22 
cast it to the clogs.” The dog was to a Jew the object of the 
utmost contempt and abhorrence, as it is at this day to 
Mahometans. Our Lord’s expression has not indeed that 
harshness in the original, which it has in our translation, for 
he uses a diminutive form of dog, which unfortunately it is 
difficult to imitate in English, our only diminutives for this 
animal being contemptuous. But the ready wit of the anxious 
mother suggested to her to parry the argument from Jewish 
customs and feelings, by one derived from her own country; 
for she was a Greek by descent, though a Syro-phoenician by 
emigration or birth, ‘^True Lord, yet the little dogs under the 
table eat of the crumbs which fall from the children’s table.” 
The serpent again is no mystical or mythological emblem, but 
simply the pet snake of the children. And the two little par¬ 
tridges and the gosling, who appear in one monument running 
on the floor, are there to gather up some crumbs from the 
children’s table. In many of the Greek funeral tablets the 
head of a horse appears, and has been supposed, as I mentioned 
before, to allude to the journey to the tomb, which like the 
warrior in Burger’s ballad, the deceased performed on horse¬ 
back. But more accurate research has shown that the myth of 
the spectre horseman, though familiar to the Slavonians and 
modern Greeks, was unknown to the ancient Greeks and 
Homans.* The presence of the horse in the assemblage of 
objects on funeral monuments is explained therefore on the same 
principle as that of the dog, and the snake and the partridges. 
The Greek hoys must have been practised riders, or they could 
not have had the Arm and graceful seat which they display on 
the frieze of the Parthenon. No doubt therefore, when they 
ceased equitare in arundine longa,t their father provided 
them with a poney, who of course became the general favourite, 
and deserved to be represented, though he could not well be 
personally present, in the family group. 
^ See Pervanogiu’s Dissertation, "before quoted, p. 54. 
t The Eoman free-horn youths are taunted by Horace (Carm. iii. 24.) with 
not being hardy riders. 
Kescit equo rudis 
Hserere ingenuus puer 
Yenarique timet, ludere doctior. 
