DISCOVERY 



153 



Odysseus in his weariness sat him down and let the 

 staff fall from his hand. There by his own homestead 

 would he have suffered foul hurt but the swineherd 

 with quick feet hasted after them and sped through 

 the outer door and let the skin fall from his hand. 

 And the hounds he chid and drove them this way and 

 that, with a shower of stones." ^ Telemachus walks 

 into the market place at Ithaca with his two dogs at 

 his heels.- Two of the nine " table dogs " which had 

 belonged to Patroclus were slaughtered on his pyre to 

 keep their dead master company.^ But the most 

 famous passage is that describing the passing of the 

 old sporting dog which Odysseus had left a puppy 

 when he sailed for Troy. Old Argos ("Swift"), lying 

 neglected on the dungheap, hears the voice of his 

 master, who, returning after twenty years of \\^andering, 

 refnains unrecognised by human beings, even by his 

 nearest and dearest. " There lay Argos, full of 

 vermin. Yet even now when he was ware of Odysseus 

 standing by, he wagged his tail and dropped both his 

 ears, but nearer to his master he had not now the 

 strength to draw. But Odysseus looked aside and 

 wiped away a tear." He learns from Eumseus the 

 story of the dog's neglect since his departure, and 

 " therewith he passed within the fair Iving house, and 

 went straight to the hall, to the company of the proud 

 wooers. But upon Argos came the fate of black death 

 even in the hour that he beheld Odysseus again in the 

 twentieth year." •• 



In historical times dogs were sacrificed at Sparta 

 and in Caria to the god of war. In Thrace Herodotus 

 reports the settlement of a dispute l^etween Perinthus 

 and the Paeonians by a triple duel in which the cliam- 

 pions fought man to man, horse to horse, and dog to 

 dog,» and the people of Magnesia on the Maeander in 

 Asia Minor are said to have trained dogs to fight with 

 their heavy infantry." But in Greece proper dogs were 

 not used in war, and the only example known to me 

 is that of the dog who accompanied his Athenian 

 master in the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), and 

 was immortalised in the famous picture of that 

 victory over the Persian invader with which 

 Polygnotus decorated the Painted Colonnade at 

 Athens." 



Sporting dogs were used in hunting the boar 

 and coursing the hare. For the former Xenophon 

 recommends Indian, Cretan, Locrian, and Spartan 



' Homer, Odyssey, xiv. 29 (trans. Butcher and Lang). 



- Ibid., ii. II. 



^ Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 173 (trans. Lang, Leaf, and Myer.s). 



* Idem, Odyssey, xvii. 290 foil. 



5 Herodotus, v. i. 



^ Pollux, V. 47. 



' ^lian, Nat. An., vii. 38. I do not know of a modern 

 English translation of this foolish but entertaining work. 

 There is a Latin translation in the French Didot edition. 



breeds.^ We may recall the famous description of an 

 Elizabethan staghound pack which Shakespeare puts 

 into the mouth of Theseus : 



" My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind. 

 So flewed, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 

 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 

 Crook kneed, and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls ; 

 Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells. 

 Each under each. A cry more tuneable 

 Was never holla'd to, nor cheered with horn 

 In Crete, in Sparta or in Thessaly." ^ 



Dogs were used to protect private houses and were 

 frequently attached to temples, which, apart from the 

 valuables (plate, etc.) they contained, were also used 

 as national banks. In the Wasps of Aristophanes the 

 hero is obliged to keep his old father, who is in his 

 second childhood, shut up to prevent him from indulg- 

 ing his passion for sitting in the law courts. The old 

 man spends his time playing at law courts at home 

 with the railing of the pig pen to make a court and the 

 house dog, Labes (" Pincher "), to take the role of the 

 accused.^" Of temple guardians the most remarkable 

 were those of the sanctuary of the native Sicilian god, 

 Adranus. During the day-time they made themselves 

 pleasant to all passers-by. At night they showed 

 singular discrimination. To thieves they gave no 

 mercy, but if they met any friends of the god, who 

 were temporarily incapacitated by conviviality, they 

 led them safely to their homes, at the same time 

 intimating their disapproval of such immoral conduct 

 by tearing their clothes and rolling them in the mud 

 without otherwise hurting them.^" 



For lap-dogs the most favourite breed was the 

 Melitean, affected, as we have seen, by tlie Man of Petty 

 .\mbition. They may have come originally from 

 Malta, but perhaps more probably were native to the 

 island of Meleda near Curzola in the Adriatic.'- Little 

 brown yapping creatures they seem to have been. 

 Lucian gives a comic description of a Stoic philosopher 

 named Thesmopolis, whose lady-love implores him to 

 promise to do something for her. She wants him to 

 take charge of sweet little Myrrine, who is not very 

 well, poor darling, and the servants won't look after 



** Xenophon, Cynegelica, s.. i. The method of boar hunting 

 was to track the quarry to its lair with a single hound : a 

 Spartan bitch is recommended for this work. Cf. the mediaeval 

 tufting with a lime hound [Hamilton, The Red Deer of Exmoor 

 {Field Office, 1907), 222 foil.]. Nets were spread round 

 the covert and only then was the pack let go. 



' Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, .\ct iv. 

 Scene i. Our ancestors, and indeed our immediate forbears, 

 paid more attention to music and less to speed than modern 

 breeders of foxhounds. On the whole subject see that 

 delightful book. Madden, The Diary of Master William Silence. 



1° Aristophanes, Wasps, 824 foil. 



" .Elian, Nat. An., xi. 20. 



'- The matter is discussed by Jebb in his notes on the 

 passage in Thcophrastus. 



