152 



DISCOVERY 



riieophrastus ' (372-278 B.C.) went in for pets of all 

 kinds. He kept a monkey and a satyr ape, and " is 

 apt also to buv a little ladder for his domestic jackdaw 

 and to make a little brass shield wherewith the jackdaw 

 shall hop upon the ladder. Or if his little Melitean 

 dog has died, he will put up a little memorial stone 

 with the inscription, ' A Scion of Melita.' " 



" I would rather have a good friend," said Socrates, 

 " than the best cock or quail in the world ; I would 

 even further say than a horse or dog." - The birds and 

 animals referred to were primarily kept for purposes 

 of sport ; both cock-fighting and quail-fighting were 

 favourite pastimes with the young bloods of the day. 

 .\lcibiades used to carry a favourite quail about with 

 him. Plutarch tells a story of how, when he was 

 distributing largesse among the people, " the multitude 

 thereupon applauding him and shouting, he was so 

 transported at it. that he forgot a quail which he had 

 under his robe, and the bird being frighted with the 

 noise, flew off ; upon which the people made louder 

 acclamations than before and many of them started 

 up to pursue the bird ; and one Antiochus, a pilot, 

 caught it and restored it to him, for which he was ever 

 after a favourite with Alcibiades." ^ 



A pet bird was not an expensive luxury. In the 

 latter half of the fifth century birds could be bought 

 for pets or for the pot from Philocrates, the bird- 

 seller, whose prices were i obol for a jackdaw and 3 

 obols for a crow.^ The fairest method of assessing 

 prices is, of course, by their translation into contem- 

 porary wages or commodities. Two obols was the fee 

 paid at this time to compensate a citizen for neglecting 

 his business for a da3? in order to serve on a jur}'. 

 Three obols at the end of the Peloponnesian War, 

 when prices were rising, was the daily wage of a mason's 

 assistant.^ One obol would buy a little toy cart ' ; 

 extravagant persons might pay 20 drachmas for a 

 cloak and 8 drachmse for a pair of sandals, but these 

 were " Bond Street prices." ' A magical ring, an 

 infallible protection against snake-bite, could be 

 bought for I drachma, i.e. 6 obols. ^ 



1 Theophrastus, Characters, vii (trans. Jebb). In a volume 

 called English Literature and the Classics (Oxford Press, 1912) 

 there is a paper by G. S. Gordon upon Theophrastus and 

 John Earle and his other English imitators, which is well 

 worth the attention of anyone interested in literature. 



- Plato, Lysis, 211 (trans. Jowett). Cf. Xenophon, Memo- 

 rabilia, i. 6, 14 (trans. Dakjms). As I have pointed out else- 

 where {Liverpool Annals of A rchtBology , viii. 47), the coinci- 

 dence between the two passages suggests that this is an authentic 

 saying of Socrates'. 



' Plutarch, Life of A Icibiadcs, 10. 



' Aristophanes, Birds, 14, 18, 1077. 



5 Idem, Ecclesia-ztists, 510. 



* Idem, Clouds, 861. 



' Idem, Plutus, 982. 



» Ibid., 884. 



Sporting animals and the pets of the aristocracy 

 ran into big prices. The hero of the Clouds of Aristo- 

 phanes owed 12 minse (1.200 drachmae) for a race- 

 horse," and Alcibiades paid as much as 70 minse for 

 a dog, whose long and beautiful tail he proceeded to 

 cut off, a prank to make people talk about him." 

 His extravagance may be measured by the price of 

 slaves. At the sale of confiscated property belonging 

 to Alcibiades and others, who were convicted in 414 B.C. 

 of having blasphemously acted a parody of the sacred 

 mysteries, the top prices for Syrian slaves were 2J 

 and 3 minjE, while Carian and Thracian slaves ran as 

 low as ij minse." 



Of our two favourite domestic animals, the dog and 

 cat, the cat proper which the Greeks called " wavy 

 tail " (ailouros) was indigenous in Eg\'pt, and it is 

 represented in .Egean Bronze Age art in designs 

 adapted from Eg3*ptian originals ; but Herodotus 

 devotes some space to its description as a foreign 

 animal. 1- and it does not seem to have been a usual 

 inhabitant of Greek houses. The Bceotian in the 

 Acharnians who has already been mentioned speaks 

 of having cats to sell," but as a rule the marten cat 

 (gale) seems to have been used in Greek houses to 

 keep down the smaller rodents. The superstitious 

 believed that it was bad luck if a gale crossed 3'our 

 path as you were going out.'* But the Greek lived in 

 the market place and not at home ; the mouser in 

 consequence played little part in his life and hardly 

 figures in literature. 



\\'ith the dog it was otherwise. Plato used his 

 virtues to illustrate the characteristics required 

 by the waj"rior class in his ideal republic,'^ but 

 alreadv in Homer we find him in his familiar 

 aspects of the watchdog, the sporting dog, and the 

 friend of man. Those who ha\-e travelled in modern 

 Greece and. have had to defend themselves with stones 

 against the onset of the savage sheepdogs until their 

 masters called them off will appreciate the truth of the 

 picture of Odysseus's approach to the steading of 

 Eumaeus the swineherd: " And of a sudden the baying 

 dogs saw Odysseus, and they ran at him yelping, but 



' Aristophanes, Clouds, 21. 



'" Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades, 9. 



'I Hicks and Hill, Greek Historical Inscriptions, No. 72. No 

 doubt SjTians were more highly educated and therefore more 

 expensive. After Alexander's conquests black slaves became 

 fashionable with people of social pretensions (Theophrastus, 

 Characters, vii), as they were afterwards in Rome [Tibullus, II, 

 iii. 55 (Loeb Classical Library)], and in England in the 

 eighteenth century. 



'2 Herodotus, ii. 66 (trans. Rawlinson). .^n amusing account 

 of why Egypt is not overrun with cats. The historian notices 

 also the mummied cats of Bubastis. 



•^ Aristophanes, Acharnians, 879. 



'* Theophrastus, xvi. The Superstitious Man. 



15 Plato, Republic, 375-6. 



