i o Gleanings from the 



reprefents them as being animated. Here they 

 are " immortal and free from old age for aye." 1 

 Another celebrated dog of myth was the dog of 

 Hades, afterwards known as Cerberus. When 

 OdyfTeus meets the made of Heracles in the lower 

 world, the latter tells him that he had been com- 

 pelled to enter Hades while he was yet alive, and 

 drag this dog to the upper air, " for no greater 

 tafk could be devifed ;" but Hermes and blue-eyed 

 Athene helped him to perform it. 2 Orion's dog 

 was a well-known ftar. In all thefe cafes the dog 

 is even in Homer's time a familiar domeftic crea- 

 ture. Lap-dogs too are named. Perhaps a faint 

 reflection of the wonder which the taming of the 

 creature firft caufed among men yet glimmers on 

 the mythical ftories juft related. 



Stags and fawns are frequently mentioned in the 

 Homeric poems ; this is only natural, confidering 

 the numbers which in the early days of Greece 

 muft have been found on her mountains or feed- 

 ing in the fair glens befide them. Sheep appear 

 among domefticated animals bleating as they wait 

 to be milked. The riotous wooers of Penelope 

 eat fheep, kine, and goats. There is yet a wild 

 fheep in Sardinia, known as ovis mujmon, with 

 horns one foot eleven inches long. Lambs are 

 born with horns, fays Homer, in Libya, and the 

 fheep there bring forth thrice in a year. 3 Can this 

 ftory of the horned lambs be a reflection of the 

 true hiftory of the wild fheep of Europe ? White 



1 "Odyffey," vii. 94. 2 /^/., xi. 263. 



3 Ibid., lv. 85, 86. 



