ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 317 



any of their respective qualities. Thus our Saviour, 

 adopting this concise method, applies the word 

 "dog" to men of odious character and violent 

 temper ; and, as with us at present, the term of 

 reproach, " he was a son of a dog," was in common 

 use among the Jews. The wife Abigail (1 Sam. 

 XXV., 3,) " was a woman of good understanding, 

 and of a beautiful countenance ; but the man 

 (Nabal) was churlish and evil in his doings, and 

 ivas of the house of Caleb.'''' But this last, says an 

 able expounder of the Scriptures, is not a proper 

 name. Literally it is, " he was the son of a dog." 

 On the other hand, the idolatrous Egyptians held 

 the dog sacred, and worshipped him in their god 

 Anubis, representing the form of a man with a 

 dog's head, which Juvenal complains of in his fif- 

 teenth satire : 



" Oppida tota canem venerantur, nemo Dianam." 



Anubis, says Strabo, is also the city of dogs, the 

 capital of the Cynopolitan prefecture. " Those 

 animals," says he, " are fed there on sacred ali- 

 ments, and religion has decreed them a worship." 

 This absurd adoration is confirmed by Diodorus 

 Siculus and Herodotus ; and Rome having adopted 

 the ceremonies of Egypt, the Emperor Commodus, 

 when celebrating the Isiac feasts, shaved his head, 

 and himself carried the dog Anubis. 



But to proceed to their origin and history. It 

 has been justly remarked, that " all dogs whatso- 

 ever, even from the terrible Boar-dog to little 

 Flora, were all one in the first creation ; '' and 



