rational is the capacity we have when we form something in our imagination out of the things we know through physical sensation. We (humans) have seen gold and we have seen a house, but never a golden house; yet we can form images of a golden house if we want; but an animal is not able to, as only a rational being can do so.”

By a similar stretch of the imagination, this time pictorial rather than conceptual, the nineteenth-century Brescian artist Modesto Faustini (1839–1891) was able to evoke the potential of human-animal interactions in the ancient city to reach this ideal level of “zoopolis” with networks of friendship between humans and animals that go beyond the distancing objectification of animals found in the modern and imperial city. After travelling to Rome in 1869 and meeting the artist Nino Costa (1826–1903), Faustini developed as a narrative painter whose closest aesthetic links were with the English Pre-Raphaelites. He was best known for his execution of Christian and religious themes, including the Cappella degli Spagnoli at Loreto (1886–1890), and for his frescoes in the new glamour residences of Risorgimento Rome like the angels adorning Palazzo Menotti and his ceiling fresco of birds and exotic animals in an imaginary gazebo in Villa Mirafiori. But his earlier training at the Milan Academy in 1861–1864 under Giuseppe Bertini

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(1825–1898) drew him to reconstructions of ancient genre scenes in the Academic manner. A painting sold at auction at Phillips London in 1997 (see Fig. 3) is particularly notable for the fondness with which he recreates a scene of daily life.22 Faustini combines here exact details from Pompeii such as the dipinto and street sign over the door of an aristocratic Roman house with, in the left-hand background, a flavour of the impoverished lifestyle of contemporary Italy. The bearded form of the Barbary ape in the foreground accompanying the musicians may owe something to the animals shown in David Teniers’ painting Apes in the Kitchen (St. Petersburg, Hermitage, c. 1645). Yet, while Teniers’ animals have the human kitchen to themselves and are entirely detached from human contact, Faustini’s animals, by contrast, interact with humans in an engaged manner. At the same time, this interaction is a studied contrast with the way in which animals interact with humans in ancient representations. The inclusion of the monkey seems indebted to a painting in the House of the Dioscuri at Pompeii (VI.ix.6), re-discovered in 1828, but more widely disseminated only a few years before Faustini’s painting.23 The ancient fresco (see Fig. 4) shows an ape dressed in a hooded sleeved coat, walking on its hind legs at the end of a lead held by a young boy twice its height, who directs its movements with a whip. It was recognised very soon after its discovery as a representation of a boy teaching an ape to dance, controlled under the boy’s whip, and the ape’s costume was interpreted as the “Santonian bardocucullus” from Gaul recalled by Martial (14.128) as a costume for monkeys at a recent performance.24 Later interpreters have assumed that this was done for the delight of an audience at a theatre or circus show, pointing out the amphora in the corner to which the animal reaches in vain, constrained by its leash from accessing the still tantalis-

_____ 22 A painting entitled Marriage Festival at Pompeii was sold at New York in April 1909 for $ 325; see Bénézit (1913: 262). It is unclear whether or not this is the same painting as the street scene sold in London in 1997. 23 The fresco was painted on a pilaster in the south-east corner of the large peristyle. It was found in April 1828, and the discoveries were reported on 18 June 1828; see Fiorelli (1860: 207– 213). First illustrated by Daremberg & Saglio (1875 [vol. 1]: 694 fig. 831) and Gusman (1899: 285– 286 fig.), whose drawing shows the monkey exaggeratedly smaller than the boy. 24 Reported by Laglandière, first as “un Pigmeo che fa danzare una scimia” (1829a: 22) and then as “un enfant qui joue avec un singe” (1829b: 24). It was subsequently cited by Avellino (1831: 13) who identified the bardocucullus, and further interpreted by Panofka (1843: 3, pl. I.6) as a “Knabe, der einen Affen tanzen lehrt” and similarly by Jahn (1847: 435), who called the boy the animal’s “trainer (Affenabrichter)”, pointing out the whip. Later, Fiorelli, whose more widely disseminated work was perhaps Faustini’s source, pilloried the image as “la grottesca figura di un giovinetto, il quale fassi a domare una scimia vestita con camisciuola e cappuccino” (1860: 210); the latter was synthesised by Helbig (1868: 335 no. 1417).

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ingly distant prize.25 The humanoid characteristics of this species are further exploited in other painted caricatures, perhaps likewise derived from amusements at the ludi: one from Torre della Annunziata with two apes drawing a cart; the other (in the House of the Wild Boar, VIII.iii.8, the third room from the peristyle) with an ape (or possibly a dog – the painting is much damaged) standing in a cart drawn by two pigs with the reins around its neck.26 Yet, while in these ancient scenes the apes are highly objectified, Faustini’s painting, by contrast, shows the ape in its natural guise, without clothes, already holding a pot in its arms, and dancing freely in an idealised resolution of the ancient scenario in which it dances only under duress. The donkey too is no longer a street menace, alienated from the humans with whom it shares the urban space, but has wandered onto the kerb of the pavement where two well-dressed Roman matrons seem to interact with him, no doubt an allusion to Apuleius’ account of the Corinthian lady’s passion for the human-asinine Lucius (Met. 10.19–22; see Fögen, in this volume). A small boy restrains a dog on a leash which starts to move forward interestedly towards the donkey. Faustini successfully depicts the reality of a world where ape and donkey alike engage naturally and intimately with their human neighbours and where the humans seem unbothered by the nuisances they might cause to their social lives or to the cityscape, be they ones of smell, noise or conceptual barriers between rational and irrational. In human-animal relations, as in so much else, ancient Rome was both the forerunner of the modern city and a place apart. Elite attitudes embedded in literary texts and legal prescriptions alike present an attempt to order the urban environment in a way that is comparable to more recent differentiations between the wild and the domesticated. In these contexts, animals were often the instruments of human convenience, productivity and entertainment, as well as being sources of potential danger, and the structures of urban space show signs of regulation that kept animals “in their proper place”. Yet their economic role was so central to the ancient city (Morley 1996: 121) that a clearly delineated anthropocentric model was not always possible. The categories of “wild” and “domesticated” proved to be artificial poles, as domestic animals were viewed as being potentially as hazardous to their human neighbours as wild ones might be useful or beneficial. Moreover, in the representation of the common interac-

_____ 25 Gusman (1899: 285–286) interpreted the scene as a comic turn exhibited on market days. See, more recently, McDermott (1938: 280 no. 479) and Toynbee (1973: 58). 26 See King (2002: 434), McDermott (1938: 281 nos. 481–482; considered on p. 122 to be scenes from the circus), and Helbig (1868: 384, 479, nos. 1552 and 1553b). The two apes drawing the cart are reported by Roque Joaquín Alcubierre for 4 September 1750; see Fiorelli (1860: 10).

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tions between humans and animals, both verbal and visual, we see not only a human perspective delineated, but a kind of sympatheia to the viewpoint of animals. Some areas of the ancient city reflected, in the close proximity of humans to both feral and domestic animals, that ideal of the ‟zoopolis” which modern theorists crave. Yet it was never complete. While the ideal of the ‟zoopolis” is hinted in ancient literary and visual representations, it was never fully embodied in ancient urban space.

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Kolendo, Jerzy (1969): Épigraphie et archéologie. Le praepositus camellorum dans une inscription à Ostie. In: Klio 51, 287–296. Kyle, Donald G. (1998): Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome, London. Laglandière, E. de (1829a): Pompei. Casa detta di Castore e Polluce. In: Bullettino degli Annali dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, 21–23. Laglandière, E. de (1829b): Lettre sur les dernières fouilles de Pompei. In: Bullettino degli Annali dell’Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, 23–26. Lanciani, Rodolfo (1897): The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, London. Lanciani, Rodolfo (1990): Storia degli Scavi di Roma. Edited by Leonello Malvezzi Campeggi, Roma. La Regina, Adriano (1999a): Vivarium. In: Eva Margareta Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae (vol. 5), Roma, 208–209. La Regina, Adriano (1999b): Vivarium Cohortium Praetoriarum et Urbanarum. In: Eva Margareta Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae (vol. 5), Roma, 209. Larsson, Lars (1991): Symbolism and mortuary practice. Dogs in fractions – symbols in action. In: Archaeology and Environment 11, 33–38. Larsson, Lars (1993): The Skateholm project. Late Mesolithic coastal settlement in southern Sweden. In: Peter I. Bogucki (ed.), Case Studies in European Prehistory, Boca Raton, 31–62. Larsson, Lars (1994): Pratiques mortuaires et sépultures de chiens dans les sociétés mésolithiques de Scandinavie méridionale. In: L’Anthropologie 98, 562–575. Laurence, Ray (1994): Roman Pompeii. Space and Society, London & New York. Llewelyn, Stephen R. (1994): A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1982– 83, North Ryde, N.S.W. Luff, Rosemary-Margaret (1984): Animal Remains in Archaeology, Aylesbury. MacKinnon, Michael (2013): Pack animals, pets, pests, and other non-human beings. In: Paul Erdkamp (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome, Cambridge, 110–128. MacKinnon, Michael (2014): Animals in the urban fabric of Ostia. Initiating a comparative zooarchaeological synthesis. In: Journal of Roman Archaeology 27, 175–201. McDermott, William C. (1938): The Ape in Antiquity, Baltimore. Michael, Mike (2006): Technoscience and Everyday Life. The Complex Simplicities of the Mundane, Maidenhead. Morley, Neville (1996): Metropolis and Hinterland. The City of Rome and the Italian Economy, 200 B.C. – A.D. 200, Cambridge. Nuviala, Pauline (2014): Pompéi, Pistrina. Recherches sur les boulangeries de l’Italie romaine – Les équidés de la Casa dei Casti amanti. In: Chronique des activités archéologiques de l’École française de Rome. Les cités vésuviennes (available online: http://cefr.revues.org/ 1245). Palmén, Ritva (2014): Richard of St Victor’s Theory of Imagination, Leiden. Pàmias, Jordi (2004): Dionysus and donkeys on the streets of Alexandria. Eratosthenes’ criticism of Ptolemaic ideology. In: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 102, 191–198. Panofka, Theodor (1843): Bilder antiken Lebens, Berlin. Peters, Joris (1998): Römische Tierhaltung und Tierzucht. Eine Synthese aus archäozoologischer Untersuchung und schriftlich-bildlicher Überlieferung, Rahden. Philo, Chris & Chris Wilbert (2000): Animal Spaces, Beastly Places. New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations, London & New York. Philo, Chris & Jennifer Wolch (1998): Through the geographical looking glass. Space, place, and human-animal relations. In: Society and Animals 6, 103–118.

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Pietrangeli, Carlo (1963): Musei Capitolini. Guida breve, Roma. Poehler, Eric E. (2011): Where to park? Carts, stables, and the economics of transport in Pompeii. In: Ray Laurence & David Newsome (eds.), Rome, Ostia, Pompeii. Movement and Space, Oxford, 194–214. Pöllath, Nadja (2010): Old horses, stray dogs and butchering refuse. The faunal remains from the amphitheatre at the Roman military station Quintana/Künzing. In: Gisela Grupe, George McGlynn & Joris Peters (eds.), Archaeobiodiversity. A European Perspective, Rahden, 235–274. Purcell, Nicholas (1987): Town in country and country in town. In: Elisabeth Blair MacDougall (ed.), Ancient Roman Villa Gardens, Washington, D.C., 185–203. Purcell, Nicholas (2007): The horti of Rome and the landscape of property. In: Anna Leone, Domenico Palombi & Susan Walker (eds.), Res Bene Gestae. Ricerche di storia urbana su Roma antica in onore di Eva Margareta Steinby, Roma, 289–307. Robert, Louis (1955): Hellenica. Recueil d’épigraphie de numismatique et d’antiquités grecques. Vol. 10: Dédicaces et reliefs votifs, villes, cultes, monnaies et inscriptions de Lycie et de Carie, Paris. Robinson, Olive F. (1992): Ancient Rome. City Planning and Administration, London & New York. Rosenberger, Veit (2007): Republican Nobiles. Controlling the res publica. In: Jörg Rüpke (ed.), A Companion to Roman Religion, Malden, Mass. & Oxford, 292–303. Scobie, Alex (1986): Slums, sanitation and mortality in the Roman world. In: Klio 68, 399–433. Sogliano, Antonio (1900): Pompei. Relazione degli scavi fatti durante il mese di gennaio 1900. In: Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità, 27–31. Spinola, Giandomenico (1996): Il Museo Pio Clementino. Vol. 1: Il settore orientale del Belvedere, il Cortile Ottagono, e la Sala degli Animali, Vatican City. Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C. (1973): Animals in Roman Life and Art, London. Trinquier, Jean (2002): Localisation et fonctions des animaux sauvages dans l’Alexandrie lagide. La question du ‘zoo d’Alexandrie’. In: Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: Antiquité 114, 861–919. Tsujimura, Sumiyo (1991): Ruts in Pompeii. The traffic system in the Roman system. In: Opuscula Pompeiana 1, 58–86. Ville, Georges (1996): La gladiature en Occident des origines à la mort de Domitien, Roma. von Staden, Heinrich (2012): The living environment. Animals and humans in Celsus’ ‘Medicina’. In: Nicoletta Palmieri (ed.), Conserver la santé ou la rétablir. Le rôle de l’environnement dans la médecine antique et médiévale. Actes du colloque international, SaintÉtienne, 23–24 octobre 2008, Saint-Étienne, 161–192. Zedda, Marco, Paolo Manca, Valentina Chisu, Sergio Gadau, Gianluca Lepore, Angelo Genovese & Vittorio Farina (2006): Ancient Pompeian dogs. Morphological and morphometric evidence for different canine populations. In: Anatomia Histologia Embryologia. Journal of Veterinary Medicine 35, 319–324.

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Illustrations

Figure 1: Sarcophagus from Parium (Istanbul Archaeological Museum, inv. 4447) Photo: Forschungsarchiv, Cologne © Archaeological Museum Istanbul

Figure 2: Funerary relief from Rome Roma, Musei Capitolini, Sala dei Filosofi, inv. MC 624/S Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Capitolini (photograph by Zeno Colantoni) © Roma, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali ‒ Musei Capitolini

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Figure 3: Modesto Faustini (1839–1891), Roman Street Scene Photo: Pinterest

Figure 4: Boy and ape, painting from the House of the Dioscuri at Pompeii Photo: German Archaeological Institute Rome

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Alastair Harden

‘Wild Men’ and Animal Skins in Archaic Greek Imagery Alastair Harden ‘Wild Men’ and Animal Skins in Archaic Greek Imagery Abstract: In most Classical and post-Classical art, animal-skin garments are an unambiguous symbol of the wild or uncivilised nature of their human wearer, an effect achieved either through the metonymic transfer of wildness from the animal to the human or through an invitation to the viewer to re-imagine the circumstances under which the garment was obtained. Was such an unambiguous reading possible in ancient Greece? What was the semantic value of the animal-skin garment in art and literature? This paper suggests that modern European connotations of violence and exoticism may have roots in the process by which the animal skin became the quintessential symbol of ‘otherness’ during the Archaic and early Classical periods. In the Archaic period, animal-skin garments represented a relic of some interaction between an animal and a human. In literature this interaction need only be the day-to-day activities of a farmer or shepherd, or the logical artefacts of a successful hunter; this is reflected in the Homeric uses of animal skins, as well as the earliest Homeric Hymns and scant other archaic literary references. As costume, however, the animal skin becomes increasingly pejorative. The later sixth century B.C. sees a diminishing in the ambiguous, positive associations of both shepherding and heroic costume, as a more straightforward “skins = wild” semantic programme dominates Classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman conceptions of animal-skin garments. This paper outlines the changing semantic value of the animal-skin garment in Archaic and Classical Greek culture, which was perhaps based on an increasing disdain for those whose livelihoods depended on working with animals, stemming ultimately from a conscious urbane distaste from the realities of objects and products derived from animals. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-015

1 Introduction: The changing semantics of the animal-skin garment In Classical and classically derived iconography, to clothe a figure in animal skins is to signify consciously and unambiguously that the depicted figure is outside the normal sphere of civilised human life, from the perspective of the viewer: from the Dionysian leopard skin and Pan’s lynx pelt through John the Baptist’s animal-skin cloaks and the feline pelts of the wild women in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s paintings from the Victorian era,1 the connection is a

_____ 1 For a discussion of Alma-Tadema’s wild women and their costume, see especially Hedreen (1994/95). DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-015

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strong one and is unimpeachable for much of the art and literature stemming from the beginning of the Greek Classical period. This close semantic affiliation between animal skins and wildness was gradually established in Classical art in the sixth century B.C.,2 but it was not universally the case in the art and literature produced before 500 B.C. and a close examination of some key pieces of visual and textual evidence suggests that at this pivotal stage in Mediterranean culture a shift in perspectives took place. While it remained possible to depict (for example) bucolic figures in animal skins, wearers of animal skins enjoy much greater sympathy and prominence in the art and literature of Archaic Greece, and in the Classical period an increasing suspicion and detestation of those human beings whose lives depended on interactions with animals is certainly detectable. The change in the semantic value of the animal skin can be observed with reference to the Dionysian animal-skin garment. On a well-known psykteramphora in London attributed to Lydus (see Fig. 1),3 satyrs feature on the principal face, and a maenad stands among them.4 She is wearing a garment described in scholarly literature as a nebris (“fawn-skin”), and the viewer immediately notices that the maenad’s nebris visually affiliates her not only with her satyr companions, but also with a hare towards which a young satyr reaches. We may suggest that by adopting this costume she enters into a continuum or animal-human nexus, donning an animalistic attribute in order to transform herself from an anonymous woman or nymph-like hanger-on into a maenad proper, the wild and raging acolyte of Dionysus and female counterpoint to the male half-animal satyr. Whether or not this is the case, the garment is an unequivocal marker of her participation in the world of animals. The following questions may be asked: Where did she get this garment? Did she recently tear it from the back of some unfortunate deer, one of whose siblings had perhaps also just undergone diasparagmos in a scenario common to later Classical imagery?5 Is this Archaic maenad’s costume, in short, a symbol (or an icon) of her animalistic activity and potentially violent disposition?

_____ 2 See Harden (2016) for an outline of this position. 3 London 1848.6-19.5; see Gasparri (1986a: 452 no. 299). Throughout this chapter, vases are cited by city and inventory number; any relevant illustrations in LIMC are also given. Images of most cited vases can be retrieved at the Beazley Archive Pottery Database (www.beazley. ox.ac.uk) by entering the city and inventory number. 4 Following Carpenter (1986: 80), who himself follows Simon (1961: 1004), the term “maenad” here refers to any female follower of Dionysus. 5 The type-scene is perhaps best-known from the Derveni krater, but was common on neoAttic reliefs. See Pollitt (1986: 169–172).

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Based on contemporary iconography, we can venture to answer this last question in the negative. Guy Hedreen (forthcoming) has noted the peaceful, ‘primitive’ landscape of Dionysian play in the black-figure tradition, where the whole spectrum from deity to man, half-animal and animal (and indeed vegetation) peacefully interact, and this is surely the tone of Lydus’ vase: extra-urban, peaceful Dionysian play, as also practised by the rows of dancing satyrs and maenads common to Attic black-figure.6 The image of the ‘violent maenad’ does not become a definite feature of the iconographical landscape until the fifth century B.C.7 Before then, while female followers of Dionysus certainly seem at home in the realm between human and animal (by handling snakes and cavorting with satyrs),8 they pose little bodily threat to animals until they become associated with such figures as the eponyms of Aeschylus’ Bassarids, who assail Orpheus, and the frenzied relatives of Pentheus. These violent episodes both enter the lexicon of the vase painter after the advent of the red-figure style, and they are most prominent in the years after 500 B.C.; the participants here do not, as a rule, perform their assaults while clad in animal skins,9 and the dangerous, skin-wearing maenad who poses a serious threat to animals is a figure who enters the repertoire of the vase painter with the red-figure cup-painters at a time when the broader semantics of animal-skin costume had also changed dramatically. Animal-skin garments have a complex history in Greek iconography, and are also fairly well-attested in the literary record. Their use is far more widespread than the merely Dionysian dimension, particularly in the years before 500 B.C., and a substantial shift in their wearers takes place around this time. By analysing the changing wearers and contexts of these garments, we may suggest a history of attitudes towards those humans whose lives revolved around, and depended on, their interactions with animals. Animal-human interaction is reflected in art and texts in a variety of registers: quite apart from

_____ 6 For example, the name-vase of the Oakeshott Painter (New York 17.230.5); see Hermary & Jaquemin (1988: 640 no. 139a). 7 For the late sixth-century maenad and degree to which the figure is the same as the Euripidean Bacchae, see most recently Villanueva-Puig (2009). 8 As on Lydus’ famous column-krater in New York (31.11.11), dating to around 550 B.C., and extending as far as the Kleophrades Painter’s equally well-known amphora of Panathenaic shape in Munich (2344), painted in the years after 500 B.C. 9 The well-known cup attributed to Douris (see Bažant & Berger-Doer 1994: 312 no. 43) is an exception to this: animal skins are conspicuous by their absence on the early Pioneer Group hydria in Berlin (1966.18; see Bažant & Berger-Doer 1994: 312 no. 40) and Euphronius’ fragmentary psykter in Boston (10.221; see Bažant & Berger-Doer 1994: 312 no. 39).

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the prestige which is perennially associated with high-status hunting, there is a rich seam of evidence for lower-status dependence on animals on the part of shepherds and people working with animal products including animal skins. These human lives were intrinsically bound up with, and dependent upon, violence towards animals, which is the unpleasant and unseen counterpoint to the bucolic life of the shepherd. This is vividly and startlingly portrayed in the famous Hellenistic statue of the ‘flayer-peasant’ in the Louvre (see Fig. 2; Louvre Ma. 517), a statue which presents an emotively fetishised view of the realities of animal slaughter. In the light of a range of evidence from the years before the later sixth century B.C., it is noticeable that wearers of animals skins are generally free from the pejorative ring of urban suspicion and sneer which characterises skinwearers from the late sixth century B.C. onwards: centaurs, Amazons, satyrs, maenads, foreigners and rustics are among those most often found wearing animal skins in the Classical period, and there is a clear sense that a life lived in close proximity to animals and animal products is undesirable. However, the evidence suggests that in the early sixth century B.C. and beforehand, those who lived in such a way were viewed unexceptionally, or perhaps with rustic charm, in the case of shepherds, or with outright prestige, in the case of hunters and other high-status wearers of high-status skins (a cultural trope referred to here as the ‘rustic/positive’ view). As the sixth century B.C. draws to a close, animal-skin wearers are treated with increasing suspicion from within urban cultural environments until the garment takes on an additional connotative force as a symbol either of animalistic wildness or of low status worthy of being despised. With regard to rustic figures, this may be a result of the discomfort arising in urban environments which accompanies the knowledge that the lives and livelihoods of these humans depend on the lives and deaths of the animals which they tend: this is the perennial human theme of how the urbane regards the nomadic, a cultural perspective which is evident in the gruesome and vicarious image of the flayer-peasant and which ultimately governs the modern unease and blinkered social perspectives on the distasteful origins of animalbased food and products.10 The ultra-urbane ancient Greek city may be the cultural milieu which first and most emphatically characterised the wearers of animal skins either as savage monsters or as low vagabonds and hapless rustics, as well as propagating the equally snobbish image of the noble rustic inhabiting a bucolic paradise in

_____ 10 There is an abundance of modern literature on this theme. See e.g. Scully (2002).

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the shadow of the god Pan and his lynx pelt.11 In early Archaic Greece, animalskin garments were apparently a normal part of the semantic landscape, and their depiction therefore drew either a neutral or a positive response, perhaps as a result of the merely-nascent urbanism of Greek urban society and its persisting closeness to the animal world; but during the sixth century, attitudes towards those who live and work with animals became quite different and may have reflected a disconnection with the animal world which is much more recognisable to a modern viewer and indeed persisted in Western art until the time of Alma-Tadema. Whatever the explanation, among most wearers of animalskin garments an iconographical inversion happened in the years around 500 B.C., and the inverted position became the dominant one: whereas Athenian artisans had been very happy to depict Achilles, Apollo and even Theseus as wearers of animal skins, this was utterly unthinkable in fifth-century Greece and forever thereafter.12

2 Archaic shepherds and heroes Before it was more explicitly ‘bestialised’, then, the animal-skin garment enjoyed a wide range of wearers in art and literature. The most enduring episode featuring an animal skin is probably Athena’s transformation of Odysseus, disguising him as a beggar and endowing him with a δέρμα ψιλόν (Od. 13.436–437) as part of his rustic trappings which also include a stick and a smoke-blackened cloak. The precise significance of the δέρμα is unclear: it is not the skin itself that indicates a low vagrant, but the fact that it is ψιλόν, i.e. over-worn and rubbed smooth through long use in a way that transforms it into something like the modern stereotype of the dirty overcoat. This particular animal skin is not simply the inevitable artefact of a life lived in proximity to animals, such as may be found among animal herders of any era, but rather a useful all-purpose over-

_____ 11 Pan is described as the νόμιος θεός in the Homeric Hymn to Pan, which mentions his “shaggy lynx cloak” (Hom. Hymn. Pan. 19.23–24: λαῖφος … λυγξός) and is datable to the fifth century B.C. (see West 2003: 18). He is also the god who presides over Menander’s cast of rustics in the Dyscolus. 12 In the fifth century B.C., there are a few notable exceptions, including a Mannerist archaising depiction of Theseus wearing a nebris on a vase attributed to the Pig Painter (Madrid, Fisa collection 1999.99.90). Achilles will later be allowed to sit upon a deer skin (see KossatzDeissmann 1981: 109–110 no. 445), but no longer to wear an animal skin.

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coat-cum-blanket which is useful for the traveller and may perhaps be considered analogous to the chlamys which appears in conjunction with the petasos as the quintessential outfit of the traveller in Classical art. These latter wool or textile garments are also the key identifying attributes of Hermes in Greek art, along with his winged boots and messenger’s staff (kerykeion).13 It is worth noting at this stage that Hermes, who may be regarded as the patron deity of wanderers and nomads, and to whom the disguised Odysseus indeed prays (Od. 15.319), is very often depicted wearing an animal skin in Archaic Greek art (on which see below). After his transformation, Odysseus visits the swineherd Eumaeus, whose hut is festooned with skins as the artefacts of his rustic life. Returning from driving a boar to the rapacious suitors in the opening lines of Book 14 of the Odyssey, in a passage which also describes his ox-hide sandals (Od. 14.24: δέρμα βόειον), Eumaeus rescues Odysseus from the inhospitable welcome of his guard dogs and spreads before him a “skin of a shaggy wild goat” (Od. 14.50: δέρμα ἰονθάδος ἀγρίου αἰγός). The portrayal of Eumaeus here is evidently a sympathetic one, and among commentators he is renowned in the Homeric corpus as a character who is portrayed with painstaking sympathy (see also Fögen, in this volume). He is the noble labourer who keeps Odysseus’ household working in his master’s absence, and he is deeply immersed in the animal-based economics of urban Greece as the man who keeps the Ithacan royal household supplied with meat during the occupation of the suitors. The description of his making a bed for his as yet unknown guest mentions his laying down the skins of sheep and goats beside the fire in a touching portrait of a compassionate host making a stranger welcome (Od. 14.518–519). However, as his guard dogs’ hostile reception shows, the world of Eumaeus is rough and hard, and not one into which any stranger can wander lightly; his life is very different from those who live downtown. He is a figure who operates within the raw world whose products hit the suitors’ table when cooked: Eumaeus notes that he is the most despised of Odysseus’ servants among the suitors, particularly Antinous (Od. 17.388), and from the mouths of some of the most dastardly human figures in the Homeric epics we have a glimpse of the sort of anti-pastoralist feeling and stigmatisation of the animal-dependent human which would come to predominate in Greek culture and in subsequent urban civilisations. The lingering Classical negative view of the rustic is the same as the one inside the hostile and disrupted palace

_____ 13 See the comments of Siebert (1990: 383) on Hermes’ costume.

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of Ithaca, and within the narrative scheme of the Odyssey the contrast is stark and it is clear which of the two worlds is portrayed more positively. In the Iliad, far from the ‘rustic/positive’ view the picture is quite different as animal skins feature in the role of heroic costume and accessory. Agamemnon wears a lion skin, and Menelaus and Paris both wear leopard skins (see Homer, Il. 3.17 and 10.21–29). Much has been made of the apparent species hierarchy here: that his leopard skin emphasises Menelaus’ junior status before Agamemnon’s Herculean lion skin, and that Paris’ leopard skin demonstrates the multi-coloured trappings of an eastern effete.14 However, an alternative position seems preferable: regardless of any intentional species differentiation, the Archaic Greek cultural context recommends viewing these skins in the same way as those worn by (for example) the hunters on the François Vase, painted around 580 B.C. (see Fig. 3). The most important factor is not necessarily the exact species of the garment, but the very fact that the garments themselves are the artefacts of a successful hunt and characterise the wearers as wealthy men of high social status who opt to hunt wild animals for sport. This fact is arguably as true and impressive for deer as it is for felines, particularly in the Mediterranean of the early first millennium B.C. when lions were still agrarian pests in some areas. The garments on the François Vase illustrate and indicate the fact that the figures are heroic hunters, and in the case of the Homeric wearers we may hypothesise that their skins fulfil the same function. In the fifth Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the earliest of the Homeric Hymns with a likely date in the latter half of the seventh century B.C. (see Faulkner 2008: 47–50), this heroic aspect is explicitly stated in a description of the bed of the goddess’s love-interest Anchises (Hom. Hymn. Aphr. 5.158–160; transl. Martin L. West): (…). αὐτὰρ ὕπερθεν ἄρκτων δέρματ᾿ ἔκειτο βαρυφθόγγων τε λεόντων, τοὺς αὐτὸς κατέπεφνεν ἐν οὔρεσιν ὑψηλοῖσιν. “on top of which lay skins of bears and roaring lions that he himself had killed in the high mountains.”

It is noteworthy too that Anchises is characterised not as a warrior but as a heroic and beautiful βουκόλος, tending his cattle on Mount Ida (Hom. Hymn. Aphr.

_____ 14 See e.g. Hainsworth (1993: 159–161) on the felines’ species and their significance, and Kitchell (in this volume).

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5.54–55), yet as the object of divine attraction and a hunter of bears and lions his heroic status is evident and he too should be characterised as the equal of the hunters on the François Vase. In this respect he is also similar to the Trojan prince Paris, who wears a leopard skin and may have been a shepherd in the epic tradition15 and certainly was in the late Archaic period and thereafter.16 The Athenian black-figure vase-record also features many instances of heroic warriors wearing animal skins, including a cup in New York of around 575 B.C. which depicts the Ambush of Troilus and features Achilles wearing a nebris.17 Theseus wears a nebris in several depictions of the slaying of the Minotaur, mainly confined to Attic black-figure including the earliest recorded version, on the cup in Munich signed by Archicles and Glaucytes.18 The semantic value of the nebris in this context is unclear, and it seems best to consider the skin as a heroic attribute within the iconographical nexus of Attic black-figure: with very few exceptions, warriors and heroes cease to wear the nebris in Classical art altogether as it becomes the preserve of the rustic and the bestial ‘other’.

3 Hermes Among the broader cast of mythological figures who do not bring their animalskin attributes with them from the Archaic iconographical tradition, one of the key nebris-wearing figures during the sixth century B.C. was Hermes. It was noted above that the disguised Odysseus shares some attributes with the figure of Hermes, and more than any other figure Hermes emblematises the animal skin’s semantic associations and the change they underwent in the years around 500 B.C.: the predominance of animal skins in Classical art is among figures such as Artemis, Amazons, Dionysus, maenads, satyrs, centaurs, giants, and similar, very definitely ‘otherly’ figures who often have a clear and tangible connection with the animal world, but in the Archaic period the iconography paints quite a different picture. Further to the remarks above concerning Achilles and Theseus,

_____ 15 Nickel (2002: 219, with n. 18) notes that, although the evidence for this is scanty, “Trojan princes are frequently represented tending flocks on Mt. Ida”. 16 See e.g. Kossatz-Deissmann (1994: 179 nos. 30, 34, 34b, 35 and esp. 36) for late-Archaic/ early-Classical depictions of the Judgement of Paris which make clear the outdoor setting and his shepherding. 17 The famous ‘Troilus cup’: New York 01.8.6. 18 Munich 2243; see Neils & Woodford (1994: 940–941 no. 233).

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in Attic black-figure, Apollo is also far more likely to wear an animal skin than Dionysus.19 Similarly, the Dionysian entourage is a relative late-comer to the animal wardrobe (beginning with Lydus garbing maenads in nebrides, in the second generation of Athenian black-figure painters),20 and we find instead that the nebris is worn by straightforwardly heroic figures such as Theseus, Achilles, Perseus, and, above all, Hermes, none of whom continue to wear the skin into the Classical period. Among these wearers, Hermes is the earliest.21 In the black-figure tradition, Hermes first wears a nebris on an olpe in the British Museum attributed near the Gorgon Painter.22 On this vase, he stands between two sphinxes and, from an iconographical perspective, he seems to belong in the interesting tradition of human participants in the processional ‘animal frieze’ which was common in Corinthian and Attic vase painting by the end of the seventh century. While these human ‘infiltrations’ are often as processional and detached as the animals, some of these participations are more narrative in tone with examples including pastoral scenes, such as a shepherd warding an attacking lion from his cattle on a Proto-Corinthian amphora in Athens,23 or Hermes himself with the cattle of Apollo on a later Attic ‘Tyrrhenian’ amphora.24 A contemporary marble relief from the Athenian acropolis25 is one of a very small number of nebrides in Archaic sculpture (two of which also feature Hermes)26 and shows Hermes wearing a pilos, chitoniskos and nebris, and holding a syrinx (see Fig. 4). Notwithstanding the later relationship between this

_____ 19 Apollo wears a nebris in both surviving black-figure depictions of his slaying the Niobids (Hamburg 1960.1 and the fragmentary amphora Leipzig T4225, both illustrated and discussed by Torelli 2012 [vol. 2]: 369), at least one of the six Attic versions of his pursuing Tityus (Louvre E864) as well as a Thasian version of the same episode (see Coulié 2002: 95–96, pl. 65.244), one of five Gigantomachies (Lydus’ fragmentary dinos from the Athenian Acropolis, 1.607), and many scenes of his struggle with Heracles for the Delphic tripod. (A search on the Beazley Archive Pottery Database for ‘Apollo AND struggle AND nebris’, performed on 21 February 2016, yielded twenty-one examples). Dionysus, however, tends to wear an animal-skin garment primarily in scenes of the Gigantomachy; see Carpenter (1986: 66). 20 On a Siana cup in the Giamalakis collection. See Villanueva-Puig (2009: 103). 21 The evidence suggests that these wearers all ultimately owe their wearing of the garment to Hermes. See Harden (2016: 263–264). 22 London B32. See Siebert (1990: 309 no. 237). 23 Athens 303. See Markoe & Serwint (1986: 9) for illustration and comments. 24 Geneva MF156. It should be noted that rustic animal skins do not feature on either vase. 25 Athens Acropolis 622. See Deyhle (1969: 55, pl. 22). 26 Other examples include the so-called Introduction Pediment (Acropolis Museum 9), which also features Hermes in a nebris, and the Gigantomachy frieze from the Siphnian Treasury (which features nebrides worn by Hermes and Artemis).

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musical instrument and the world of the bucolic, the god’s headgear contextualises him in a long tradition of rustic figures (see Pipili 2000), and it seems quite clear that a rustic image is intended here. Hermes’ association with the nebris may ultimately stem from his status as a patron of shepherds, a status which is well-evidenced in archaic literature.27 The nature of Hermes is a vexed question which has occupied scholars since the nineteenth century, generally concerning the supposed origins of the god in phallic worship or as a god of the stone-heap (see e.g. Athanassakis 1989). In the art and literature of the Greek Archaic period, he has a small number of distinct narrative functions: as a guide, messenger, thief, and patron of shepherds and more generally of profit. His pastoral associations are particularly strong in early Greek texts: at Odyssey 14.435 he is the recipient of a sacrifice by Eumaeus, and, as noted above, the (δέρμα-wearing) disguised Odysseus also claims the patronage of Hermes as he seeks to embark on δρηστοσύνη (“service”) under the swineherd (Od. 15.319). Hesiod’s Theogony (v. 444) mentions Hermes in connection with the fertility of flocks, and the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women also identifies him as “overseer of the flocks” (fr. 160 [= P. Oxy. 2489]: ἐπίσκοπος νομήων; see Most 2007: 242–243). A more detailed sense of the god’s pastoral nature is documented in the fourth Homeric Hymn to Hermes: besides the general sneakiness and thievery which characterise his actions in the hymn, and of course the central narrative of cattle-theft, he is again associated with the fertility of cattle (Hom. Hymn. Herm. 4.491), and towards the poem’s end he is explicitly endowed with lordship (Hom. Hymn. Herm. 4.571: ἀνάσσειν) over flocks and associated with wild animals, as well as being named as ἄγγελος to Hades (Hom. Hymn. Herm. 4.567–573; transl. Martin L. West): ταῦτ᾿ ἔχε, Μαιάδος υἱέ, καὶ ἀγραύλους ἕλικας βοῦς, ἵππους τ᾿ ἀμφιπόλευε καὶ ἡμιόνους ταλαεργούς.” < lines missing > καὶ χαροποῖσι λέουσι καὶ ἀργιόδουσι σύεσσιν καὶ κυσὶ καὶ μήλοισιν, ὅσα τρέφει εὐρεῖα χθών, πᾶσι δ᾿ ἐπὶ προβάτοισιν ἀνάσσειν κύδιμον Ἑρμῆν· οἶον δ᾿ εἰς Ἀΐδην τετελεσμένον ἄγγελον εἶναι, ὅς τ᾿ ἄδοτός περ ἐὼν δώσει γέρας οὐκ ἐλάχιστον. “ ‘(…) Have these things for your own, son of Maia, and the curly-horned, field-dwelling cattle, and concern yourself also with horses and toiling mules.’ < So spoke the son of Leto, the far-shooting lord Apollo. And Zeus confirmed all he had said; and he declared

_____ 27 See esp. Athanassakis (1989) for the close link between Hermes and pastoral activity, as evidenced principally in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.

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that Hermes should be the herald of the gods, and further that he should rule over animals: bears and grey wolves, > and fierce lions and white-tusked boars, and dogs and sheep, all that the broad earth nourishes; and that glorious Hermes should be lord over all flocks; and that he alone should be empowered as envoy to Hades, who without receiving offerings will yet confer not the smallest of boons.”

The hymn makes it clear that by the sixth century B.C. Hermes was understood as fulfilling a number of roles connected with stewardship over shepherds and their flocks and that this was intimately connected with his role as a divine messenger who can traverse the great distance from the heavens to earth and beyond to Hades. Like the skins in Eumaeus’ hut, Hermes’ nebris may then be seen as an artefact of rustic activity, or it may be the case that, like Odysseus’ own δέρμα ψιλόν, Hermes’ nebris is the garment of a wandering traveller. In either case, in the early sixth century B.C. Hermes is depicted in the animalistic costume of those whose livelihoods depend on human-animal co-existence, as befits his status as patron of shepherds. The nebris of Hermes may function as a divine version of the garments which a shepherd wears, perhaps once as symbolically legible as the coarse hair garment of John the Baptist in Renaissance painting; but this association was short-lived and confined to Attic sculpture and vase painting. What is certainly true is that Hermes, like his protégé Perseus and the entire cast of rustic/positive and heroic wearers mentioned above, abruptly ceases from wearing animal skins in the years around 500 B.C. when they become the costume of Dionysian wildness and animalistic otherness.

4 Conclusion: The changing reception of the ‘wild man’ No images of Eumaeus have come down from this era of Greek art, but there are several images of real and fictional figures wearing animal skins whose livelihoods revolved around animals. One is Eurytion, the son of Ares and guardian of Geryon’s cattle, who, along with his companion dog Orthus and Geryon himself, was killed by Heracles. In Hesiod’s Theogony Eurytion is referred to as a cowherd (Theog. 293: βουκόλος), and he wears a nebris on two black-figure depictions of the death of Geryon.28 Eurytion’s nebris even survives the rare trans-

_____ 28 Louvre F53 (signed by Exekias as potter; see Zervoudaki 1988: 113 no. 3) and Christchurch, Canterbury University 42.57 (attributed to Group E; see Boardman 1990: 76 no. 2483 and Zervoudaki 1988: 114 no. 37).

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mission into red-figure, on a cup by Euphronius.29 Like Hermes on the Acropolis relief, he wears a felt hat as his primary attribute. This accessory has undergone thorough analysis by Maria Pipili (2000) in terms of its function as the headgear of rustics and labourers in Archaic and Classical Athenian art, common to both mythological and real figures (unlike the nebris, which is primarily a mythological garment). In the case of Eurytion, the nebris is used in conjunction with the pilos and the guard dog to evoke the world of the mythical pastoralist, drawing on rustic or pastoral imagery which has reference points in the paraphernalia of both the everyday and the mythical. Beyond mythological space, several images survive of mortal figures wearing animal skins, and two vases seem to exemplify the shift in cultural attitude towards men whose livelihoods depended on animals. A black-figure amphora attributed to the Bucci Painter shows a ploughman wearing an animal-skin cloak knotted at the neck; a slightly later red-figure cup signed by Epictetus shows a herdsman in an arm-slung cloak also knotted at the neck. (On the reverse is the donkey which he is presumably driving.) There is a marked difference in tone between these two images (see Figs. 5–6): on the Bucci Painter amphora, the ploughman wears the same petasos as is often found on Hermes, but his animal skin is not a nebris (and in fact is rather unusual in form). The vase’s reverse shows bird-liming, an activity depicted as a worthy bucolic pursuit in Longus (Daphnis and Chloe 3.10). There is every reason to think that this whole amphora depicts the same peaceful, ‘rustic/positive’ agrarian space in which, for example, labourers and satyrs press grapes in scenes of wine-vintaging on Archaic symposium vessels.30 However, the same cannot be said of the redfigure cup, which gives a revised impression of the same calibre of figure: the man’s hairline and waistline deviate from the lithe and youthful Classical norm, and the rude beast he drives is part of a nexus of inelegant equine iconography which has been well studied by Mark Griffith (2006). Detectable here, arguably, is the shift from the natural and positive view of animal-derived livelihoods towards a fetishisation of rustic pursuits and ultimately a sophisticated urbane denigration of those whose lives and incomes depended on working with animals. Two texts from the sixth century B.C. shed further light on the low regard in which the wearers of animal skins were held: the ‘urbane’ view which came to predominate within the Classical consciousness. The texts are roughly contem-

_____ 29 Munich 2620; see Zervoudaki (1988: 115 no. 44). 30 Forty-eight of the sixty-three vases retrieved with the search-term ‘Vintage’ on the Beazley Archive Pottery Database are dated before 475 B.C.

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poraneous, and are cited together by Leslie Kurke (1999: 187–188) as evidence for the despising of the class of merchants who were gaining political prominence in the sixth century B.C. The first is a well-known fragment of Anacreon (fr. 388.1–6 [= Athenaeus, Deipn. 12 533f]; text and transl. David A. Campbell): πρὶν μὲν ἔχων βερβέριον, καλύμματ᾿ ἐσφηκωμένα, καὶ ξυλίνους ἀστραγάλους ἐν ὠσὶ καὶ ψιλὸν περὶ πλευρῇσι βοός, νήπλυτον εἴλυμα κακῆς ἀσπίδος, ἀρτοπώλισιν κἀθελοπόρνοισιν ὁμιλέων ὁ πονηρὸς Ἀρτέμων, κίβδηλον εὑρίσκων βίον (…). “He used to go about in an old cap, a wasped hood, with wooden dice in his ears and around his ribs a hairless oxhide, the unwashed wrapping of a wretched shield ‒ that scoundrel Artemon, consorting with bread-women and ready whores, devising a fraudulent living (…).”

The character of Artemon is lampooned wearing an oxhide that is also described as ψιλόν (“plucked”), like that of the disguised Odysseus, and second-hand as well: Anacreon adds the extra detail that it was salvaged from an old shield. Kurke cites Christopher Brown’s linking this with a passage of Theognis (vv. 53– 58; transl. Douglas E. Gerber), and the costume of the two targets as equally indicative of low status: Κύρνε, πόλις μὲν ἔθ᾿ ἥδε πόλις, λαοὶ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι οἳ πρόσθ᾿ οὔτε δίκας ᾔδεσαν οὔτε νόμους, ἀλλ᾿ ἀμφὶ πλευραῖσι δορὰς αἰγῶν κατέτριβον, ἔξω δ᾿ ὥστ᾿ ἔλαφοι τῆσδ᾿ ἐνέμοντο πόλεος. καὶ νῦν εἰσ᾿ ἀγαθοί, Πολυπαΐδη· οἱ δὲ πρὶν ἐσθλοὶ νῦν δειλοί. τίς κεν ταῦτ᾿ ἀνέχοιτ᾿ ἐσορῶν; “Cyrnus, this city is still a city, but the people are different, people who formerly knew neither justice nor laws, but wore tattered goatskins about their sides and lived outside this city like deer. And now they are noble, Polypaïdes, while those who were noble before are now base. Who can endure the sight of this?”

Who are these wild men? Christopher Brown (1983) equated Theognis’ δορά (at v. 55 above) with the διφθέρα, a garment characteristic of a low underclass, and he goes on to note several texts which employ this word. The word itself denotes the product of preparation and curing, rather than a raw hide (δέρρις): as a leather cloak, in Aristophanes’ Clouds (vv. 70–72) the διφθέρα is contrasted with the ξυστίς, i.e. the saffron himation of charioteers and of kings in tragic per-

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formances (see Brown 1983: 13 n. 70). Commenting on the line, Dover (1968: 102) notes that this same garment features in Plato’s Republic (420e), where the speaker fancifully imagines farmers being dressed in ξυστίδες, with implied contrast to the διφθέραι which were their normal costume. The διφθέρα is described as the garment of a farm labourer in Menander’s Dyscolus (v. 415); it is also worn by slaves in Menander’s Epitrepontes (v. 229), and later in the same play a διφθέρα is described as the sort of garment worn by the kind of mythical goatherd who finds abandoned infants like Neleus and Pelias.31 A speaker in Varro’s De re rustica (2.11.11) also notes that old men in Greek tragedies and young rustics in Greek and Roman comedy were themselves referred to with the Latin word diphtherae after the garments which they wore. Of the men described by Anacreon and Theognis, Kurke (1999: 189) has convincingly argued that these rustics are in fact κάπηλοι or retail tradesmen, on the receiving end of sneers from moneyed aristocrats. But a closer look at their skin garments may add some further nuance to the characterisation. Aside from Theognis’ word-play with cognates νέμομαι (v. 56) and νόμος (v. 54), the juxtaposition of which suggests that pastoral people are without laws, the absence of δίκαι noted in v. 54 also recalls the statement in Hesiod that δίκη was a quality denied by Zeus to non-human animals (Erga 278: οὐ δίκη ἐστὶ μετ᾽ αὐτοῖς). Whereas Brown (1983) and Kurke (1999) see these figures as those whose rude costume places them among a low class of humans, and while Hermes, by wearing a nebris, may perhaps be characterised as a sneaky κάπηλος trickster in the Archaic period,32 we may suggest in conclusion that their garments do as the maenad’s nebris does on the black-figure vase with which this chapter opened: the costume puts the human wearer into an animal-human continuum, onto which the viewer projects their own prejudices. In the case of the maenad drawn on a symposium vessel, she is transported into a fantastic landscape of Dionysian creatures which, in an era long before Euripides’ Bacchae, could be conceptualised in a wholly positive way. When divisive matters of human politics are at stake, however, dehumanising one’s opponent may be effected in Classical Greek art by dressing them in a certain way as part of a broader programme of packaging their qualities in a format that can be looked upon with superiority. Apart from those positive figures who are still ‘allowed’

_____ 31 Neleus and Pelias were found by a πρεσβύτης ἀνὴρ / αἰπόλος, ἔχων οἵαν ἐγὼ νῦν διφθέραν (Menander, Ep. 327–328). 32 Many thanks to Phillip Horky for this intriguing and likely suggestion. Hermes’ dispensing with the nebris in Classical art may then be related to his increasing depiction as psychopompos and more generally as a guide.

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to use animal skins – Artemis and élite hunters –, the potential for heroic characterisation formerly associated with this garment evaporated towards the end of the Archaic period, and they became unambiguous markers of suspicion and hostility. The removal and donning of an animal’s skin became charged with animalistic, negative and exotic connotations, and this ruled them out as a potential costume for Theseus’ labours in pursuit of human νόμος and ξενία. In this later iconographic environment it is predominantly the wild, hostile and violent who are permitted to wear animal skins.33

Bibliography Editions, commentaries and translations Campbell, David A. (1988): Greek Lyric. Vol. 2: Anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman. Edited and translated (Loeb Classical Library 143), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Dover, Kenneth J. (1968): Aristophanes: Clouds. Edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford. Faulkner, Andrew (2008): The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Introduction, text, and commentary, Oxford. Gerber, Douglas E. (1999): Greek Elegiac Poetry. From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC. Edited and translated (Loeb Classical Library 258), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Hainsworth, John Bryan (1993): The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. 3: Books 9–12, Cambridge. Most, Glenn W. (2007): Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments. Edited and translated (Loeb Classical Library 503), Cambridge, Mass. & London. West, Martin L. (2003): Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer. Edited and translated (Loeb Classical Library 496), Cambridge, Mass. & London.

Secondary literature Athanassakis, Apostolos (1989): From the phallic cairn to shepherd god and divine herald. In: Eranos 87, 33–49. Bažant, Jan & Gratia Berger-Doer (1994): s.v. “Pentheus”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 7.1), Zürich & München, 306–317. Boardman, John, Olga Palagia & Susan Woodford (1988): s.v. “Herakles”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 4), Zürich & München, 728–838.

_____ 33 Thanks are due to Thorsten Fögen and Edmund Thomas for providing generous help with the final version of this paper.

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Boardman, John & al. (1990): s.v. “Herakles”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 5), Zürich & München, 1–192. Brown, Christopher G. (1983): From rags to riches. Anacreon’s Artemon. In: Phoenix 37, 1–15. Carpenter, Thomas H. (1986): Dionysian Imagery in Archaic Greek Art. Its Development in BlackFigure Vase Painting, Oxford. Coulié, Anne (2002): La céramique thasienne à figures noires, Athens. Deyhle, Wolfgang (1969): Meisterfragen der archaischen Plastik Attikas. In: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Athenische Abteilung 84, 1–64. Gasparri, Carlo (1986a): s.v. “Dionysos”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 3), Zürich & München, 414–514. Gasparri, Carlo (1986b): s.v. “Dionysos/Bacchus”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 3), Zürich & München, 540–566. Griffith, Mark (2006): Horsepower and donkeywork. Equids and the ancient Greek imagination. In: Classical Philology 101, 185–246 and 307–358. Harden, Alastair (2016): The Archaic iconography of the animal-skin garment. In: Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Österreich (Beiheft 2), Vienna, 261–270. Hedreen, Guy (1994/95): Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s “Women of Amphissa”. In: Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 52/53, 79–92. Hedreen, Guy (forthcoming): Athenian Dionysian vase imagery, primitive life, and the Etruscans. In: Dyfri Williams, R. R. R. Smith & Thomas Mannack (eds.), Greek Pots Abroad, Oxford. Hermary, Antoine & Anne Jaquemin (1988): s.v. “Hephaistos”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 4), Zürich & München, 627–654. Kossatz-Deissmann, Anneliese (1981): s.v. “Achilleus”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 1), Zürich & München, 37–200. Kossatz-Deissmann, Anneliese (1994): s.v. “Paris iudicium”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 7), Zürich & München, 176–188. Kurke, Leslie (1999): Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold. The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece, Princeton. Markoe, Glenn E. & Nancy J. Serwint (1985): Animal Style on Greek and Etruscan Vases. An Exhibition at the Robert Hull Fleming Museum (University of Vermont, April 11‒June 2, 1985), Burlington, Vermont. Nickel, Roberto (2002): Euphorbus and the death of Achilles. In: Phoenix 56, 215–233. Neils, Jennifer & Susan Woodford (1994): s.v. “Theseus”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 7), Zürich & München, 922–951. Pipili, Maria (2000): Wearing an other hat. Workmen in town and country. In: Beth Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal. Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, Leiden, 153– 179. Pollitt, Jerome J. (1986): Art in the Hellenistic Age, Cambridge. Scully, Matthew (2002): Dominion. The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, New York. Siebert, Gérard (1990): s.v. “Hermes”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 5), Zürich & München, 285–387. Simon, Erika (1961): s.v. “Menadi”. In: Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (ed.), Enciclopedia dell’arte antica, classica e orientale (vol. 4), Roma, 1002–1013. Torelli, Mario (2012): ΣΗΜΑΙΝΕΙΝ – Significare. Scritti vari di ermeneutica archeologica (2 vols.), Pisa.

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Villanueva-Puig, Marie-Christine (2009): Ménades. Recherches sur la genèse iconographique du thiase féminin de Dionysos des origines à la fin de la période archaïque, Paris. Zervoudaki, Eos (1988): s.v. “Eurytion II”. In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (vol. 4), Zürich & München, 112–117.

Illustrations

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Figure 1: Black-figure psykter-amphora showing Dionysus, satyrs and maenad, attributed to Lydus (London, British Museum 1848.6-19.5) © Trustees of the British Museum

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Figure 2: Roman copy of Hellenistic ‘flayer-peasant’, detail (Paris, Musée du Louvre Ma. 517) Photo by the author

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Figure 3: The Calydonian Boar hunt from the François Vase (Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale) Taken from Adolf Furtwängler & Karl Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei: Auswahl hervorragender Vasenbilder (vol. 1), München 1904, pl. 13

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Figure 4: Hermes with syrinx, limestone relief from the Athenian acropolis (Athens, Acropolis Museum 622) Drawing by the author

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Figure 5: Man driving oxen and plough, from a black-figure amphora attributed to the Bucci Painter (New York, Shelby White & Leon Levy collection) Drawing by the author

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Kapitel_15_Bild_06.tif

Figure 6: Man driving donkey, from a red-figure cup signed by Epictetus (St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum B2101) Drawing by the author

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Galen on the Relationship between Human Beings and Fish | 389

John Wilkins

Galen on the Relationship between Human Beings and Fish John Wilkins Galen on the Relationship between Human Beings and Fish Abstract: Galen, the medical author of the second century A.D. with big interests in nutrition, among many other areas of medicine and philosophy, wrote his De alimentorum facultatibus (On the Powers of Foods) in about A.D. 180. He reviews which fish are the most important part of the human diet and what the impact of fish flesh is on the human digestive and blood-making system. He does this within the context of a millennium of thought in Greek poetry and philosophy on the relationship between human beings and fish, a very distant one if Homer and Plato are to be believed. Galen addresses the issue of one animal consuming another within the framework of Aristotle’s biology, in which an animal’s need to eat is considered alongside environmental, social and other needs and constraints. Fundamental to the nature of an animal in Aristotle’s and Galen’s thought are the functions of growth, reproduction, and, the topic of this paper, nutrition. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-016

1 Introduction A bird consuming a worm, a buzzard consuming a song bird, a fox consuming a domestic hen, a badger consuming a hedgehog and a human being consuming a pig or part of a pig are all doing two basic things. On the one hand, they are expressing one of the most aggressive actions of the natural world; and on the other hand, they are expressing the weakness of all mortal creatures, animal or plant, namely the need to replace lost energy with more, in the form of food. They are maintaining a life by taking another. Galen describes the process of energy replacement in the human body in the following passage (De sanitate tuenda 1.3, CMG V 4.2 pp. 5.35–6.3 [= VI 7 Kühn]; my translation): Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἀπορρεῖ μὲν ἁπάντων τῶν ζῴων ὁσημέραι πολὺ μέρος τῆς οὐσίας διὰ τὴν ἔμφυτον θερμότητα, δεόμεθα δὲ ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὴν συμμετρίαν αὐτῆς διαφυλάττεσθαι σιτίων τε καὶ πομάτων, ἀναπνοῆς τε καὶ σφυγμῶν, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀκολουθήσει τοῖσδε περιττωμάτων γένεσις. “Since a considerable part of the substance of all animals flows away daily through their innate heat, and we have need of foods and drinks and respiration and the pulse to maintain the equilibrium of that heat, there inevitably follows the genesis of bodily residues.”

These residues are humours placed in inappropriate parts of the body, Galen tells us, created by eating foods that are insufficiently similar to the substance of the body that we have lost through body heat. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-016

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If we focus on the human action here, the human being is performing one of what Galen calls the ‘natural activities’, which he identifies (following Aristotle) in On Natural Faculties as genesis, growth, and nourishment (De nat. fac. 1.5 [= II 10 Kühn]). In our case of eating the pig, the human being is doing the last of these, nourishing him- or herself. Pork, by the way, is a useful food for human beings, being very close in substance to human flesh (see Galen, De alim. fac. 3.1, CMG V 4.2 pp. 333.23–334.3 [= VI 663 Kühn, p. 182.1–10 Wilkins]). An ancient anthropological take on this key biological activity and its place in human development is provided by the author of the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine. The diet is based on plants rather than animals or fish (Vet. med. 3; transl. William H. S. Jones): ἡ ἀνάγκη ἰητρικὴν ἐποίησε ζητηθῆναί τε καὶ εὑρεθῆναι ἀνθρώποισιν· (…). Ἔτι δ᾽ ἄνωθεν ἔγωγε ἀξιῶ οὐδ᾽ ἂν τῶν ὑγιαινόντων δίαιτάν τε καὶ τροφὴν, ᾗ νῦν χρέονται, εὑρεθῆναι, εἰ ἐξήρκεε τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ταὐτὰ ἐσθίοντι καὶ πίνοντι βοΐ τε καὶ ἵππῳ καὶ πᾶσιν ἐκτὸς ἀνθρώπου, οἷον τὰ ἐκ τῆς γῆς φυόμενα, καρπούς τε καὶ ὕλην καὶ χόρτον· ἀπὸ τουτέων γὰρ καὶ αὔξονται καὶ ἄπονοι διάγουσιν, οὐδὲν προσδεόμενοι ἄλλης διαίτης. (…) Ὡς γὰρ ἔπασχον πολλά τε καὶ δεινὰ ἀπὸ ἰσχυρῆς τε καὶ θηριώδεος διαίτης, ὠμά τε καὶ ἄκρητα καὶ μεγάλας δυνάμιας ἔχοντα ἐσφερόμενοι, οἷά περ ἂν καὶ νῦν ὑπ᾽ αὐτέων πάσχοιεν, πόνοισί τε ἰσχυροῖσι καὶ νούσοισι περιπίπτοντες, καὶ διὰ ταχέος θανάτοισιν. (…) καὶ τοὺς μὲν πλείστους τε καὶ ἀσθενεστέρην φύσιν ἔχοντας ἀπόλλυσθαι εἰκὸς (…). Διὰ δὴ ταύτην τὴν χρείην καὶ οὗτοί μοι δοκέουσι ζητῆσαι τροφὴν ἁρμόζουσαν τῇ φύσει, καὶ εὑρεῖν ταύτην, ᾗ νῦν χρεόμεθα· ἐκ μὲν οὖν τῶν πυρῶν, βρέξαντες καὶ πτίσαντες καὶ καταλέσαντες πάντα, καὶ διασήσαντες, καὶ φορύξαντες, καὶ ὀπτήσαντες, ἀπετέλεσαν ἄρτον· ἐκ δέ γε τῶν κριθέων μᾶζαν (…). “Sheer necessity has caused men to seek and to find medicine (…). I hold that not even the mode of living and nourishment enjoyed at the present time by men in health would have been discovered, had a man been satisfied with the same food and drink as satisfy an ox, a horse, and every animal save man, for example the products of the earth – fruits, wood (ὕλη) and grass. For on these they are nourished, grow and live without pain, having no need at all of any other kind of living (…). Many and terrible were the sufferings of men from strong and brutish living when they partook of crude foods, uncompounded and possessing great powers – the same in fact as men would suffer at the present day, falling into violent pains and diseases quickly followed by death. (…) The majority naturally perished, having too weak a constitution (…). So, because of this need, the ancients too seem to me to have sought for nourishment that harmonised with their constitution, and to have discovered that which we use now. So from wheat, after steeping it, winnowing, grinding and sifting, kneading, baking, they produced bread, and from barley they produced cake (…).”

For this author, humankind has found its way safely to the civilised order: food and cooking are at the centre of medical development, fire supporting the

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body’s heat in digestion, and more important than drugs and other interventions.1 In this article, I focus on what Plato in the Timaeus would identify as the furthest extremes in the spectrum of animal life, the consumption of fish by human beings (see below). My interest is in nutrition, within biological systems. Galen knew the Timaeus and wrote a commentary on it, though Aristotle, as we shall see, is a far more important influence on Galen’s thought.2 After a brief diversion through the epic verse of Hesiod and Oppian, I will return to Galen, who is, naturally, interested in fish, as a section of the animal kingdom that human beings consume. My argument is that Galen implicitly adopts the cultural categories of Greek thought in placing fish outside the civilised order. However, the ancients did eat fish as part of their cultural practice. Thus Galen, in his account of how nutrition assimilates fish flesh into human flesh, places fish and human beings on the same spectrum. They are animals (ζῷα), with some similar characteristics, as set out in Aristotle’s biology. Galen shows how fish and their human consumers are affected by environment, bodily juices and a range of natural processes.

2 Human proximity to fish I often buy a Dover sole on the beach at Budleigh Salterton in Devon (UK). The fishermen have recently beached their boat, and are untangling their catch from the nets set in the bay overnight. The sole live on the sandy bottom of the pretty bay. Out of the water, the sole are gasping and arching their bodies. They are still alive. Is it cruel to eat them? I take the view that there is a case for eating animals and fish, the latter in particular. I would almost say that we ought to eat them.3

_____ 1 There is a huge bibliography on this in ancient studies, specifically on the myth of Prometheus and its interpretation in the wake of Lévi-Strauss (1964). See in particular Detienne & Vernant (1979). 2 Galen in the last ten years has become a much more accessible author to us, nearly every printed edition up to 1823 now being online at the Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Médecine (BIUM), based at University of Paris 5. In addition, by a great act of generosity on the part of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of the Sciences, editions of the Corpus Medicorum Graecorum (= CMG) are also freely available online, the more recent ones provided with a translation in a modern language, sometimes English. 3 For the ancient engagement with this much debated area, see Sorabji (1993), Osborne (2007), and Grumett & Muers (2008).

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I am concerned in this paper not so much with the ethics of eating animals and fish (a very important area, of course); rather, I am interested in human knowledge about living creatures. What do we know about fish? I contend that eating an animal is one way of extending our relationship with them. It is certainly a predatory relationship. But if we eat fish, we are not only nourishing ourselves, we are also extending our knowledge about them, and also about the sea. Not to do so risks sentimentality, or at least challenges our notions of our status as human beings and our relationship with animals, as we have evolved over millennia. Pets as honorary human beings clearly come into a similar area of thought, an area explored by Marion Nestle (2008) and by Louise Calder (in this volume). Another way to bring animals closer to human beings is through film. Wellloved cartoons readily come to mind: Mickey Mouse, Tom & Jerry, Yogi Bear & Booboo, Top Cat, Deputy Dawg. There are not many fish cartoons, but an influential example is Finding Nemo. The film’s attractive central character, a clownfish, led some advertisers and tourist authorities to promote sales of the species, with some serious environmental consequences.4 For reasons such as this and many other factors separating human beings from life in the sea, not eating fish may lead to ignorance, pollution and the destruction of the marine environment, as happened in British waters after the Second World War. Only now, after decades of damage, are projects being considered, for example, to reintroduce the native oyster to Swansea Bay, a shellfish once available abundantly to almost everyone (see The Guardian, 25 April 2015, http://www.theguardian. com/environment/2015/apr/25/bringing-home-oysters-restore-british-fishing). How many species of fish and marine life live in British waters? They may be, to borrow a term from Oppian, ‟countless” (Hal. 1.80: μυρία). Why are they so attractive to Spanish boats? Why, when I lived in Aberdeen in the 1980s, was much of the Peterhead catch loaded on to forty-ton trucks and shipped to Boulogne? Why do the Scots not eat squid every day, one of the fresh, plentiful, local foods of that country? According to a recent report by Lewis Smith in the Guardian (9 April 2015, pp. 10–11), 60–75% of all fish eaten in the UK is from one species, cod. Consumers may not know many of the other species available. And government agencies have a massive knowledge deficit as well. Smith reports that Seafish, “a government-funded body representing the seafood industry”, and the Marine Stew-

_____ 4 I am grateful to the anonymous reader for reference to McClenachan, Cooper, Carpenter & Dulvy (2012) who deal with this topic.

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ardship Council declared that of 450 inshore fisheries only one in nine operate sustainably. Smith continues: “While the fish populations in many of the 400 problem fisheries might be healthy, nobody knows the true status because of a severe lack of scientific data on the stock size and how many are caught by fishermen each year.”

A severe knowledge deficit, we might say.5 My colleague Erica Rowan works on the food remains of a sewer in Herculaneum (see Rowan 2014a and Rowan 2014b). Analysis of the fish bones shows that forty-five different varieties of fish were eaten by the inhabitants of the building, a row of workshops with flats above.6 How many similar buildings in modern Britain would reveal so many kinds of fish eaten by ordinary working people? We live on an island with numerous edible species swimming around us all the time. But as a nation we are more meat-eaters than fish-eaters. We need to understand what we do in order to understand what Galen has to tell us about eating fish in the second century A.D., or indeed what people were eating in the houses and workshops of Herculaneum. Galen is concerned with more than eating: biology and environment are important too. Nutrition remains the focus of the treatise on nutrition, naturally, but Galen concerns himself with pollution and the environment (deep sea or in-shore), both of which influence the fish’s constitution. At the beginning of the book, Galen declares that nutrition constitutes a third of medicine, alongside pharmacology and surgery (De alim. fac. 1.1, CMG V 4.2 pp. 201.4–202.6 [= VI 453 Kühn, p. 3.3– 11 Wilkins]). Fish are an interesting area of study since, like insects, they are remote from mankind and other mammals, and, in the case of fish, additionally inhabit a medium inimical (for more than a short period) to human life. Fish are not like us in many ways. Some sea creatures are more like us, mammals such as dolphins and whales, for example, and human beings go on dolphin watch and whale watch rather than eating them on the plate. I know of only one Greek text

_____ 5 Balcombe (2016) was published too late for me to read fully, but focuses fascinatingly on the area under discussion from a modern perspective. 6 On the contribution of archaeology to the understanding of fish, see also Čechová (2014), Curtis (2014), Lytle (2013), and Mylona (2015). Rowan (2014b) brings out what archaeology can contribute to the identification and distribution of species, though ancient terms for species remain confusing in some species (see n. 7), but not those mentioned in this article. Mylona (2008) offers an excellent review of ancient evidence and of archaeological data for fish remains in Greek waters.

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that mentions the eating of dolphins, Xenophon’s Anabasis (5.4.28). The sea, of course, is infinitely challenging and remains unknown to scientists in vast tracts of the earth’s oceans. Remember the words of Odysseus (Od. 5.413–422; transl. A. T. Murray & George E. Dimock): ἀγχιβαθὴς δὲ θάλασσα, καὶ οὔ πως ἔστι πόδεσσι στήμεναι ἀμφοτέροισι καὶ ἐκφυγέειν κακότητα· μή πώς μ᾿ ἐκβαίνοντα βάλῃ λίθακι ποτὶ πέτρῃ κῦμα μέγ᾿ ἁρπάξαν· μελέη δέ μοι ἔσσεται ὁρμή. εἰ δέ κ᾿ ἔτι προτέρω παρανήξομαι, ἤν που ἐφεύρω ἠιόνας τε παραπλῆγας λιμένας τε θαλάσσης, δείδω μή μ᾽ ἐξαῦτις ἀναρπάξασα θύελλα πόντον ἐπ᾽ ἰχθυόεντα φέρῃ βαρέα στενάχοντα, ἠέ τί μοι καὶ κῆτος ἐπισσεύῃ μέγα δαίμων ἐξ ἁλός, οἷά τε πολλὰ τρέφει κλυτὸς Ἀμφιτρίτη· “and the water is deep close to shore, so that there is no way to stand firm on both feet and escape evil. As I try to come ashore, a great wave may seize me and dash me against the jagged rock, and so shall my effort be in vain. But if I swim on yet further in hope of finding shelving beaches and harbours of the sea, I fear that the storm wind may catch me up again, and bear me, groaning heavily, over the fish-filled sea; or that some god may even send forth upon me some great monster out of the sea, like those that glorious Amphitrite breeds in such numbers.”

The sea is both threatening and dangerous, and a source for human progress, as the Odyssey shows throughout. The sea offers easier transport than does the land, trade opportunities, and a wealth of fish for those who wish to catch them.

3 A summary of fish in ancient thought This challenge to knowledge was taken up by ancient writers and scientists.7 I will mention Hesiod, Oppian and Aristotle, but many others are worth consideration, such as the Fishes of Archippus, a poet of Greek Old Comedy (see Wilkins 2000a, Wilkins 2000b, and Wilkins 2008). Homer virtually removed fish from Bronze Age life in his epics. Only in the Odyssey do the heroes eat fish, and then solely when under the duress of severe hunger (Od. 4.368–369, 12.330–332).

_____ 7 The identification of fish in ancient texts is not always easy. The best survey of ancient texts is Thompson (1947), but his identification of species is not fully reliable.

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Hesiod in Works and Days establishes the utter divide between human beings and other animals (Erga 276–279; my translation): τόνδε γὰρ ἀνθρώποισι νόμον διέταξε Κρονίων, ἰχθύσι μὲν καὶ θηρσὶ καὶ οἰωνοῖς πετεηνοῖς ἔσθειν ἀλλήλους, ἐπεὶ οὐ δίκη ἐστὶ μετ᾽ αὐτοῖς· ἀνθρώποισι δ᾽ ἔδωκε δίκην, ἣ πολλὸν ἀρίστη γίνεται· “The son of Kronos ordained this law for mankind, that fish and wild beasts and winged birds should eat each other, because there is no justice among them; but to men he gave justice, which is far the best.”

Plato expressed a similar division, but in a hierarchy of intellectual ability, with a spectrum ranging through men, women, animals, and finally fish (Timaeus 92b–c; transl. Desmond Lee): τέταρτον γένος ἔνυδρον γέγονεν ἐκ τῶν μάλιστα ἀνοητοτάτων καὶ ἀμαθεστάτων, οὓς οὐδ᾽ ἀναπνοῆς καθαρᾶς ἔτι ἠξίωσαν οἱ μεταπλάττοντες, ὡς τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπὸ πλημμελείας πάσης ἀκαθάρτως ἐχόντων, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντὶ λεπτῆς καὶ καθαρᾶς ἀναπνοῆς ἀέρος εἰς ὕδατος θολερὰν καὶ βαθεῖαν ἔωσαν ἀνάπνευσιν· ὅθεν ἰχθύων ἔθνος καὶ τὸ τῶν ὀστρέων συναπάντων τε ὅσα ἔνυδρα γέγονεν, δίκην ἀμαθίας ἐσχάτης ἐσχάτας οἰκήσεις εἰληχότων. καὶ κατὰ ταῦτα δὴ πάντα τότε καὶ νῦν διαμείβεται τὰ ζῷα εἰς ἄλληλα, νοῦ καὶ ἀνοίας ἀποβολῇ καὶ κτήσει μεταβαλλόμενα. “But the most unintelligent and ignorant of all turned into the fourth kind of creature that lives in water. Their souls were hopelessly steeped in every kind of error, and so their makers thought them unfit to breathe pure clean air, and made them inhale water, into whose turbid depths they plunged them. That is the origin of fish, shell-fish and everything else that lives in water; they live in the depths as a punishment for the depths of their stupidity. These are the principles on which living creatures change into each other, the transformation depending on the loss or gain of understanding and folly.”

Elsewhere in his dialogues, Plato sees fish as part of the pleasurable life (along with wine and parties), which threatens the good order of a rational and philosophical life (see e.g. Davidson 1997: 20–26). This discourse is taken up by Archestratus of Gela, who in a parodic poem mocks both the epic poets and Plato.8 Archestratus considers categories of fish in the context of luxurious dining (fr. 40; my translation):

_____ 8 See Wilkins & Hill (22011) and, for a full critical edition, Olson & Sens (2000).

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ἀλλὰ λαβὲ ξιφίου τέμαχος Βυζάντιον ἐλθών, οὐραίου γ᾽ αὐτὸν τὸν σφόνδυλον. ἐστὶ δὲ κεδνὸς κἀν πορθμῷ πρὸς ἄκραισι Πελωριάδος προβολαῖσι. “get a slice of swordfish when you come to Byzantium, the very joint of the tail. It is also good in the strait near the jutting headland of Pelorum (Northeast Sicily).”

Interest here is in the location of the fish and the best part of it for eating. This text is Europe’s earliest cookery book, in epic hexameters, written in perhaps 350–330 B.C. Oppian’s remarkable Halieutica, also a didactic hexameter poem, of the second century A.D., brings out the unknowability of the sea, the predation of one species on another, and the reproductive behaviour of fish. Also powerful is the contrast between fish and certain human beings (Hal. 1.80–89; transl. A. W. Mair): Μυρία μὲν δὴ φῦλα καὶ ἄκριτα βένθεσι πόντου ἐμφέρεται πλώοντα· τὰ δ᾽ οὔ κέ τις ἐξονομήναι ἀτρεκέως· οὐ γάρ τις ἐφίκετο τέρμα θαλάσσης· ἀλλὰ τριηκοσίων ὀργυιῶν ἄχρι μάλιστα ἀνέρες ἴσασίν τε καὶ ἔδρακον Ἀμφιτρίτην. πολλὰ δ᾽ (ἀπειρεσίη γὰρ ἀμετροβαθής τε θάλασσα) κέκρυπται, τά κεν οὔ τις ἀείδελα μυθήσαιτο θνητὸς ἐών· ὀλίγος δὲ νόος μερόπεσσι καὶ ἀλκή. οὐ μὲν γὰρ γαίης πολυμήτορος ἔλπομαι ἅλμην παυροτέρας ἀγέλας οὔτ᾽ ἔθνεα μείονα φέρβειν. “Countless (μυρία) and indefinable are the tribes that are carried along swimming in the depths of the sea, and no one is able to name them with certainty. For no one has come to the end of the sea, but men know and have seen Amphitrite as far as 300 fathoms. Much is hidden since the sea is boundless and its depth unmeasured, and a mortal would not be able to relate things that cannot be seen, for small are the mind and strength of men. For I do not think that the briny deep feeds fewer herds or lesser tribes than does Earth who is mother of many.”

The poem concludes (Hal. 5.665–680): πολλάκι δ᾽ ἐχθίστης τε τυχὼν καὶ ἀπηνέος ἄγρης ἅλμενος ἐς πόντοιο βαθὺν πόρον οὐκέτ᾽ ἀνέσχε, δύσμορος, ἀντιάσας δυσδερκέϊ θηρὶ πελώρῳ· καί ῥ᾽ ὁ μὲν οἷς ἑτάροισιν ἐπισείων θαμὰ δεσμὸν κέκλεται αὖ ἐρύειν, τὸ δέ οἱ δέμας ἡμιδάϊκτον κητείη τε βίη καὶ ὁμόστολοι ἔσπασαν ἄνδρες, οἰκτρὸν ἰδεῖν, ἔτι νηὸς ἐφιέμενον καὶ ἑταίρων· οἱ δὲ θοῶς κεῖνόν τε πόρον καὶ λυγρὸν ἄεθλον

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ἀχνύμενοι λείπουσι καὶ ἐς χέρσον κατάγονται λείψανα δυστήνοιο περικλαίοντες ἑταίρου. Τόσσ᾽ ἐδάην, σκηπτοῦχε διοτρεφές, ἔργα θαλάσσης. σοὶ δ᾽ αἰεὶ νῆες μὲν ἀπήμονες ἰθύνοιντο, πεμπόμεναι λιαροῖσι καὶ ἰθυπόροισιν ἀήταις, αἰεὶ δ᾽ ἰχθυόεσσα περιπλήθοιτο θάλασσα, γαίης δ᾽ ἀστυφέλικτα Ποσειδάων ἐρύοιτο Ἀσφάλιος ῥιζοῦχα θεμείλια νέρθε φυλάσσων. “Often when the sponge-cutter has leapt into the deep waters of the sea and won his loathly and unkindly spoil, he comes up no more, unhappy man, having encountered some huge and hideous beast. Shaking repeatedly the rope he bids his comrades pull him up. And the mighty sea-monster and the companions of the fisher pull at his body rent in twain, a pitiful sight to see, still yearning for ship and shipmates. And they in their sorrow speedily leave those waters and their mournful labour and return to land, weeping over the remains of their unhappy comrade. So much I know, O Wielder of the Sceptre, nursling of the gods, of the works of the sea. But for you may your ships be steered free from harm, sped by gentle winds and fair; and always for you may the sea teem with fish; and may Poseidon, Lord of Safety, guard and keep unshaken the nether foundations which hold the roots of Earth.”

In summary, a millennium of thought about fish in Greek culture, from Hesiod to Oppian, has shown that there is no justice in the sea; that savagery reigns, with constant consumption; that, while there is calm and peace on the surface for the Emperor, the fishermen are poor and marginal. In addition, we may add that Oppian and Aristotle regard the grey mullet as the most virtuous of fish as it is a herbivore species. I return to the grey mullet below. This is the literary background to Galen’s book in Greek thought. Before considering his debt to Aristotle’s biology, it is worth highlighting his interest in classification, in this case not of a fish but of a snail (De alim. fac. 3.2, CMG V 4.2 p. 337.11–20 [= VI 668–669 Kühn, p. 187.5–16 Wilkins]; my translation): Ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὔτ᾽ ἐν τοῖς πτηνοῖς οὔτ᾽ ἐν τοῖς ἐνύδροις ἀριθμεῖσθαι χρὴ τοῦτο τὸ ζῷον, ἄντικρυς δῆλον. εἰ δὲ μηδ᾽ ἐν τοῖς πεζοῖς αὐτοῦ μνημονεύσαιμεν, οὐδ᾽ ὅλως ἐροῦμέν τι περὶ τῆς ἐκ κοχλίου τροφῆς. οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ παραλιπεῖν εὔλογον, ὥσπερ τοὺς ἐκ τῶν ξύλων σκώληκας ἐχίδνας τε καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους ὄφεις ὅσα τε κατ᾽ Αἴγυπτον καὶ ἄλλα τινὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν ἐσθίουσιν· οὔτε γὰρ ἐκείνων τις ἀναγνώσεται ταῦτα, καὶ ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἄν ποτε φάγοιμέν τι τῶν ἐκείνοις ἐδωδίμων. κοχλίας δ᾽ ὁσημέραι πάντες Ἕλληνες ἐσθίουσιν, ἔχοντας μὲν σκληρὰν τὴν σάρκα καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δύσπεπτον, εἴ γε μὴν πεφθείη, τροφιμωτάτην. “That this animal (sc. the snail) is not numbered among the birds or the water-dwellers is instantly clear. If I do not discuss it among the footed animals, I will be able to say nothing at all about nourishment offered by the snail. Nor is it reasonable to leave it out, like the wood bugs and vipers and other snakes which they eat among the Egyptians and other peoples. None of those people are going to read this, nor are we ever going to eat anything

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that they consider edible. The Greeks eat snails every day, and they have a hard flesh and for this reason are hard to digest, though if they are digested they are extremely nourishing.”

This article will show that Galen’s approach to nutrition supplied by fish is heavily dependent on Aristotle’s categories in the History of Animals, a work on which there has been much debate among philosophers about exactly how Aristotle’s biological system works. There is no need to go into that here.9 For the present purpose, Aristotle’s biology, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, is the system that Galen follows, both in his analysis of the human body and his analysis of fish, all within the same system. Two observations, though, should be made. A considerable amount of Aristotle’s thought is biologically based: Tracy (1969) shows how arguments about what is natural in political affairs and social structure are based on his philosophy of nature. Secondly, a team is working at the University of Thessaloniki to explore Aristotle’s observations and conclusions about certain marine species. Their opinion, as biologists and not Classicists, is that Aristotle’s observations are acute and impressive. Their biology and classifications, naturally, are not Aristotle’s, but the philosopher’s data is good, they believe.10 How then does Galen modify Aristotle’s biology for his discussion of nutrition, a subsection of Aristotle’s work, but central to Galen’s medicine, as to Hippocrates’ too? Consideration only of the first five sections of Book 1 of the History of Animals, before we get to the celebrated sixth section on categories, shows the closeness of Galen’s match to Aristotle. Before Aristotle gets to classes of animal and parts, starting with human beings, there are more fundamental questions to address. We start with the building blocks of life, what Aristotle calls the homoiomerous and non-homoiomerous, that is substance such as flesh that is similar across the body, and matter such as a hand which only has two instances in a human body. This is the basis of Galen’s physiology which he deploys for example at the beginning of De sanitate tuenda, when he is discussing the human ζῷον (De sanitate tuenda 1.1, CMG V 4.2 p. 3.13–17 [= VI 2 Kühn]; my translation):

_____ 9 For a recent review of the issues, see Gotthelf (2012). On the strong biological strand in Aristotle’s thought more widely, see Tracy (1969). 10 See Voultsiadou & Vafidis (2007) and Voultsiadou & Chinitroglou (2008).

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(…) δέδεικται τῶν μὲν ὁμοιομερῶν ὀνομαζομένων ἡ ὑγεία, ψυχροῦ καὶ θερμοῦ καὶ ξηροῦ καὶ ὑγροῦ, συμμετρία τις ὑπάρχουσα, τῶν δ᾽ ὀργανικῶν ἐκ τῆς τῶν ὁμοιομερῶν συνθέσεώς τε καὶ ποσότητος καὶ πηλικότητος καὶ διαπλάσεως ἀποτελουμένη. “(…) health is an equilibrium accomplished from both the so-called homoiomerous parts, of the cold, the hot, the dry and the wet, and of the organic parts, that is their synthesis from the homoiomerous, their size, their kind and their moulding (διάπλασις).”

Aristotle continues (Hist. anim. I 1) with consideration of more or less; soft-flesh or hard flesh (486b: μαλακόσαρκα and σκληρόσαρκα); way of life, whether on land or in water; social or scattered (488a: τὰ μὲν πολιτικὰ τὰ δὲ σποραδικά). Further categories are methods of food intake (Hist. anim. I 2); semen production; touch (Hist. anim. I 3), fluids such as blood; reproduction, whether through live young or eggs; locomotion, whether footed or swimming; then on to γένη, whether bird, fish or whatever. And classes of sea life such as ὀστρακόδερμα, μαλακόστρακα and μαλακία; then insects, then quadrupeds; then humans, and the consideration of the parts of the human body. Later, in Book 8, Aristotle discusses diet and disposition: πρᾶξις and βίος vary according to ἤθη and τροφή. Chapters 1–2 focus on fish habits and eating. Further, Aristotle discusses certain essential functions of animals in the Parva Naturalia, that is On the Parts of Animals and On Generation. Galen’s understanding of the ‘natural faculties’ follows Aristotle closely: they are generation (γένεσις), growth (αὔξησις) and nutrition (θρέψις).

4 Galen on nutrition What we are considering, therefore, is the consumption of the fish ζῷον (with its constituent parts) by the human ζῷον, as the latter seeks to replace its lost energy with more τροφή (‘nourishment’) of a non-disturbing kind, i.e. that will produce good blood and minimum περιττώματα (‘humours out of place’; see above). In order to find out how that τροφή (‘nourishment’) is delivered into the body, let us now turn to Galen’s organisation in De alimentorum facultatibus.11 Animals and fish come only in the third and final book. The work is organised as follows: In Book 1 he lists cereals and legumes, in Book 2 other green plants,

_____ 11 For English translations, see Grant (2000) and Powell (2003). The latter has valuable medical notes from the author, who was trained as a medical practitioner.

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meat and fish follow in Book 3. Foods are ordered in each book according to calorific value. Book 1, on cereals, beans and pulses, unquestionably addresses the staples of the ancient diet. Within Book 3, fish are by implication less nutritious than meat because they follow meat, birds, and food products such as milk and eggs. On the other hand, at the beginning of Book 2, these are all considered valuable (Galen, De alim. fac. 2.1, CMG V 4.2 p. 264.16–19 [= VI 555 Kühn, pp. 88.27–89.4 Wilkins]): φαίνεται γοῦν τά τε χοίρεια κρέα καὶ τὰ τῶν ἐρίφων τε καὶ αἰγῶν καὶ μόσχων καὶ βοῶν καὶ προβάτων, οὐδὲν δ᾽ ἧττον αὐτῶν ὅσα θηρεύουσιν ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσιν οἱ κυνηγέται, πολλὴν χρείαν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις παρεχόμενα, καθάπερ γε καὶ τῶν πτηνῶν πολλὰ καὶ τῶν ἐνύδρων. “It seems, therefore, that pig’s flesh, and that of kids, goats, calves, cattle and sheep, as also the meat of animals that huntsmen catch in the mountains, provide much benefit for humans, as also does that of many winged and aquatic animals.”

Galen is considering primarily agricultural products, with wild plants and animals an important but lesser category. This is a diet based on culture. Fish are outside this human culture (confirmed by their almost complete exclusion from sacrifice to the gods). The primary animals for Galen are pigs, sheep and cattle. Fish belong to the wild, with no fish farms considered (though they existed in antiquity, as the Roman agricultural writers attest). Galen’s fish categories are as follows: those eaten regularly, namely grey mullet, sea bass, red mullet, rock fish, and goby; soft fleshed (μαλακόσαρκα); firm fleshed (σκληρόσαρκα); molluscs (ὀστρακόδερμα); crustaceans (μαλακόστρακα); cephalopods (μαλακία); cartilaginous species (σελάχια); cetaceous species; and sea urchins. These closely follow Aristotle’s categories (see above), which probably came in to medicine and nutrition through Mnesitheus of Athens and Diphilus of Siphnos in the fourth and third centuries B.C. These doctors mention the Aristotelian categories of μαλακία, ὀστρακόδερμα, μαλακόδερμα, πετραῖοι (‘living among rocks’), and λεπιδωτοί (‘with a scaly skin’).12 A further important physician from the fourth century B.C. was Phylotimus, pupil of Praxagoras of Cos, who wrote an influential book On Foods, with whose zoological classifications Galen took issue in the treatise (see further below). As we have seen, Galen believed that the human body, like any other animal body, needs to take in food to replace lost energy. The best food is that closest to what has been lost in bodily heat. Breast milk, therefore, is best as it is

_____ 12 Mnesitheus, fr. 38 Bertier. For Diphilus, see Athenaeus, Deipn. 8 355a–357a.

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closest to the baby’s own substance; pork is best for adults as it resembles human flesh. Those περιττώματα (‘residues’), which I mentioned above, accumulate if the body heat is insufficient to digest food, or if the food is unsuitable. And, to take an example of an unsuitable fish, a grey mullet caught in the polluted estuary of the River Tiber is likely to produce bad digestion and bad residues.13 A good fish would be a grey mullet caught in open waters. Galen clearly links environmental conditions with the flesh of fish and its impact on the human consumer. Fish are better away from human influence. Galen’s extensive interest in environmental impact on health is exemplified by his commentary on the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places. Galen approaches fish according to their biological family, their γένος (De alim. fac. 3.24, CMG V 4.2 p. 361.11–16 [= VI 708-709 Kühn, p. 221.17–23 Wilkins]): Τοῦ γένους τῶν λεπιδωτῶν ἰχθύων ἐστὶν ὁ κέφαλος, οὐκ ἐν θαλάττῃ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ λίμναις καὶ ποταμοῖς γεννώμενος. διὸ καὶ μεγάλην ἔχουσιν οἱ κατὰ μέρος κέφαλοι πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαφοράν, ὡς δοκεῖν ἕτερον εἶναι γένος τοῦ πελαγίου κεφάλου πρὸς τὸν ἐν λίμναις ἢ ποταμοῖς ἢ τέλμασιν ἢ ὀχετοῖς τοῖς ἐκκαθαίρουσι τοὺς ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι κοπρῶνας. “The grey mullet is in the class (γένος) of scaly fish (λεπιδωτοί).14 It reproduces not just in the sea, but also in marshes and rivers. Consequently, they differ greatly from each other in each category (μέρος), and, therefore, the pelagic mullet appears to be in a different class from those in marshes or rivers, pools or drains cleansing the latrines in cities.”

The type of food the fish eats will be an environmental concern just as crucial for the human consumer as the waters in which the fish lives (De alim. fac. 3.24, CMG V 4.2 p. 362.4–6 [= VI 710 Kühn, p. 222.17–22 Wilkins]): καὶ παρὰ τὰς τροφὰς δὲ βελτίους γίγνονται καὶ χείρους. ἔνιοι μὲν γὰρ εὐποροῦσι καὶ πόας καὶ ῥιζῶν χρηστῶν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο κρείττους εἰσίν· ἔνιοι δ᾽ ἰλυώδη τε πόαν ἐσθίουσι καὶ ῥίζας κακοχύμους (…).

_____ 13 See Rowe (2014) and Staccioli (2015). Roman authors cast an interesting light on Galen’s comments about rivers like the Tiber. Satirists from Lucilius (see Macrobius, Sat. 3.16.17–18) to Horace (Sat. 2.2.31), along with Pliny (Nat. hist. 9.169) and Macrobius (Sat. 3.16.11–18), highlight the excellence of Tiber sea-bass ‘between the two bridges’, which Staccioli (2015) identifies as the Aemilia and Sublicia, just below Tiber Island, and near the Cloaca Maxima. The identification of the bridges is disputed, as Staccioli brings out, as is the excellence of the sea-bass; Juvenal (Sat. 5.104–106) is severely critical. 14 For this class, see Aristotle, Hist. anim. II 13 505a25. Scaly fish are distinguished from rough-skinned and smooth-skinned.

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“They are better or worse according to their food. Some are well supplied with plants and good roots and for this reason are better; but others eat muddy plants and roots that generate bad juices (…).”

What the fish eats determines the impact of its flesh on the human consumer. All grey mullets are not the same, and the marine environment and season are key determining factors for the quality of the fish on the plate.

5 Taste and humours I turn now to the consumer. This is the organism in which the consumed fish is to create potential change. A word is needed on this ‘change’. Galen’s definition of nourishment (τροφή) is a substance that sustains the body but does not change it (De alim. fac. 1.1, CMG V 4.2 pp. 209.13–210.7 [= VI 467–468 Kühn, p. 14.1–20 Wilkins]). In distinction from foods, drugs do promote change in the body. This is a definition he derives from Hippocratic authors (see e.g. De nutr. 19). It is not a watertight distinction, however, for at least two reasons. First, Galen concedes that many foods do produce change, plants for example, such as cannabis (De alim. fac. 1.34) and wild herbs (De alim. fac. Book 2). Many green foods have little τροφή but other sharp, quasi-pharmacological properties. Onions are a prime example (De alim. fac. 2.69). They have few calories (in our terms) but acrid juices which (in Galen’s terms) cut through thick humours, and can rebalance a diet excessive in bread or pork. Secondly, every human body is unique in its mixture of humours, or rather mixture of properties (ποιότητες). Few will have a perfect mixture. One may have a tendency towards yellow bile production – intellectuals, for example – while another may produce more phlegm, or have a slightly lower body heat. This last would produce potential humoral imbalances and lead to disease. Not everyone therefore can eat a fatty fish produced in the estuary waters and generate good blood from digestion. Some will be fine, others not. Galen, however, will be able to match the properties of the fish with their potential impact on a particular humoral profile of mixture of properties in a patient. Taste will be a key indicator. It should be noted that the humours are fundamental biological fluids, bodily equivalents of the four elements, which are best seen at a secondary level in the mixtures of properties. Galen wrote a long treatise on κράσεις (‘mixtures’). The mixture is best indicated in the external appearance of a person and in fluids produced by the body, especially blood and urine. The taste, smell and texture of these products will indicate the pro-

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file; and these taste, smell and texture profiles may well be maintained or destabilised by the taste, smell or texture of the fish. One may remember that in Aristotle, χυμός is the word for taste, the word that Galen uses for both taste and humour. It is often unclear whether a food that is κακόχυμος (‘of bad humour’, ‘of bad taste’) has bad juices itself or produces humoral imbalance in the human consumer. In Galen’s usage it is likely that the food does contain bad juices, and it is certainly the case that it has the potential (δύναμις) to influence the body for the worse. This ‘potential’ or ‘power’ is at the heart of Galen’s treatise on nutrition. Let us return to the grey mullet (Galen, De alim. fac. 3.24, CMG V 4.2 p. 363.22–26 [= VI 712–713 Kühn, pp. 224.23–225.3 Wilkins]): εὐθὺς δὲ καὶ ἡ γεῦσις ἐσθίοντί σοι γνωρίσει τὸν ἀμείνω κέφαλον· δριμυτέρα γάρ ἐστιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἡδίων καὶ ἀλιπὴς ἡ σάρξ. οἱ δὲ λιπαροὶ καὶ κατὰ τὴν γεῦσιν ἔκλυτοι χείρους μέν εἰσι καὶ εἰς αὐτὴν τὴν ἐδωδήν, χείρους δὲ καὶ πεφθῆναι καὶ κακοστόμαχοι καὶ κακόχυμοι· διὸ καὶ σὺν ὀριγάνῳ σκευάζουσιν αὐτούς. “The taste as you eat it will immediately identify the better mullet. Its flesh is sharper (δριμυτέρα), more pleasant (ἡδίων) and less fatty. The fatty and less tasty ones are worse both for eating and for digesting: they are bad for the mouth of the stomach and have a bad juice. People therefore prepare them with oregano.”

This verdict is standard in Galen’s discussion of taste and nutrition for all foods, plants, meat or whatever. The mouth of the stomach, the cardia, is an important part of digestive physiology since it has nerves that send messages to the brain, and it also links the oesophagus with the stomach and digestive system. Astringent food such as unripe pears can therefore have quite an impact, depending on whether they hit the cardia at the start or end of a meal. The discussion of red mullet returns us to an aspect of taste that concerned Archestratus and Plato above, namely food that is pleasurable but not ‘useful’, medically or morally – at least in Plato’s view (De alim. fac. 3.26, CMG V 4.2 p. 365.17–20 [= VI 716 Kühn, p. 227.9–13 Wilkins]): ἡ τοίνυν τῆς τρίγλης σὰρξ ἡδεῖα μέν, ὡς ἂν οἰκεία τροφὴ τῇ φύσει τῶν ἀνθρώπων, σκληροτέρα δ᾽ οὖσα τῶν ἄλλων ἰχθύων, ὅμως ἑκάστης ἡμέρας ἐσθίεσθαι δύναται, διότι ψαθυρὰ καὶ ἀλιπής ἐστι καί τι καὶ δριμύτητος ἔχουσα. “Now the flesh of the red mullet is pleasant (ἡδεῖα: lit. ‘sweet’), partly because is a suitable fish (οἰκεία) for the human organism, and although it is firmer-fleshed than other fish, it can be eaten every day because it is friable and not oily, and also has a certain sharpness.”

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Clearly, Galen is not dismissive of red mullet, even though it is a fish highly sought after in Rome and a gourmet item. Rather, he identifies its suitability, based on taste and texture. On the goby, a fish not greatly regarded by ancient or modern aficionados, Galen observes (De alim. fac. 3.28, CMG V 4.2 p. 367.8–10 [= VI 718 Kühn, p. 229.12–14 Wilkins]): ἄριστος δ᾽ εἰς ἡδονήν τε ἅμα καὶ πέψιν ἀνάδοσίν τε καὶ εὐχυμίαν ἐστὶν ὁ κατὰ τοὺς ψαμμώδεις αἰγιαλοὺς ἢ τὰς πετρώδεις ἀκτάς· “It is the best for taste, as well as for digestion, distribution and good humour – that is, the one that inhabits sandy shores and rocky headlands.”

Here, once again, the environmental habitat of the fish contributes to its nutritional qualities, namely the ease of blood-making and transportation around the body to the correct humoral location. On sea bass (λάβραξ), Galen observes (De alim. fac. 3.25, CMG V 4.2 pp. 364.17–365.3 [= VI 714–715 Kühn, p. 226.3–18 Wilkins]): ἥ γε μὴν τροφὴ κἀκ τοῦδε κἀκ τῶν ἄλλων ἰχθύων αἵματός ἐστι γεννητικὴ λεπτοτέρου τῇ συστάσει τῆς ἐκ τῶν πεζῶν ζῴων, ὡς μήτε τρέφειν δαψιλῶς καὶ διαφορεῖσθαι θᾶττον. ἐπεὶ δὲ τὸ λεπτότερον ὄνομα ποτὲ μὲν ἐπὶ δύο πράγμασι παραβαλλομένοις λέγομεν, ἐνίοτε δ᾽ ἁπλῶς ἄνευ παραβολῆς, ἰστέον, ὅτι πρὸς τὸ μέσον αἷμα τῶν ἄκρων ἡ παραβολὴ γίγνεται τοῖς ἁπλῶς λεγομένοις. ἄκρα δὲ τῇ κακίᾳ κατὰ τὴν σύστασίν ἐστι τό τε παχὺ καθάπερ ὑγρὰ πίττα τό τ᾽ ὀρῶδες οὕτως, ὡς ἐκχυθὲν τῆς φλεβὸς ἐν τῷ πήγνυσθαι πλεῖστον ἔχειν ὑγρὸν ἐποχούμενον ὑδατῶδες. ἄριστον δὲ τὸ τούτων ἀκριβῶς μεταξὺ γεννώμενον ἐξ ἄρτου τε τοῦ κάλλιστα κατεσκευασμένου, περὶ οὗ κατὰ τὸ πρῶτον εἴρηται γράμμα, καὶ τῶν πτηνῶν ὧν εἴρηται ζῴων, ἐκ πέρδικός τε καὶ τῶν παραπλησίων. ἐγγὺς δὲ τούτων εἰσὶ καὶ τῶν θαλαττίων οἱ πελάγιοι τῶν ἰχθύων. “Now the nourishment both from this fish and from the others generates blood which is finer (λεπτοτέρου) in consistency than that from quadrupeds, so it nourishes less and is distributed faster. The term ‘finer’ we use sometimes in comparing two things, at others simply, without making a comparison: so we must recognise that the comparative in things referred to simply aims at moderate blood between extremes. The extreme in badness of consistency is thickness like wet pitch, and the whey-like when it flows from a vein and clots and has a maximum of watery substance in it. The best blood is that generated precisely between these extremes, both from bread that has been made in the very best way (which was discussed in the first book) and from the winged creatures discussed, namely from the partridge and similar birds. Close to these too are pelagic species of salt-water fish.”

The consistency of a fish is of great importance, whether it is ‘fine’ or ‘thick’, whether it is composed of fine particles (λεπτομερές) or thick particles (παχυμερές).

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6 Conclusion Fish live in the sea, an alien and savage environment. Fish and humans share the same biological system. For Galen, human nutrition is based on the impact of plant and fish juices on the body’s mixtures. This impact varies with the age, social status, and location of the human consumer, and on the habitat, lifestyle and location of the fish. Galen is not concerned with the social world or morality of fish, as Hesiod and Oppian are, or even with rapacity among fish, except for those that eat small crabs. Rather, his interest lies in water quality (the Black Sea is good, with many large rivers flowing into it; the Upper Tiber and the Nar are good fresh water; the lower Tiber is toxic), and in the influence of fish on bodily mixtures. This is a special development of Aristotle’s biology. Galen is very attentive to Aristotle’s biological categories. The Hellenistic doctor Phylotimus (see above) is twice taken to task for anomalous placing of fish in categories of hard and soft flesh – showing, incidentally, that Aristotle’s categories were already in place in medical texts by the end of the fourth century B.C. Environment, humours, texture and taste are all considered in Galen. This does not seem to be so well developed in earlier authors, or done in so systematic a fashion. That said, Galen implicitly adopts the Greek notion of the sea as remote from human affairs. He does not include anecdotes of conversations with fishermen, as he does with agricultural peasants in numerous places (see e.g. De alim. fac. 1.7, 1.13 and 1.37). Rather, he seems to focus on fish at market, and to have an eye, like Archestratus, on location, taste and texture. To return to the Dover sole on Budleigh beach, I know where it has come from, within half a mile, the season, and how I am going to cook it. This, together with Vivian Nutton’s conclusion (2004: 241) that there is almost nothing in Galen’s nutrition that would disturb a modern nutritionist, gives me confidence that Galen’s medical science based on Aristotle’s biological science can teach us something valuable about the impact of animals and plants on our bodies, whatever the difference of scientific models between the second and twenty-first centuries.15

_____ 15 I am most grateful to Thorsten Fögen and Edmund Thomas for their numerous improvements to this article.

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Bibliography Editions, commentaries and translations Bertier, Janine (1972): Mnésithée et Dieuchès. Fragments, Leiden. Grant, Mark (2000): Galen on Food and Diet. Translation and Notes, London. Jones, William H. S (1934): Hippocrates (vol. 1). With an English translation (Loeb Classical Library 147), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Koch, Konrad, Georg Helmreich, Karl Kalbfleisch & Otto Hartlich (eds.) (1923): Galenus: De sanitate tuenda, De alimentorum facultatibus, De bonis malisque sucis, De victu attenuante, De ptisana (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V 4.2), Leipzig & Berlin. Olson, S. Douglas & Alexander Sens (2000): Archestratos of Gela: Greek Culture and Cuisine in the Fourth Century BCE. Text, Translation and Commentary, Oxford. Powell, Owen (ed.) (2003): Galen: On the Properties of Foodstuffs. Introduction, Translation and Commentary. With a foreword by John Wilkins, Cambridge. Wilkins, John (2013): Galien: Sur les facultés des aliments. Texte établi et traduit, Paris. Wilkins, John & Shaun Hill (22011): Archestratus. The Life of Luxury. Translated with introduction and commentary, Totnes (first ed. 1994).

Secondary literature Balcombe, Jonathan P. (2016): What a Fish Knows. The Inner Lives of our Underwater Cousins, New York. Čechová, Martina (2014): Fish products and their trade in Tauric Chersonesos/Byzantine Cherson. The development of a traditional craft from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. In: Emmanuel Botte & Victoria Leitch (eds.), Fish and Ships: Production et commerce des ‘salsamenta’ durant l’Antiquité. Actes de l’atelier doctoral, Rome 18–22 juin 2012, Arles, 229– 235. Curtis, Robert I. (2014): From fish to fish sauce. Seafood in the ancient Roman world. In: Seth D. Pevnick (ed.), Poseidon and the Sea. Myth, Cult, and Daily Life, London, 95–109. Davidson, James N. (1997): Courtesans and Fishcakes. The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, London. Detienne, Marcel & Jean-Pierre Vernant (1979): La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec, Paris. Gotthelf, Allan (2012): Teleology, First Principles and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology, Oxford. Grumett, David & Rachel Muers (eds.) (2008): Eating and Believing. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vegetarianism and Theology, London & New York. Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1964): Le cru et le cuit, Paris. Lytle, Ephraim (2013): ‘Entirely ignorant of the agora’ (Alkiphron 1.14.3). Fishing and the economy of Hellenistic Delos. In: Sheila L. Ager & Riemer A. Faber (eds.), Belonging and Isolation in the Hellenistic World, Toronto, 295–315. McClenachan, Loren, Andrew B. Cooper, Kent E. Carpenter & Nicholas K. Dulvy (2012): Extinction risk and bottlenecks in the conservation of charismatic marine species. In: Conservation Letters 5, 73–80.

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Mylona, Dimitra (2008): Eating Fish in Greece from 500 BC to AD 700. A Story of Impoverished Fishermen or of Lavish Banquets?, Oxford. Mylona, Dimitra (2015): From fish bones to fishermen. Views from the sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia. In: Donald C. Haggis & Carla M. Antonaccio (eds.), Classical Archaeology in Context. Theory and Practice in Excavation in the Greek World, Berlin & Boston, 385–418. Nestle, Marion (2008): Pet Food Politics. The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine, Berkeley & Los Angeles. Nutton, Vivian (2004): Ancient Medicine, London & New York. Osborne, Catherine (2007): Dumb Beasts and Dead Philosophers. Humanity and the Humane in Ancient Philosophy and Literature, Oxford. Rowan, Erica (2014a): Roman Diet and Nutrition in the Vesuvian Region. A Study of the Bioarchaeological Remains from the Cardo V Sewer at Herculaneum, Diss. Oxford. Rowan, Erica (2014b): The fish remains from the Cardo V sewer. New insights into consumption and the fishing economy of Herculaneum. In: Emmanuel Botte & Victoria Leitch (eds.), Fish and Ships: Production et commerce des ‘salsamenta’ durant l’Antiquité. Actes de l’atelier doctoral, Rome 18–22 juin 2012, Arles, 61–73. Rowe, Julie (2014): Rome’s medieval fish market at S. Angelo in Pescheria. In: David R. Marshall (ed.), The Site of Rome. Studies in the Art and Topography of Rome 1400–1750, Roma, 8–27. Sorabji, Richard (1993): Animal Minds and Human Morals. The Origins of the Western Debate, London. Staccioli, Romolo A. (2015): I buoni pesci del Tevere e un possibile antico toponimo della sponda trasteverina. In: Strenna dei Romanisti 76, 455–486. Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth (1947): A Glossary of Greek Fishes, London. Tracy, Theodore J. (1969): Physiological Theory and the Doctrine of the Mean in Plato and Aristotle, Chicago. Voultsiadou, Eleni & Dimitris Vafidis (2007): Marine invertebrate diversity in Aristotle’s zoology. In: Contributions to Zoology 76, 103–120. Voultsiadou, Eleni & Chariton Chinitroglou (2008): Aristotle’s lantern in echinoderms. An ancient riddle. In: Cahiers de Biologie Marine 49, 299–302. Wilkins, John (2000a): Edible choruses. In: David Harvey & John Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes, Exeter, 341–354. Wilkins, John (2000b): Athenaeus and the Fishes of Archippus. In: David Braund & John Wilkins (eds.), Athenaeus and his World, Exeter, 523–535. Wilkins, John (2008): Animals in the Greco-Roman culture of the second century A.D. In: Annetta Alexandridis, Markus Wild & Lorenz Winkler-Horaček (eds.), Mensch und Tier in der Antike, Wiesbaden, 315–328.

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Marco Vespa

Why Avoid a Monkey: The Refusal of Interaction in Galen’s Epideixis

Marco Vespa Why Avoid a Monkey: The Refusal of Interaction in Galen’s Epideixis Abstract: Every object surrounding our environment can give us an opportunity to use it or to change its place and function in our cognitive horizon. But in the specific case concerning nonhuman animals, it is not just a one-directional dimension (from man to others) which is involved, but a two-directional one. Animals can react to our actions or they can simply make the first move offering us a mutual affordance. Interactions between animals and humans are crucial in the cultural analysis of ancient society: animals were everywhere, and their particular bond with humans could be conceptualised in culturally specific ways (cognitive metaphors) or contribute to elaborate the image of a social group (see, for example, the case of interactions with horses among the élites in classical Greece). However, the interactional dimension between animals and humans can give rise to other cultural phenomena: for instance, cases of missed interactions caused by the refusal of interacting practices. This paper focuses on the name and cultural avoidance of monkeys in the Graeco-Roman world, starting from a peculiar passage in Galen’s Anatomicae administrationes (VIII 8) where the author rejects the vivisection of primates, defining them as a “hideous spectacle” (εἰδεχθὲς θέαμα). Why should a monkey be avoided, especially on such an important public occasion as a medical show (ἐπίδειξις)? In Galen’s corpus a possible answer could be found in the light of some passages offering an alternative name for ‘monkey’: καλλίας (‘the handsome one’), which was a euphemistic and auspicious term counteracting the otherwise presumed inauspicious nature of primates, at least according to ancient Greek folklore. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-017

1 Introduction When we talk about human-animal interactions and relationships, we cannot avoid considering the notion of affordance, as it has been defined by Gibson and his school of ecological psychology (Gibson 1979; see Eco 1997: 137–146). Our perception as well as the perception of others can be defined as the “awareness of (…) the affordances of the objects, places and events surrounding us through the detection of ecological information (…) affordances are opportunities for doing something, for obtaining certain resources”, as Reed (1998: 112) remarks. Through the perceived ecological information we can do something with objects, whereas there are some actions which are precluded from being performed, owing to the perceptual Gestalt of certain animals or items. What is very important about affordances in an anthropological and anthrozoological analyDOI 10.1515/9783110545623-017

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sis is the basic distinction between affordances and mutual affordances: some objects (such as a stick or a tree) are only open to manipulation and action exercised by other animate beings (an affordance). However, a creature cannot only offer affordances to another subject, but it can also act back, giving its own reactions and above all being aware of the process of realisation that is taking place (a case of mutual affordance). Other living beings can interact with us and with our intentions: they are capable of preventing something from happening by a process of belief attribution. A prey can make some reasonable hypotheses about the hunter’s behaviour and his probable actions; by considering the hunter’s sounds, gestures and movements, the prey can come up with a good plan for surviving. But can such a theoretical concept, coming from neurobiology and psychology, be useful and function as a heuristic device for the analysis of cultural phenomena? As far as Graeco-Roman antiquity is concerned, some more recent studies have adopted this approach. For example, the cultural complexity of birth in ancient Rome has received a new evaluation, starting from the study of different popular beliefs concerning the symbolic construction of weasels in antiquity. A new hypothesis has been put forward which could explain the reason why a weasel would be considered in antiquity as an animal capable of making childbirth easier or harder,1 by looking at its anatomical structure (its long and elastic body) and its ethological features (such as its capacity of sneaking through holes and its ‘synanthropic’ way of life).2 It has been possible to detect these affordances, or perceptual primary data, as the basis upon which popular beliefs and symbolic interpretations about women and childbirth were created and accepted. This perspective offers us, at least, the possibility of investigating the link existing between the so-called folklore phenomena and their perceptual grounds. Dealing with monkeys in Graeco-Roman antiquity, I will try to evalu-

_____ 1 One may think of the cult which was offered to weasels in ancient Greece, at least in Boeotia (at Thebes), for having made easier the birth of Heracles. See Aelian, De nat. anim. 12.5.3–8: Θηβαῖοι δὲ σέβουσιν Ἕλληνες ὄντες ὡς ἀκούω γαλῆν, καὶ λέγουσί γε Ἡρακλέους αὐτὴν γενέσθαι τροφόν, ἢ τροφὸν μὲν οὐδαμῶς, καθημένης δὲ ἐπ’ ὠδῖσι τῆς Ἀλκμήνης καὶ τεκεῖν οὐ δυναμένης, τὴν δὲ παραδραμεῖν καὶ τοὺς τῶν ὠδίνων λῦσαι δεσμούς, καὶ προελθεῖν τὸν Ἡρακλέα καὶ ἕρπειν ἤδη. 2 The first use of this heuristic device in the field of classical studies can be found in Bettini (1998). For a reassessment of the notion of affordance and an evaluation of the limits of this concept, see Franco (2014: esp. 161–184); see also Bettini (2009a). Recent archaeological excavations carried out at the ancient site of Praeneste have discovered a sacred space, probably linked to Juno, where some votive statuettes of young women in labour were moulded in a semiprone posture, resembling very much the typical posture of a weasel; see Tedeschi (2007).

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ate the role played by affordances and cultural beliefs related to these nonhuman animals with regard to the complex phenomenon of human-animal interactions.

2 Subject, method and purpose In this paper I will examine a particular interactional practice in the humananimal relationship, which can be defined as the avoidance of interaction. It would certainly be interesting to investigate all those anthrozoological relationships which are blocked by one or both participants. There could be a very wide range of diverging explanations as to why an animal should prefer to avoid another living being rather than communicate and interact with it. Some of these causes are reasonable and easy to understand: one may think about a hare which tries to run away from its predator; survival is at stake here. In other circumstances, human beings avoid other animals just because they imagine dangerous behaviour on their part. It is not so difficult to observe such behaviour in cases of zoophobia, when people are afraid of domestic animals even without ‘experiencing’ pets or other living beings who display aggressive conduct. Whether or not such zoophobic behaviour is caused at the outset by a real menace, we are usually faced with pernament attitudes towards the other. More interesting is the case when such avoidance of interaction is not a permanent behaviour, but involves changes depending on the pragmatic context of the interaction. This survey intends to analyse a certain type of intermittent avoidance. In ancient medical practice it was common to conduct a test or an experiment on animal bodies. In particular Galen, and very probably other previous anatomists, were accustomed to dissect monkeys in order to test their medical hypotheses and to teach their pupils. Monkeys3 were killed (very often they were

_____ 3 In this paper I use the term ‘monkey’ as a modern equivalent to the ancient Greek πίθηκος. By this term ancient sources usually meant two different things: either a general indication of all non-human primates known to them (a linguistic habit very similar to common terms used in modern languages other than English, e.g. French singe, German Affe, Italian scimmia, or Spanish mono), or the specific taxon of the ‘Barbary macaque’ (or ‘Barbary ape’), scientifically identified as Macaca sylvanus. Barbary macaques were certainly the most common non-human primates in the Mediterranean world with which ancient Greeks and Romans came into contact, and for this reason they represented, so to speak, the prototypical species of non-human

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drowned) and became the testing ground where a physician like Galen could produce his medical and philosophical speculations and put them to the test.4 This was certainly what happened indoors or in the private domain of a school of medicine, but ancient medicine was not only a matter of science and speculation. Indeed, it was very important to the ancient physician to look after the public side of his activity: in order to be well accepted in the higher ranks of his social community, it was essential for him to persuade and fascinate the élite of the city through public tests and spectacular experimentations. This kind of medical practice shows how the body of living animals was used to prove or reject a defined hypothesis, for example the demonstration of the physiological process of emitting the voice. I will focus on some specific cases of humananimal missed interaction in the context of such medical public demonstrations. As we will see, on some occasions Galen refuses to interact with the test animal which he normally uses for his medical research. The question that needs answering, in my opinion, is just why this happened. I follow here the anthropological approach outlined by Bettini (2009b and 2014), based upon the notion of cultural oddity or queerness. Developing and expanding the studies of Kluckhohn (1949: 9–17), Geertz (1984: 263–277) and Remotti (1987: passim), this anthropological approach suggests that the best way to understand a culture is to start one’s analysis from what is more incomprehensible and obscure from the point of view of the observer. Oddities are there to raise the sentiment of otherness: why does something happen in such a ‘strange’ way among other people? And why does it not happen in my culture or why does it happen the other way round? This methodological approach can be traced back to the ancient practice of allegorical explanation of biblical texts as carried out by Philo of Alexandria who spoke of ἀφορμή,5 literally both the starting point and the resource in the process of comprehension. When the biblical commentator runs into an odd or unexpected passage or word, he can use it to propose a new interpretation, based upon a different per-

_____ primates whose common name (πίθηκος) was used to represent the entire world of primates. For further discussion of such terminological issues, see Kitchell (2014: 5, 9–10). 4 In his medical treatises Galen uses a group of six classes of animals, which represent his practical and analogical field of study during his demonstrations across his corpus. For this aspect, see Garofalo (1991). On the role of monkeys in ancient medicine, see McDermott (1938: 93–100), Boudon (2005), and Greenlaw (2011: 74–75). On the debate about human dissection or even vivisection, see Byl (1997: 113–120). 5 One of the most explicit references to ἀφορμή by Philo is in De confusione linguarum 191 Wendland: δίδωσι μέντοι πρὸς τοῦτ’ ἀφορμὰς τὸ εἶδος τοῖς μὴ τυφλοῖς διάνοιαν ὁ νομοθέτης αὐτός, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ ἐφ’ ὧν νῦν ἐστιν ὁ λόγος.

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ception of the text through the stimulus offered by an aberration or abnormality compared with what is normally expected. My aim here is to investigate some specific cases of interaction avoidance situated in a particular pragmatic context. The main goal of my enquiry is to disentangle a complex set of cultural constructions and beliefs concerning monkeys in antiquity. This could possibly explain the refusal to engage with monkeys among the medical public in antiquity, and demonstrate a cultural practice that seems to us in the modern Western world odd and certainly difficult to understand.

3 Monkeys in a public context: Galen’s ἀνατομαί I begin my study by presenting a passage which can help us to understand the public context of an ἀνατομή, which in ancient medicine referred to both the vivisection and the dissection practice (see Daremberg 1841: 7). During his first stay in Rome (A.D. 162–166), Galen was invited by a leading figure in Roman society, Flavius Boethus, to give a public demonstration of how the complex mechanism of voice production functioned. It was not a private event with just a few people, but the entire élite of Rome was gathered there. There were sophists, rhetors, other physicians, Roman matronae and politicians. The pragmatic context of a medical show can be retraced from this very clear episode: a rich patron usually invited a medical performer and financially supported the organisation of the event in which the public took part, a public that was made up of rich and influential figures who were able to support and promote the future activity of the performer; for example, they could in turn invite him to perform the same show in their own houses or hire him as a personal physician.6 What about the action? We know from different passages that a performance of this kind had to take into account the persuasive and spectacular features rather than the logical and philosophical ones.7 In his Anatomicae admini-

_____ 6 For a documented and precise presentation of this episode, see Boudon-Millot (2012: 138– 143). See also Debru (1995). 7 For the links of ancient medicine with the Second Sophistic, see von Staden (1995), Percy (1994), and Gleason (2009). For a review of the rhetorical aspects of medicine, with particular reference to imperial Rome, see Jouanna (2014).

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strationes, Galen advises his pupils about useful tricks intended to fascinate the audience. He points out that an animal used for demonstrations could lose its voice because of the laces tied by the physician, but it is also possible that it suddenly recovers its voice – which is the best way to impress the audience.8 The public performance requires a number of assistants in order to prepare the animal in advance and to tie the laces properly, which have to be of a certain kind so as to produce this sudden change in the animal’s voice. For this reason, a noose (ἀγχύλη) rather than a square knot (τυφλόν ἅμμα) is better, since it is easier and quicker to untie. This kind of public show (ἐπίδειξις) demanded a very high degree of concentration and self-control. It was vital to keep calm, even if something went wrong – for instance when one was flaying the thorax or tying a rib nerve or sinew (see Anat. adm. VIII 4 Garofalo [= II 673 Kühn]). To see and grasp an animal close to death or screaming and struggling to avoid being smothered could be dreadful and distress the performers, not only the inexperienced ones (ἄπειροι). When Galen gives advice to his pupils, he recommends keeping calm and not reacting to the animal’s acts of resistance (Anat. adm. VIII 8 Garofalo [= II 693 Kühn]: κατὰ τὴν φαντασίαν … ἐκπλήττουσα τοὺς ἀπείρους … μὴ καταπλαγῇ). Let us now return to the specific scene in Boethus’ house mentioned above (Progn. V 8; transl. Vivian Nutton): Φλάβιος Βοηθὸς ὑπατικὸς ἀνὴρ, ὅπως μὲν ἦν φιλόκαλός τε καὶ φιλομαθὴς οἶσθα καὶ σύ. διδασκάλῳ δ’ ἐχρῆτο τῶν Περιπατητικῶν δογμάτων Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τῷ Δαμασκηνῷ, γινώσκοντι μὲν καὶ τὰ τοῦ Πλάτωνος, ἀλλὰ τοῖς Ἀριστοτέλους προσκειμένῳ μᾶλλον. ὁπότ’ οὖν παρεκάλεσέ με, διδάξαι διὰ τῶν ἀνατομῶν ὅπως ἀναπνοή τε καὶ φωνὴ γίνεται, παρεσκεύασεν ἐρίφους τε καὶ χοίρους πλείονας· πιθήκων γὰρ οὐδὲν ἔφην δεῖσθαι τὴν ἀνατομὴν, ὁμοίως τε τὴν κατασκευὴν ἐχόντων οὐ μόνον τούτων τῶν ζώων, ἀλλὰ καὶ πεζῶν σχεδὸν ἁπάντων· ὅσα δὲ φωνὴν ἔχει μεγάλην, ἐπιτηδειότερα τῶν μικροφώνων εἶναι, παρασχεῖν ἀποδεικτικὰ λήμματα πρὸς τὴν τοῦ προκειμένου πίστιν. “You well remember the great interest in art and learning of Flavius Boethus, the exconsul: he also had as his tutor in Peripatetic doctrine Alexander of Damascus, an expert also in the teachings of Plato but who inclined more to those of Aristotle. When he invited me to show him by dissections how breath and speech are produced, he got several kids

_____ 8 Galen, Anat. adm. VIII 4 Garofalo (= II 669 Kühn): ἐπιδεικνυμένῳ δὲ βέλτιόν ἐστιν αὐτῷ παρεσκευάσθαι τοῖς νεύροις ἅπασι λίνον ὑποβεβλημένον ἄνευ τοῦ δεδέσθαι· κέκραγε γὰρ οὕτω παιόμενον, εἶτ’ ἐξαίφνης ἄφωνον γινόμενον ἐπὶ τῷ σφιγχθῆναι τοῖς λίνοις τὰ νεῦρα τοὺς θεατὰς ἐκπλήττει (…).

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and pigs ready. I had said that there was no need to dissect monkeys9 since not only these, but almost all other land animals are similar in structure: those with loud voices are much better at providing a convincing demostration to prove the point at issue than those with soft.”

With this specific context in mind,10 I would like to focus on the animals involved. There is evidence that the main test animals in ancient medicine were monkeys, especially during the Roman period. Certainly there were other animals, for example pigs or even dogs, but the monkey was preferred, having the closest anatomical resemblance to human beings.11 For this reason one may expect Galen to resort to a monkey for his public performance concerning the mechanisms of voice production. But Galen declares the contrary, when informing Flavius Boethus that there was no need for a monkey for his demonstration. He continues by saying that the anatomical structure (κατασκευή) needed for his purpose was not a peculiarity of monkeys, but all quadrupeds were suitable for this kind of ἐπίδειξις. This is the reason why Flavius Boethus had prepared only kids and piglets (ἐρίφους τε καὶ χοίρους). Galen gives no explanation other than the equivalence of anatomical structure needed for this physiological process concerning all quadrupeds.12 He only adds that it is better to use animals with a loud voice rather than those who have a weak one, because the perceptible effects of the experiment on these animals’ bodies would be very impressive and evident (ἀποδεικτικὰ λήμματα) – certainly more so than with other animals. Why should Galen avoid using the animal that he would normally use for testing? Several answers have been proposed: – As Grmek (1997: 144) has argued, monkeys would be more expensive than piglets, being exotic animals that had to be transported from distant countries, while a domestic animal would be much cheaper and equally suitable for the purpose of the ‘voice spectacle’. This approach may be called the ‘socio-economic hypothesis’.

_____ 9 I have modified Nutton’s translation of the word πίθηκος by using the term ‘monkey’ instead of ‘ape’ for the sake of consistently translating πίθηκος as ‘monkey’ in this paper. Animals which we usually call ‘apes’ (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas) were in all probability unknown to the ancient Greeks. See further Garofalo (1991). 10 For a full commentary on this passage, see Nutton (1979: 190–192). 11 A complete account of animals in medical experimentation from antiquity to the present can be found in Guerrini (2003). 12 For a specific analysis of the place of animals in ancient medicine, see Ayache (1997). See also Hankinson (1997), who gives an account of the analogical procedure used by Galen on test animals in order to illustrate phenomena of human anatomy.

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Other suggestions draw on the emotional side of animal vivisection. Galen and his pupils would have been impressed by the animals’ screaming and struggling against the threat of death; for this reason they should have avoided an animal like the monkey, whose gestures, voice and cries resemble human ones much more than those of piglets.13 A third hypothesis, which may be called ‘functional’, relates to the voice quality of the animals at issue: instead of a monkey, a weak-voiced animal (μικρόφωνον ζῷον), it would be better to choose another animal with a louder voice, like a piglet.14 This hypothesis is certainly more plausible, since it relies on a passage that we find in the later books of Anatomicae administrationes, surviving only in Arabic translation.15 Here Galen says that a pig is endowed with a louder and stronger voice than a monkey (see Anat. adm. XI 5.110–111 Duckworth), even though the size of their bodies is the same.

However, in my view, it is Galen’s attitude towards monkeys that needs closer consideration, together with the place of monkeys in ancient Greek culture in general. In the following passage, Galen reminds his pupils that he often made use of pigs in private vivisections (ἀνατομαί) as well as in public demonstrations concerning the blocking operation of the thorax and diaphragm (Anat. adm. VIII 8 Garofalo [= II 690 Kühn]; transl. Charles Singer): Κατὰ λόγον δ’ ἂν εἴη διελθεῖν, ὅπως ἄν τις ἀκίνητον ἐργάσαιτο τὸν ὅλον θώρακα, μόνοις τοῖς κινοῦσι τοὺς μῦς αὐτοῦ νεύροις βρόχους περιβάλλων, ὅπερ οὐ μόνον ἰδίᾳ πολλάκις ὑμῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ δημοσίᾳ δεικνύντα με ἐθεάσασθε. τοὺς μὲν δὴ μεσοπλευρίους μῦς διὰ τῶν ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ἰόντων ἀπὸ τοῦ νωτιαίου νεύρων ἀκινήτους ἐργάσῃ, καθ’ ὃν εἴρηται τρόπον· τὸ διάφραγμα δὲ τὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ τούτου τῶν νεύρων ὁμοίως κακώσας. ἐφ’ ὑῶν δὲ μάλιστα πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα δεικνύντα με ἐθεάσασθε πολλάκις ἰδίᾳ τε καὶ δημοσίᾳ, διὰ τὸ μήτε πλέον ἔχειν τι πίθηκον ἐν ταῖς τοιαύταις ἀνατομαῖς, εἰδεχθές τ’ εἶναι τὸ θέαμα.

_____ 13 Boudon-Millot (2012: 138–139) points out that, in addition to wanting to choose animals with a strong voice like a piglet, Galen might have had another reason for not presenting a live monkey: because of its resemblance to human expressivity, it may have affected the audience too much. 14 For this explanation, see Debru (1994: 1738), who refers to Anat. adm. XIV 6 (only available in Arabic translation). 15 See Galen, Anat. adm. XI 5.110–111 Duckworth. One may add that if it is true that Galen here considers piglets more suitable for anatomical vivisection concerning voice emission due to the stronger nature of their voice, it is no less important to notice that in this passage there is no mention of kids (ἔριφοι), which are nevertheless requested and used by Galen in the demonstration at Flavius Boethus’ home.

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“Logically, the next step would be to make the whole thorax motionless by ligating the nerves that move its muscles. This you have often seen me demonstrate not only to you privately, but in public. You can immobilize the intercostal muscles through the nerves that reach them from the spinal marrow, as I have described, and then the diaphragm by destroying the origins of its nerves. You have seen me demonstrate all these things both privately and publicly using pigs because there is no advantage in having a monkey in such experiments and the spectacle is hideous.”

Here Galen gives some details about his choice: monkeys, he says, do not offer more than other mammals (pigs in this case) for the purpose of this demonstration about voice and air transmission. He thus gives more or less the same reason already mentioned in the passage analysed above, but here he adds that vivisecting a monkey would have offered a hideous spectacle to the audience; a good reason for not using a monkey in a demonstration is its ugliness (or unsightliness).16 But can we really think that an ugly object or living being would be avoided only for this reason?17 Galen himself mentions the animal’s ugliness in other passages of his works, in particular in two of his commentaries on the Hippocratic works: In Hippocratis de fracturis commentarii and In Hippocratis prognosticum commentarii.18 I shall begin with the more explicit passage (In Hipp. de fract. comm. XVIIIb 611 Kühn; my translation):

_____ 16 This is not the only source which defines a monkey as hideous, since the scholiast to Pindar, Pyth. 2 uses the same label in assessing the real nature of monkeys, which would be considered erroneously good-looking only by children (Pyth. 2.72–73, ed. Snell): καλός τοι πίθων παρὰ παισίν, αἰεί / καλός. Further, Schol. in Pind., Pyth. 2.131b3–4 (ed. Drachmann): πίθων καλὸς, πρὸς τὸν πίθηκον οὐκ ὄντα καλὸν ἀλλ’ εἰδεχθῆ. See Hubbard (1990) for an analysis of this passage; see also Brillante (2000: esp. 103–106) for an anthropological analysis of the animal symbolism of the ode in connection with the ethical values of classical Greek culture. 17 The only other occurrence of the term εἰδεχθές (‘hideous’) in the entire Corpus Galenicum is in De simpl. med. temp. ac fac. XII 312 Kühn, where Galen talks about a skin disease called ἐλέφας. What is interesting is the fact that the man suffering from ἐλέφας gets uglier and foulsmelling day by day; for that reason he is confined to another place far from his village, where some people go every now and then to bring him something to eat or drink. The other inhabitants of his village decide to avoid any contact with him by ‘concealing’ him far away from the sight of everyone and compelling him to live in a hut. Here we are confronted with social avoidance undertaken by a community with regard to a single man due to his ugliness and disease, a situation which, when compared with that concerning the monkey, could shed a new light on the use of the term εἰδεχθές. See Gleason (2009: 112–113). For the disease ἐλέφας, recognised as modern elephantiasis, all the passages in the Corpus Galenicum are gathered in Durling (1993: s.v. ‘ἐλεφαντίασις’ and ‘ἐλέφας’). 18 A fundamental presentation of Galen’s commentaries on Hippocrates’ works can be found in Manetti & Roselli (1994: esp. 1531–1535, 1538–1540). See also Manuli (1983).

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Ὀλισθήματα μὲν ὀνομάζει τὰς τέτταρας παραλλαγὰς τῶν ὀστῶν, διακινήματα δὲ τὰς βραχείας. εὐηθέστερον δὲ εἶπεν οὐ κατὰ τὸ κύριον τοῦ εὐήθους σημαινόμενον, ἐν ᾧ δηλοῦται τὸ εὖ ἔχον τὸ ἦθος. εἰ γὰρ ἠλίθιος εὐήθης ὁμοίως λέγεται, τῇ τε γλυκείᾳ καὶ τῷ καλλείᾳ, γλυκεῖαν μὲν τὴν σῦν ὀνομαζόντων ἀνθρώπων, ὅταν εὐήθη τοῖς θεοῖς εὐφημίας ἕνεκα, καλλείαν δὲ τὸν πίθηκον, ἐπειδὴ καὶ τούτου τὴν προσηγορίαν φυλάττοντες λέγουσιν, ὥσπερ καὶ Καλλίμαχος ἔφη πρὸ μιῆς ὥρας θηρίον οὐ λέγεται. “He (sc. Hippocrates) calls luxations the four distortions of the bones, but displacements the small ones. He said εὐηθέστερον not in accordance with the proper meaning of the word εὐήθης, which means ‘one who has a good heart’. If εὐήθης also means ‘stupid’, (this occurs) in the same way as the terms γλυκεῖα and καλλείας (are used); people call the pig γλυκεῖα whenever they want it to be an appreciated offer for the gods, as a word of good omen, but they call the monkey καλλείας, since they abstain from saying this word, in the same way as Callimachus said that the word θηρίον is not uttered early in the morning.”

In his analysis of the terminology used by Hippocrates, Galen suggests that the term εὐήθης is used somewhat metaphorically, since the most common meaning deals with one’s disposition or nature: the εὐήθεις are the good-hearted, simple-minded people. The proper application of a name could be diverted, totally changed, or even slightly modified in order to express a different meaning. This is the case with a second-degree metaphorical use of the term in question; indeed εὐήθης also means ‘stupid’ or ‘silly’. The term εὐήθης can thus have at least three different meanings: ‘benign’, ‘simple-minded’ and ‘silly’. Since the last one sounds semantically less obvious, Galen has to explain to what extent a common word like ‘good-hearted’ could be so distorted to take on such a different meaning, and he chooses to resort to a simile. ‘As much as to say’ (ὁμοίως λέγεται) is the introduction of the simile. But what about the other term of comparison? Galen compares the metaphorical use of εὐήθης to that operating in two other words: γλυκεῖα and καλλείας. The first one is used in the ritual assemblies when a sacrifice takes place: people use the term γλυκεῖα to designate a pig which is being offered to the gods. Why do the participants (and officiants) of the rite use this linguistic term? Galen says that they call a pig ‘γλυκεῖα’ because they want the animal victim to be appreciated by the gods. They call a pig ‘the sweet one’ εὐφημίας ἕνεκα, i.e. pronouncing a word of good omen: during the performance of a ritual it is important to say good words which could avoid any kind of adversity or bad luck. As far as the term καλλείας is concerned, it was used to refer to a monkey.19 Its metaphorical quality is recognisable from its lexical root (*kall-), referring to

_____ 19 See Lex. Segueriana p. 190 Bekker: καλλίας ὁ πίθηκος.

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beauty, seductive appearance, etc.20 Bearing in mind what Galen said about a πίθηκος, one may notice a certain contradiction between καλλείας and the monkey’s notorious ugliness within Greek culture.21 Galen reports a general motivation for this linguistic practice: people say that one should avoid (or be aware of) the name of a monkey, and refrain from pronouncing the name θηρίον (‘little animal’) before the dawn, as Callimachus recommended. One may thus detect the cultural mechanism of name avoidance: on some occasions (at dawn, during the ritual or something else), it is far better not to use certain names and words to designate some usual objects or living beings. In the other passage, the description of the monkey as an ugly animal is also combined with the epithet καλλίας (In Hipp. progn. III 7, CMG V 9.2 [= XVIIIb 236 Kühn]; my translation): ἄνθρωποι λέγονται μὲν καὶ οἱ κακοήθεις ἐν ὑποκορίσει τινί, καθάπερ καὶ ὁ πίθηκος καλλίας, λέγονται δὲ καὶ οἱ ἐπαινετὸν ἔχοντες τὸ ἦθος. ἀλλὰ τοῦ μὲν προτέρου παμπόλλη χρῆσίς ἐστι παρὰ τοῖς , τοῦ δὲ δευτέρου σπανιωτέρα. λέγουσι δ’ οὖν ποτε καὶ οὕτως οὐ τὸν εὐήθη μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν εὐήθειαν ἐπὶ τῆς εὖ τὸ ἦθος ἐχούσης διαθέσεως. “Malicious people are called εὐήθεις as a kind of euphemism, in the same way as a monkey is called καλλίας, and also good-hearted people are usually called εὐήθεις. But the first usage was much more common in Greece, the second one less. They use not only the name εὐήθης, but also the the term εὐήθεια in order to talk about an attitude of good disposition on the part of someone.”

As in the previous passage, the monkey is connected to the term εὐήθης. The basic linguistic mechanism of hypocorism is linked with strategies of word avoidance: maladies, misfortunes, ugly people etc. are often called by other names in order not to attract the misfortune which was normally attached to them or which they could elicit. A well-known example of this phenomenon is epilepsy being referred to as νόσος ἱερά (‘sacred disease’), or the modern Greek term for plague being καλοτύχη (‘good fortune’).

_____ 20 See Chantraine (1968: s.v. ‘καλλίας’): “… issu de κάλλος par plaisanterie ou euphémisme”. Cf. one of the ancient Indian terms for monkeys: sumukha- (‘beautiful face’), containing the prefix su- which is genetically linked to ancient Greek εὐ-. See also Frisk (1960–1972: s.v. καλλίας). 21 See e.g. Semonides, fr. 7.71–73 West: τὴν δ’ ἐκ πιθήκου· τοῦτο δὴ διακριδὸν / Ζεὺς ἀνδράσιν μέγιστον ὤπασεν κακόν. / αἴσχιστα μὲν πρόσωπα. Monkey-woman is the ugliest one in the ‘race of women’. See also Aristophanes, Eccl. 1072–1073, and Anth. Pal. 11.196 where the woman Bito is so ugly that the poet describes her as having a three-monkey snout.

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4 Some remarks about the word καλλίας and a possible reason for avoiding a monkey For an even better understanding of the initial passage from Galen, one may go further in exposing a suppressed thread of ancient popular beliefs about monkeys and their names. The most important source is a fragment from a speech by Dinarchus reported by the Suda, where the orator refers to a group of people in Athens who used to rear monkeys and called the animal καλλίας.22 According to the explanation offered by the Suda, the word καλλίας had the same meaning as πίθηκος, and the reason why the latter was not normally used was that it belonged to a collection of hostile, odious and offensive nouns (τὰ δυσχερῆ τῶν ὀνομάτων). Such words were usually avoided by people of Attica and replaced by other auspicious and fair-sounding words (εὐφημότερον εἰώθασιν οἱ Ἀττικοὶ προφέρεσθαι). Accordingly, the people of Attica used the word καλλίας for monkeys. The Suda adds that a similar linguistic practice was employed for the Erinyes, euphemistically called ‘Eumenides’. This linguistic and cultural evidence offered by the Suda is not isolated. There is another passage which helps to understand the precise meaning of the term δυσχερῆ. The Byzantine author Photius refers a book written by Helladius, a learned man from Egypt (fourth century A.D.), who had collected in his Chrestomathia some passages from authors (Bibl. 279 535a12). This source contains a discussion of Greek literature, history and politics, including issues of language and etymology. Reporting what he probably read in Helladius’ work, Photius says that for the ancients not to pronounce words of bad omen came from a heart-felt concern (μὴ λέγειν δύσφημα … φροντὶς ἦν).23 He gives some examples: in addition to the Eumenides, he refers to the term μύσος (‘defilement’) which was usually substituted by ἄγος (‘religious consecration’), a generic term dealing with the notion of communicating with the gods. Finally, Photius men-

_____ 22 Suda, s.v. ‘καλλίου’ (Dinarchus, fr. 7 Conomis): πιθήκου. Τὰ δυσχερῆ γὰρ τῶν ὀνομάτων εὐφημότερον εἰώθασιν οἱ Ἀττικοί προφέρεσθαι. Καί τὸν πίθηκον καλλίαν προσηγόρευσαν. Δεινάρχος ἐν τῷ κατὰ Πυτέου· ἀλλ’, οἶμαι, οἱ τοὺς καλλίας ἐν τοῖς οἴκοις τρέφοντες, τουτέστι πιθήκους. Οὕτω δὲ καὶ τὰς Ἐριννύας Εὐμενίδας λέγουσιν. 23 See Bornmann (1952: 85–103), who provides a list of animals whose names were changed on some social occasions due to popular beliefs concerning bad luck and the hope of a successful outcome for an action undertaken. On the avoidance of names and euphemism, see Caroli (1999: 41–69). For the study of cultural phenomena classified under the label of ‘superstition and folklore’, see Riess (1896), (1897) and (1903). For a methodical review and discussion of the notion of ‘superstition’ as a heuristic tool, see Lelli (2014: 41–54).

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tions that such a linguistic practice is normally defined by grammarians as ἀντίφρασις, and he adds an intriguing note about monkeys. Reporting Helladius’ words, he confirms that one of the most learned people in the imperial period used to call these animals καλλίας. Thanks to this remark, it is possible to identify a linguistic habit consisting in the avoidance of pronouncing the name ‘monkey’, considered an animal of bad omen. This cultural habit was certainly no longer widespread in the imperial and Byzantine period, as Photius testifies, but it may hint at largely shared beliefs within Classical or Alexandrian society. According to another Byzantine lexicon this expression was employed as εὐφημισμός.24 As Benveniste (1949) has shown, the term also had another meaning, which preceded its rhetorical use and related to ritual contexts where words and expressions of bad omen had to be avoided. The word καλλίας must have been in use for a very long time before the Byzantine period, as several references to this word in ancient lexica, grammars, commentaries and proverb collections prove. Even in Greek regions outside Attica, some diatopic variations of the ‘euphemistic’ word for πίθηκος were widespread, as Hesychius reports when he says that καλλίαρ was the local Laconian variant for καλλίας (s.v. ‘καλλίαρ’: πίθηκος. παρὰ Λάκωσι). However, besides these remarks about the supposedly harmless term καλλίας, it is worth considering a more complex version of the same belief concerning monkeys in the ancient world: a passage in Lucian’s Pseudologistes (‘The Mistaken Critic’). In this work Lucian takes his revenge on a dancer and sophist called Timarchus, who had reproached him for his use of an oldfashioned Greek word (ἀποφράς: ‘ill-omened’ or ‘fateful’). Indeed, at Ephesus Lucian had pronounced this term of abuse aloud in order to make his friends aware of the presence of Timarchus, who was considered to be a man of ill omen. Throughout the work Lucian aims at warding off insinuations about his own bad use of the Greek language; at the same time, he wants to depict Timarchus as an ignorant person when it comes to the use of Greek. Lucian insists that the term ἀποφράς was still widespread. At this point he provides his enemy with a list of people, peculiar social groups or persons, considered of ill omen in antiquity (Lucian, Pseud. 17; transl. Austin M. Harmon): Ἡμεῖς δὲ καὶ τοὺς χωλοὺς τῷ δεξιῷ ἐκτρεπόμεθα, καὶ μάλιστα εἰ ἕωθεν ἴδοιμεν αὐτούς· κἂν εἴ τις βάκηλον ἢ εὐνοῦχον ἴδοι ἢ πίθηκον εὐθὺς ἐξιὼν τῆς οἰκίας, ἐπὶ πόδα ἀναστρέφει

_____ 24 Lex. Segueriana p. 275 Bekker (s.v. ‘καλλίας’): Καλλίας· ὁ πίθηκος κατ’ εὐφημισμόν.

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καὶ ἐπανέρχεται, οὐκ ἀγαθὰς μαντευόμενος τὰς ἐφημέρους ἐκείνας πράξεις ἔσεσθαι αὑτῷ ὑπὸ πονηρῷ τῷ πρώτῳ καὶ δυσφήμῳ κληδονίσματι. “We avoid those who are lame in the right foot, especially if we should see them early in the morning; and if anyone should see a cut priest or a eunuch or a monkey immediately upon leaving the house, he returns upon his tracks and goes back, auguring that his daily business for that day will not be succesful, thanks to the bad and inauspicious omen at the start.”

According to Lucian, having left home with some project in mind and having bumped into a monkey, one would be expected to turn back home. It was common opinion that all the activities undertaken under that bad sign would turn out to be disastrous and without success. This confirms the notion that was attached to the term καλλίας and to monkeys.25 If it is true that the term ἀποφράς was commonly used to refer to days and circumstances of bad omen,26 it cannot be ruled out that this adjective was employed to identify someone who was thought to have a bad influence on events and actions. Evidence of this usage is provided by a passage from Eupolis (fr. 332 PCG), in which someone leaving home bumps into an ἄνθρωπος ἀποφράς

_____ 25 As for popular beliefs concerning monkeys as animals of bad omen, see Cicero, De div. 1.76 and 2.69. Both passages deal with an omen which predicted the defeat of Leuctra for the Spartans. The omen consisted of a monkey, the beloved pet of the king of Molossia, who scattered and wasted the sortes (pieces of wood or metal used to obtain an oracle, by pulling them out of a box) in the sanctuary of Jupiter at Dodona. In De div. 2.69, the monkey is defined as a monstruosissuma bestia. In Roman culture monstrum was not merely something ugly or abnormal, but an event or a person who represented an omen, a presage compelling the community to remedy something that was unpleasant and about to happen. See Pease (21977: 225 and 461–462). On the reputation of monkeys as bad signs see also Hopf (1888: 52). A useful list of animals linked to ancient popular ‘superstitions’ can be found in Riess (1894: 68–83). See also Suetonius, Nero 46.1, where Nero has bad premonitions which announce his forthcoming death: among the most dreadful events the emperor sees his favourite horse changed into a monkey in the rear part of its body. – One may also refer to the so-called poena cullei, a punishment against parricides instituted or reformulated by the Lex Pompeia de parricidiis in 55 B.C., which gave orders to shut the parricide in a sack with some animals, whose number and identity varies according to the different sources. These animals included a monkey (simia, simius), together with a dog, a cock and a snake. Radin (1920: 127) asserts that “(t)he monkey had no associations of uncanniness or horror or evil omen to the ancient Roman.” However, he does not mention Lucian, Pseud. 17 or Ps.-Lucian, Amores 39; nor does he refer to Nero’s dream (Suetonius, Nero 46.1). 26 See in particular Mikalson (1976) whose analysis is devoted to highlighting the differences between the ἀποφράδες ἡμέραι and the Roman dies atri. According to Mikalson, Lucian would have used the Greek term, but had in mind the Roman cultural practice of the dies atri.

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who is ἀπιστίαν βλέπων – a strange expression which seems to describe a treacherous person.27 This tendency of attributing a lack of trustworthiness to people of ill omen, which is found in Greek literature from at least the fourth century B.C. onwards, could be of considerable importance, given that monkeys were often considered unloyal and treacherous animals. They were thought of as malevolent and tricky creatures who did not submit easily to human orders and wishes.28 For that reason they would be a perfect example of creatures who ‘exude treachery’ and upon whom it was dangerous to rely, above all in the context of important public events. Another intriguing passage comes from Pseudo-Lucian’s Erotes, a text dating to the beginning of the fourth century A.D. (Amores 39; transl. Matthew D. Macleod): εἰ γοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς νυκτέρου κοίτης πρὸς ὄρθρον ἴδοι τις ἀνισταμένας γυναῖκας, αἰσχίω νομίσει θηρίων τῶν πρωΐας ὥρας ὀνομασθῆναι δυσκληδονίστων· ὅθεν ἀκριβῶς οἴκοι καθείργουσιν αὑτὰς οὐδενὶ τῶν ἀρρένων βλεπομένας· γρᾶες δὲ καὶ θεραπαινίδων ὁ σύμμορφος ὄχλος ἐν κύκλῳ περιεστᾶσι ποικίλοις φαρμάκοις καταφαρμακεύουσαι τὰ δυστυχῆ πρόσωπα· “If at any rate one were to see women when they rise in the morning from last night’s bed, one would think a woman uglier than those beasts whose name it is inauspicious to mention early in the day. That is why they closet themselves carefully at home and let no man see them. They are surrounded by old women and a throng of maids as ugly as themselves who doctor their ill-favoured faces with an assortment of medicaments.”

These are the words pronounced by Callicratidas of Athens, the partisan of homosexual love in this dialogue,29 aiming at belittling the beauty and seductive

_____ 27 This expression, combining a verb of seeing (βλέπω) with the term ἀπιστία (‘lack of faith’) as a direct object in the odd sense of ‘seeing treachery’, may be linked to the Greek concept of malign influence (βασκανία) which was supposed to spread through eye contact. See e.g. Plutarch, Quaest. conv. V 7 680c–683b (γινώσκομεν γὰρ ἀνθρώπους τῷ καταβλέπειν τὰ παιδία μάλιστα βλάπτοντας). For a fuller analysis of the magical power of the evil eye in antiquity, see Giuman (2013: 1–22). 28 It is worth recalling that the monkey-woman described by Semonides was not only the ugliest woman, but also a kind of trickster, spending all day inventing new tricks against her husband. She knows all the ploys and tricks of a monkey (Semonides, fr. 7.78–79 West). See also Eubulus, fr. 114 PCG where rearing and keeping a monkey at home is considered to be like nourishing a malevolent traitor. 29 The dialogue begins between Lycinus and Theomnestus. The latter declares that he is practising both heterosexual and homosexual love. For this reason, he is unable to establish which one is to be considered the best kind of love and asks Lycinus for his opinion. Lycinus responds

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power of women. Callicratidas’ argument consists in denying the natural beauty of women: they are considered extremely shrewd and capable of concealing their real nature which is not charming but hideous thanks to a considerable use of deceptive tricks such as make-up products. At this point Callicratidas invites his interlocutor to have a look at the women very early in the morning, when their tricks are not yet in action, and he will be able to see their real ugliness, which is worse than that of monkeys. In this passage monkeys and ill omen are intertwined. Pseudo-Lucian talks about primates bringing bad luck in a particular context where women’s ugliness is related to the semantic sphere of deception and illusion to the detriment of men. On the basis of the traditional Greek stereotype of women causing trouble, the possibility of being swindled by a woman, who should normally remain under the control of her husband or father, was one of the most pressing fears among men. From a male perspective, women are sources of tricks and trouble, because they are not actually the appearance that they present, i.e. a charming face, but only a hideous spectacle. Callicratidas confirms exactly this when he refers to πίθηκοι, so famous for their ugliness and treachery that their name could (and should) be avoided or substituted by an antiphrastic one. Pseudo-Lucian’s text supports the previously observed cultural link between the ugliness of monkeys and their reputation as an animal of bad omen, even if no direct causal link is explicitly stated.

5 Worried about the freak: eunuchs, cinaedi and monkeys As Delcourt (1938: 29–66) has shown, disabilities, physical handicaps and structural flaws were considered signs of bad omen. This was true in Archaic Sparta and Classical Athens (see e.g. the social institution of ἀπόθεσις and ἔκθεσις), but also in Roman society where the abnormality was removed and eliminated by violence and death.30 This could certainly be a possible reason why people

_____ that he will give his judgement only after having reported a dialogue about this topic between Charicles of Corinth and Callicratidas of Athens, the first one a supporter of love for women and the second an advocate of love for boys. For a complete analysis of the dialogue, see Bloch (1907); see also Cantarella (21992: 102–106). 30 For a comprehensive analysis of the notion and examples of abnormality in antiquity, see Garland (1995: 23): “At moments of crisis the ugly and deformed, like other marginal groups, including foreigners and ethnic minorities, tend to become liable to physical persecution

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would consider a monkey an animal of ill omen. But in view of the categories of people cited by Lucian as bringing bad luck (Pseud. 17; see above), an alternative explanation is possible. According to Lucian, people that one is expected to avoid are always characterised by a nature or appearance which is not what is normally expected, according to a culturally determined natural state of things. They present abnormalities, marked features which contribute to their isolation. The χωλὸς ἀνήρ is considered of bad omen only if he is lame in the right foot (τοὺς χωλοὺς τῷ δεξιῷ), which, in normal condition, has to be the best and fortunate one, as it is inscribed in its name (δεξιός: ‘right’, ‘fortunate’, ‘clever’).31 It is not the encounter with a lame man which is a bad presage, but the fact that in this man the natural condition of lameness is perverted: what is normally the best part of the body, the right side (with all the polysemy attached to this expression), turns out to be the unfortunate and disabled one.32 As far as the other figures (the βάκηλοι and the εὐνοῦχοι) are concerned, it is easier to single out the marked traits which determine their abnormality: they are male, but their anatomical structure and their externally perceived features, such as their way of moving or dressing, reveal an anomalous identity.33 They are men deviating from the commonly accepted paradigm of masculinity.34 Particularly interesting

_____ which often results in their death (…). The victim, who was often but not invariably ugly and deformed, underwent ritual expulsion or, much less commonly it seems, execution.” In Roman society ugly and deformed people were considered a bad omen at their birth (see Garland 1995: 59–72). See e.g. Livy 27.37.6 on intersexual people who were considered bad signs and executed. There were no great worries about lesser abnormalities, but they were also regularly noted in prodigy lists. 31 See LSJ (s.v. ‘δεξιός’) and Chantraine (1968: s.v. ‘δεξιός’). 32 It is worth recalling that in ancient Greek culture the accepted evaluation of space and direction played a crucial role and that the left was included in the paradigmatic axes alongside concepts such as anomalous, imperfect, suspicious, of bad omen etc. to the extent that the left side of the human body or an event perceived as ‘left’ obtained the antiphrastic linguistic label ἀριστερός (‘the better part’). For an analysis of the cultural evaluation of right and left in antiquity, see Aretini (1998) and Lloyd (1966). 33 One may compare the treatise De aëre, aquis et locis, where an entire section (§ 22) is devoted to eunuchs from Scythia. In the very first lines, it is confirmed that eunuchs look like women, do what women do, or speak with a feminine voice. However, the passage also reports that eunuchs are celebrated or honoured by other Scythians because the latter worry about themselves (σέβονται τουτέους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ προσκυνέουσι, δεδοικότες περὶ ἑωυτέων ἕκαστοι). It is as if the natives consider the presence of eunuchs a latent menace (a bad omen presence?), which can be avoided only by bestowing honours to them. For an analysis of this passage related to the φύσις of Scythians, see Ballabriga (1986: 132–138). 34 See e.g. the example given by the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata concerning the voice of eunuchs which, along with that of children and women, is acute in contrast to the deep sounds

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is the last character cited by Lucian: the effeminate homosexual (κίναιδος). Lucian not only explains that it is best to avoid a κίναιδος, but he indirectly gives some useful information on the reason for this recommendation. A κίναιδος is someone who practises forbidden actions, in particular in the sphere of sex, playing the role of a female prostitute.35 He is not really a man, but someone who has perverted his nature, becoming a figure who cannot be defined as either a man or woman. It seems clear why Lucian calls a κίναιδος a swindler, a charlatan and a liar, a person who can represent only a disgrace to anyone bumping into him: he is a deceiver who has abandoned his role of male citizen to become a counterfeit of a woman. But how is this related to monkeys? Why are they, together with eunuchs and effeminate homosexuals, figures of bad omen? One may assume that the same discursive logic comes into operation, but unfortunately Lucian is not explicit about that, and therefore a possible reason should be identified in the ancient Greek cultural tradition dealing with primates. What were the cultural representations of monkeys which would support popular beliefs about their being animals of bad omen? What kind of affordances were they built on? To shed light on these questions, one may consider the description of primates in Aristotle’s Historia animalium where they are defined as animals with the features of humans and other mammals.36 In Aristotle’s classification monkeys are ἐπαμφότερα ζῷα (Hist. anim. II 8 502a16–26; transl. Arthur L. Peck):

_____ pronounced by men (Probl. XI 16 900b16). They are infertile (ἄγονοι), because they are unable to actively produce offspring (γόνος). One of the usual expressions to designate a eunuch was τoμίας (< τέμνω), a term which conceptualised them as deprived of the main feature making a man. See Ps.-Zonaras, Lex., s.v. ‘τoμίας’; Photius, Lex., s.v. ‘τoμίας’; Hesychius, s.v. εὐνοῦχος. On eunuchs as bad omens, see esp. Guyot (1980: 42–44). 35 On the κίναιδος see e.g. Petronius, Sat. 21.2: ultimo cinaedus supervenit myrtea subornatus gausapa cinguloque succinctus (…) modo extortis nos clunibus cecidit, modo basiis olidissimis inquinavit (…). See also Artemidorus, Oneir. 5.65: Ἔδοξέ τις τὸ αἰδοῖον αὐτοῦ ἄχρις ἄκρας τῆς κορώνης τετριχῶσθαι καὶ λάσιον εἶναι πυκνῶν πάνυ τριχῶν αἰφνίδιον φυεισῶν. ἀποπεφασμένος κίναιδος ἐγένετο πάσῃ μὲν ἀκολάστῳ χαρισάμενος ἡδονῇ [θηλυδρίας τε καὶ ἀνδρόγυνος ὤν], μόνῳ δὲ τῷ αἰδοίῳ κατὰ νόμον ἀνδρῶν μὴ χρώμενος. τοιγαροῦν οὕτως ἀργὸν ἦν αὐτῷ τὸ μέρος ἐκεῖνο, ὡς διὰ τὸ μὴ τρίβεσθαι πρὸς ἕτερον σῶμα καὶ τρίχας ἐκφῦσαι. For ancient sources on the κίναιδος, see Guyot (1980: 40 n. 17), Delcourt (1958: passim), Brisson (1997: passim), and Williams (22010: esp. 193–214, 230–239). See also Fögen (2009: 26–37) and Fögen (2014: esp. 82–85). 36 On the peculiarities of Aristotle’s classifications and their difference from modern taxonomies, see Zucker (2005).

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Ἔνια δὲ τῶν ζῴων ἐπαμφοτερίζει τὴν φύσιν τῷ τ’ ἀνθρώπῳ καὶ τοῖς τετράποσιν, οἷον πίθηκοι καὶ κῆβοι καὶ κυνοκέφαλοι (…). Οἱ δὲ πίθηκοι δασεῖς μέν εἰσι τὰ πρανῆ ὡς ὄντες τετράποδες, καὶ τὰ ὕπτια δ’ ὡσαύτως ὡς ὄντες ἀνθρωποειδεῖς (τοῦτο γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐναντίως ἔχει καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν τετραπόδων, καθάπερ ἐλέχθη πρότερον) (…). “Some animals have dual natures of both man and quadrupeds, for example monkeys, tailed monkeys and baboons (…). Monkeys are hairy, in virtue of their being quadrupeds, and hairy on their fronts, in virtue of their being man-like (that, as I mentioned before, is a point in which the arrangement in man is the reverse of that in the quadrupeds) (…).”

As is clear from the text, monkeys are not difficult to define. They are not strange creatures or hybrids, but since they have the qualities of humans and quadrupeds, they are culturally more complex than other animals. At the same time, a double belonging could be seen as no actual belonging, as Aristotle indicates in another zoological treatise (De part. anim. IV 10 689b28–34; transl. Arthur L. Peck): Ὅπως δ’ ἐν φυλακῇ καὶ σκέπῃ ᾖ τὸ λειτουργοῦν μόριον τὴν ἔξοδον τοῦ περιττώματος, τὴν καλουμένην οὐρὰν καὶ κέρκον αὐτοῖς ἀπέδωκεν ἡ φύσις, ἀφελομένη τῆς εἰς τὰ σκέλη γιγνομένης τροφῆς. Ὁ δὲ πίθηκος διὰ τὸ τὴν μορφὴν ἐπαμφοτερίζειν καὶ μηδετέρων τ’ εἶναι καὶ ἀμφοτέρων, διὰ τοῦτ’ οὔτε οὐρὰν ἔχει οὔτ’ ἰσχία, ὡς μὲν δίπους ὢν οὐράν. “Yet to ensure that the part which serves them for the discharge of the residue shall be guarded and covered over, nature has assigned to them tails or scuts by taking off somewhat of the nourishment which would otherwise go into the legs. The monkey is, in form, intermediate between the two, man and quadruped, and belongs to neither, or to both, and consequently he has no tail, qua biped, and no buttocks, qua quadruped.”

Monkeys do not have a tail,37 resembling from this point of view the anatomical structure of human beings, but at the same time they are similar to other mammals in not being provided with gluteus muscles. The anatomical resemblance to humans could represent the perception (the affordance), upon which cultural constructions about monkeys were elaborated: an animal capable of assuming an erect position, but normally moving as quadruped. Their capability of using

_____ 37 As already stated before (see n. 3), I use the general term ‘monkey’ to translate the ancient word πίθηκος. By using the term πίθηκος here, Aristotle refers to Barbary macaques which do not have tails and are represented as the prototypical non-human primate in antiquity. Although a modern difference exists that distinguishes ‘apes’ (who lack tails and resemble human beings) from ‘monkeys’ (who have tails and are more similar to other mammals), this distinction was foreign to the ancient Greek way of ‘organising’ the animal world.

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hands both as a tool to manipulate objects and as a locomotion device could have led to a more complex perception of the strange and deceptive nature of primates. The intricate link between cognitive complexity in anatomy, exterior ugliness and a deceptive nature is not completely arbitrary. Indeed, in Book 5 of his Republic (479b–d), Plato cites a kind of riddle very widespread in the ludic context of the symposium; but what is important here is his way of describing the key character in the riddle: a eunuch. According to the formulation of the riddle, a man who is not a man (the eunuch) hits a bird which is not a bird (νυκτερίς: a bat) with a stone which is not a stone (the pumice stone). Plato explains that this deceptive way of talking (τῷ τῶν παίδων αἰνίγματι … αἰνίττονται) is possible because the objects of the story have a dual nature (ἐπαμφοτερίζουσιν ἔοικεν … καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα ἐπαμφοτερίζειν). Both the eunuch and the bat present a higher cognitive complexity; it takes more time for observers to identify and categorise these beings, as Plato himself stresses when he points out that it is not possible to apprehend them firmly and without reservations (καὶ οὔτ’ εἶναι οὔτε μὴ εἶναι οὐδὲν αὐτῶν δυνατὸν παγίως νοῆσαι). The passage from Pseudo-Lucian’s Amores discussed above can also be interpreted in this light. The link between women and monkeys appears to be less arbitrary, since both, according to the misogynous Callicratidas, present a counterfeit nature, which for women is acquired by means of make-up products and in the case of primates is naturally received. This analysis can offer a new interpretation of what lay at the basis of popular beliefs regarding monkeys as animals of ill omen. According to the Greek perception of the anthropoid anatomy of monkeys (primary perceptual data, affordance), a primate was deemed a hideous spectacle that did not inspire confidence and should be completely avoided. It was considered to be imperfect and lacking in something (the first layer of cultural construction), resembling humans but not coinciding with them, and for this reason deceptive and ugly (the second layer of cultural interpretation).

6 Conclusion: emic hypotheses about monkey avoidance in Galen Having considered this complex set of cultural attitudes, linguistic habits and pragmatic contexts, it is now possible to return to the original question: Why should Galen have avoided interacting with a monkey during a public performance? Cultural avoidance of monkeys in a public performance is not a permanent phenomenon, taking place regardless of other social variables, since cul-

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tural phenomena are usually not statistically constant data. Getting a sense of cultures implies paying attention to the single context of enunciation made up of human agents, particular settings and different contexts activated by distinctive discursive strategies. For this reason, it would be difficult to assert that ancient physicians would always avoid coming into contact with primates in a public context, but it is very likely that a manifold set of cultural variables was at stake, including traditional beliefs about animals of bad omen.38 As has been noted above, this kind of behaviour has up to now prompted several explanations, in particular the ‘socio-economic hypothesis’ and the ‘functional hypothesis’. While the first explanation is a manifest example of a reductionist approach, ignoring the existence of cultural motivations much to the benefit of (supposed) economic ones, the second rests on certain indications in Galen’s text. Here monkeys are presented as μικρόφωνα ζῷα, while pigs and piglets are classified as strong-voiced animals. The ‘functional hypothesis’ is worth considering because it tries to interpret the case of monkey avoidance through other passages in Galen’s own writings. However, although this is a plausible approach, there could be another reason behind the decision made by Galen. This article has shed light on some peculiar textual details, in particular on the use of the word ‘hideous’ and ‘disgusting’ as a good reason to avoid a monkey in a public context. It has also looked at widespread Greek cultural habits, seeing the monkey as an animal of bad omen, considered ugly and treacherous, in order to give a more nuanced explanation for the passages from Galen analysed above. For these reasons, it is possible to propose a new hypothesis which, though not the only one, is embedded in the Greek cultural context of the imperial period: that the monkey was thought of as an animal of ill omen which was better avoided on specific occasions.

_____ 38 On the other hand, there are some other passages which suggest that a public encounter with monkeys was possible, for example in Galen, De optimo medico cognoscendo V 6 (ed. Iskandar, CMG Suppl. Gr.). Unfortunately, it survives only in the medieval Arabic translation, but it is not explicitly said there that the monkey, whose abdomen was incised and intestines exposed, was alive. Interestingly, it is added that Galen had severed many large veins of the primate inviting the other self-styled medical doctors to treat them and block the seepage of blood; but a similar reference to blood pouring out of the veins is also found in Anat. adm. XV 6.315 Duckworth, where Galen invites his pupils to pay attention to this accident, even if they had taken charge of strangulating the monkey before the dissection. An analogous passage concerning monkeys killed before the anatomical dissection is in Anat. adm. XIII 3.182 Duckworth with regard to small veins in the area of the mesentery.

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To sum up, there is ample evidence for an emic hypothesis that may serve to explain Galen’s behaviour:39 – In the texts analysed here, interaction with a monkey is completely and explicitly avoided by Galen, at least in public contexts. – A monkey shown on a public occasion in front of an audience was considered hideous. – In Greek culture monkeys were believed to be animals of ill omen, as Lucian testifies. – This was true to the extent that there was another name for calling monkeys by the euphemism καλλίας. – This name is constructed by ‘antiphrasis’, since the animal was commonly considered to be ugly and misshapen. – There was a widespread belief that the monkey was a malevolent and treacherous animal. It is therefore possible that a very specific set of cultural beliefs and folk traditions could have exerted some influence on a public perfomer like Galen.40 For a physician, there was much at stake in terms of prestige, power and money; it was a veritable test to enter the class of the Roman élite. What the Greeks called ἐπίδειξις was a matter of persuasion undertaken in a magical atmosphere, and much more than an impersonal medical demonstration. Every oversight could turn out to be fatal for the performer, and it was certainly safer to choose a piglet than a hideous and treacherous animal like a monkey, with the load of popular beliefs and folk rumours concerning its presence. It is, in my opinion, these peculiar but shared rumours about monkeys bringing bad luck, namely the

_____ 39 ‘Emic’ in cultural anthropology entails an explanation of a social or cultural phenomenon based on conceptions and categories which are already part of the culture being analysed. It is normally opposed to an ‘etic’ approach which usually adopts the interpretative categories of external observers of a culture. For the origin in the field of linguistical theory, see Pike (1967: 8–15). See Olivier de Safran (1998) for an exposition of the different interpretations of the two concepts and a new proposal for their use. 40 This episode could be perceived as inconsistent with the image of Galen as a rationalist physician, but scholars such as Kudlien (1981), Frede (2003) and Berdozzo (2011: 265–279) have pointed out that Galen was first and foremost a Greek who was part of the cultural and religious life of his period. It is worth citing several passages where Galen declares that deities could interfere with ordinary life, and that this had happened to him. For instance, he refused to follow the emperor Marcus Aurelius to war because Asclepius appeared to him discouraging the trip (De libr. propr. 2: πεισθεὶς δ’ ἀφεῖναι λέγοντος ἀκούσας τἀναντία κελεύειν τὸν πάτριον θεὸν Ἀσκληπιόν, οὗ καὶ θεραπευτὴν ἀπέφαινον ἐμαυτόν; see also De propr. plac. II 2 Nutton).

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power attributed to them of determining and causing events, that could have blocked the interaction between Galen and his otherwise common test animals.41

Bibliography Editions, translations and commentaries Burnet, John (1900): Platonis opera (vol. 4), Oxford. Duckworth, Wynfrid L. H. (1962): Galen on Anatomical Procedures. The Latter Books, Cambridge. Garofalo, Ivan (1986): Galeni Anatomicarum administrationum libri qui supersunt novem. Earundem interpretatio arabica Hunaino Isaaci filio ascripta. Tomus 1: Libros I-IV continens, Napoli. Garofalo, Ivan (2000): Galeni Anatomicarum administrationum libri qui supersunt novem. Earundem interpretatio arabica Hunaino Isaaci filio ascripta. Tomus 2: Libros V-IX continens, Napoli. Harmon, Austin M. (1962): Lucian (vol. 5), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Heeg, Joseph (1915): Galeni in Hippocratis Prognosticum commentarii III (CMG V 9.2), Leipzig. Kühn, Carl Gottlob (1821): Claudii Galeni opera omnia (vol. 2), Leipzig. Kühn, Carl Gottlob (1830): Claudii Galeni opera omnia (vol. 18b), Leipzig. Macleod, Matthew D. (1967): Lucian (vol. 8), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Nutton, Vivian (1979): Galeni de praecognitione (CMG V 8.1), Berlin. Pease, Arthur S. (21977): M. Tulli Ciceronis de divinatione libri duo, Darmstadt. Peck, Arthur L. & Edward S. Forster (1937): Aristotle: Parts of Animals, Movement of Animals, Progression of Animals, Cambridge, Mass. & London. Peck, Arthur L. (1965): Aristotle: History of Animals (vol. 1), Cambridge, Mass. & London. Singer, Charles (1999): Galen: On Anatomical Procedures, Oxford.

_____ 41 This paper is part of a broader research project about primates in antiquity, which will consider other aspects of the cultural construction of monkeys in the Graeco-Roman world, such as the role played by ethological affordances and their culturally relevant interpretation in the evaluation of interactions between humans and monkeys. Special thanks are due to Thorsten Fögen and Edmund Thomas for numerous improvements of this article. I also wish to thank Maurizio Bettini, Daniela Fausti, Cristiana Franco, Bonnie MacLachlan, and Arnaud Zucker for their comments.

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Animals in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: A Select Bibliography Thorsten Fögen Animals in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: A Select Bibliography Given the vastness of the topic, which is thematically connected with a great number of other areas (in particular myth, cult, ritual and religion, science, philosophy etc.), this bibliography makes no claim whatsoever to be comprehensive. It has the rather modest aim to provide a tool for those who would like to familiarise themselves with research on animals mainly in Graeco-Roman antiquity. The list contains studies from classical philology, ancient history and cultural studies, but to some extent also from Graeco-Roman archaeology (with only a very limited number of zoo-archaeological investigations included). Occasionally, works on later periods (esp. the Middle Ages) have been incorporated. Apart from very few instances, entries in encyclopedias such as Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (RE), Der Neue Pauly or Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (RAC) have not been taken into account for reasons of space. A distinction is made between (1) more general works (i.e. dealing with a variety of different animals) and (2) studies with a particular focus on individual species. In addition, there are seven special sections on (3) animals as food, (4) vegetarianism, (5) hunting, (6) spectacles (games), (7) sacrifice, (8) veterinary medicine, and (9) ‘monsters’ in antiquity. A final update was made on 15 May 2016. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-018

1 More general studies on animals 1.1 Readers (Collections of ancient sources) Harden, Alastair (2013): Animals in the Classical World. Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts, Basingstoke. Kompatscher, Gabriela, Albrecht Classen & Peter Dinzelbacher (eds.) (2010): Tiere als Freunde im Mittelalter. Eine Anthologie. Eingeleitet, ausgewählt, übersetzt und kommentiert, Badenweiler. Kompatscher-Gufler, Gabriela, Franz Römer & Sonja Schreiner (2014): Partner, Freunde und Gefährten. Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen der Antike, des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit in lateinischen Texten, Wien. Linnemann, Manuela (2000): Brüder – Bestien – Automaten. Das Tier im abendländischen Denken, Erlangen. DOI 10.1515/9783110545623-018

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Newmyer, Stephen T. (2011): Animals in Greek and Roman Thought. A Sourcebook, London & New York. Nickel, Rainer (1985): Von Hasen, Hunden und anderen Tieren. Texte für die Interimslektüre (Ratio 20), Bamberg (Hauptband + Lehrerheft). Perfahl, Jost (1970): Dankbarkeit der Delphine und andere Tiergeschichten der Antike, Bremen. Perfahl, Jost (1983): Wiedersehen mit Argos und andere Nachrichten über Hunde in der Antike, Mainz.

1.2 Monographs Amat, Jacqueline (2002): Les animaux familiers dans la Rome antique, Paris. Andò, Valeria (2013): Violenza bestiale. Modelli dell’umano nella poesia greca epica e drammatica, Caltanissetta & Roma. Aston, Emma (2011): Mixanthrôpoi. Animal-Human Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion, Liège. Ax, Wolfram (1986): Laut, Stimme und Sprache. Studien zu drei Grundbegriffen der antiken Sprachtheorie, Göttingen. Bacigalupo, Maria Vittoria (1965): Il problema degli animali nel pensiero antico, Torino. Baranski, Anton (1886): Geschichte der Thierzucht und Thiermedicin im Alterthum, Wien (repr. Hildesheim 1971). Barloy, Jean Jacques (1974): Les animaux domestiques. Cent siècles de vie commune entre l’homme et l’animal, Paris (English translation by Henry Fox: Man and Animals. 100 Centuries of Friendship, London 1978). Beagon, Mary (1992): Roman Nature. The Thought of Pliny the Elder, Oxford (ch. 4: ‘Man and the Animals’). Benton, Janetta Rebold (1992): The Medieval Menagerie. Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages, New York. Bettini, Maurizio (1998): Nascere. Storie di donne, donnole, madri ed eroi, Torino (English translation by Emlyn Eisenach: Women & Weasels. Mythologies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome, Chicago 2013). Bettini, Maurizio (2008): Voci. Antropologia sonora del mondo antico, Torino. Bleiberg, Edward, Yekaterina Barbash & Lisa Bruno (2013): Soulful Creatures. Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt, London & Brooklyn, New York. Blundell, Sue (1986): The Origins of Civilization in Greek & Roman Thought, London & Sydney. Bodson, Liliane (1978): Hiera zoa. Contribution à l’étude de la place de l’animal dans la religion grecque ancienne, Bruxelles. Bodson, Liliane (2009): L’interprétation des noms grecs et latins d’animaux illustrée par le cas du zoonyme sēps-seps, Bruxelles. Boessneck, Joachim (1988): Die Tierwelt des Alten Ägypten. Untersucht anhand kulturgeschichtlicher und zoologischer Quellen, München. Boudet, Jacques (1962): L’homme et l’animal. Cent mille ans de vie commune, Paris. Boutantin, Céline (2014): Terres cuites et culte domestique. Bestiaire de l’Égypte grécoromaine, Leiden & Boston. Brunner-Traut, Emma (1977): Altägyptische Tiergeschichte und Fabel. Gestalt und Strahlkraft, Darmstadt.

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Calder, Louise (2011): Cruelty and Sentimentality. Greek Attitudes to Animals, 600–300 B.C., Oxford. Calvet, Jean & Marcel Cruppi (1955): Le bestiaire de l’antiquité classique, Paris. Calvet, Jean & Marcel Cruppi (1956): Les animaux dans la littérature sacrée, Paris. Camardese, Daniela (2010): Il mondo animale nella poesia lucreziana tra topos e osservazione realistica, Bologna. Campagnet, Pierre-Paul (1979): L’animal dans la civilisation grecque du haut archaïsme et dans la littérature épique ancienne de l’Hellade, Diss. Paris. Campbell, Gordon L. (2006): Strange Creatures. Anthropology in Antiquity, London. Capponi, Filippo (1985): Le fonti del X libro della “Naturalis historia” di Plinio, Genova. Chandezon, Christophe (2003): L’élevage en Grèce (fin Ve–1er s. a. C.). L’apport des sources épigraphiques, Bordeaux. Ciliega, Noemi (2013): Tierbilder auf Münzen des klassischen Altertums. Eine deskriptive Dokumentation, Berlin. Clark, Kenneth (1977): Animals and Men. Their Relationship as Reflected in Western Art from Prehistory to the Present Day, London. Clark, Stephen R. L. (1975): Aristotle’s Man. Speculations upon Aristotelian Anthropology, Oxford. Clark, Stephen R. L. (1977): The Moral Status of Animals, Oxford & New York. Clark, Stephen R. L. (1997): Animals and Their Moral Standing, London. Clavel-Lévêque, Monique (1984): L’Empire en jeux. Espace symbolique et pratique sociale dans le monde romain, Paris. Connell, Sophia M. (2016): Aristotle on Female Animals. A Study of the Generation of Animals, Cambridge. Corbel-Morana, Cécile (2012): Le bestiaire d’Aristophane, Paris. Dahlmann, Johannes Hellfried (1928): De philosophorum Graecorum sententiis ad loquellae originem pertinentibus capita duo, Diss. Leipzig. Delort, Robert (1984): Les animaux ont une histoire, Paris (German translation by Josef Winiger: Der Elefant, die Biene und der heilige Wolf. Die wahre Geschichte der Tiere, München 1987). De Pury, Albert (1993): Homme et animal – Dieu les créa. L’Ancien Testament et les animaux, Genève. De Visser, Marinus W. (1900): De Graecorum diis non referentibus speciem humanam, Diss. Leiden. Dickerman, Sherwood Owen (1909): De argumentis quibusdam apud Xenophontem, Platonem, Aristotelem obviis e structura hominis et animalium petitis, Diss. Halle. Dierauer, Urs (1977): Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike. Studien zur Tierpsychologie, Anthropologie und Ethik, Amsterdam. Duchet-Suchaux, Gaston & Michel Pastoureau (2002): Le bestiaire médiéval. Dictionnaire historique et bibliographie, Paris. Dumont, Jacques (2001): Les animaux dans l’Antiquité grecque, Paris. Dyroff, Adolf (1897): Die Tierpsychologie des Plutarchos von Chaironeia, Würzburg. Eltz-Hoffmann, Lieselott von (2003): Ihr Herz schlug für das Tier. Große Fürsprecher der Tiere von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Bamberg. Findeisen, Hans (1956): Das Tier als Gott, Dämon und Ahne. Eine Untersuchung über das Erleben des Tieres, Stuttgart. Forbes Irving, Paul M. C. (1990): Metamorphosis in Greek Myths, Oxford.

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Hopf, Ludwig (1888): Thierorakel und Orakelthiere in alter und neuer Zeit. Eine ethnologischzoologische Studie, Stuttgart. Houghton, Herbert P. (1915): Moral Significance of Animals as Indicated in Greek Proverbs, Amherst, Mass. Howe, Timothy (2008): Pastoral Politics. Animals, Agriculture and Society in Ancient Greece, Claremont. Hübner, Wolfgang (1982): Die Eigenschaften der Tierkreiszeichen in der Antike. Ihre Darstellung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Manilius, Wiesbaden. Hübner, Wolfgang (1983): Zodiacus Christianus. Jüdisch-christliche Adaptationen des Tierkreises von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Königstein im Taunus. Imhoof-Blumer, Friedrich & Otto Keller (1889): Tier- und Pflanzenbilder auf Münzen und Gemmen des klassischen Altertums, Leipzig (repr. Hildesheim 1972). Jennison, George (1937): Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome, Manchester. Jeschonnek, Friedrich (1885): De nominibus, quae Graeci pecudibus domesticis indiderunt, Diss. Königsberg. Kádár, Zoltán (1978): Survivals of Greek Zoological Illuminations in Byzantine Manuscripts, Budapest. Kamke, Wolfgang (2008): Abbildungen von Tieren auf Münzen der Antike. Vol. 1: Griechische Münzen (Europa, Asien, Afrika). Vol. 2: Römische Münzen (Römische Republik, Römisches Kaiserreich), Norderstedt. Keitz, Emil von (1883): Die Tierliebhaberei im Altertume (Beilage zum Osterprogramm des Königlichen Realprogymnasiums zu Duderstadt 1883), Duderstadt. Keller, Otto (1878): Ueber die Bedeutung einiger Thiernamen im Griechischen und Lateinischen. Vortrag gehalten in der anthropologischen Gesellschaft zu Graz, Graz. Keller, Otto (1887): Thiere des classischen Alterthums in culturgeschichtlicher Beziehung, Innsbruck (repr. Hildesheim 2001). Keller, Otto (1909–1913): Die antike Tierwelt (2 vol.), Leipzig (repr. Hildesheim 1963). Kitchell, Kenneth F. (2014): Animals in the Ancient World from A-Z, New York. Knapp, Fritz Peter (1979): Das lateinische Tierepos, Darmstadt. Koch-Harnack, Gundel (1983): Knabenliebe und Tiergeschenke. Ihre Bedeutung im päderastischen Erziehungssystem Athens, Berlin. Köhler, Karl Sylvio (1881): Das Tierleben im Sprichwort der Griechen und Römer, Leipzig. Körner, Otto (1917): Das homerische Tiersystem und seine Bedeutung für die zoologische Systematik des Aristoteles, Wiesbaden. Körner, Otto (21930): Die homerische Tierwelt, München (first ed. Berlin 1880). Krekoukias, Demetrio (1970): Gli animali nella meteorologia popolare degli antichi greci, romani e bizantini, Firenze. Kroll, Henriette (2010): Tiere im Byzantinischen Reich. Archäozoologische Forschungen im Überblick, Mainz. Kroll, Wilhelm (1940): Zur Geschichte der aristotelischen Zoologie (Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 218.2), Wien. Kullmann, Wolfgang (1979): Die Teleologie in der aristotelischen Biologie. Aristoteles als Zoologe, Embryologe und Genetiker (Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 1979/2), Heidelberg. Kurtz, Eduard (1886): Tierbeobachtung und Tierliebhaberei der alten Griechen. Vortrag, Leipzig. Labarrière, Jean-Louis (2004): Langage, vie politique et mouvement des animaux. Études aristotéliciennes, Paris.

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1.3 Edited volumes Alexandridis, Annetta, Markus Wild & Lorenz Winkler-Horaček (eds.) (2008): Mensch und Tier in der Antike. Grenzziehung und Grenzüberschreitung, Wiesbaden. Andò, Valeria & Nicola Cusumano (eds.) (2010): Come bestie? Forme e paradossi della violenza tra mondo antico e disagio contemporaneo, Caltanissetta. Anreiter, Peter & al. (eds.) (1998): Man and the Animal World. Studies in Archaeozoology, Archaeology, Anthropology and Palaeolinguistics in memoriam Sándor Bökönyi, Budapest. Bell, Jeremy & Michael Naas (eds.) (2015): Plato’s Animals. Gadflies, Horses, Swans, and Other Philosophical Beasts, Bloomington & Indianapolis. Bernasconi, Floriana & al. (eds.) (1974): Das Tier in der Antike. 400 Werke ägyptischer, griechischer, etruskischer und römischer Kunst aus privatem und öffentlichem Besitz (Ausgestellt im Archäologischen Institut der Universität Zürich, 21. September bis 17. November 1974), Zürich. Beta, Simone & Francesca Marzari (eds.) (2010): Animali, ibridi e mostri nella cultura antica. Atti dei convegni, Siena, 4 e 5 giugno 2007, Columbus, Ohio, 11, 12, 13 gennaio 2008, Fiesole. Bianciotto, Gabriel & Michel Salvat (eds.) (1984): Epopée animale, fable, fabliau. Actes du IVe colloque de la Société internationale renardienne (Evreux, 7–11 septembre 1981), Paris. Biella, Maria Cristina & Enrico Giovanelli (eds.) (2016): Nuovi studi sul bestiario fantastico di età orientalizzante nella penisola italiana, Trento. Biers, Jane (ed.) (2004): Animals in Ancient Art from the Leo Mildenberg Collection. Vol. 6: A Peaceable Kingdom, Mainz. Bodson, Liliane (ed.) (1993): L’histoire de la connaissance du comportement animal. Actes du Colloque international, Université de Liège, 11–14 mars 1992, Liège. Bodson, Liliane (ed.) (1996): Le statut éthique de l’animal. Conceptions anciennes et nouvelles, Liège. Bodson, Liliane (ed.) (1997): L’animal de compagnie. Ses rôles et leurs motivations au regard de l’histoire, Liège. Bodson, Liliane (ed.) (1998): Les animaux exotiques dans les relations internationales. Espèces, fonctions, significations, Liège. Bodson, Liliane (ed.) (2000): Ces animaux que l’homme choisit d’inhumer. Contribution à l’étude de la place et du rôle de l’animal dans les rites funéraires, Liège. Bodson, Liliane (ed.) (2001): La sépulture des animaux: Concepts, usages et pratiques à travers le temps et l’espace. Contribution à l’étude de l’animalité, Liège. Boulogne, Jacques (ed.) (2005): Les Grecs de l’Antiquité et les animaux. Le cas remarquable de Plutarque, Villeneuve-d’Ascq. Brodrick, Alan Houghton (ed.) (1972): Animals in Archaeology, London. Campbell, Gordon L. (ed.) (2014): The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford. Cassin, Barbara & Jean-Louis Labarrière (eds.) (1997): L’animal dans l’antiquité, Paris. Castignone, Silvana & Giuliana Lanata (eds.) (1994): Filosofi e animali nel mondo antico, Pisa. Centre de Recherches A. Piganiol (ed.) (1995): Homme et animal dans l’antiquité romaine. Actes du colloque de Nantes 1991, Tours. Charpentier, Marie-Claude (ed.) (2004): Les espaces du sauvage dans le monde antique: Approches et définitions. Colloque Besançon 4–5 mai 2000, Besançon.

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Preus, Anthony (1990): Animal and human souls in the Peripatetic school. In: Skepsis 1, 67–99. Radermacher, Ludwig (1918): Menschen und Tiere. In: Ludwig Radermacher, Beiträge zur Volkskunde aus dem Gebiet der Antike (Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 187/3), Wien, 18–51. Rahn, Helmut (1953): Tier und Mensch in der homerischen Auffassung der Wirklichkeit. Ein Beitrag zur geisteswissenschaftlichen Selbstkritik. In: Paideuma 5, 277-297 and 432–480 (reprint as monograph: Darmstadt 1968). Rahn, Helmut (1967): Das Tier in der homerischen Dichtung. In: Studium generale 20, 90–105. Renehan, Robert (1981): The Greek anthropocentric view of man. In: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85, 239–259. Resnick, Irven M. & Kenneth F. Kitchell (1996): Albert the Great on the “language” of animals. In: American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 70, 41–61. Riddehough, Geoffrey B. (1959): Man-into-beast changes in Ovid. In: Phoenix 13, 201–209. Robson, James E. (1997): Bestiality and bestial rape in Greek myth. In: Susan Deacy & Karen F. Pierce (eds.), Rape in Antiquity. Sexual Violence in the Greek and Roman Worlds, London, 65–96. Sallmann, Klaus (2001): Der Mensch und ‘seine’ Natur. In: Gymnasium 108, 485–514. Santese, Giuseppina (1994): Animali e razionalità in Plutarco. In: Silvana Castignone & Giuliana Lanata (eds.), Filosofi e animali nel mondo antico, Pisa, 139–170. Saylor, Charles F. (1972): Man, animal, and the bestial in Lucretius. In: Classical Journal 67, 306–316. Scarpi, Paolo (1998): Manteis e animali. Dal segno alla parola nella divinazione greca. In: Ileana Chirassi Colombo & Tullio Seppilli (eds.), Sibille e linguaggi oracolari: Mito, storia, tradizione. Atti del Convegno, Macerata-Norcia, settembre 1994, Pisa, 107–117. Schmaltz, Bernhard (1983): Mensch und Tier in der griechischen Antike. In: Hermann MüllerKarpe (ed.), Zur frühen Mensch-Tier-Symbiose, München, 99–114. Schmitt, Arbogast (1997): Verhaltensforschung als Psychologie. Aristoteles zum Verhältnis von Mensch und Tier. In: Wolfgang Kullmann & Sabine Föllinger (eds.), Aristotelische Biologie. Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, Stuttgart, 259–285. Schmitt, Arbogast (2014): Gibt es ein Rechtsverhältnis des Menschen gegenüber dem Tier? In: Peter Janich (ed.), Der Mensch und seine Tiere. Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse im Spiegel der Wissenschaften, Stuttgart, 13–32. Schwabe, Calvin W. (1994): Animals in the ancient world. In: Aubrey Manning & James Serpell (eds.), Animals and Human Society. Changing Perspectives, London & New York, 36–58. Shelton, Jo-Ann (1996): Lucretius on the use and abuse of animals. In: Eranos 94, 48–64. Smith, Andrew (1984): Did Porphyry reject the transmigration of souls into animals? In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 127, 277–284. Sorabella, Jean (2007): Eros and the lizard. Children, animals, and Roman funerary sculpture. In: Ada Cohen & Jeremy B. Rutter (eds.), Constructions of Childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy, Princeton, 353–372. Sorabji, Richard (1997): Esprits d’animaux. In: Barbara Cassin & Jean-Louis Labarrière (eds.), L’animal dans l’antiquité, Paris, 355–373. Specht, Edith (1995): Prometheus und Zeus. Zum Ursprung des Tieropferrituals. In: Tyche 10, 211–217. Stähler, Klaus (1983): Zur Bedeutung der Tierfriese auf attisch geometrischen Vasen. In: Dieter Metzler, Brinna Otto & Christof Müller-Wirth (eds.), Antidoron. Festschrift für Jürgen Thimme zum 65. Geburtstag am 26. September 1982, Karlsruhe, 51–60.

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Tabarroni, Andrea (1988): On articulation and animal language in ancient linguistic theory. In: Versus 50/51, 103–121. Vegetti, Mario (1982): Zoologia e antropologia in Plinio. In: Plinio il Vecchio sotto il profilo storico e letterario. Atti del Convegno di Como 5/6/7 ottobre 1979. Atti della Tavola rotonda nella ricorrenza centenaria della morte di Plinio il Vecchio, Bologna, 16 dicembre 1979, Como 1982, 117–131. Vermeule, Cornelius (1972): Greek funerary animals, 450–300 B.C. In: American Journal of Archaeology 76, 49–59. Vernant, Jean-Pierre (1980): Between the beasts and the gods. In: Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, New York 1980, 143–182. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (1975): Bêtes, hommes et dieux chez les Grecs. In: Léon Poliakov (ed.), Hommes et bêtes. Entretiens sur le racisme, Paris, 129–142. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre (2001): Beasts, humans and gods. The Greek view. In: Jóhann P. Árnason & Peter Murphy (eds.), Agon, Logos, Polis. The Greek Achievement and its Aftermath, Stuttgart, 127–137. Williams, Craig A. (2013): When a dolphin loves a boy. Some Greco-Roman and native American love stories. In: Classical Antiquity 32, 200–242. Winkler-Horaček, Lorenz (2000): Mischwesen und Tierfries in der archaischen Vasenmalerei von Korinth. In: Tonio Hölscher (eds.), Gegenwelten zu den Kulturen Griechenlands und Roms in der Antike, München & Leipzig, 217–244. Zirin, Ronald A. (1980): Aristotle’s biology of language. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association 110, 325–347. Zucker, Arnaud (2005): La sexualité grecque dans le kaléidoscope animal. In: Dialogues d’Histoire Ancienne 31, 29–55. Zucker, Arnaud (2006): Sur l’extension de certains noms d’animaux en grec. Les zoonymes pluriels. In: Mètis N.S. 4, 97–122.

2 Focus on individual species 2.1 Monographs and edited volumes Birds: André, Jacques (1967): Les noms d’oiseaux en latin, Paris. Capponi, Filippo (1979): Ornithologia latina, Genova. Chalatsi, Eleni (2000): Kyknos melodos. Schwan und Schwanengesang in der griechischen Antike, Diss. Freie Universität Berlin. Delplace, Christiane (1980): Le griffon de l’archaïsme à l’époque impériale. Étude iconographique et essai d’interprétation symbolique, Bruxelles. Dietl, Clara Bettina (1981): Vogelbilder in der pompejanischen Wandmalerei, Diss. Wien. Douglas, Norman (1927): Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology, Firenze (repr. New York 1972). Geyer, Ursula (1965): Der Adlerflug im römischen Konsekrationszeremoniell, Diss. Bonn. Grabow, Eva (2015): Der Hahn – Haustier oder Dämon? Studien zu griechischen Vasenbildern, Marsberg-Padberg.

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Hammerschmidt, Karl (1897): Die Ornithologie des Aristoteles (Jahresbericht über das Königlich Humanistische Gymnasium Speier für das Studienjahr 1896/97), Speier. Holland, Richard (1895): Heroenvögel in der griechischen Mythologie. Mit einem Anhange über Diomedes in Italien (Jahresbericht des Thomasgymnasiums in Leipzig 1894–1895), Leipzig. Hubaux, Jean & Maxime Leroy (1939): Le mythe du phénix dans les littératures grecque et latine, Liège. Hübner, Wolfgang (1970): Dirae im römischen Epos. Über das Verhältnis von Vogeldämonen und Prodigien, Hildesheim. Johansson, Karin (2012): The Birds in the ‘Iliad’. Identities, Interactions and Functions, Göteborg. Jones, Frederick (2016): The Boundaries of Art and Social Space in Rome. The Caged Bird and Other Art Forms, London. Keller, Otto (1893): Rabe und Krähe im Altertum (1. Jahresbericht des wissenschaftlichen Vereins für Volkskunde und Linguistik in Prag), Prag. Lenz, Dirk (1995): Vogeldarstellungen in der ägäischen und zyprischen Vasenmalerei des 12. bis 9. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Espelkamp. Lindner, Kurt (1973): Beiträge zu Vogelfang und Falknerei im Altertum, Berlin & New York. Lorentz, Balduin (1886): Die Taube im Altertume (Programm des Königlichen Gymnasiums zu Wurzen in Sachsen 1885/86), Wurzen. Lunczer, Clemens (2009): Vögel in der griechischen Antike. Eine Untersuchung über Kenntnisse und Wahrnehmung der antiken Vogelwelt, Diss. Heidelberg. Martin, Ernest Whitney (1914): The Birds of the Latin Poets, Palo Alto. Normand, Hélène (2015): Les rapaces dans les mondes grec et romain. Catégorisation, représentations culturelles et pratiques, Bordeaux. Pasquier Roger F. & John Farrand (1991): Peintres et illustrateurs d’oiseaux de l’antiquité à nos jours, Paris. Pischinger, Arnold (1901): Der Vogelgesang bei den griechischen Dichtern des klassischen Altertums. Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung des Naturgefühls in der antiken Poesie (Beilage zum Programm des Königlich-Bayerischen Humanistischen Gymnasiums Eichstätt 1901), Eichstätt. Pollard, John (1977): Birds in Greek Life and Myth, London. Rink, Annette (1997): Mensch und Vogel bei römischen Naturschriftstellern und Dichtern. Untersucht insbesondere bei Plinius, Älian und Ovid, Frankfurt am Main. Robert, Fritz (1911): Les noms des oiseaux en grec ancien. Étude sémantique, Neuchâtel. Royds, Thomas F. (31930): The Beasts, Birds, and Bees of Virgil. A Naturalist’s Handbook to the Georgics, Oxford (first ed. 1914). Sauvage, André (1975): Étude de thèmes animaliers dans la poésie latine. Le cheval – Les oiseaux, Bruxelles. Schmid, Georg (1904): De luscinia quae est apud veteres, Petersburg. Schmidt, Gudrun (2002): Rabe und Krähe in der Antike. Studien zur archäologischen und literarischen Überlieferung, Wiesbaden. Sühling, Friedrich (1930): Die Taube als religiöses Symbol im christlichen Altertum, Freiburg im Breisgau. Tammisto, Antero (1997): Birds in Mosaics. A Study on the Representation of Birds in Hellenistic and Romano-Campanian Tessellated Mosaics to the Early Augustan Age, Roma. Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth (21936): A Glossary of Greek Birds, London (first ed. Oxford 1895).

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van den Broek, Roelof (1972): The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions, Leiden. Walla, Marialuise (1969): Der Vogel Phoenix in der antiken Literatur und der Dichtung des Laktanz, Wien.

Cats: Bobis, Laurence (2006): Une histoire du chat. De l’Antiquité à nos jours, Paris. Donalson, Malcolm Drew (1999): The Domestic Cat in Roman Civilization, Lewiston. Engels, Donald W. (1999): Classical Cats. The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat, London & New York. Langton, Neville & B. Langton (1940): The Cat in Ancient Egypt. Illustrated from the collection of cat and other Egyptian figures formed by N. and B. Langton, Cambridge (repr. London & New York 2002). Málek, Jaromír (1993): The Cat in Ancient Egypt, London. Oeser, Erhard (32008): Katze und Mensch. Die Geschichte einer Beziehung, Darmstadt (first ed. 2005).

Centaurs: Baur, Paul V. C. (1912): Centaurs in Ancient Art. The Archaic Period, Berlin. DuBois Page (1982): Centaurs and Amazons. Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being, Ann Arbor. Dumézil, Georges (1929): Le problème des Centaures. Étude de mythologie comparée indoeuropéenne, Paris.

Deer: Brein, Friedrich (1969): Der Hirsch in der griechischen Frühzeit, Wien. Domagalski, Bernhard (1990): Der Hirsch in spätantiker Literatur und Kunst. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der frühchristlichen Zeugnisse, Münster. Frontisi-Ducroux, Françoise (2003): L’homme-cerf et la femme-araignée. Figures grecques de la métamorphose, Paris.

Dogs: Baecker, Elmar (1884): De canum nominibus Graecis, Diss. Königsberg. Bloomfield, Maurice (1905): Cerberus, the Dog of Hades. The History of an Idea, Chicago & London. Brewer, Douglas J., Terence Clark & Adrian Phillips (2001): Dogs in Antiquity: Anubis to Cerberus. The Origins of the Domestic Dog, Warminster. Franco, Cristiana (2003): Senza ritegno. Il cane e la donna nell’immaginario della Grecia antica, Bologna. Franco, Cristiana (2014): Shameless. The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece, Oakland (revised English translation of Senza ritegno, Bologna 2003). Hull, Denison Bingham (1964): Hounds and Hunting in Ancient Greece, Chicago. Joubert, Claude Jacques (1958): Le chien dans le monde antique, Diss. Toulouse.

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Lilja, Saara (1976): Dogs in Ancient Greek Poetry, Helsinki. Mainoldi, Carla (1984): L’image du loup et du chien dans la Grèce ancienne d’Homère à Platon, Paris. Merlen, René H. A. (1971): De canibus. Dog and Hound in Antiquity, London. Oeser, Erhard (32009): Hund und Mensch. Die Geschichte einer Beziehung, Darmstadt (first ed. 2004). Omieczynski, Max (1924): Hundezucht und Hundekrankheiten in der Literatur des klassischen Altertums mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kynosophions, Diss. Berlin. Orth, Ferdinand (1910): Der Hund im Altertum (Beilage zum Berichte des Königlich-preußischen Hennebergischen Gymnasiums zu Schleusingen 1909/1910), Schleusingen. Ory, Thérèse Tricot (1982): Le chien, sa place et son image à Rome sous la République et le Haut Empire, Diss. Paris. Perfahl, Jost (1983): Wiedersehen mit Argos und andere Nachrichten über Hunde in der Antike, Mainz. Phillips, Adrian A. & Malcolm M. Willcock (1999): Xenophon & Arrian: On Hunting. Edited with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary, Warminster. Rice, Michael (2006): Swifter than the Arrow. The Golden Hunting Hounds of Ancient Egypt, London & New York. Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich (1896): Das von der „Kynanthropie“ handelnde Fragment des Marcellus von Side, Leipzig. Scholz, Herbert (1937): Der Hund in der griechisch-römischen Magie und Religion, Diss. Berlin. Zlotogorska, Maria (1997): Darstellungen von Hunden auf griechischen Grabreliefs. Von der Archaik bis in die Römische Kaiserzeit, Hamburg.

Dolphins: Czernohaus, Karola (1988): Delphindarstellungen von der minoischen bis zur geometrischen Zeit, Göteborg. Vidali, Stamatoula (1997): Archaische Delphindarstellungen, Würzburg.

Fish: Apostolides, Nikolaos C. (1883): La pêche en Grèce. Ichthyologie, migrations, engins et manières de pêche, produits, statistique et législation, Athens. Bekker-Nielsen, Tønnes (ed.) (2005): Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region, Aarhus. Bohlen, Diedrich (1937): Die Bedeutung der Fischerei für die antike Wirtschaft. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der antiken Fischerei, Hamburg. Bunsmann, Ludwig (1910): De piscatorum in Graecorum atque Romanorum litteris usu, Münster. Capponi, Filippo (1990): Natura aquatilium (Plin. nat. hist. IX), Genova. Corcoran, Thomas H. (1957): The Roman Fishing Industry of the Late Republic and Early Empire, Diss. Evanston, Illinois (Northwestern University). Cotte, Henri-Jules (1944): Poissons et animaux aquatiques au temps de Pline. Commentaire sur le livre IX de l’Histoire naturelle de Pline, Paris. Delorme, Jean & Charles Roux (1987): Guide illustré de la faune aquatique dans l’art grec, Juanles-Pins.

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Dumont, Jacques (1981): Halieutika. Recherches sur la pêche dans l’Antiquité grecque, Diss. Paris. Higginbotham, James Arnold (1997): Piscinae. Artificial Fishponds in Roman Italy, Chapel Hill. Höppener, Jenk (1931): Halieutica. Bijdrage tot de kennis der Oud-Grieksche visscherij, Amsterdam. Kunisch, Norbert (1989): Griechische Fischteller. Natur und Bild, Berlin. Lacroix, Léon (1937): La faune marine dans la décoration des plats à poissons. Étude sur la céramique grecque d’Italie méridionale, Verviers. Longo, Oddone, Francesco Ghiretti & Enrico Renna (1995): Aquatilia. Animali di ambiente acquatico nella storia della scienza. Da Aristotele ai giorni nostri, Napoli. Peurière, Yves (2003): La pêche et les poissons dans la littérature latine. Vol. 1: Des origines à la fin de la période augustéenne, Bruxelles. Richmond, John (1973): Chapters on Greek Fish-Lore, Wiesbaden. Sahrhage, Dietrich (2002): Die Schätze Neptuns. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Fischerei im römischen Reich, Frankfurt am Main. Saint-Denis, Eugène de (1947): Le vocabulaire des animaux marins en latin classique, Paris. Sciallano, Martine (1997): Poissons de l’Antiquité, Istres. Strömberg, Reinhold (1943): Studien zur Etymologie und Bildung der griechischen Fischnamen, Göteborg. Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth (1947): A Glossary of Greek Fishes, London.

Horses and donkeys: Anderson, John K. (1961): Ancient Greek Horsemanship, Berkeley. Arnold, Rosemary (1972): The Horse-Demon in Early Greek Art and His Eastern Neighbors, Diss. New York (Columbia University). Björck, Gudmund (1932): Zum Corpus Hippiatricorum Graecorum. Beiträge zur antiken Tierheilkunde, Uppsala. Björck, Gudmund (1944): Apsyrtus, Julius Africanus et l’hippiatrique grecque, Uppsala. Chomel, Claude (1900): Histoire du cheval dans l’antiquité et son rôle dans la civilisation, Paris. Clutton-Brock, Juliet (1992): Horse Power. A History of the Horse and the Donkey in Human Societies, London & Cambridge, Mass. Delebecque, Édouard (1951): Le cheval dans l’Iliade. Suivi d’un lexique du cheval chez Homère et d’un essai sur le cheval pré-homérique, Paris. Dupuy, Jean-Paul (1960): Le cheval dans l’antiquité, Diss. Toulouse. Gaebel, Robert E. (2002): Cavalry Operations in the Ancient World, Norman, Oklahoma. Gardeisen, Armelle (ed.) (2005): Les équidés dans le monde méditerranéen antique, Lattes. Gardeisen, Armelle & Christophe Chandezon (ed.) (2014): Équidés et bovidés de la Méditerranée antique. Rites et combats, jeux et savoirs, Lattes. Georgoudi, Stella (1990): Des chevaux et des bœufs dans le monde grec. Réalités et représentations animalières à partir des livres XVI et XVII des Géoponiques, Paris & Athens. Hörnschemeyer, Alois (1929): Die Pferdezucht im klassischen Altertum, Diss. Gießen. Hyland, Ann (1990): Equus. The Horse in the Roman World, London. Hyland, Ann (2003): The Horse in the Ancient World, Stroud. Kelekna, Pita (2009): The Horse in Human History, Cambridge.

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Lazaris, Stavros (ed.) (2012): Le cheval dans les sociétés antiques et médiévales. Actes des journées d’étude internationales organisées par l’UMR 7044 (Étude des Civilisations de l’Antiquité), Strasbourg, 6–7 novembre 2009, Turnhout. Markman, Sidney D. (1943): The Horse in Greek Art, Baltimore (repr. New York 1969). Oeser, Erhard (2007): Pferd und Mensch. Die Geschichte einer Beziehung, Darmstadt. Salomonson, Jan Willem (1965): La mosaïque aux chevaux de l’antiquarium de Carthage, La Haye. Sauvage, André (1975): Étude de thèmes animaliers dans la poésie latine. Le cheval – Les oiseaux, Bruxelles. Schlieben, Adolph (1867): Die Pferde des Alterthums, Neuwied & Leipzig (repr. Wiesbaden 1969). Schulz, Meinhard-Wilhelm (2012): Edle Rösser der Griechen und Römer. Antike Skulpturen und ihr Nachleben, Aachen. Sidnell, Philip (2006): Warhorse. Cavalry in Ancient Warfare, London. Simon, Erika (2006): Pferde in Mythos und Kunst der Antike, Ruhpolding. Streubel, Franz (1954): Fahren und Reiten im Übergang vom Altertum zum Mittelalter, Diss. Hamburg. Tillios, Angelos (2010): Die Funktion und Bedeutung der Reiter- und Pferdeführerdarstellungen auf attischen Grab- und Weihreliefs des 5. und 4. Jhs. v. Chr., Oxford. Vigneron, Paul (1968): Le cheval dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine (des guerres médiques aux grandes invasions). Contributions à l’histoire des techniques, Nancy. Vogt, Ingeborg (1991): Studien zu Pferd und Reiter in der frühgriechischen Kunst, Bonn. von Wangenheim, Caroline (1988): Archaische Bronzepferde in Rundplastik und Relief, Bonn. Willekes, Carolyn (2016): The Horse in the Ancient World. From Bucephalus to the Hippodrome, London. Worley, Leslie J. (1994): Hippeis. The Cavalry of Ancient Greece, Boulder, Colorado. Zimmermann, Jean-Louis (1989): Les chevaux de bronze dans l’art géométrique grec, Mainz.

Insects: Beavis, Ian C. (1988): Insects and Other Invertebrates in Classical Antiquity, Exeter. Capponi, Filippo (1994): Entomologia Pliniana (N.H. XI, 1–120), Genova. Davies, Malcolm & Jeyaraney Kathirithamby (1986): Greek Insects, New York. Fraser, Henry Malcolm (21960): Beekeeping in Antiquity, London (first ed. 1931). Gil Fernández, Luis (1959): Nombres de insectos en griego antiguo, Madrid. Giuman, Marco (2008): Melissa. Archeologia delle api e del miele nella Grecia antica, Roma. Körner, Otto (1930): Die Bienenkunde bei Homer und Hesiod. Dichtung oder Forschung? (Sitzungsberichte und Abhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Rostock III 2), Rostock. Melon, M. (1942): La cigale dans l’Antiquité gréco-latine, Liège. Ransome, Hilda M. (1937): The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore, London. Roscalla, Fabio (1998): Presenze simboliche dell’ape nella Grecia antica, Firenze. Royds, Thomas F. (31930): The Beasts, Birds, and Bees of Virgil. A Naturalist’s Handbook to the Georgics, Oxford (first ed. 1914). Schlütsmeier-Hage, Ute (1988): Parasitenprobleme beim Haustier in der Antike und ihre wichtigsten Behandlungsverfahren, Diss. München. Sekal, Ilse (1980): Die Biene und die Zikade in der antiken Kunst, Diss. Wien. Waszink, Jan Hendrik (1974): Biene und Honig als Symbol des Dichters und der Dichtung in der griechisch-römischen Antike, Opladen.

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Lions: Andreae, Bernard (1985): Symbolik der Löwenjagd, Opladen. Gabelmann, Hanns (1965): Studien zum frühgriechischen Löwenbild, Berlin. Kluge, Theodor (1906): Die Darstellungen der Löwenjagd im Altertum, Berlin. Lonsdale, Steven H. (1990): Creatures of Speech. Lion, Herding, and Hunting Similes in the Iliad, Stuttgart. Müller, Pierre (1978): Löwen und Mischwesen in der archaischen griechischen Kunst. Eine Untersuchung über ihre Bedeutung, Zürich. Pérez López, Immaculada (1999): Leones romanos en Hispania, Madrid. Quacquarelli, Antonio (1975): Il leone e il drago nella simbolica dell’età patristica, Bari. Rambo, Eleanor F. (1918): Lions in Greek Art, Diss. Bryn Mawr. Schnapp-Gourbeillon, Annie (1981): Lions, héros, masques. Les représentations de l’animal chez Homère, Paris. von Hofsten, Sven (2007): The Feline-Prey Theme in Archaic Greek Art. Classification ‒ Distribution ‒ Origin ‒ Iconographical Context, Stockholm.

Oxen, bulls and cows: Azara, Pedro (ed.) (2002): Toros. Imatge i culte a la Mediterrània antiga. Exposició a Barcelona, Saló del Tinell (14. 11. 2002‒6. 3. 2003), Barcelona. Gardeisen, Armelle & Christophe Chandezon (ed.) (2014): Équidés et bovidés de la Méditerranée antique. Rites et combats, jeux et savoirs, Lattes. Georgoudi, Stella (1990): Des chevaux et des bœufs dans le monde grec. Réalités et représentations animalières à partir des livres XVI et XVII des Géoponiques, Paris & Athens. McInerney, Jeremy (2010): The Cattle of the Sun. Cows and Culture in the World of the Ancient Greeks, Princeton & Oxford. Vincke, Franz (1931), Die Rinderzucht im alten Italien, Diss. Gießen. Zeissig, Karl (1934), Die Rinderzucht im alten Griechenland, Diss. Gießen.

Pigs: Meyer, Helmut, Peter Robert Franke & Johann Schäffer (2004): Hausschweine in der griechischrömischen Antike. Eine morphologische und kulturhistorische Studie, Oldenburg. Winkelstern, Karl (1933): Die Schweinezucht im klassischen Altertum, Diss. Gießen.

Sheep: Brendel, Otto (1934): Die Schafzucht im alten Griechenland, Würzburg. Frayn, Joan N. (1984): Sheep-Rearing and the Wool Trade in Italy during the Roman Period, Liverpool.

Snakes: Gourmelen, Laurent (2004): Kékrops, le roi-serpent. Imaginaire athénien, représentations de l’humain et de l’animalité en Grèce ancienne, Paris. Höpflinger, Anna-Katharina (2010): Schlangenkampf. Ein Vergleich von ausgewählten Bild- und Textquellen aus dem griechisch-römischen und dem altorientalischen Kulturraum, Zürich.

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Küster, Erich (1913): Die Schlange in der griechischen Kunst und Religion, Gießen. Leitz, Christian (1997): Die Schlangennamen in den ägyptischen und griechischen Giftbüchern, Stuttgart. Ogden, Daniel (2013): Drakōn. Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford. Ogden, Daniel (2013): Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds. A Sourcebook, Oxford. Rodriguez Pérez, Diana (2008): Serpientes, dioses y héroes. El combate contra el monstruo en el arte y la literatura griega antigua, León.

Wolves: Dulière, Cécile (1979): Lupa Romana. Recherches d’iconographie et essai d’interprétation, Bruxelles. Eckels, Richard P. (1937): Greek Wolf-Lore, Diss. University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). Mainoldi, Carla (1984): L’image du loup et du chien dans la Grèce ancienne d’Homère à Platon, Paris. Mazzoni, Cristina (2010): She-Wolf. The Story of a Roman Icon, Cambridge.

Others: Bouvier, Michel (2000): Le lièvre dans l’antiquité, Lyon. Dumoulin, Dorothee (1994): Antike Schildkröten, Würzburg. Eichinger, Wolfgang (2005): Der Bär und seine Darstellung in der Antike, Hamburg. Lévêque, Pierre (1999): Les grenouilles dans l’antiquité. Cultes et mythes des grenouilles en Grèce et ailleurs, Paris. McDermott, William C. (1938): The Ape in Antiquity, Baltimore. Psichari, Jean (1921): La chèvre chez Homère, chez les Attiques et chez les Grecs modernes, Paris. Rachewiltz, Siegfried de (1987): De Sirenibus. An Inquiry into Sirens from Homer to Shakespeare, New York. Roer, Hans Henning (1965): Schildkröte, Frosch und Eidechse in der griechischen und römischen Antike, Diss. Wien. Scullard, Howard H. (1974): The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, Cambridge.

2.2 Articles in journals and edited volumes Apes: Lilja, Saara (1980): The ape in ancient comedy. In: Arctos 14, 31–38. Lissarrague, François (1997): L’homme, le singe et le satyre. In: Barbara Cassin & Jean-Louis Labarrière (eds.), L’animal dans l’antiquité, Paris, 455–472. McDermott, William C. (1935): The ape in Greek literature. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association 66, 165–176. McDermott, William C. (1936): The ape in Roman literature. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association 67, 148–167.

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Styka, Jerzy (2011): Simia blanda an turpissima? Apes and their function in selected texts by Roman authors. In: Katarzyna Marciniak (ed.), Birthday Beasts’ Book: Where Human Roads Cross Animal Trails. Cultural Studies in Honour of Jerzy Axer, Warszawa, 389–400.

Birds: André, Jacques (1966): Onomatopées et noms d’oiseaux en latin. In: Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 61.1, 146–156. Bigwood, Joan M. (1993): Ctesias’ parrot. In: Classical Quarterly 43, 321–327. Boraston, John MacLair (1911): The birds of Homer. In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 31, 216–250. Bruneau, Philippe (1962): Ganymède et l’aigle. Images, caricatures et parodies animales du rapt. In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 86, 193–228. Capponi, Filippo (1977): Avifauna nella divinazione e nel mito. In: Latomus 36, 440–456. Capponi, Filippo (1981): Avifauna e magia. In: Latomus 40, 292–304. Chandler, Albert R. (1934/35): The nightingale in Greek and Latin poetry. In: Classical Journal 30, 78–84. Cho, Dae-Ho (2012): Lautäußerungen der Vögel in der aristotelischen Historia animalium 11. In: Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 22, 11–38. Clauss, James J. (1993): An Attic-speaking crow on the Capitoline. A literary emigré from the Hecale. In: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 96, 167–173. D’Héronville, P. (1923): Les oiseaux de Virgile. In: Revue des Études Latines 6, 46–70. Fögen, Thorsten (2007): Antike Zeugnisse zu Kommunikationsformen von Tieren. In: Antike & Abendland 53, 39–75. Fögen, Thorsten (2014): Animal communication. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 216–232. Glidden, David K. (1994): Parrots, Pyrrhonists and native speakers. In: Stephen Everson (ed.), Language, Cambridge, 129–148. Heironimus, John Paul (1934/35), Pliny and the nightingale. In: Classical Journal 30, 297–298. Hough, John N. (1974/75): Bird imagery in Roman poetry. In: Classical Journal 70, 1–13. Kádár, Zoltán (1970): Über die Klassifikation in der Ornithologie des Aristoteles. In: Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis 6, 27–33. Lauwerier, Roel G. C. M. (1983): Bird remains in Roman graves. In: Archaeofauna 2, 75–82. Lunczer, Clemens (2014): Eagles and vultures in the ancient world. In: Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 24, 165–186. Parker, A. J. (1988): The birds of Roman Britain. In: Oxford Journal of Archaeology 7, 197–226. Secchi, Claudio Cesare (1928): L’epigramma XIII,69 di Marziale e il ‘cattus’ nell’antichità grecoromana. In: Atene e Roma 9, 233–253. Watson, George E. (2002): Birds. Evidence from wall paintings, mosaics, sculpture, skeletal remains, and ancient authors. In: Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 357–400.

Cats: Ashmead, Ann (1978): Greek cats. Exotic pets kept by rich youths in fifth-century Athens as portrayed on Greek vases. In: Expedition 20, 38–48. Keller, Otto (1908): Zur Geschichte der Katze im Altertum. In: Römische Mitteilungen 23, 40– 70.

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Dogs: Baumann, E. D. (1928): Über die Hundswut im Altertume. In: Janus 32, 137–151. Beck, William (1991): Dogs, dwellings, and masters. Ensemble and symbol in the Odyssey. In: Hermes 119, 158–167. Bodson, Liliane (1980): Place et fonctions du chien dans le monde antique. In: Ethnozootechnie 25, 13–21. Burriss, Eli Edward (1935): The place of the dog in superstition as revealed in Latin literature. In: Classical Philology 30, 32–42. Busuttil, J. (1969): The Maltese dog. In: Greece & Rome 16, 205–208. Cole, Susan Guettel (1995): Women, dogs, and flies. In: Ancient World 26, 182–191. Day, Leslie P. (1984): Dog burials in the Greek world. In: American Journal of Archaeology 88, 21–32. De Grossi Mazzorin, Jacopo (2008): L’uso dei cani nel mondo antico nei riti di fondazione, purificazione e passaggio. In: Francesco D’Andria, Jacopo De Grossi Mazzorin & Girolamo Fiorentino (eds.), Uomini, piante e animali nella dimensione del sacro. Seminario di Studi di Bioarcheologia (28–29 giugno 2002), Bari, 71–81. Eastman, Charles R. (1916): Hunting dogs of the ancients. In: American Museum Journal 16, 403–408. Faust, Manfred (1970): Die künstlerische Verwendung von κύων ‘Hund’ in den homerischen Epen. In: Glotta 48, 8–31. Forster, E. S. (1940/41): Dogs in ancient warfare. In: Greece & Rome 10, 114–117. Gourevitch, Danielle (1968): Le chien, de la thérapeutique populaire aux cultes sanitaires. In: Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 80, 247–281. Guarducci, Margherita (1940): Il cane di Zeus. In: Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 16, 1–18. Hilzheimer, Max (1932): Aus der Stammesgeschichte des Haushundes unter besonderer Berücksichtigung verschiedener Hundetypen. In: Zeitschrift für Hundeforschung 1, 3–14 (English translation: Dogs. In: Antiquity 6 [1932], 411–419). Keller, Otto (1905): Hunderassen im Altertum. In: Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien 8, 242–269. Kitchell, Kenneth F. (2004): Man’s best friend? The changing role of the dog in Greek society. In: Barbro Santillo Frizell (ed.), PECUS: Man and Animal in Antiquity. Proceedings of the Conference at the Swedish Institute in Rome, September 9–12, 2002, Roma, 177–182. Köhnken, Adolf (2003): Perspektivisches Erzählen im homerischen Epos. Die Wiedererkennung Odysseus‒Argos. In: Hermes 131, 385–396. Kompatscher-Gufler, Gabriela (2010): Care canis, plangende nimis. Ein mittelalterliches Trauergedicht auf einen Freund. In: Der Altsprachliche Unterricht 53.4, 42–47. Löbe, Julius (1900): Notizen über den Hund aus griechischen und römischen Schriftstellern. In: Mitteilungen aus dem Osterlande 9, 31–56. Mainoldi, Carla (1981): Cani mitici e rituali tra il regno dei morti e il mondo dei viventi. In: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 8, 7–41. Menache, Sophia (2000): Hunting and attachment to dogs in the pre-modern period. In: Anthony L. Podberscek, Elizabeth S. Paul & James A. Serpell (eds.), Companion Animals and Us. Exploring the Relationships between People and Pets, Cambridge, 42–60. Mentz, Ferdinand (1933): Die klassischen Hundenamen. In: Philologus 88, 104–129, 181–202 and 415–442.

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Most, Glenn W. (1991): Ansichten über einen Hund. Zu einigen Strukturen der Homerrezeption zwischen Antike und Neuzeit. In: Antike & Abendland 37, 144–168. Neuhausen, Karl-August (1975): Platons „philosophischer“ Hund bei Sextus Empiricus. In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 118, 240–264. Ridgway, Brunilde S. (2004): The man-and-dog stelai. In: Brunilde S. Ridgway, Second Chance. Greek Sculptural Studies Revisited, London, 45–70. Rohdich, Hermann (1980): Der Hund Argos und die Anfänge des bürgerlichen Selbstbewußtseins. In: Antike & Abendland 26, 33–50. Saayman, F. (1993): Dogs and lions in the Oresteia. In: Akroterion 38, 11–18. Schlerath, Bernfried (1954): Der Hund bei den Indogermanen. In: Paideuma. Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 6, 25–40. Schneider, Carsten (2000): Herr und Hund auf archaischen Grabstelen. In: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 115, 1–36. Scott, John A. (1947/48): Dogs in Homer. In: Classical Weekly 41, 226–228. Zaganiaris, Nicholas J. (1980/81): Le chien dans la mythologie et la littérature gréco-latines. In: Platon 32/33, 52–85.

Dolphins: Higham, Thomas F. (1960): Nature note: Dolphin-riders. Ancient stories vindicated. In: Greece & Rome 7, 82–86. Stevens, Benjamin (2009): Pliny and the dolphin ‒ or, A story about storytelling. In: Arethusa 42, 161–179. Williams, Craig A. (2013): When a dolphin loves a boy. Some Greco-Roman and native American love stories. In: Classical Antiquity 32, 200–242.

Elephants: Bigwood, Joan M. (1993): Aristotle and the elephant again. In: American Journal of Philology 114, 537–555. Obermaier, Sabine (2008): Alexander und die Elefanten. Antike Zoologie und christliches Herrscherideal im deutschsprachigen Alexanderroman. In: Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 18, 77–100. Shelton, Jo-Ann (1999): Elephants, Pompey and the reports of popular displeasure in 55 B.C. In: Shannon N. Byrne & Edmund P. Cueva (eds.), Veritatis Amicitiaeque Causa. Essays in Honor of Anna Lydia Motto and John R. Clark, Wauconda, Illinois, 231–271. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2001): The display of elephants in ancient Roman arenas. In: International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ) Newsletter 21, 2–6. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2004): Dancing and dying. The display of elephants in ancient Roman arenas. In: Rory B. Egan & Mark Joyal (eds.), Daimonopylai. Essays in Classics and the Classical Tradition Presented to Edmund G. Berry, Winnipeg, 363–382. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2006): Elephants as enemies in ancient Rome. In: Concentric 32, 3–25. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2007): Beastly spectacles in the ancient mediterranean world. In: Linda Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity, Oxford & New York, 97–126.

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Fish: Bekker-Nielsen, Tønnes (2002): Fish in the ancient economy. In: Karen Ascani, Vincent Gabrielsen, Kirsten Kvist & Holm Rasmussen (eds.), Ancient History Matters. Studies Presented to Jens Erik Skydsgaard on His Seventieth Birthday, Roma, 29–38. Collin Bouffier, Sophie (1999): La pisciculture dans le monde grec. État de la question. In: Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 111, 37–50. Corcoran, Thomas H. (1959): Roman fishponds. In: Classical Bulletin 35, 37–43. Corcoran, Thomas H. (1963): Roman fish sauces. In: Classical Journal 58, 204–210. Curtis, Robert I. (1984): Salted fish products in ancient medicine. In: Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 39, 430–435. Kazmierski, Sergiusz (2013): Die Laute der Fische aus aristotelischer und moderner Sicht. In: Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 23, 61–92. Kron, Geoffrey (2008): Animal husbandry, hunting, fishing, and fish production. In: John Peter Oleson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, Oxford, 175–222. Kron, Geoffrey (2014): Ancient fishing and fish farming. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 192–202. Lacroix, Léon (1937): Noms de poissons et noms d’oiseaux en grec ancien. In: L’Antiquité Classique 6, 265–302. Reese, David S. (2002): Fish. Evidence from specimens, mosaics, wall paintings, and Roman authors. In: Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 274–291. Reese, David S. (2002): Marine invertebrates, freshwater shells, and land snails. Evidence from specimens, mosaics, wall paintings, sculpture, jewelry, and Roman authors. In: Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 292–314. Schmölcke, Ulrich & Elena A. Nikulina (2008): Fischhaltung im antiken Rom und ihr Ansehenswandel im Licht der politischen Situation. In: Schriften des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins für Schleswig-Holstein 70, 36–55.

Horses and donkeys: Adolf, Helen (1950): The ass and the harp. In: Speculum 25, 49–57. Anderson, Andrew R. (1930): Bucephalas and his legend. In: American Journal of Philology 51, 1–21. Antikas, Theo & Thomas Alifakiotis (2002): Was the burial of Bucephalas for real? Recent finds of horse burials in King Philip’s tomb at the Great Tumulus of Aigai, Greece. In: Keith Dobney & Terry O’Connor (eds.), Bones and the Man. Studies in Honour of Don Brothwell, Oxford, 72–78. Bodson, Liliane (1986): L’utilisation de l’âne dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine. In: Ethnozootechnie 37, 7–14. Calder, Louise (2008): The asses’ lot. In: Donna Kurtz (ed.), Essays in Classical Archaeology for Eleni Hatzivassiliou 1977-2007, Oxford, 155–164. Chandezon, Christophe (2005): “Il est le fils de l’âne …”. Remarques sur les mulets dans le monde grec. In: Armelle Gardeisen (ed.), Les équides dans le monde méditerranéen antique, Lattes, 207–217. Corsetti, Pierre-Paul (1982): Columelle et les dents du cheval. In: Guy Sabbah (ed.), Médecins et médecine dans l’antiquité, Saint-Étienne, 7–23.

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Davies, Mark I. (1990): Asses and rams. Dionysiac release in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Attic vase-painting. In: Mètis 5, 169–183. Gregory, Justina (2007): Donkeys and the equine hierarchy in archaic Greek literature. In: Classical Journal 102, 193–212. Griffith, Mark (2006): Horsepower and donkeywork. Equids and the ancient Greek imagination. In: Classical Philology 101, 185–246 and 307–358. Hubbell, Harry M. (1928): Horse sacrifice in antiquity. In: Yale Classical Studies 1, 181–192. Keuls, Eva (1970): The ass in the cult of Dionysus as a symbol of toil and suffering. In: Anthropological Journal of Canada 8, 26–46. Kosmetatou, Elizabeth (1993): Horse sacrifices in Greece and Cyprus. In: Journal of Prehistoric Religion 7, 31–41. Luppe, Wolfgang (1995): Der geile Esel bei Archilochos. In: Hermes 123, 247–249. Malten, Ludolf (1914): Das Pferd im Totenglauben. In: Jahrbuch des Kaiserlichen Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 29, 179–255. Martin, Susan D. (1990): Servum meum mulionem conduxisti. Mules, muleteers, and transportation in classical Roman law. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association 120, 301–314. Nachtergael, Georges (1989): Le chameau, l’âne et le mulet en Égypte gréco-romaine. Le témoignage des terres cuites. In: Chronique d’Égypte 64, 287–336. Nagel, Wolfram, Jutta Bollweg & Eva Strommenger (1999): Der “Onager” in der Antike und die Herkunft des Hausesels. In: Altorientalische Forschungen 26, 154–202. Olck, Franz (1907): s.v. “Esel”. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft VI.1, Stuttgart, 626–676. Opelt, Ilona (1966): s.v. “Esel”. In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (vol. 6), Stuttgart, 564–595. Padgett, J. Michael (2000): The stable hands of Dionysus. Satyrs and donkeys as symbols of social marginalization in Attic vase painting. In: Beth Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal. Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, Leiden, 43–70. Romer, Frank E. (2000): Ὀχεῖα, mules, and animal husbandry in a Prometheus play. Amending LSJ and unemending Aeschylus fr. 189a R. In: Transactions of the American Philological Association 130, 67–87. Schein, Seth L. (2002): The horses of Achilles in Book 17 of the Iliad. In: Michael Reichel & Antonios Rengakos (eds.), ‘Epea pteroenta’: Beiträge zur Homerforschung. Festschrift für Wolfgang Kullmann zum 75. Geburtstag, Stuttgart, 193–205. Schnitki, Max (1924): Das Pferd in der altgriechischen Kunst. In: Archiv für wissenschaftliche Tierheilkunde 51, 338–346. Yalouris, Nikolaos (1950): Athena als Herrin der Pferde. Archäologische Untersuchungen zu Pindars 13. Olympie. In: Museum Helveticum 7, 19–101.

Insects: Bodson, Liliane (1991): Les invasions d’insectes dévastateurs dans l’antiquité grécoromaine. In: Liliane Bodson & Roland Libois (eds.), Contributions à l’histoire des connaissances zoologiques. Journée d’étude, Université de Liège, 17 mars 1990, Liège, 54–69. Bodson, Liliane (1994): Ancient views on pests and parasites of livestock. In: Argos 10, 303– 310.

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Capelle, Wilhelm (1962): Zur Entomologie des Aristoteles und Theophrast. In: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 105, 56–66. Cook, Arthur B. (1895): The bee in Greek mythology. In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 15, 1–24. Egan, Rory (2014): Insects. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 180–191. Jones, John E. (1976): Hives and honey of Hymettus. Beekeeping in ancient Greece. In: Archaeology 50, 80–91. Larew, Hiram G. (2002): Insects. Evidence from wall paintings, sculpture, mosaics, carbonized remains, and ancient authors. In: Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 315–326. Sauvage, André (1970): Les insectes dans la poésie latine. In: Latomus 29, 269–296.

Lions: Martini, Wolfram (2014): Die Magie des Löwen in der Antike. In: Peter Janich (ed.), Der Mensch und seine Tiere. Mensch-Tier-Verhältnisse im Spiegel der Wissenschaften, Stuttgart, 65–92. Obermaier, Sabine (2009): Auf den Spuren des Löwen. Zum Bild vom Tier in Mittelalter und Neuzeit In: Imprimatur. Ein Jahrbuch für Bücherfreunde N.F. 21, 9–32.

Snakes: Bodson, Liliane (1981): Les Grecs et leurs serpents. Premiers résultats de l’étude taxonomique des sources anciennes. In: L’Antiquité Classique 50, 57–78. Bodson, Liliane & David Orr (2002): Amphibians and reptiles. Evidence from wall paintings, mosaics, sculpture, skeletal remains, and ancient authors. In: Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 327–356. Sauvage, André (1975): Le serpent dans la poésie latine. In: Revue Belge de philologie, littérature et histoire anciennes 49, 241–254.

Wolves: Buxton, Richard (1987): Wolves and werewolves in Greek thought. In: Jan Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology, London, 60–79. De Block, Raymond (1877): Le loup dans les mythologies de la Grèce et de l’Italie anciennes. In: Revue de l’Instruction publique en Belgique 20, 145–158 and 217–234. Kunster, Barton (1990/91): The werewolf figure and its adoption into the Greek political vocabulary. In: Classical World 84, 189–205. Marcinkowski, Alexandre (2001): Le loup et les Grecs. In: Ancient Society 31, 1–26. Schuster, Mauriz (1930): Der Werwolf und die Hexen. Zwei Schauermärchen bei Petronius. In: Wiener Studien 48, 149–178. Smith, Kirby F. (1894): An historical study of the werwolf in literature. In: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 9, 1–42.

Others: Bodson, Liliane (1977): Le mouton dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine. In: Ethnozootechnie 21, 107– 121.

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Bodson, Liliane (1994): Ancient views on pests and parasites of livestock. In: Argos 10, 303–310. Bodson, Liliane & David Orr (2002): Amphibians and reptiles. Evidence from wall paintings, mosaics, sculpture, skeletal remains, and ancient authors. In: Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 327– 356. Gauly, Bardo Maria (2012): Die weiche Seite des Krokodils. Tiere in Senecas Naturphilosophie. In: Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 22, 51–68. Hellmann, Oliver (2012): Tierbeobachtung, Verhaltensbeschreibung und Paradoxographie. Die Karawane der Mäuse (Ael. 5.22). In: Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 22, 69– 82. Hoffmann, Otto Adalbert (1904): Auf Saujagd bei Homer. Eine jagdlich kritische Skizze. In: Monatsschrift für höhere Schulen 3, 442–446. King, Anthony (2002): Mammals. Evidence from wall paintings, sculpture, mosaics, faunal remains, and ancient literary sources. In: Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski & Frederick G. Meyer (eds.), The Natural History of Pompeii, Cambridge, 401–450. Kron, Geoffrey (2008): Animal husbandry, hunting, fishing, and fish production. In: John Peter Oleson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, Oxford, 175–222. Lilja, Saara (1976): Vermin in ancient Greece. In: Arctos 10, 59–68. Marciniak, Katarzyna (2001): The winged mouse. Bats in ancient literature. In: Eos 88, 307– 314. Obermaier, Sabine (2011): Antike Irrtümer und ihre mittelalterlichen Folgen. Das Flusspferd. In: Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption 21, 135–179.

3 Animals as food in antiquity Alston, Richard & Onno M. van Nijf (eds.) (2008): Feeding the Ancient Greek City, Leuven & Dudley, Mass. André, Jacques (1961): L’alimentation et la cuisine à Rome, Paris (German translation by Ursula Blank-Sangmeister: Essen und Trinken im alten Rom, Stuttgart 1998). Auberger, Janick (2010): Manger en Grèce classique. La nourriture, ses plaisirs et ses contraintes, Québec. Beer, Michael (2010): Taste or Taboo. Dietary Choices in Antiquity, Totnes. Beranová, Magdalena & Jaroslav Řešátko (2000): Jak se jedlo ve starověku. Římská kuchařka, Praha. Berthiaume, Guy (1982): Les rôles du mágeiros. Étude sur la boucherie, la cuisine et le sacrifice dans la Grèce ancienne, Leiden. Bettenworth, Anja (2004): Gastmahlszenen in der antiken Epik von Homer bis Claudian. Diachrone Untersuchungen zur Szenentypik, Göttingen. Blanc, Nicole & Anne Nercessian (1992): La cuisine romaine antique, Grenoble. Bober, Phyllis Pray (1999): Art, Culture, and Cuisine. Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy, Chicago. Bode, Matthias (1999): Apicius: Anmerkungen zum römischen Kochbuch. Das Kochbuch des Apicius als Quelle zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, St. Katharinen.

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Cerchiai, Claudia (2004): Cibi e banchetti nell’antica Roma, Roma. Cool, Hilary E. M. (2006): Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain, Cambridge. Dalby, Andrew (1996): Siren Feasts. A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece, London & New York (German translation by Kai Brodersen: Essen und Trinken im alten Griechenland. Von Homer bis zur byzantinischen Zeit, Stuttgart 1998). Dalby, Andrew (2000): Dangerous Tastes. The Story of Spices, London. Dalby, Andrew (2003): Food in the Ancient World from A to Z, London & New York. Dalby, Andrew (2010): Tastes of Byzantium. The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire, London. Dalby, Andrew & Sally Grainger (1996): The Classical Cookbook, London (German translation by Roland Vocke: Küchengeheimnisse der Antike, Würzburg 1996). D’Arms, John H. (1984): Control, companionship and clientela. Some social functions of the Roman communal meal. In: Échos du monde classique 28, 327–348. D’Arms, John H. (1990): The Roman convivium and the idea of equality. In: Oswyn Murray (ed.), Sympotica. A Symposium on the symposion, Oxford, 308–320. D’Arms, John H. (1999): Performing culture. Roman spectacle and the banquets of the powerful. In: Bettina Bergmann & Christine Kondoleon (eds.), The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Washington, D.C & New Haven, 301–319. Donahue, John F. (2015): Food and Drink in Antiquity. Readings from the Graeco-Roman World, London. Dunbabin, Katherine M. D. (2003): The Roman Banquet. Images of Conviviality, Cambridge. Faas, Patrick C. P. (1994): Rond de tafel der Romeinen. Met meer dan 150 originale recepten, Diemen (English translation by Shaun Whiteside: Around the Roman Table. With more than 150 original recipes, London 2003). Fellmeth, Ulrich (2001): Brot und Politik. Ernährung, Tafelluxus und Hunger im antiken Rom, Stuttgart. Garnsey, Peter (1988): Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World. Responses to Risk and Crisis, Cambridge. Garnsey, Peter (1998): Cities, Peasants and Food in Classical Antiquity. Essays in Social and Economic History. Ed. with addenda by Walter Scheidel, Cambridge. Garnsey, Peter (1999): Food and Society in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge. Gerlach, Gudrun (2001): Zu Tisch bei den alten Römern. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Essens und Trinkens, Stuttgart. Gowers, Emily (1993): The Loaded Table. Representations of Food in Roman Literature, Oxford. Gozzini Giacosa, Ilaria (1986): A cena da Lucullo. Come cucinare oggi i piatti dell’antica Roma, Casale Monferrato (English translation by Anna Herklotz: A Taste of Ancient Rome, Chicago 1992; German translation by Michaela Wunderle: Genießen wie die alten Römer. Antike Küche neu entdeckt, Frankfurt am Main 1995). Grimm, Veronika E. (1996): From Feasting to Fasting: The Evolution of a Sin. Attitudes to Food in Late Antiquity, London. Nadeau, Robin (2010): Les manières de table dans le monde gréco-romain, Rennes. Rudd, Niall (1966): Food and drink. In: Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace, Cambridge, 202–223. Schmitt Pantel, Pauline (2011): La cité au banquet. Histoire des repas publics dans les cités grecques, Paris. Schnurbusch, Dirk (2011): Convivium. Form und Bedeutung aristokratischer Geselligkeit in der römischen Antike, Stuttgart. Schwarz, Irene (1995): Diaita: Ernährung der Griechen und Römer im klassischen Altertum. Eine altsprachlich-ernährungswissenschaftliche Studie, Innsbruck.

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Slater, William J. (ed.) (1991): Dining in a Classical Context, Ann Arbor. Stein-Hölkeskamp, Elke (2005): Das römische Gastmahl. Eine Kulturgeschichte, München. Thurmond, David L. (2006): A Handbook of Food Processing in Classical Rome. For Her Bounty No Winter, Leiden. Tietz, Werner (2013): ‚Dilectus ciborum‘. Essen im Diskurs der römischen Antike, Göttingen. Vössing, Konrad (2004): Mensa regia. Das Bankett beim hellenistischen König und beim römischen Kaiser, München & Leipzig. Vössing, Konrad (ed.) (2008): Das römische Bankett im Spiegel der Altertumswissenschaften, Stuttgart. Węcowski, Marek (2014): The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet, Oxford. Wilkins, John (2000): The Boastful Chef. The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy, Oxford. Wilkins, John M. & Shaun Hill (2006): Food in the Ancient World, Malden, Mass. Wilkins, John, David Harvey & Mike Dobson (eds.) (1995): Food in Antiquity, Exeter. Wilkins, John & Robin Nadeau (eds.) (2015): A Companion to Food in the Ancient World, Malden, Mass. & Oxford. Winspeare, Maddalena Paola (ed.) (2005): Cibi e sapori nel mondo antico (Firenze, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 18 marzo 2005–15 gennaio 2006), Livorno.

4 Vegetarianism in antiquity Clark, Gillian (ed.) (2000): Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals, London. Corbier, Mireille (1989): The ambiguous status of meat in ancient Rome. In: Food and Foodways 3, 223–264. Detienne, Marcel (1970): La cuisine de Pythagore. In: Archives de sociologie des religions 29, 141–162. Dierauer, Urs (2001): Vegetarismus und Tierschonung in der griechisch-römischen Antike. In: Manuela Linnemann & Claudia Schorcht (eds.), Vegetarismus. Zur Geschichte und Zukunft einer Lebensweise, Erlangen, 9–72. Dombrowski, Daniel A. (1984): Vegetarianism and the argument from marginal cases in Porphyry. In: Journal of the History of Ideas 45, 141–143. Dombrowski, Daniel A. (1987): Porphyry and vegetarianism. A contemporary philosophical approach. In: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 36.2, 774–791. Dombrowski, Daniel A. (2014): Philosophical vegetarianism and animal entitlements. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 535–555. Haussleiter, Johannes (1935): Der Vegetarismus in der Antike, Berlin. Newmyer, Stephen T. (1999): Speaking of beasts. The Stoics and Plutarch on animal reason and the modern case against animals. In: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 63, 99– 110. Newmyer, Stephen T. (2011): Animals in Greek and Roman Thought. A Sourcebook, London & New York, 97–125. Osborne, Catherine (1995): Ancient vegetarianism. In: John Wilkins, David Harvey & Michael Dobson (eds.), Food in Antiquity, Exeter, 214–224. Taylor, Thomas & Esme Wynne-Tyson (eds.) (1965): Porphyry: On Abstinence from Animal Food, London.

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Tsekourakis, Damianos (1983): Pythagoreanism or Platonism and ancient medicine? The reasons for vegetarianism in Plutarchs “Moralia”. In: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 36.1, 350–393.

5 Hunting in antiquity Anderson, John K. (1985): Hunting in the Ancient World, Berkeley. Aymard, Jacques (1951): Essai sur les chasses romaines des origines à la fin du siècle des Antonins (Cynegetica), Paris. Barringer, Judith M. (2001): The Hunt in Ancient Greece, Baltimore. Daltrop, Georg (1966): Die kalydonische Jagd in der Antike, Hamburg & Berlin. Fornasier, Jochen (2001): Jagddarstellungen des 6. bis 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. Eine ikonographische und ikonologische Analyse, Münster. Hull, Denison Bingham (1964): Hounds and Hunting in Ancient Greece, Chicago. Lane Fox, Robin (1996): Ancient hunting. From Homer to Polybius. In: Graham Shipley & John Salmon (eds.), Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity. Environment and Culture, London & New York, 119–153. Longo, Oddone (1989): Le forme della predazione. Cacciatori e pescatori nella Grecia antica, Napoli. MacKinnon, Michael (2014): Hunting. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 203–215. Miller, Max (1883): Das Jagdwesen der alten Griechen und Römer. Für Freunde des klassischen Alterthums und den gebildeten Weidmann nach den Mittheilungen der alten Schriftsteller dargestellt, München (repr. Amsterdam 1970). Sachs, Gerd (2012): Die Jagd im antiken Griechenland. Mythos und Wirklichkeit, Hamburg. Schauenburg, Konrad (1969): Jagddarstellungen in der griechischen Vasenmalerei, Hamburg & Berlin. Zazoff, Peter (1970): Jagddarstellungen auf antiken Gemmen, Hamburg & Berlin.

6 Spectacles (games) in antiquity Auguet, Roland (1970): Cruauté et civilisation. Les jeux romains, Paris (English translation: Cruelty and Civilization. The Roman Games, London 1972). Barton, Carlin A. (1994): Savage miracles. The redemption of lost honor in Roman society and the sacrament of the gladiator and the martyr. In: Representations 45, 41–71. Beacham, Richard C. (1999): Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome, New Haven. Clavel-Lévêque, Monique (1986): L’espace des jeux dans le monde romain. Hégémonie, symbolique et pratique sociale. In: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 16.3, 2405– 2563. Coleman, Kathleen M. (1990): Fatal charades. Roman executions staged as mythological enactments. In: Journal of Roman Studies 80, 44–73. Coleman, Kathleen M. (1993): Launching into history. Aquatic displays in the early Empire. In: Journal of Roman Studies 83, 48–74.

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Coleman, Kathleen M. (2000): Entertaining Rome. In: Jon C. Coulston & Hazel Dodge (eds.), Ancient Rome. The Archaeology of the Eternal City, Oxford, 210–258. Coleman, Kathleen M. (ed.) (2006): Martial: Liber Spectaculorum, Oxford. Coleman, Kathleen M. (ed.) (2012): L’organisation des spectacles dans le monde romain (Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 58), Vandœuvres & Genève. Dodge, Hazel (2011): Spectacle in the Roman World, London (esp. pp. 47–62: “Animals and Spectacle”). Edwards, Catharine (2007): Death in Ancient Rome, New Haven & London. Egelhaaf-Gaiser, Ulrike & Thorsten Fuchs (ed.) (2006): Spektakuläre Spiele im Amphitheater. Vorschläge zur Bild-Text-Arbeit im Lateinunterricht der Oberstufe, Göttingen. Fagan, Garrett G. (2011): The Lure of the Arena. Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games, Cambridge. Futrell, Alison (2000): Blood in the Arena. The Spectacle of Roman Power, Austin, Texas. Hönle, Augusta & Anton Henze (1981): Römische Amphitheater und Stadien. Gladiatorenkämpfe und Circusspiele, Zürich. Hughes, J. Donald (1975): Ecology in Ancient Civilizations, Albuquerque. Jennison, George (1937): Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome, Manchester. Jiménez Sánchez, Juan Antonio (2006): La cruz y la escena. Cristianismo y espectáculos durante la Antigüedad Tardía, Alcalá de Henares. Kyle, Donald G. (1994): Animal spectacles in ancient Rome. Meat and meaning. In: Nikephoros 7, 181–205. Kyle, Donald G. (2001): Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome, London. Landes, Christian (ed.) (2007): Jeux et spectacles dans l’Antiquité tardive, Turnhout. Letzner, Wolfram (2009): Der römische Circus. Massenunterhaltung im Römischen Reich, Mainz. Plass, Paul (1995): The Game of Death in Ancient Rome. Arena Sport and Political Suicide, Madison, Wisconsin. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2007): Beastly spectacles in the ancient Mediterranean world. In: Linda Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity, Oxford, 97–126. Shelton, Jo-Ann (2014): Spectacles of animal abuse. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 461–477. Soler, Emmanuel & Françoise Thelamon (eds.) (2008): Les jeux et les spectacles dans l’Empire romain tardif et dans les royaumes barbares, Mont-Saint-Aignan. Toner, Jerry (2014): The Day Commodus Killed a Rhino. Understanding the Roman Games, Baltimore. Weeber, Karl-Wilhelm (1994): Panem et circenses. Massenunterhaltung als Politik im antiken Rom, Mainz (revised edition, first ed. 1983). Wiedemann, Thomas (1995): Emperors and Gladiators, London. Wistrand, Magnus (1992): Entertainment and Violence in Ancient Rome. The Attitudes of Roman Writers of the First Century A.D., Göteborg.

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7 Sacrifice in antiquity Berthiaume, Guy (1982): Les rôles du mágeiros. Étude sur la boucherie, la cuisine et le sacrifice dans la Grèce ancienne, Leiden. Burkert, Walter (1984): Anthropologie des religiösen Opfers. Die Sakralisierung der Gewalt, München. Burkert, Walter (1987): The problem of ritual killing. In: Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (ed.), Violent Origins. Walter Burkert, René Girard and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, Stanford, 156–188. Burkert, Walter (1990): Wilder Ursprung. Opferritual und Mythos bei den Griechen, Berlin (English translation by Peter Bing: Savage Energies. Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece, Chicago 2001). Burkert, Walter (1992): Opfer als Tötungsritual. Eine Konstante der menschlichen Kulturgeschichte? In: Fritz Graf (ed.), Klassische Antike und Wege der Kulturwissenschaften. Symposium Karl Meuli (Basel, 11.–13. September 1991), Basel, 169–189. Burkert, Walter (1996): Creation of the Sacred. Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, Cambridge, Mass. (German edition: Kulte des Altertums. Biologische Grundlagen der Religion, München 1998). Burkert, Walter (21997): Homo Necans. Interpretationen altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen, Berlin & New York (first ed. 1972. English translation by Peter Bing: Homo Necans. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, Berkeley 1983). Burkert, Walter (2004): Tieropfer. Realität ‒ Symbolik – Problematik. In: Hartmut Böhme & al. (eds.), Tiere. Eine andere Anthropologie, Köln, 177–186. Detienne, Marcel & Jean-Pierre Vernant (1979): La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec, Paris (English translation by Paula Wissing: The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks, Chicago 1989). Ekroth, Gunnel (2014): Animal sacrifice in antiquity. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 324–354. Faraone, Christopher A. & Fred S. Naiden (eds.) (2012): Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice. Ancient Victims, Modern Observers, Cambridge. Georgoudi, Stella, Renée Koch Piettre & Francis Schmidt (eds.) (2005): La cuisine et l’autel. Les sacrifices en questions dans les sociétés de la Méditerranée ancienne, Turnhout. Gladigow, Burkhard (1971): Ovids Rechtfertigung der blutigen Opfer. In: Der altsprachliche Unterricht 14.3, 5–23. Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G. (ed.) (1987): Violent Origins. Walter Burkert, René Girard and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, Stanford. Henrichs, Albert (1992): Gott, Mensch, Tier. Antike Daseinsstruktur und religiöses Verhalten im Denken Karl Meulis. In: Fritz Graf (ed.), Klassische Antike und Wege der Kulturwissenschaften. Symposium Karl Meuli (Basel, 11.–13. September 1991), Basel, 129–167. Heyman, George (2007): The Power of Sacrifice. Roman and Christian Discourses in Conflict, Washington, D.C. Himmelmann, Nikolaus (1997): Tieropfer in der griechischen Kunst, Opladen. Hitch, Sarah & Ian Rutherford (eds.) (2013): Animal Sacrifice in the Ancient Greek World, Cambridge. Hubbell, Harry M. (1928): Horse sacrifice in antiquity. In: Yale Classical Studies 1, 181–192. Jameson, Michael H. (1988): Sacrifice and animal husbandry in classical Greece. In: Charles R. Whittaker (ed.), Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge, 87–119.

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Kadletz, Edward (1976): Animal Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religion, Diss. Seattle (Univ. of Washington). Knust, Jennifer & Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (eds.) (2011): Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, Oxford. Kosmetatou, Elizabeth (1993): Horse sacrifices in Greece and Cyprus. In: Journal of Prehistoric Religion 7, 31–41. Meuli, Karl (1946): Griechische Opferbräuche. In: Olof Gigon & al., Phyllobolia für Peter von der Mühll, Basel, 185–288. Petropoulou, Marie-Zoe (2008): Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 BC‒AD 200, Oxford. Rosivach, Vincent J. (1994): The System of Public Sacrifice in Fourth-Century Athens, Atlanta. Rudhardt, Jean & Olivier Reverdin (eds.) (1981): Le sacrifice dans l’antiquité (Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 27), Vandœuvres & Genève. Stroumsa, Guy (2005): La fin du sacrifice. Mutations religieuses de l’antiquité tardive, Paris. Ullucci, Daniel C. (2012): The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice, Oxford. van Straten, Folkert T. (1995): Hierà kalá. Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece, Leiden.

8 Ancient veterinary medicine Adams, James N. (1995): Pelagonius and Latin Veterinary Terminology in the Roman Empire, Leiden. Ahlquist, Helga (1909): Studien zur spätlateinischen Mulomedicina Chironis, Uppsala. Baranski, Anton (1886): Geschichte der Thierzucht und Thiermedicin im Alterthum, Wien (repr. Hildesheim 1971). Björck, Gudmund (1932): Zum Corpus Hippiatricorum Graecorum. Beiträge zur antiken Tierheilkunde, Uppsala. Björck, Gudmund (1944): Apsyrtus, Julius Africanus et l’hippiatrique grecque, Uppsala. Bodson, Liliane (1984): La médecine vétérinaire dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine. Problèmes – composantes – orientations. In: Ethnozootechnie 34, 3–12. Boehm, Isabelle & Pascal Luccioni (ed.) (2008): Le médecin initié par l’animal: Animaux et médecine dans l’Antiquité grecque et latine. Actes du colloque international tenu à la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux les 26 et 27 octobre 2006, Lyon. Bressou, Clément Jean Pierre (1970): Histoire de la médecine vétérinaire, Paris. Brumme, Martin Fritz (1997): Tierheilkunde in Antike und Renaissance. Historiographische Untersuchungen zur Konstituierung und Legitimierung, Berlin (Habilitationsschrift Freie Universität Berlin). Cam, Marie-Thérèse (ed.) (2007): La médecine vétérinaire antique. Sources écrites, archéologiques, iconographiques (Actes du colloque international de Brest, 9–11 septembre 2004), Rennes. Fischer, Klaus-Dietrich (1988): Ancient veterinary medicine. A survey of Greek and Latin sources and some recent scholarship. In: Medizinhistorisches Journal 23, 191–209. Froehner, Reinhard (1952): Kulturgeschichte der Tierheilkunde. Vol. 1: Tierkrankheiten, Heilbestrebungen, Tierärzte im Altertum, Konstanz.

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Goebel, Veronika & Joris Peters (2014): Veterinary medicine. In: Gordon L. Campbell (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Oxford, 589–605. Gröpl, Thomas J. M. (2003): Das Tier in der Medizin. Eine ideengeschichtliche Abhandlung der Beziehung des Menschen zum Tier unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Antike anhand Galens anatomischer Schrift Anatomikai encheireseis („Anatomische Handgriffe“), Diss. München (Technische Universität). Jacob, André (1958): La médecine vétérinaire dans l’art antique grec et latin, Diss. Alfort. Moulé, Léon (1891): Histoire de la médecine vétérinaire dans l’antiquité, Paris. Omieczynski, Max (1924): Hundezucht und Hundekrankheiten in der Literatur des klassischen Altertums mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kynosophions, Diss. Berlin. Ortoleva, Vincenzo & Maria Rosaria Petringa (eds.) (2009): La veterinaria antica e medievale. Testi greci, latini, arabi e romanzi (Atti del II Convegno internazionale, Catania, 3–5 ottobre 2007), Lugano. Richter, Will (1978): Palladius und sein Columella-Text im Buch über die Tiermedizin. In: Wiener Studien N.F. 12, 249–271. Schlütsmeier-Hage, Ute (1988): Parasitenprobleme beim Haustier in der Antike und ihre wichtigsten Behandlungsverfahren, Diss. München.

9 ‘Monsters’ in antiquity Atherton, Catherine (ed.) (1998): Monsters and Monstrosity in Classical Antiquity, Bari. Baglioni, Igor (ed.) (2013): Monstra. Costruzione e percezione delle entità ibride e mostruose nel Mediterraneo antico. Vol. 1: Egitto, Vicino Oriente antico, area storico-comparativa. Vol. 2: L’antichità classica, Roma. Beta, Simone & Francesca Marzari (eds.) (2010): Animali, ibridi e mostri nella cultura antica. Atti dei convegni, Siena, 4 e 5 giugno 2007, Columbus, Ohio, 11, 12, 13 gennaio 2008, Fiesole. Biella, Maria Cristina & Enrico Giovanelli (eds.) (2016): Nuovi studi sul bestiario fantastico di età orientalizzante nella penisola italiana, Trento. Campbell, Gordon L. (2006): Strange Creatures. Anthropology in Antiquity, London. Cuny-Le Callet, Blandine (2005): Rome et ses monstres. Naissance d’un concept philosophique et rhétorique, Grenoble. De Giorgio, Jean-Pierre & Fabrice Galtier (eds.) (2012): Le monstre et sa lignée. Filiations et générations monstrueuses dans la littérature latine et sa posterité, Paris. Eason, Cassandra (2008): Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters, and Animal Power Symbols. A Handbook, Westport, Connecticut. Farkas, Ann E., Prudence O. Harper & Evelyn B. Harrison (eds.) (1987): Monsters and Demons in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. Papers Presented in Honor of Edith Porada, Mainz. Felton, Debbie (2012): Rejecting and embracing the monstrous in ancient Greece and Rome. In: Asa Simon Mittman & Peter J. Dendle (eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, Farnham, 103–132. Franco, Cristiana (ed.) (2007): Zoomania. Animali, ibridi e mostri nelle culture umane. Catalogo della mostra, Siena, Santa Maria della Scala (9 marzo – 27 maggio 2007), Siena. Jouteur, Isabelle (ed.) (2009): Monstres et merveilles. Créatures prodigieuses de l’Antiquité, Paris.

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Kitchell, Kenneth F. (2015): A defense of the “monstrous” animals of Pliny, Aelian, and others. In: Preternature. Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 4, 125–151. Levointurier, François Louis Rémi (1958): Les animaux fantastiques au Moyen Âge, Diss. Toulouse. Lloyd-Jones, Hugh (1980): Mythical Beasts, London. Louis, Pierre (1978): Monstres et monstruosités dans la biologie d’Aristote. In: Jean Bingen (ed.), Le monde grec: Pensée, littérature, histoire, documents. Hommage à Claire Préaux, Bruxelles, 277–284. Lowe, Dunstan (2015): Monsters and Monstrosity in Augustan Poetry, Ann Arbor. Mazoyer, Michel & Jorge Pérez Rey (eds.) (2007): Monstres et monstruosités dans le monde ancien, Paris. Morgan, Wendy Reid (1984): Constructing the Monster. Notions of the Monstrous in Classical Antiquity, Diss. Melbourne (Deakin University). Murgatroyd, Paul (2007): Mythical Monsters in Classical Literature, London. Pohlke, Annette & Reinhard Pohlke (2002): Im Labyrinth des Minotauros. Ungeheuer der Antike, Düsseldorf & Zürich. Rodriguez Pérez, Diana (2008): Serpientes, dioses y héroes. El combate contra el monstruo en el arte y la literatura griega antigua, León. South, Malcolm (ed.) (1987): Mythical and Fabulous Creatures. A Source Book and Research Guide, New York. Upton, Thomas V. (2003): Aristotle on monsters and the generation of kinds. In: American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 77, 21–36. Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew (ed.) (2014): The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, Farnham.

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Contributors Contributors Contributors Claudia Beier was a Research Assistant at the editorial department of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Berlin (Germany) from 2012 until 2016. She studied Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the Humboldt University of Berlin and Material Culture Studies at Sheffield University (UK). She has published articles on Greek and Roman mixed-beings and the geography of ancient afterlife. She is currently completing her Ph.D. thesis at the Free University of Berlin on Attic mixed-beings and their significance for human-animal relations. Louise Calder works in the Sackler Library of Oxford University (UK). She studied Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Corpus Christi College and Wolfson College Oxford. Her Ph.D. thesis (Oxford 2009) examined interactions between domestic animals and ancient Greeks, published as Cruelty and Sentimentality: Greek Attitudes to Animals, 600‒300 B.C. (Oxford 2011). She has also contributed a chapter entitled “The asses’ lot” to Essays in Classical Archaeology for Eleni Hatzivassiliou (ed. by Donna Kurtz, Oxford 2008). Gillian Clark is Professor Emerita of Ancient History at the University of Bristol (UK), and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her undergraduate and graduate studies were at Oxford (Somerville College). She works on the interaction of Christianity and classical culture in late antiquity, with a special interest in Augustine’s City of God. Publications relevant for the article printed in this volume include Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals (London 2000), and papers on Porphyry and on Augustine in her book Body and Gender, Soul and Reason in Late Antiquity (Farnham 2011). She co-edits the series Oxford Early Christian Studies / Texts (Oxford University Press) and Translated Texts for Historians 300–800 (Liverpool University Press). Thorsten Fögen is Reader (Associate Professor) in Classics at Durham University (UK). He studied Classics and General Linguistics at the Universities of Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany), Oxford (UK) and Heidelberg (Germany). Ph.D. in 2000 (University of Heidelberg), “Habilitation” during Winter Term 2008/09 (Humboldt University of Berlin). He is the author of “Patrii sermonis egestas”: Einstellungen lateinischer Autoren zu ihrer Muttersprache (Munich & Leipzig 2000) and of Wissen, Kommunikation und Selbstdarstellung: Zur Struktur und Charakteristik römischer Fachtexte der frühen Kaiserzeit (Munich 2009). He has edited eight volumes, most recently Tears in the Graeco-Roman World (Berlin & New York 2009), Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Berlin & New York 2009, together with Mireille M. Lee), and GraecoRoman Antiquity and the Idea of Nationalism in the 19th Century: Case Studies (Berlin & Boston 2016, together with Richard Warren). Cristiana Franco is Professor of Classics at the Università per Stranieri di Siena (Italy). She studied Classics at the University of Milan and completed a Ph.D. in Anthropology of the ancient world at the University of Siena (2000). She is the author of Senza ritegno: Il cane e la donna nell’immaginario della Grecia antica (Bologna 2003; expanded and updated English edition: Shameless: The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece, Oakland 2014) and Il mito di Circe: Immagini e racconti dalla Grecia a oggi (Torino 2010, together with Maurizio Bettini). She edited Zoomania: Animali, ibridi e mostri nelle culture umane (Siena 2007) and

476 | Contributors

Circe: Variazioni sul mito (Venezia 2012). Her studies focus on the representation of animals and on human-animal relationships in ancient Greece and Rome, with special attention to the role played by animals in the construction of gender and class differences in ancient societies. Alastair Harden is a teacher of Classics at Bedales School, Petersfield (UK), and was for several years a Research Assistant at the Beazley Archive. He studied Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Oxford, and his Ph.D. thesis (Reading University, 2013) was a study of the iconography of animal-skin garments in Archaic Greek art. He contributed the chapter on “Animals in Classical art” to the Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life (ed. by Gordon L. Campbell, Oxford 2014), and is the author of the sourcebook Animals in the Classical World: Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts (Basingstoke 2013). He is an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and a Consultant Editor of the Journal of Animal Ethics (University of Illinois Press). Kenneth F. Kitchell is Professor Emeritus of Louisiana State University and University of Massachusetts Amherst (US). With Irven Resnick he published the first translation of Albertus Magnus’ De animalibus (Baltimore 1999) and two other books on Albert. He is author of Animals in the Greek and Roman World A–Z (New York 2014). Most recently, he published a Medieval Latin reader for Bolchazy-Carducci Press entitled The Other Middle Ages (Mundelein, Illinois 2016) and a chapter on animal husbandry in A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome (ed. by Georgia L. Irby, Malden, Mass. & Oxford 2016). He has also published several textbooks for teaching the Latin language, including Disce! (New York 2011, together with Thomas Sienkewicz). Sian Lewis is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of St. Andrews (UK), where she teaches Greek and Roman history, historiography and art. She was an undergraduate and postgraduate at University College Oxford, and specialises in Greek political and social history of the classical period. Her publications include News and Society in the Greek Polis (London 1996), Greek Tyranny (Exeter 2009), and an edited volume of essays entitled Ancient Tyranny (Edinburgh 2006); she has also written extensively on Greek gender and iconography, including The Athenian Woman: An Iconographic Handbook (London & New York 2002) and The World of Greek Vases (Roma 2010, co-edited with Vinnie Nørskov, Lise Hannestad & Cornelia IslerKerényi). In collaboration with Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, she is currently writing a sourcebook on ancient animals entitled The Culture of Animals in Antiquity, to be published by Routledge in 2017. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University (UK). He specialises in the history and culture of ancient Iran, Greek socio-cultural history, and in the reception of antiquity in popular culture. He is the author of Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece (Swansea 2003), Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient (London & New York 2010, together with James Robson), and King and Court in Ancient Persia 559‒331 BCE (Edinburgh 2013). He has edited volumes on Hellenistic history, gender identity, and dress history. Forthcoming works include The Culture of Animals in Antiquity (with Sian Lewis) and Through Esther’s Eyes: An Iconographic Commentary on the Book of Esther in its Persian Context. He is the series editor of Edinburgh Studies in Ancient Persia for Edinburgh University Press and coseries editor of Screening Antiquity, also for EUP.

Contributors | 477

Jeremy McInerney is Davidson Kennedy Professor of Classical Studies and chair of the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (US). He took his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1992 and is the author of a book on state formation and ethnic identity in Archaic Greece entitled The Folds of Parnassos (Austin 1999), as well as a study of cattle in Greek culture entitled The Cattle of the Sun (Princeton 2010). He is editor of the WileyBlackwell Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean (Malden, Mass. & Oxford 2014) and, with Ineke Sluiter, editor of Landscapes of Value: Natural Environment and Cultural Imagination in Classical Antiquity (Leiden 2016). He has contributed four translations and commentaries to Brill’s New Jacoby. He is currently working on the function of hybridity in Greek culture. Sarah Miles teaches in the Department of Classics & Ancient History at Durham University (UK). She studied Classics at Oxford and completed a Ph.D. at Nottingham on “Strattis, Tragedy, and Comedy” (2009), which reflects her core research interest in comic fragments and Greek comedy’s engagement with tragedy (paratragedy). She has published on Greek drama, including the portrayal of the gods in Greek comedy (Old and New Comedy) and on the Hellenistic reception of Greek drama. She is currently preparing a book on Ancient Receptions of Greek Tragedy in Old Comedy. Stephen T. Newmyer is Professor of Classics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, US). He received his PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His books include Animals, Rights and Reason in Plutarch and Modern Ethics (London & New York 2006), Animals in Greek and Roman Thought: A Sourcebook (London & New York 2011), and The Animal and the Human in Ancient and Modern Thought: The “Man Alone of Animals Concept” (London & New York 2017). His research focuses on Graeco-Roman views on the intellectual properties of animals and on how classical views on this subject live on in current animal rights philosophy and in cognitive ethology. Edmund Thomas is Senior Lecturer in Ancient Visual and Material Culture at Durham University (UK). He studied Classics at Corpus Christi College Oxford and completed a D.Phil. at St John’s College Oxford in 1994. He is the author of Monumentality and the Roman Empire (Oxford 2007) and numerous articles on Roman architecture, sarcophagi and architectural aesthetics. He has co-edited Cities and Gods: Religious Space in Transition (Leuven 2013, together with Ted Kaizer, Anna Leone & Robert Witcher) and The Materiality of Text (forthcoming, together with Andrej Petrovic & Ivana Petrovic). His research focuses on the meanings and perceptions of architecture and the uses of urban space in the Greek and Roman worlds and on the impact of ancient architectural forms on the classical architectural tradition. Marco Vespa is a Ph.D. candidate in Classics at the University of Siena (Italy) and Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (France). His Ph.D. thesis examines the cultural construction of nonhuman primates in the ancient Greek world. He has completed several articles on animals in antiquity. His interests include ancient Greek myth and Greek drama. He is a member of the international research group Zoomathia sponsored by the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and of the Centre for Anthropology and the Ancient World in Siena. Furthermore, he is an alumnus of the Vatican School of Palaeography, Diplomatics and Archives.

478 | Contributors

John Wilkins is Professor Emeritus of Greek Culture at the University of Exeter (UK). For the past twenty years he has been working on food, nutrition and medicine in the ancient world, with a continuing interest in the relationship between human beings and animals. In this field of knowledge he co-edited Food in Antiquity (Exeter 1995, together with David Harvey & Mike Dobson), Athenaeus and his World (Exeter 2000, together with David Braund), Galen and the World of Knowledge (Cambridge 2009, together with Christopher Gill and Tim Whitmarsh), and A Companion to Food in the Ancient World (Chichester 2015, together with Robin Nadeau). Monographs include The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy (Oxford 2000) and Food in the Ancient World (Malden, Mass & Oxford 2006, together with Shaun Hill). He has also edited and translated Galien: Sur les facultés des aliments (Paris 2013). Arnaud Zucker is Professor of Greek Literature at Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (France) and deputy director of CEPAM (Cultures et Environnements: Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen Âge, UMR 7264, CNRS). He studied Classics and Anthropology at Paris IV Sorbonne and the École Pratique des Hautes Études (PhD). His key research topics are ancient zoology, ancient astronomy, and mythography. His main publications include Physiologos: Le bestiaire des bestiaires (Grenoble 2004), Aristote et les classifications zoologiques (Louvain 2005), Ératosthène de Cyrène: Catastérismes (Paris 2013), and L’encyclopédie du ciel: Mythologie, astronomie, astrologie (Paris 2016). He is currently heading an international interdisciplinary research network on ancient zoological knowledge (Zoomathia) and working on the edition of the zoological encyclopaedia of Constantine VII.

Index rerum | 479

Indices (compiled by Thorsten Fögen) Indices Index rerum

Index rerum affection: see ‘love for animals’ affordance: 409‒411, 426, 427‒428, 431 n. 41 agency: 12, 26, 91, 129, 147, 236 n. 5, 349, 351, 352 ager Laurens: 355 agriculture: 1‒2, 3, 7, 22, 23‒30, 57 n. 24, 78, 89, 102, 118 n. 77, 124‒127, 129, 197, 198, 345, 353‒355, 358‒359, 369, 382, 400, 405 Ahuramazda: 308 Alexander mosaic: 112 Alexander sarcophagus: 112 Alexandria: 316‒317, 324 n. 25, 342‒343, 351 n. 10, 356 altruism: 245 n. 21, 247 Amazon: 275, 278, 281 n. 18, 284, 286, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292, 293, 300, 372, 376 amicitia: see ‘friendship’ ἀναγνώρισις: see ‘recognition’ ἀνατομή: see ‘vivisection’ ἀνδρεία: see ‘courage’ anecdotes: 39, 41 n. 3, 107‒109, 110 n. 54, 111‒112, 116 n. 70, 129‒130, 186, 197, 215‒216, 233, 235, 236, 242, 245‒248, 249, 405 animal literacy: 10, 183‒200 animal skins: 12, 50, 154, 162‒163, 165, 166 n. 16, 170, 171‒172, 183, 190‒191, 193‒196, 254, 260‒261, 268, 269, 322, 369‒388, 400, 401 n. 14 anthropocentrism: 153, 168, 178, 235, 243, 339‒340, 353, 361 anthropomorphism (anthropomorphisation): 26, 56 n. 22, 71, 110, 117, 168, 179, 180, 205‒206, 207, 233, 235‒236, 242, 260, 261‒262, 288, 289, 298 anthrozoology: 6 n. 7, 409‒410, 411 antler: 163‒164, 167‒168, 170, 291, 346 n. 4 (see also ‘horn’) Apadana reliefs: 11, 312‒313, 319, 336, 337

apkallu (‘sage’): 253, 254, 260‒263, 268, 270, 273 appropriation: see ‘οἰκείωσις’ aristocracy: 19, 30, 208, 258, 270, 310, 318, 358, 360, 382 (see also ‘status’) arthritis: 22, 23, 31‒32 Athenian cavalry archive: 29 autobiography: 118‒128, 129 (see also ‘biography’) Babylon: 11, 253‒271, 308, 309‒310, 312 n. 8, 314, 317, 325‒326 ‘barbarians’: 109, 111, 145, 234, 325 bardocucullus: 360‒361 behaviourism: 179, 180, 236 n. 5 Beijing: 305, 324, 325, 328 bestiality: 9, 39‒58, 114‒116 (see also ‘zooerasty’ and ‘zoophilia’) biography: 9, 39, 89‒138, 233 (see also ‘autobiography’) blood: 24 n. 9, 27, 33‒34, 51, 62, 63, 75, 194, 216, 225 n. 31, 279, 294‒295, 297, 389, 399, 402, 404, 429 n. 38 bone: 22, 65, 126, 320 n. 16, 325, 327, 339, 346‒347, 393, 418 boundaries: 5, 11, 26 n. 11, 44, 116 n. 70, 127, 194, 205, 206‒207, 209, 275, 282, 293‒297, 339, 341, 342‒347, 355 bucolic world: 12, 370, 372, 377‒378, 380 cage: 50, 67, 72, 74, 76‒77, 306, 307 n. 2, 317, 328, 343, 356 (see also ‘stable’) Campana reliefs: 98 Carthage: 140‒141 Casa dei Casti Amanti: 353 Casa dei Ceii: 357 Casa dei Dioscuri: 360, 367 Casa del Cinghiale: 361 Casa del Fauno: 112, 339, 353 Casa del Forno: 354 Casa del Menandro: 352, 353

480 | Indices

centaur: 2, 11, 127 n. 95, 243, 267, 278, 283‒284, 286, 289, 290, 292, 294, 372, 376, 454 ceratophagia: 163 children: 22, 30, 33‒34, 39, 42, 51‒52, 53, 63, 71‒72, 78, 79, 151, 152, 190, 228, 264, 268, 295, 327, 350‒351, 357‒358, 410, 417 n. 16, 425 n. 34 cinaedus: 425‒426 claw: 74, 291, 306 clay lamps: 48‒49 cockfight: 33, 279, 281‒282, 284, 285, 287, 295 combat: 11, 73, 129, 196 n. 24, 260, 275, 276, 277‒282, 283, 285, 288, 289 n. 32, 290, 292‒298, 300‒301, 303, 326 (see also ‘warfare’) comedy: 10, 205‒229, 382, 394 communication: 4, 9, 65, 69‒70, 101‒103, 117, 122‒123, 139‒155, 244 n. 17, 411, 420 congeniality: 2, 108, 112, 113 co-operation: 2, 108, 110‒111, 112, 113, 149, 155, 244‒245, 247 courage: 73, 108, 175 n. 37, 195‒196, 237, 239‒240 cruelty: 26‒27, 33, 52, 53, 76‒79, 103, 115 n. 67, 123‒125, 127, 194, 246, 247, 329, 350, 372, 391, 424 cyborg: 297 n. 49 Delphi: 266, 267 Derveni krater: 370 n. 5 δικαιοσύνη: see ‘justice’ dirge: see ‘epicedion’ domestication: 19, 22, 40, 51, 61‒88, 92, 186, 197, 341, 355, 357, 358‒359, 361 Domus aurea: 358‒359 dung: 66, 94, 207, 214 n. 15, 222, 229, 345 earthquake: 175, 354 egg: 152, 162‒163, 167, 399, 400 egomorphism: 206, 207 n. 5 elephantiasis: 417 n. 17 emotional security: 64‒72

Enuma Eliš: 257 envy: 9‒10, 56, 159‒180 Ephesus: 421 epicedion: 55‒56, 116‒118, 128 (see also ‘epitaph’) Epicureanism: 143, 237 n. 6, 240 epitaph: 2‒3, 4‒5, 17, 31‒34, 54‒56, 64‒65, 66‒67, 68, 74, 78‒79, 96 n. 19, 97, 98 n. 24, 112, 117, 350‒351 (see also ‘epicedion’) Esagila: 254, 255, 258 Eshnunna: 314 eunuchs: 56 n. 21, 326, 421‒422, 424‒428 euphemism: 409, 419, 420, 421, 430 (see also ‘taboo’) fable: 10‒11, 12, 25‒26, 29, 39‒40, 119 n. 77, 128 n. 98, 205, 207‒208, 213‒221, 222‒223, 224‒225, 228, 229, 243, 245 n. 21 farming: see ‘agriculture’ festivals: 5, 26‒27, 342‒343 fight: see ‘combat’ and ‘warfare’ food: 4, 7, 8, 12, 20, 21, 40, 70‒71, 72, 76, 101‒103, 123, 139, 141, 142, 143, 148‒149, 155, 171, 189, 190, 192, 240, 306, 325, 326, 342, 345, 372, 389‒405, 466‒468 Forbidden City: 305‒306, 324, 328‒329 François Vase: 375‒376, 386 friendship: 1, 2, 9, 41, 57, 63, 69, 73, 109‒111, 112, 151, 176‒177, 246, 247, 358, 359 funerary monument: see ‘epitaph’ games: 11‒12, 28 n. 14, 50, 68, 73, 77, 184, 266, 267, 287, 290, 469‒470 Ganges: 106 garum: 345 gigantomachy: 278, 281 n. 18, 284, 287 n. 30, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 377 n. 19, 377 n. 26 Golden House: see ‘Domus aurea’ grinding mill: 27, 125‒128, 354 Handlungsfähigkeit: see ‘agency’ Hebrew: 149‒150, 311, 317, 326 n. 26, 327

Index rerum | 481

Herculaneum: 393 hetaira: 45 (see also ‘prostitute’) hibernation: 179 hippomanes: 164, 165, 170 homosexuality: 240‒241, 423‒424, 425‒426 horn: 24, 47‒48, 162, 165, 167, 168, 171‒172, 210, 291, 293, 297 n. 48, 313‒314, 319, 320‒322, 343, 378 (see also ‘antler’) House of Menander: see ‘Casa del Menandro’ House of the Baker: see ‘Casa del Forno’ House of the Ceii: see ‘Casa dei Ceii’ House of the Chaste Lovers: see ‘Casa dei Casti Amanti’ House of the Dioscuri: see ‘Casa dei Dioscuri’ House of the Faun: see ‘Casa del Fauno’ House of the Wild Boar: see ‘Casa del Cinghiale’ hunting: 2‒3, 12, 19, 31, 32, 33, 62, 64, 66, 67, 73, 94, 96‒97, 99‒107, 129, 139, 147, 155, 165, 186, 190, 196‒197, 198, 221 n. 24, 241, 278, 280‒281, 284, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 294, 295, 301, 307, 309, 311, 312 n. 8, 313, 315, 316, 317, 318, 325, 329, 334, 339, 341, 346, 347, 356, 357, 369, 371‒372, 375‒376, 382‒383, 386, 400, 410, 469 hybrids: 4 n. 4, 11, 51, 116 n. 70, 118, 209, 220, 243, 253‒273, 275, 277, 278, 281, 282‒284, 286, 288, 289‒291, 293‒298, 311, 341, 427 Hydaspes (river): 28, 106, 109 India: 69, 106‒107, 117, 145, 184, 197, 198‒199, 305, 309, 314‒315, 319 n. 16, 321‒322, 326 n. 26, 335, 343, 419 n. 20 intelligence: 26, 43, 63‒64, 95, 98, 118, 122, 174‒175, 178, 215, 241, 244, 395 (see also ‘rationality’) interspecies relationships: 9, 39‒58, 114‒116, 244‒245, 249 invidia: see ‘envy’ iustitia: see ‘justice’ ivory: 309, 313, 319, 337

justice: 12, 76, 142‒143, 147, 153‒154, 175 n. 37, 178, 237, 244 n. 20, 261, 268, 269, 356, 381, 395, 397 Karnak: 309, 328, 337, 338 κίναιδος: see ‘cinaedus’ kulullû (merman): 262 labour: 20‒21, 23‒30, 75‒76, 89, 124‒127, 139, 142, 198‒200, 345 language: see ‘communication’ laudatio funebris: 116‒117, 128 (see also ‘epicedion’) life expectancy: 8‒9, 20‒35 love for animals: 2, 3, 9, 28, 29, 39‒58, 63, 64, 94‒97, 100‒102, 114‒116, 125, 178, 244‒245, 246 (see also ‘bestiality’, ‘pet’, ‘zooerasty’ and ‘zoophilia’) love gifts: 61, 67‒68, 72‒76, 77, 326 luxury: 79, 196, 237‒238, 240, 353, 395 lyngurium: 165 maenad: 45‒46, 47‒48, 370, 371, 372, 376, 377, 382, 385 magic: 66, 119, 120‒122, 123, 172, 175, 236‒237, 321, 423 n. 27, 430 ‘Master of Animals’ motif: 310‒311, 333 Mémoires d’Hadrien: 2 Memphis: 253 menageries: 305, 306‒307, 309, 312‒315, 317, 318, 321, 324‒330, 342‒343, 355‒356, 358 milk production: 23, 164, 400 Ming Dynasty: 305‒307, 318 n. 14, 320, 325, 327, 329, 330 n. 27 mixed beings: see ‘hybrids’ moderation: see ‘σωφροσύνη’ ‘monster’: 45, 106, 114, 151, 152, 188, 205, 217, 226, 228, 255, 260, 261, 262, 264, 271, 297 n. 49, 311, 323, 372, 394, 396‒397, 422 n. 25, 473‒474 moral consciousness: 9‒10, 43, 47 n. 12, 79‒80, 114‒116, 127‒128, 130, 151, 153, 159, 176‒178, 233‒250, 327, 403, 405

482 | Indices

rapta motif: 32 rationality: 4, 9, 10, 11, 26, 118, 122, 139‒155, 162‒163, 166, 168, 233‒250, 345, 359, 361, 395, 430 n. 40 (see also ‘intelligence’) recognition (ἀναγνώρισις): 66, 94‒98, 123, 245

326, 329, 345, 354, 378, 400, 418, 471‒472 sadism: see ‘cruelty’ Sala degli Animali: 358 Sardis: 310 satyr: 45‒46, 188, 220 n. 23, 283, 370‒371, 372, 376, 380, 385 scent: 31 n. 21, 94‒95, 196, 240 self-preservation: see ‘οἰκείωσις’ shepherds: 12, 140 n. 3, 254, 310, 325, 347, 369, 372, 373‒376, 377, 378‒379 shows: 11‒12, 28 n. 14, 30, 47, 49, 50, 128, 290, 315‒317, 328, 329, 343, 345, 409, 412, 413‒417, 430, 469‒470 simile: 187, 196, 211, 219, 418 slaves: 4 n. 4, 5, 30, 45 n. 10, 47‒48, 63, 74‒75, 76, 92 n. 5, 94‒95, 123‒127, 200, 211, 215 n. 17, 216, 217, 220, 222, 225, 227, 234, 323, 347‒349, 352, 382 social integration: 64‒72 σωφροσύνη: 237 n. 7, 240‒241, 265 Sparta: 28 n. 14, 29, 53, 65 n. 1, 69, 188, 239‒240, 422 n. 25, 424 spectacles: see ‘shows’ stable: 122‒123, 345, 353‒354 (see also ‘cage’) status (prestige): 8, 10, 12, 21, 25, 27, 28‒29 n. 14, 30, 31, 62, 69, 74, 79, 96, 111, 112 n. 59, 208‒209, 239, 253, 267, 271, 281 n. 19, 283, 285, 288, 289, 307, 312 n. 8, 314, 321, 329, 343, 371‒372, 375‒376, 381, 405, 430 Stoicism: 143‒144, 145, 147, 160, 176, 178, 237 n. 6, 238‒239, 248‒250, 344 suicide: 69, 114‒115, 150‒151 Susa: 308‒309 swineherd: 66, 94‒97, 374, 378, 379 symbiosis: 112 (see also ‘congeniality’ and ‘co-operation’) sympathy: 3, 12, 66, 76, 97, 103, 104‒105, 361‒362, 370 symposium: 45, 66, 78, 208, 213, 214 n. 15, 222‒223, 228, 242, 243, 380, 382, 428

sacrifice: 4, 23 n. 5, 26‒27, 27 n. 12, 29 n. 16, 69, 89, 142, 153, 186, 188, 315‒316, 318,

taboo: 39‒58, 114‒116, 173 (see also ‘euphemism’)

names of animals: 2‒3, 24, 28, 29, 31, 32, 55, 56‒57, 64, 65‒66, 68, 89‒90, 92, 93‒98, 99‒105, 107‒116, 117 n. 74, 129, 137, 138, 221 n. 24, 392 Nimrud: 254, 273, 313, 316, 317, 319, 336 novel: 2‒3, 47, 49, 118‒128 οἰκείωσις: 248‒249 Oxyrhynchus: 347‒349 paradeisoi: 309‒310 paradoxography: 39, 107, 321 Parium: 349‒351, 353, 366 pauperies: 349 Persepolis: 11, 305, 312, 317, 318, 319‒320, 323, 326, 336, 337 Persia: 11, 145, 218, 262, 305‒338 pet: 3, 7, 9, 19‒20, 30‒34, 39 n. 1, 42, 51, 53‒56, 57‒58, 61‒88, 89, 96, 116‒118, 139‒155, 186, 191 n. 12, 318, 341, 346, 392, 411, 422 n. 25 (see also Index animalium below) philosophy: 4, 39, 79, 98, 119, 139‒155, 159‒180, 233‒250, 276 n. 3, 389, 395‒396, 398, 411‒412, 413 φθόνος: see ‘envy’ plague: 186, 188, 419 Pompeii: 27 n. 12, 46, 112, 339, 340, 346, 353‒354, 357‒358, 360, 367 pork: 305, 390, 401, 402 Porta Praenestina: 355‒356 Praeneste: 410 n. 2 prestige: see ‘status’ prostitute: 50, 52, 223, 229, 426 (see also ‘hetaira’) πρῶτος εὑρετής: 343

Index animalium | 483

teleology: 167, 180, 242 n. 15, 263 τέρας: see ‘monster’ τέχνη: 26, 190, 244 Thessaly: 28 n. 13, 119, 120, 125 Tiber: 401, 405 tomb: see ‘epitaph’ tooth: 32, 55, 78, 122, 227, 291, 322, 351 tragedy: 97‒98, 188‒193, 210, 213, 222, 224, 225, 229, 344, 350, 381‒382 Trojan War: 35, 94 Troy: 31 n. 20, 94‒95, 188, 189, 193, 281 tusk: 195, 291, 313, 319, 337, 378‒379

Vestalia: 27 veterinary medicine: 6 n. 7, 7, 13, 23, 30, 325, 472‒473 vivarium: 355‒356 (see also ‘menageries’) vivisection: 409, 412 n. 4, 413‒417, 429 n. 38

ultima verba: 117 n. 73 urine: 162‒163, 164‒165, 166‒167, 171, 174 n. 32, 190‒191, 402 Uruk: 255‒256, 262‒263

zoo: see ‘menagerie’ zooarchaeology: 20‒21, 22, 23, 31 zooerasty: 42, 44, 49, 51 (see also ‘bestiality’) zoophilia: 42, 47 n. 12, 51 n. 19, 115 n. 69, 116 n. 70 (see also ‘bestiality’) ‘zoopolis’: 339, 340‒341, 358‒362

vegetarianism: 140‒147, 244 n. 20, 468‒469

warfare: 3, 28, 29, 30, 109, 110‒111, 114, 129, 187, 200, 218, 219‒220, 225 n. 31, 316, 344, 345, 347 n. 5 (see also ‘combat’) witchcraft: see ‘magic’

Index animalium Index animalium ant: 106, 189, 244 n. 18 antelope: 311, 313, 319 n. 16, 325, 328, 343, 355 n. 16 ape: 10‒11, 12‒13, 77‒78, 106, 151, 313, 323 n. 22, 334, 360‒361, 367, 411 n. 3, 415 n. 9, 427 n. 37, 459‒460 (see also ‘monkey’) ass: see ‘donkey’ basbas (bird): 326 bear: 52‒53, 154, 210, 307, 313, 315, 316, 328‒329, 335, 343, 355, 356‒358, 375‒376, 379, 392 beaver: 165, 166 bee: 142, 152, 171, 186, 189, 197‒198, 244 n. 18 beetle: 150, 207, 214 n. 15, 222, 229 bird: 19, 30, 32‒33, 35, 44, 50, 51, 53, 54‒55, 56, 68, 69‒71, 72, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 88, 106, 115 n. 68, 116‒118, 120, 121‒122, 128, 129, 140‒147, 148‒149, 152, 153, 167‒168, 169, 173, 176, 188,

189, 190, 194, 207, 209‒210, 214 n. 15, 216, 217, 221, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 240, 244, 279, 281‒282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 295, 305, 306, 307, 311, 312, 313, 314, 316, 321, 322, 326, 329, 340, 342, 343, 353 n. 13, 389, 400, 404, 422 n. 25, 452‒454, 460 boar: 32, 187, 195‒196, 278, 281, 283, 284, 286, 289, 291, 294, 295, 301, 345, 356‒357, 361, 374, 378‒379, 386 (see also ‘sow’) buffalo: 313 bull: 22, 23, 44, 49, 51, 187, 195‒196, 210, 227, 278, 279, 280 n. 13, 283, 284, 286, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 296, 297 n. 48, 302, 312, 316, 321, 355, 458 (see also ‘cattle’, ‘cow’ and ‘ox’) buzzard: 224, 229, 389 camel: 305, 307, 311, 312, 313, 334, 344‒345, 355 carp: 254, 261, 262

484 | Indices

cat: 8, 30, 52, 64, 69 n. 10, 73‒74, 77, 79, 91, 140 n. 2, 165, 305, 329, 346, 353, 354‒355, 454, 460 cattle: 20‒21, 22, 23‒24, 25, 30, 31, 164, 287 n. 30, 325, 326, 328, 341, 354, 359, 375‒376, 377, 378, 379, 400, 458 (see also ‘bull’, ‘cow’ and ‘ox’) centaur: 2, 11, 127 n. 95, 243, 267, 278, 283‒284, 286, 289, 290, 292, 294, 372, 376, 454 chameleon: 168 cheetah: 74‒75, 88, 313, 315, 329 chicken: 148‒149, 194, 227, 228, 312, 313, 314, 326 n. 26, 389 chimera: 188 cicada: 33 cock: 30, 33, 72, 75, 88, 148‒149, 221, 226, 228, 229, 279, 281‒282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 295, 306, 313, 326 n. 26, 422 n. 25 cockroach: 340 coot: 72 cow: 8, 21, 22, 142, 147, 164, 339, 343, 379, 458 (see also ‘bull’, ‘cattle’ and ‘ox’) crab: 205, 213, 216, 219, 224, 225, 229, 405 crane: 145, 189 crocodile: 314, 316, 329, 355 crow: 35, 69, 209, 226, 240 dog: 1, 3, 8, 19, 22‒23, 27 n. 12, 30, 31‒32, 34, 39, 51, 52, 53, 55‒57, 62‒76, 77, 78‒79, 84, 85, 87, 89, 91, 92‒106, 110, 115 n. 68, 129, 139‒140, 147, 148‒154, 162‒163, 166‒167, 186, 188, 193, 205, 213, 214 n. 15, 216, 219, 221‒222, 225‒226, 228, 229, 280, 283, 295, 301, 306, 314, 321, 329, 343, 345, 346‒347, 349, 355, 356‒357, 361, 374, 378‒380, 415, 422 n. 25, 454‒455, 461‒462 (see also ‘lapdog’) dolphin: 43, 51, 115 n. 68, 210, 242‒248, 249‒250, 266, 267, 393‒394, 455, 462 donkey: 1‒2, 5, 8, 17, 22, 24‒27, 30, 45‒49, 89, 93, 115 n. 67, 118‒128, 129, 199, 205, 217, 223, 227, 228, 229, 243, 305, 312, 316, 317 n. 13, 321‒322, 325, 343,

344‒345, 347‒349, 352, 354, 361, 380, 388, 456‒457, 463‒464 dove: 33, 146, 148‒149, 152 (see also ‘pigeon’) duck: 70, 353 n. 13 dung-beetle: 207, 214 n. 15, 222, 229 eagle: 44, 115 n. 68, 152, 188, 214 n. 15, 216, 226, 306 elephant: 35, 51, 106, 169, 173, 306‒307, 313, 314, 316, 317 n. 13, 323, 325, 329, 334, 335, 343, 355, 356, 462 falcon: 307 fish: 8, 11, 12, 30, 32, 39, 106, 228, 229, 245 n. 21, 253‒273, 278 n. 10, 308, 311, 316, 340, 345, 354, 389‒405, 455‒456, 463 flea: 150, 216 n. 19 fly: 55, 150, 167‒168, 187 fox: 27 n. 12, 152, 186, 190, 214 n. 15, 216, 228, 283, 290, 389 francolin: 227, 314 frog: 210‒211, 224 gazelle: 325 gecko: 162‒163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170‒172, 176, 179 giraffe: 11, 307, 311, 312, 319, 320, 329, 343 goat: 23, 30, 43, 45, 46, 71‒72, 116 n. 70, 162‒163, 167, 186, 188, 196, 283, 310‒311, 312, 325, 326, 341, 343, 354, 374, 381, 382, 400 goby: 400, 404 goose: 30, 51, 53, 70, 71, 72, 79, 86 griffin: 321 haja-bird: 314 (see also ‘peacock’) hare: 30, 33, 67‒68, 71, 72, 73‒74, 76‒77, 85, 86, 87, 100, 164, 283, 290, 370, 411 hawk: 322 hedgehog: 162‒165, 166, 169, 171, 178, 179, 187, 190‒193, 206‒207, 212, 216, 389 heron: 70, 167‒168 hippopotamus: 91 horse: 2‒3, 8, 12, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27‒30, 39, 43, 44, 46, 52, 53, 56, 66, 72, 91,

Index animalium | 485

105, 107‒116, 117 n. 74, 122‒123, 125‒126, 129, 137, 138, 139, 193, 199, 227, 243, 267, 283‒284, 295, 305, 307, 308, 311, 312, 313, 321‒322, 329, 334, 349, 350‒353, 354, 378, 390, 409, 422 n. 25, 456‒457, 463‒464 (see also ‘mare’) hyaena: 154‒155, 176 hybrids: 4 n. 4, 11, 51, 116 n. 70, 118, 209, 220, 243, 253‒273, 275, 277, 278, 281, 282‒284, 286, 288, 289‒291, 293‒298, 311, 341, 427 ibex: 311 ‘ibor’ (bird): 169 insects: 10, 19, 30, 33, 55, 66‒67, 92, 106, 142, 150, 152, 164‒165, 167‒168, 171, 186, 187, 189, 198, 205‒232, 244 n. 18, 340, 381, 393, 399, 457, 464‒465 jackdaw: 70, 209, 217, 226, 244 καλλίας: 12 kite: 152 lapdog: 31, 56, 96, 346‒347 leopard: 50, 71, 72, 74, 195‒197, 305, 306, 313, 315, 317, 318 n. 14, 329, 336, 343, 369, 375, 376 leveret: 33 lion: 41 n. 3, 52, 143, 152, 155, 187, 188, 190, 195, 196, 197, 210, 225, 269, 278, 283, 284, 286, 289, 291‒292, 293, 296, 303, 305, 307, 311, 312 n. 8, 315‒316, 317‒319, 325, 326, 327‒328, 329, 330 n. 27, 336, 338, 355, 356‒357, 375‒376, 377, 378‒379, 458, 465 lizard: 33, 34, 171, 191 locust: 66‒67, 150, 229 lynx: 52, 64, 162‒163, 165, 166, 169, 171, 174 n. 32, 369, 372‒373 magpie: 69 manticora: 322 mare: 22, 28 n. 14, 164, 170 (see also ‘horse’)

Melhuhha-birds: 314 mixed beings: see ‘hybrids’ monkey: 8, 10‒11, 12, 30, 39, 48‒49, 52, 64, 79, 151, 313, 316, 317, 319, 323, 325‒326, 336, 360, 409‒431, 459‒460 (see also ‘ape’) ‘monster’: 45, 106, 114, 151, 152, 188, 205, 217, 226, 228, 255, 260, 261, 262, 264, 271, 297 n. 49, 311, 323, 372, 394, 396‒397, 422 n. 25, 473‒474 mosquito: 19 n. 1 mouse: 19, 214, 217, 226, 227, 228, 346, 392 mule: 22 n. 4, 24‒27, 29, 75‒76, 118 n. 77, 125‒127, 186, 193, 199‒200, 243, 308, 349, 352, 353‒354, 378‒379 mullet: 397, 400, 401‒402, 403‒404 nightingale: 53, 209 octopus: 168 okapi: 11, 305, 311, 312, 319‒320, 322‒323, 329, 337 onager: 343 oryx: 343 ostrich: 311, 316, 343 owl: 152, 229 ox: 21, 23‒24, 27, 29 n. 16, 30, 75, 76‒77, 120, 139, 142, 167, 186, 187, 325, 326, 344, 345, 352, 353, 354, 374, 381, 387, 390, 458 (see also ‘bull’, ‘cattle’ and ‘cow’) panther: 195, 196, 283, 316, 356‒357 parrot: 32‒33, 53, 69, 78, 106, 116‒118, 128, 129, 146, 305, 306, 307, 311‒312, 322, 329 partridge: 140‒147, 153, 227, 404 peacock: 169, 173, 176, 305, 306, 307, 311, 312, 313, 314, 326 n. 26, 329 (see also ‘haja-bird’) pheasant: 306, 342 phoenix: 35, 306 pig: 4‒5, 8, 12, 17, 22‒23, 39, 78, 221, 228, 229, 236‒242, 298, 341, 344, 346, 354, 361, 389, 390, 400, 414‒415, 416‒417, 418, 429, 430, 458

486 | Indices

pigeon: 8, 67, 240 n. 13, 340 (see also ‘dove’) plover: 169, 173 pole-cat: 228 quail: 72, 77 rabbit: 39 (see also ‘hare’) raven: 35, 69, 147, 244 rhinoceros: 305, 311, 312, 313, 314, 321, 322, 323‒324, 329, 335, 337, 343, 355 rooster: see ‘cock’ ruiying: 321 salamander: 150 scorpion: 1, 311, 321, 322 sea bass: 400, 401 n. 13, 404 seal: 43, 162‒163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 173 n. 27, 268 sea snail: 185 serpent: see ‘snake’ sheep: 22, 23, 46, 140 n. 3, 142, 152, 155, 187, 194, 226, 228, 308, 316, 326, 343, 354, 359, 374, 378‒379, 400, 458 shell: 185, 227, 229 siren: 188, 280, 283 snail: 185, 191, 397‒398 snake: 44, 51, 53, 54, 106, 164, 170, 171, 188, 190, 197, 210, 216, 220, 226, 227, 280, 283, 357‒358, 371, 397, 422 n. 25, 458‒459, 465

sow: 22‒23, 162‒163, 166, 226, 278, 281 n. 18, 283, 284, 345 (see also ‘boar’) sparrow: 54‒55, 56, 79, 117‒118, 217, 227 sphinx: 188, 280, 283, 321, 377 stag: 35, 120, 162, 163‒164, 165, 166, 167‒ 168, 170 n. 22, 171‒172, 176, 311, 318 swan: 44, 50, 51, 54, 70, 228 swordfish: 396 thrush: 69 tick: 66, 216 tiger: 11, 106, 115 n. 68, 152, 198‒199, 305‒306, 307, 311, 312, 313, 318 n. 14, 321, 322, 329, 355 tortoise: 19, 54, 71, 78, 227, 229 turtle: 44 unicorn: 321‒322 viper: 357‒358, 397 wasp: 10, 187, 189, 205‒229, 381 weasel: 53, 194, 195, 214 n. 15, 346, 410 werewolf: 194 whale: 106, 226, 393 wolf: 152, 176, 186, 187‒188, 190, 193‒195, 220, 227, 344, 355, 356‒357, 379, 459, 465 worm: 164, 191, 389 zebu: 305, 307, 343

Index nominum (personarum sive animalium) Index nominum (personarum sive animalium) Achelous: 278, 283, 284, 286, 292, 293, 294, 297 Achilles: 112, 189, 267, 298 n. 50, 373, 376, 377 Actaeon: 120, 298 Adam: 149, 151, 155 Aesop: 25‒26, 205, 207‒208, 213‒221, 222‒223, 224‒225, 228, 229 Aethon (horse): 112 n. 59 Agamben, Giorgio: 6 n. 7, 275 n. 1

Agamemnon: 185, 193, 195‒196, 375 Agrippa: 357 Aiolos (ox): 24 Alcestis: 55 Alcibiades: 77, 78, 226 Alexander the Great: 28, 89, 93, 99, 106, 107‒116, 129, 137, 138, 255, 256, 258, 263 Allen, Woody: 46 Alma-Tadema, Lawrence: 369, 373

Index nominum (personarum sive animalium) | 487

Amphitrite: 394, 396 Anacharsis: 244 Anchises: 375‒376 Antaeus: 279, 284, 286, 287 n. 30, 287 n. 31, 290, 292, 293 Antinous: 374 Aphrodite: 196, 375 (see also ‘Venus’) Apollo: 44, 54, 278, 284, 285‒286, 288‒289, 292, 346, 373, 377, 378 Ares: 284, 286, 287 n. 30, 289 n. 32, 379 Argus (dog): 31 n. 20, 32, 66, 68, 89, 92, 93‒98, 100, 104, 129 Arion (singer): 245‒248 Aristaeus: 267‒268 Artemis: 35, 53, 265‒266, 376, 377 n. 26, 383 Artystone: 326 Asclepius: 267, 430 n. 40 Ashurnasirpal II: 316‒317, 319, 336 Astyanax: 295 Athena: 279, 286, 293, 373 Augustus: 69, 113, 198‒199 Azatiwata: 311 Bathyllus: 50, 51 Bdelycleon: 207‒208, 211, 213, 214 n. 15, 217, 220‒223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229 Bel-Marduk: 255, 261, 264, 270 Berossus: 11, 253‒271, 309‒310 Bertini, Giuseppe: 359‒360 Borysthenes (horse): 2‒3, 113, 117 n. 74 Bucephalas (horse): 28, 89, 93, 107‒116, 129, 137, 138 Cacus: 151‒152 Callicratidas: 423‒424, 428 Carcinus: 213, 219, 224, 225, 229 Castaigne, André: 109 n. 49, 137 Cecrops: 220, 227 Cephalus: 32, 52‒53 Cerberus: 221 n. 25, 280, 283 Charon: 210 Chiron (centaur): 11, 267‒268, 283‒284 Cimon: 28 n. 14 Circe: 236‒237, 239, 298 Clytemnestra: 185 Confucius: 320

Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus: 1 Corinna (puella in Ovid): 116‒118, 128, 129 Costa, Nino: 359 Crassus: 146 Crathis: 43 n. 7, 116 n. 70 Cronus: see ‘Kronos’ Cyclops: 152, 190, 217 Daisy (sheep): 46 Daniel: 327‒328 Darius: 308‒309, 326, 327 DeMello, Margo: 6 n. 7, 61‒62, 63, 65, 79, 118 n. 76, 124 n. 86 Deputy Dawg: 392 Derrida, Jacques: 275, 296 Dexter: 32 Diana: 120, 356 Diomedes: 193, 195, 196 n. 24 Dionysus: 45, 46, 185, 188, 196, 210, 222, 224, 343, 345, 369, 370, 371, 376‒377, 379, 382, 385 Dolon: 183, 193‒197 Dryope: 44, 51, 54 Edinburgh Painter: 11 Epaminondas: 69 Erigone: 32, 115 n. 68 Erinyes: 420 Eumaeus: 66, 94‒97, 374, 378, 379 Eumenides: 420 Eurystheus: 281, 295 Eurytion: 286, 287 n. 30, 379‒380 Faustini, Modesto: 359‒361, 367 Flavius Boethus: 413‒415, 416 n. 15 Franzoni, Francesco Antonio: 358 Frick, Grace: 2 Fuscus (dog): 31 Gaia: 279, 287 n. 30 Ganymede: 43, 44 Geertz, Clifford: 281 n. 19, 412 Geryon: 279, 282, 284, 286, 287 n. 30, 292, 293, 294, 379 Glaucis (dog): 55 Gryllus: 236‒242

488 | Indices

Hadrian (Roman emperor): 2‒3, 105, 113, 117 n. 74 Haraway, Donna: 6 n. 7, 58 n. 25, 297 n. 49, 340, 341 Hector: 189 Heleius Hellespontianus: 349‒352, 366 Helen: 51, 188, 196 Helladius: 420‒421 Hephaestion: 112 Heracles/Hercules: 151, 188‒189, 228, 267, 269, 275, 278‒282, 284, 285‒286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294‒295, 297, 300, 303, 375, 377 n. 19, 379, 410 n. 1 Hermes: 267, 374, 376‒379, 380, 382, 387 Hesperides: 280 Horme (dog): 31, 56‒57, 64, 97, 99‒105, 129 Hylas: 357‒358 Ingold, Tim: 4 n. 4, 179, 339, 341 Irtaštuna: 326 Isis: 119, 122 n. 84, 129, 265 Issa (dog): 56 Jason: 267 John the Baptist: 369, 379 Jupiter: 27, 198, 346, 422 n. 25 (see also ‘Zeus’)

Manetho: 255, 263 Marcus Aurelius: 2 Margarita (dog): 32 Mars Ultor: 355 Maryaddada: 326 Massinissa: 79 Medusa: 279 Melicertes: 266‒267 Mendes: 43, 45 Menelaus: 195‒196, 268, 375 Mickey Mouse: 392 Midgley, Mary: 6 n. 7, 339 Minotaur: 51, 278, 281 n. 18, 283, 284, 286, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 301, 376 Mutta: 326 Myia (dog): 55 Nabunassar: 258‒259 Nebuchadnezzar: 258, 310, 326 Neleus: 382 Nemo: 392 Neoptolemus: 189, 190, 191, 281, 295 Nereus: 268, 269, 278, 284, 286, 287 n. 30, 290, 291, 292, 293 Nero: 49 n. 16, 50, 358‒359, 422 n. 25 Ninurta: 254, 273, 326

Kelainos (ox): 24 Kluckhohn, Clyde: 412 Kronos: 44, 214 n. 15, 395 Kyon (dog): 221‒222, 228

Oannes: 11, 253‒271 Oceanus: 279 Odysseus: 31 n. 20, 32, 52, 66, 68, 89, 92, 93‒98, 129, 189, 191, 193, 195, 196 n. 24, 217, 236‒242, 280, 298, 373, 374, 376, 378, 379, 381, 394 Orpheus: 371

Labes (dog): 221, 228 Lacydes: 79 Laelaps (dog): 65 Leda: 43, 44, 50‒51 Lesbia: 54‒55, 56, 117, 199‒200 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim: 104 Leucothea: 266‒267 Lucius (‘donkey’): 9, 46, 47 n. 12, 115 n. 67, 118‒128, 129, 361 Lycurgus: 262, 264 Lydia (dog): 32, 98 n. 24 Lydus: 370, 371, 377, 385

Palaemon: 266‒267 Pan: 45, 46, 220 n. 23, 369, 372‒373 Paris (Trojan prince): 195, 196‒197, 375‒376 Pasiphae: 45, 49‒50, 51, 115 n. 67 Patrike (dog): 31 Patroclus: 112 Peina: 347‒349 Peleus: 298 Pelias: 382 Penelope: 53, 70, 96 n. 16, 98, 239‒240 Pentheus: 371 Peritas (dog): 110

Index locorum | 489

Perseus: 377, 379 Philocleon: 205, 207‒209, 213‒229 Philoctetes: 183, 188‒193, 195 Phylotimus: 400, 405 Pluto: 210 Podargos (ox): 24 Poseidon: 44, 279, 287 n. 30, 397 Priam: 48, 189, 225, 281, 295 Priapus: 47‒48 Procne: 209‒210 Prometheus: 262, 391 n. 1 Proteus: 268 Ptahhotep: 317, 336 Ptolemy II Philadelphus: 266, 316‒317, 342‒343 Pusamiski: 326 Pythagoras: 154, 265

Teniers, David: 360 Tereus: 209‒210 Theseus: 275, 278‒279, 281 n. 18, 284, 286, 288, 290, 292, 294, 301, 373, 376‒377, 383 Thrasymachus: 187‒188 Thutmose III: 309, 324‒325, 337 Tiamat: 261, 264 Tiglath-pileser I: 309, 315‒316 Tom & Jerry: 392 Top Cat: 392 Triton: 278, 284, 286, 287 n. 30, 290, 291, 292, 293 Troilus: 376 Typhoeus: 264 Ullikumi: 264 Uranus: 279

Rhesus: 193‒197 Venus: 43, 50 n. 17 (see also ‘Aphrodite’) Sargon II: 310 Schommer, François: 109 n. 49, 138 Semiramis: 43 Shalmaneser III: 313, 316 n. 12, 323, 334 Shen Defu: 305‒307, 318 n. 14, 320 n. 18, 324, 327, 328 Socles: 43, 114‒116 Solon: 96 n. 19, 244, 247‒248, 262, 264, 265 Sykes, Naomi: 19, 20‒21, 23

Xanthus (horse): 112 Xerxes: 185, 270 Yogi Bear & Booboo: 392 Yourcenar, Marguerite: 2 Zeus: 25, 35, 43‒44, 54, 94‒95, 264, 285, 378, 382 (see also ‘Jupiter’)

Index locorum Index locorum Aelian De nat. anim. 1.35: 175; 2.6: 43, 51 n. 18; 2.14: 175 n. 37; 3.9: 240 n. 11; 3.10: 191; 3.17: 164 n. 9, 171‒172, 174 n. 33; 3.19: 171 n. 24; 3.35: 141 n. 8; 4.7: 115 n. 68; 4.8: 43 n. 7, 116 n. 70; 4.17: 171 n. 24; 4.21: 312 n. 8; 4.31: 35; 4.40: 95 n. 15; 4.52: 312 n. 8, 313‒314, 321‒322; 4.56: 43; 4.58: 173 n. 27; 5.21: 173 n. 27; 5.42: 175; 5.45: 78; 5.51: 102 n. 33; 6.2: 43; 6.24: 165 n. 15; 6.25: 115 n. 68; 6.29: 43, 115 n. 68; 6.42: 116 n. 70; 6.44: 43, 114‒116; 6.49: 186; 6.64: 164‒165;

7.7–8: 175 n. 35; 7.19: 43, 45; 7.28: 115 n. 68; 7.29: 95 n. 15; 7.40: 69, 115 n. 68; 7.41: 79; 8.1: 110 n. 53; 10.41: 115 n. 68; 10.48: 175; 11.13: 115 n. 68; 11.18: 175; 12.5.3–8: 410 n. 1; 12.7: 175; 12.36: 53; 12.45: 246; 14.18: 164 n. 9; 17.7: 35; epilogue: 175 n. 37 Var. hist. 1.15: 240 n. 13; 13.42: 69 Aeschines Orat. 1.24: 76; 3.41: 76 Aeschylus Eum. 705: 220 n. 22

490 | Indices

Pers. 65: 212 n. 12 Sept. 907: 219‒220 Aesop Fab. 180 Perry: 25‒26 Aëtius De plac. rel. 2.25.12: 259; 2.28.1: 259; 2.29.2: 259 Alexis Aesop fr. 9: 215 n. 17 Anacreon fr. 388.1–6 Campbell: 380 Année Épigraphique AE 1955.181: 355 n. 16 AE 1994 [1997], no. 699: 31 Anthologia Latina 149 Riese: 43, 50 n. 17 Anthologia Palatina 6.45: 191; 6.169: 191; 6.228: 24 n. 9, 75; 6.312: 71‒72; 7.211: 64; 7.425: 70; 9.301: 126 n. 90; 11.77: 98 n. 24; 11.196: 419 n. 21 Antigonus Mir. 20: 164, 169‒170, 174 Antoninus Liberalis Met. 32.1‒3: 53‒54 Apollodorus Bibl. 2.5.11: 287 n. 30 Apollonius Rhodius Arg. 2.512–520: 267‒268; 4.1390–1392: 280 n. 14 Appian Bell. civ. 2.21: 30 n. 18 Apuleius Apol. 51: 169 n. 21; 170

Met. 1.2: 125 n. 89; 2.1: 120 n. 81; 2.4: 120; 2.5: 120 n. 82; 2.6: 121 n. 83; 3.26: 123 n. 85; 3.27: 123; 3.29: 127 n. 94; 4.3–4: 125 n. 88; 4.8: 127 n. 95; 6.29–30: 125 n. 88, 127 n. 95; 7.15: 125, 126 n. 90; 7.17–20: 125 n. 88; 7.21: 115 n. 67; 7.22: 115 n. 67; 8.29: 127 n. 96; 9.10‒13: 125‒126; 9.11: 126 n. 90; 9.12: 127 n. 93; 9.14‒31: 127‒128; 10.2‒12: 128; 10.5: 128 n. 97; 10.16–19: 125 n. 88; 10.19‒22: 115 n. 67, 361; 10.19.3: 50; 10.21‒22: 47; 10.23: 125 n. 88; 10.23‒28: 128; 10.29‒35: 47, 128; 11.20: 125 n. 89 Archestratus of Gela fr. 40: 395‒396 Archilochus fr. 103 Diehl: 190 Aretaeus De caus. 1.15: 194 n. 19 Aristophanes Ach. 880: 194 n. 19 Birds 5‒8: 209; 61: 210; 92: 210; 222: 210; 268‒305: 210; 466–475: 214 n. 15; 471: 214 n. 15; 485: 326 n. 26; 651–653: 214 n. 15; 707: 72, 326 n. 26; 1290: 77 Clouds 32: 30 n. 17; 70–72: 380‒381 Eccl. 1072–1073: 419 n. 21 Frogs 137–138: 210; 267: 210 Knights 706: 220 n. 22; 1017–1034: 221 n. 25 Lys. 471–477: 218; 694–695: 214 n. 15 Peace 41–49: 222; 129–130: 214 n. 15; 313‒315: 221 n. 25 Thesm. 130: 212 n. 12 Wasps 4: 217; 17: 216; 64‒66: 215; 113: 217; 114–124: 220; 129: 217; 131– 132: 217; 140: 217; 179–196: 217; 189: 217; 206–207: 217; 223–227: 211, 219; 368: 217; 389: 220; 408: 211; 420: 211; 423–425: 211; 430:

Index locorum | 491

220; 430–432: 218‒219; 438: 220; 455: 220 n. 22; 566: 214 n. 15; 819: 220; 903: 221; 933–934: 221; 1071– 1121: 211; 1087: 218; 1090: 212, 213 n. 13; 1105: 220 n. 22; 1181: 222; 1182: 214 n. 15, 215; 1258–1260: 222 n. 28; 1259: 214 n. 15; 1305–1306: 223; 1310: 223; 1401–1405: 214 n. 15; 1446–1449: 214 n. 15, 215, 222; 1457– 1458: 223; 1486: 224; 1489: 224; 1496: 224; 1506–1534: 224 Wealth 157: 72 Aristophanes of Byzantium Epit. 1.25: 173 n. 30; 2.488: 163‒164 Aristotle Ath. pol. 53.2: 190 De gen. anim. 725a: 165; 739b21–27: 164 n. 10 De part. anim. 663a8: 167 n. 18; 689b28– 34: 427 Eth. Eud. 1221a39–40: 160 n. 1; 1233b18‒21: 160‒161 Eth. Nic. 1108b1–3: 176‒177; 1141a26–28: 241 n. 14 fr. 107: 78 n. 30; 322: 161‒162; 504: 52‒53 Hist. anim. I 1 486b: 399; I 1 488a 9–11: 189; I 1 488b12–25: 173 n. 30; I 1 488b25: 176; I 2: 399; I 3: 399; I 6 490b27–3: 190; II 8 502a16–26: 426‒427; II 13 505a25: 401 n. 14; III 1 509b9: 190; III 11 517b22–27: 190; III 21 522b7–9: 164; IV 9 535a26– 536b23: 144 n. 18; V 2 540a3–4: 190; VI 18 572a19–22: 164; VI 18 573b15–17: 22‒23; VI 20 574b29–33: 22; VI 20 574b30–575a2: 95 n. 15; VI 21 575a31– 33: 22; VI 22 576a26–31: 22; VI 22 577a8–11: 164; VI 23 577b3–4: 22; VI 24 577b29: 22 n. 1; VI 24 577b29– 578a1: 25, 75‒76; VI 29 578b23–26: 35; VII 1–2 588a21–589b2: 175 n. 36; VII 9 596a11–12: 35; VII 12 597b27–29: 69, 78; VII 17 600b15–27: 163 n. 6; VIII 1 608a13–20: 175 n. 36; VIII 5 611a26–

31: 163; VIII 6 612b1–9: 192; VIII 6 612b10: 194 n. 19; VIII 9 614a22–23: 141 n. 8; VIII 47 631a1–8: 115 n. 68 Met. 980b1–981a3: 241 n. 14 Mir. 65 835a: 163 n. 6; 65–66 835a26–29: 171 n. 23; 75–77 835b27–32: 171 n. 23 Pol. I 1 1253a1–11: 189; I 1 1253a10–11: 175 n. 36; VI 5 1320a32‒b11: 76; VII 12 1332b5–6: 175 n. 36 Probl. XI 16 900b16: 425‒426 n. 34 Rhet. 1349a19–26: 235; 1366b1–4: 237 n. 7; 1380 b34–1381b37: 177 n. 40; 1387b25: 177 n. 39; 1393b–1394a: 216 Top. 109b35: 160; 110a1: 160 n.1 Arrian Anab. 1.12.1–2: 112; 5.4.3: 106; 5.6.8: 106 n. 43; 5.19.4–6: 28, 111‒112; 6.16.5: 106 n. 43; 7.14.1–4: 112 Cyn. 1.1–2.5: 99 n. 27; 3.5–6: 99 n. 28; 4.1–2: 99 n. 28; 4.5: 100; 5: 64, 99‒105, 346; 5.1–2: 31 n. 21; 5.6: 57; 7.2: 99 n. 28; 7.3: 101 n. 31; 9.1: 101 n. 31; 11.1‒2: 103 n. 34; 18.1: 104; 32.1‒2: 104 Ind. 13–14: 106; 29.9–16: 106; 30: 106 Artemidorus Oneir. 5.65: 426 n. 35 Athenaeus Deipn. 5 200d–201c: 343; 8 355a–357a: 400 n. 12; 9 388c: 115 n. 68; 12 519a: 79; 12 533f: 380; 13 606c: 173 n. 27; 14 654b–d: 342 Augustine Conf. 1.14.23: 152 De civ. 1.20: 150; 8.17: 151; 12.22: 149, 152 n. 30; 15.27: 150; 16.4: 150; 16.7: 150; 16.8: 151; 16.11: 149‒150; 18.41: 146 n. 24; 19.7: 140, 150, 152‒153; 19.12: 151, 152; 19.15: 151; 19.16: 149; 21.4: 150 De doct. Chr. 2.3: 148‒149; 2.7–9: 148; 2.8: 149 Enarr. in ps. 146.18: 151

492 | Indices

Ausonius Epist. 6.25–26: 345

Columella De re rust. 2.21: 27; 6.2: 41 n. 4; 6.2.1: 23; 6.2.9‒14: 24 n. 7; 6.4–19: 23 n. 6; 7.1.1‒3: 124; 7.12.1: 57 n. 24, 102; 7.12.13: 65 n. 1, 104

Babrius Fab. 7: 75; 29: 75

Cornelius Nepos See ‘Nepos’

Berossus Babyl. FGrHist 680 F1b: 256 n. 4, 264‒266; F8: 309‒310; F10: 258‒259; F12: 255‒256; F16: 259; F17a–c: 259; F18: 259 FGrHist 680 T1a: 256; T1b–c: 256; T2: 256; T3a–b: 256; T4: 256; T5: 256; T6‒12: 256; T11a: 256 n. 4

Corpus Hippocraticum De aëre, aquis et locis 22: 425 n. 33 De mul. aff. 203: 164 n. 12 De nat. mul. 34: 164 n. 12 De nutr. 19: 402 Vet. med. 3: 390‒391

Aulus Gellius See ‘Gellius’

Cassius Dio Hist. 53.33: 355; 54.9.8: 198‒199; 54.19: 355; 55.10.8: 355 n. 16; 69.10.2: 2, 105 n. 39, 105 n. 40, 113 n. 63; 78.1: 355 Cato Maior De agr. 132: 27; 138: 27 Catullus Carm. 2: 54‒55, 56; 3: 56 n. 22, 117‒118; 83: 199 Cicero Ad Att. 14.9: 346 De div. 1.76: 422 n. 25; 2.69: 422 n. 25 De fin. 1.45: 240 n. 12 De nat. deor. 2.160: 238 n. 8 De off. 1: 237 n. 7; 2.17: 41 n. 4 Tusc. 3.21: 160 n. 2; 4.17: 160 Claudius Aelianus See ‘Aelian’

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum CIL VI 130: 356 n. 18 CIL VI 29896: 32 CIL X 659 (= CLE 1176): 31 CIL XII 1122 (= CLE II 1522): 3 n. 3, 113 n. 63 CIL XIII 488: 55 Ctesias FGrHist 688 F45.8: 69, 312 n. 8, 322; F45dβ: 312 n. 8; F45q: 312 n. 8, 313‒314, 321‒322 Demosthenes Orat. 45.17: 190 Dig. 1.12.1.12: 357 n. 21; 9.1.1 pr.: 349; 9.1.1.5: 349; 9.1.1.10: 357 n. 19; 9.2.52.2: 352; 9.2.52.3: 352; 21.1.40–42: 356‒357; 47.20: 163 n. 8 Dinarchus fr. 7 Conomis: 420 n. 22

Clement of Alexandria Paed. 3.4: 56 Strom. 1.142.4: 145

Dio Cassius See ‘Cassius Dio’

Cleomedes De motu 2.4: 259

Diodorus Siculus Hist. 16.41: 310; 17.92: 110 n. 53

Index locorum | 493

Diogenes Laertius 5.43: 169 n. 20; 5.80: 215 n. 17; 7.49–51: 143 n. 14; 7.57: 145; 7.85: 248 n. 24; 7.87: 238; 7.89: 238; 10.127–128: 240 n. 12; 10.149–150: 240 n. 12 Epicurus Ep. Men. 127–128: 240 n. 12 RS 29–30: 240 n. 12 Etymologicum Magnum 144.23–32: 52‒53 Eubulus fr. 114 PCG: 423 n. 28 Eupolis fr. 332 PCG: 422‒423 Maricas fr. 207 (Schol. Aesch. Pers. 65): 212 n. 12 Euripides Bacch. 100: 210; 616–621: 210; 920–922: 210; 1017–1020: 210 fr. 403 Nauck: 177 Herc. 397–399: 280 n. 14 Med. 319: 220 n. 22 Or. 1198: 220 n. 22 Rhes. 208–215: 195 Galen Anat. adm. VIII 4 Garofalo (= II 669 Kühn): 414 n. 8; VIII 4 Garofalo (= II 673 Kühn): 414; VIII 8 Garofalo (= II 690 Kühn): 416‒417; VIII 8 Garofalo (= II 693 Kühn): 414; XI 5.110–111 Duckworth: 416; XIII 3.182 Duckworth: 429 n. 38; XV 6.315 Duckworth: 429 n. 38 De aff. dign. 7.2: 177 De alim. fac. 1.1, CMG V 4.2 pp. 201.4–202.6 (= VI 453 Kühn): 393; 1.1, CMG V 4.2 pp. 209.13–210.7 (= VI 467–468 Kühn): 402; 2.1, CMG V 4.2 p. 264.16–19 (= VI 555 Kühn): 400; 3.1, CMG V 4.2 pp. 333.23–334.3 (= VI 663 Kühn): 390; 3.2, CMG V 4.2 p. 337.11–20 (= VI 668– 669 Kühn): 397‒398; 3.24, CMG V 4.2

p. 361.11–16 (= VI 708‒709 Kühn): 401; 3.24, CMG V 4.2 p. 362.4–6 (= VI 710 Kühn): 401‒402; 3.24, CMG V 4.2 p. 363.22–26 (= VI 712–713 Kühn): 403; 3.25, CMG V 4.2 pp. 364.17–365.3 (= VI 714–715 Kühn): 404; 3.26, CMG V 4.2 p. 365.17–20 (= VI 716 Kühn): 403; 3.28, CMG V 4.2 p. 367.8–10 (= VI 718 Kühn): 404 De libr. propr. 2: 430 n. 40 De nat. fac. 1.5 (= II 10 Kühn): 390 De opt. med. cogn. V 6 (ed. Iskandar, CMG Suppl. Gr.): 429 n. 38 De propr. plac. II 2 Nutton: 430 n. 40 De san. tuend. 1.1, CMG V 4.2 p. 3.13–17 (= VI 2 Kühn): 398‒399; 1.3, CMG V 4.2 pp. 5.35–6.3 (= VI 7 Kühn): 389 In Hipp. de fract. comm. XVIIIb 611 Kühn: 417‒418 In Hipp. progn. III 7, CMG V 9.2 (= XVIIIb 236 Kühn): 419 Progn. V 8: 414‒415 Simp. med. 11.11–12 (XII 274 Kühn): 164 n. 11 Gellius Noct. Att. 5.2.4‒5: 110 n. 51; 5.14.28: 41 n. 3 Geoponica Geop. 13.9.5: 1 Hermogenes Progymn. p. 2 Rabe: 10‒11 Herodotus Hist. 1.23–24: 245; 2.46: 45; 2.57: 146; 2.66.4: 79; 2.67: 315; 2.134: 215 n. 17; 6.103.2–4: 28 n. 14 Hesiod Cat. fr. 160 (= P. Oxy. 2489): 378 Erga 276–279: 395; 278: 178, 382; 436– 438: 23 fr. 304 Merkelbach & West: 35 Theog. 233–236: 268; 278: 279; 293: 379; 444: 378

494 | Indices

Historia Augusta Hadr. 2.1: 105 n. 39; 20.12: 3, 105 n. 40, 113 n. 63; 20.13: 105 n. 39; 26.3‒4: 105 n. 39 Homer Il. 2.278: 239; 3.1–37: 196; 3.17: 375; 3.22–26: 196; 3.382: 196; 4.215–216: 267; 6.344: 188; 8.269–272: 196 n. 24; 8.409: 351; 10.21–24: 195; 10.21–29: 375; 10.29: 195; 10.114– 123: 196; 10.177–178: 195; 10.256– 257: 195; 10.333–335: 193; 12.167– 170: 218; 16.259–265: 218; 19.404– 418: 112; 22.66–76: 218, 225; 24.77: 351; 24.159: 351 Od. 4.368–369: 394; 5.333–335: 266; 5.413–422: 394; 9.447–460: 152; 10.203–574: 236‒237; 11.623–626: 280; 12.330–332: 394; 13.436– 437: 373; 14.24: 374; 14.50: 374; 14.435: 378; 14.518–519: 374; 15.319: 374, 378; 17.290–327: 31 n. 20; 17.292–295: 94 n. 11, 100 n. 30; 17.296–304: 94 n. 12; 17.304‒305: 66; 17.309‒310: 66; 17.312–323: 94‒95; 17.388: 374; 18.28: 78; 19.536–537: 70 Homeric Hymns Hom. Hymn. Aphr. 5.54–55: 375‒376; 5.158–160: 375; 5.200–201: 351 n. 9; 5.217: 351 Hom. Hym. Dion. 44: 210 Hom. Hymn. Herm. 4.491: 378; 4.567–573: 378‒379 Hom. Hymn. Pan. 19.23–24: 373 n. 11 Horace Epist. 2.2.75: 345 Sat. 1.6.103: 30 n. 18; 2.2.31: 401 n. 13

Inscriptiones Graecae IG XII 2.459: 41 n. 3 Isidore Etym. 12.2.20: 174 n. 32 John Chrysostom Hom. 59: 356 Josephus Ap. 1.128–131: 256 Julian Mis. 26 355b–c: 344‒345 Juvenal Sat. 3.207: 346; 6.60‒66: 50‒51; 6.314‒334: 47‒48; 6.651‒654: 55; 9.92: 48 n. 13; 12.34–36: 165 n. 15 Libanius Autob. 259: 345 Orat. 14: 356; 50: 345 Livy 21.62.3: 344; 27.23.2: 346; 27.37.3: 344; 27.37.6: 425 n. 30; 30.2.10: 346 Longus Daphnis & Chloe 1.8: 24 n. 7; 3.10: 380; 4.26: 24 n. 7; 4.38: 24 n. 7 Lucian Onos 50‒52: 46; 56: 47 Pseud. 17: 421‒422, 425 Macrobius Sat. 2.4.29–30: 69; 3.16.11–18: 401 n. 13; 3.16.17–18: 401 n. 13

Hyginus Fab. 31: 287 n. 30

Martial De spect. 5: 48 Epigr. 1.109: 56; 3.19: 357‒358; 11.69: 32, 98 n. 24; 14.128: 360

Iamblichus Vit. Pyth. 60: 154

Menander Dysc. 415: 382

Index locorum | 495

Ep. 229: 382; 327–328: 382 n. 31 fr. 538.6 Körte: 177 Menander Rhetor 2.377.9–11: 235 n. 3 Mnesitheus fr. 38 Bertier: 400 n. 12 Nepos Pelop. 1.1: 90 n. 1 Nicander Ther. 196: 194 n. 19 Nonnus Dion. 47.219–245: 115 n. 68 Oppian Hal. 1.80–89: 396; 5.665–680: 396‒397 Orosius Hist. 4.4.1–2: 344 Ovid Am. 2.6: 32‒33, 116‒118; 2.7.15–16: 125 n. 88 Fast. 4.681–712: 27 n. 12; 5.495–518: 29 n. 16; 6.311–318: 27 n. 12; 6.347–348: 27 n. 12 Met. 3.211: 65; 7.271–274: 35 Paul the Deacon Hist. misc. 16 (PL 95 991b): 356 Pausanias Per. 1.44.8: 267; 6.6.7–11: 194 n. 18; 8.10.10: 35; 10.12.9: 256 Pedanius Dioscurides De mat. met. 2.75.2: 164 n. 12; 2.81.3: 165 Petronius Sat. 21.2: 426 n. 35; 24: 48 n. 13; 46.3: 53 Philo De conf. ling. 191 Wendland: 412 n. 5

Philostratus Ap. 2.12: 35 Imag. 2.2: 267 Photius Bibl. 72 45a21 T10: 312 n. 8, 322; 278 528a40–b27: 162‒163; 279 535a12: 420‒421 Pindar Nem. 3.43–52: 267 Pyth. 2.72–73: 417 n. 16; 3.43–45: 267; 4.101–109: 267 Plato Def. 416.13: 177 Leg. 789b: 77; 836c: 240 n. 13 Phaed. 61b: 215 n. 17 Phaedr. 241d: 187 Phil. 48b11: 177 n. 39; 49d6–7: 177 n. 39 Rep. 2.16: 64 Tim. 92b–c: 395 Plautus Epid. 208–209: 345 Most. 778–782: 200 Pseud. 136: 125 n. 88 Pliny the Elder Nat. hist. 6.1: 170‒171; 7.123: 256; 7.193: 256; 8.7–9: 173 n. 29, 174 n. 32; 8.56: 76; 8.63: 196 n. 25; 8.109: 165 n. 15; 8.115: 170 n. 22; 8.118: 164; 8.133: 174 n. 32; 8.133–135: 191; 8.137: 170 n. 22, 174 n. 32; 8.138: 192; 8.142‒145: 32, 115 n. 68; 8.147: 31 n. 21; 8.149‒150: 110 n. 53; 8.154: 108 n. 48, 110 n. 51, 113 n. 64; 8.155: 43; 8.155‒158: 113 n. 64, 115 n. 68; 8.180: 23; 8.208: 344; 9.24: 246; 9.28: 246; 9.167: 32; 9.169: 401 n. 13; 10.18: 115 n. 68; 10.44: 173 n. 27; 10.76: 171; 10.118: 69; 10.120‒124: 69; 10.166: 240 n. 13; 10.195: 164; 23.44: 78 n. 30; 28.92– 93: 175; 28.149: 164; 28.211: 164;

496 | Indices

28.226: 164; 29.124: 173 n. 27; 32.26: 165 n. 15 Pliny the Younger Epist. 4.2: 34, 53; 9.33.6: 41 n. 4 Paneg. 81.1–3: 105 n. 39 Plutarch Aem. 10.6–8: 34 Alc. 9: 78; 10: 77 Alex. 1.1–3: 90 n. 1; 5.8: 112 n. 62; 6.1: 107; 6.3–4: 107‒108; 15.4–5: 112 n. 62; 16.7: 109; 32.7: 28, 109; 44.3: 109, 111 n. 57; 61: 109, 110 n. 53 Brut. anim. 1 986a: 237; 1 986b: 237; 2 986d: 239; 2 986e: 239; 3 987b: 237; 4 987c–d: 239; 4 987f: 239; 4 988c: 239; 5 988f–989a: 43, 45; 5–9 988f–992c: 237 n. 7; 6 989b: 240; 6 989c: 240; 7 990d: 240; 7 990e–f: 240‒241; 9 991d: 241; 9 991e: 241; 9 991f: 241; 9 992a: 241; 10 992c: 241; 10 992e: 241 Caes. 17.4: 113 n. 64; 18.2: 113 n. 64 Cato Maior 5.3–4: 25 Coniug. praec. 45 144e: 115 n. 68 Conv. 3 149c–e: 243; 4 150a: 243; 7 152d: 244; 12 155c: 244; 16 159b–c: 244; 18 161a: 245; 18 161b–d: 246‒247; 19 162f: 248 De am. prol. 493b–e: 178 n. 41; 495a: 178 n. 41 De def. or. 415c: 240 n. 11 De esu carn. 7 996a: 76, 78 De frat. amic. 482c: 52 De inv. 537a: 172 n. 26; 537b: 172 n. 25, 177 De soll. anim. 2 960a: 175 n. 36, 249; 3 961d: 172; 4 962a: 249; 4 962c: 249; 6 964b: 142; 13 969a–c: 147; 13 970a–b: 25; 14 970c: 115 n. 68; 15 970f: 110 n. 53; 16 971e–f: 191; 16 972a: 192; 23 975e: 234; 23 975f: 234; 27 978e–f: 168; 36 984e: 53; 36 984f: 115 n. 68, 250 De superst. 5 167c: 115 n. 68 Quaest. conv. 680c–683b: 423 n. 27; 681c–d: 173 n. 28; 700d: 167

Polybius Hist. 10.21.2–8: 90 n. 1 Porphyry Ad Gaurum 12.4.7–10: 141 n. 7 De abst. 1.1: 142; 1.3.2: 142; 1.6: 142; 3.1.4: 143; 3.2.4: 143‒144; 3.3.2: 143‒144; 3.3.3: 145; 3.4.2: 146; 3.4.7: 140‒141; 3.5.1: 146; 3.5.2: 146; 3.5.3: 146‒147; 3.6.1: 147; 3.6.2: 147; 3.6.4: 147; 3.19.3: 153; 4.10.4: 145; 4.16.1: 145; 4.16.5: 145 P. Oxy. 2489: 378; L 3555: 347‒349 Procopius Bell. Goth. 1.22.10: 355 n. 17; 23.16–17: 355 n. 17 Propertius Carm. 4.3.56: 55 Pseudo-Eratosthenes Cat. 11: 345 Pseudo-Hyginus Astr. 2.8: 54 Pseudo-Lucian Amores 39: 422 n. 25, 423‒424, 428 Quintilian Inst. orat. 2.4.41: 235 Richard of St Victor Benjamin Minor (Book of the Twelve Patriarchs) 16, p. 132.9–14: 359 Schol. in Pind. (ed. Drachmann) Pyth. 2.131b3–4: 417 n. 16 Semonides fr. 7.43–46 West: 124 n. 87; 7.71–73 West: 419 n. 21; 7.78–79 West: 423 n. 28

Index locorum | 497

Seneca philosophus De ira 2.26: 41 n. 4; 2.31: 41 n. 4 Epist. 41.6–7: 41 n. 4 Nat. quaest. 3.29.1: 256 Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. 8.271: 147 Silius Italicus Pun. 10.454–475: 113 n. 64 Solinus Coll. 2.38: 174 n. 32; 2.38–39: 170 n. 22 Sophocles Phil. 15‒19: 191; 159‒160: 191; 180‒181: 189; 225‒226: 189; 289‒295: 190; 702: 190; 770: 190; 952: 191; 955: 190; 958‒959: 190; 1263: 190; 1321: 189 Trach. 1099–1100: 280 n. 14

Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum SEG 15.765: 349‒350; 25.711: 4‒5 Tacitus Ann. 15.42.1: 359 Tertullian Ad Mart. 5: 356 Theocritus Id. 17.82–85: 266 Theognis 53–58: 380, 382

Statius Silv. 2.4: 32‒33

Theophrastus Char. 21.6: 70; 21.9: 69, 78‒79 De lap. 28: 165 De sign. 30: 192 fr. 365b–d Fortenbaugh: 168 Hist. plant. 2.2.9: 189‒190; 3.2.2: 189‒190; 9.11.3: 164 n. 11 Met. 10b7–15: 167‒168

Stobaeus Flor. 4.36.27: 171 n. 23

Thucydides Hist. 2.50: 186

Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta SVF III 415, p. 101 von Arnim: 160

Varro De re rust. 2.11.11: 382

Strabo Geogr. 13.1.4: 351 n. 9; 13.1.14: 53; 15.43: 35; 17.1.5: 343; 17.1.19: 45

Vergil Aen. 4.65–66: 198; 4.68–73: 198; 4.365– 367: 198; 4.550–551: 152 n. 30; 8.190–267: 151‒152; 11.89–90: 112 n. 59 Georg. 1.268–275: 27; 4.194–196: 198

Strato fr. 47 Sharples: 175 n. 34 Suetonius Aug. 43.4: 199 Cal. 14.1: 354 Div. Iul. 57: 113 n. 64; 61: 113 n. 64 Nero 12.1–2: 49 n. 16; 29: 50; 31.1: 358‒359; 46.1: 422 n. 25 Sulpicius Severus Dial. 1.15: 155 n. 32

Vincent of Beauvais Speculum naturale 19.103: 161 n. 3 Vita Aesopi 140 (381 Perry): 25 Vitruvius De arch. 9.2.1–2: 256, 259; 9.6.2: 256; 9.8.1–2: 256

498 | Indices

Xenophon Anab. 5.4.28: 393‒394; 7.8.2: 29; 7.8.6: 29

Cyn. 3.2–3: 100 n. 29; 6: 64; 7.5: 104, 221 n. 24; 12.7: 186 De re equ. 4–6: 30 n. 17 Oec. 30–36: 70