THE CAT OF ANTIQUITY 15 



But, in an evil hour, I said her nay; 



And now, alas ! 

 Far-travelled Nicias hath wooed and won 



Arsinoe, 

 With gifts of furry creatures, white and dun, 



From over sea." 



It is a melancholy truth that after the " little lion " 

 had been domesticated in Greece, we hear nothing 

 to her credit. Theocritus flouts her with a careless 

 word, 



" Cats love to sleep softly ; " 



and decadent poets, in place of singing her beauty 

 and her grace, as Homer sang of Helen on the 

 battlements of Troy, grow ethical and positively 

 evangelical over her too manifest shortcomings. 

 There was a cat of spirit belonging to the epigram- 

 matist, Agathias, who, when the occasion offered, 

 ate her master's tame partridge, for which deed she 

 has been handed down to posterity as an unnatural 

 and infuriate monster. Agathias solaced himself 

 by writing two poems on the tragedy, one of which 

 has been very charmingly — if very freely — trans- 

 lated by Mr. Richard Garnett. 



" O cat in semblance, but in heart akin 

 To canine raveners, whose ways are sin ; 

 Still at my hearth a guest thou dar'st to be ? 

 Unwhipt of Justice, hast no dread of me ? 

 Or deerri'st the sly allurements shall avail 

 Of purring throat and undulating tail ? 



