On Animals depicted on Antique Monuments. 271 



The Dziggetai^ or Equus hemionus of naturalists, was also 

 known to them, for this species had been domesticated by the 

 Greeks in many provinces in Asia. If we are to regard the 

 Mosaic of Palestrina as authoritative, the ancients were also ac- 

 quainted with another species of the same genus, intermediate 

 between the preceding and the couagga (Equus quaccha). If 

 this species, as every thing seems to indicate, has really existed, 

 it must have totally disappeared and become extinct, as has hap- 

 pened with so many other races, the former existence of which 

 we know only by those remains of them that are found in the va- 

 rious strata of the earth. 



But the ancients have bestowed not less attention to the va- 

 rious species of the dog than to the several races of the horse. 

 They appear even to have had dogs so large and powerful, that 

 they could harness them to their chariots. Thus Heliogabalus 

 made himself be driven in his chariot by four dogs of a prodigious 

 size; whilst, at other times, he preferred four stags, or it might be 

 lions or tigers*. It is not less true that their monuments exhi- 

 bit a crowd of other varieties of dogs, amongst the most common 

 of which we mention the greyhound, the mastiff, the pointer, the 

 harrier, the setter, and the spaniel. This last variety is found 

 upon a carnelian stone, and may be found represented in a work 

 of Agostini, published at Rome in 1686, under the title of the 

 Antique Gem. The other varieties may be seen upon divers 

 monuments which are copied in numerous works, among which 

 we shall only mention Le Rovine delta cittd di Pesto delta ancora 

 Posidonia (Roma, 1784) ; also Le pitture del Mtiseo in Portici 

 travatei incise da Baltassare Probst (Augusta 1795) ; and, 

 lastly, Le Antiche lucerne Sepolcrali, Jigurate da Belhri (Roma, 



1691) t- 



It will not be questioned that lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, 

 and bears, which were exhibited in such wonderful profusion in 

 the amusements of the Circus, or in the triumphal processions, are 

 found in abundance on the antique monuments. These, in fact, 

 are the most common. We shall mention, then, only a very few 



• L'Antiquite expliqu^e, de Montfaucon, torn. iii. part ii. p. 271. 



■f- The author last quoted, in reference to the various races of dogs, as well 

 as of other animals brought under his review, furnishes a list of forty-two 

 archeological worki^ which is here omitted. 



T 2 



