The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

question of the viewer and explains the reason for its placement on the tomb: as a symbol
of the courage of the dead. 124 The third epigram, which is anonymous, contains a similar,
but lengthier, conversation between a viewer and the statue of a dog:
A: Tell me, dog, who was the man on whose tomb thou standest
keeping guard?
B: The Dog.
A: But what man was that, the Dog?
B: Diogenes.
A: Of what country?
B: Of Sinope.
A: He who lived in a jar?
B: Yes, and now he is dead, the stars are his home.
(Anonymous, Anth. Pal. 7.64) [15]
In this epigram, the dog speaks through the voice of the viewer as if it were alive. It
identifies the deceased interred in the tomb: the philosopher Diogenes. In this respect, it
is reminiscent of the epigram with the Sphinx on Xenocrates’ tomb.
In these epigraphical and literary epigrams, animal representations and viewers
participate in a form of a dialogue that is composed of questions and answers. The
viewer poses questions to the animal subject which, in turn, uses his or her voice in order
to answer back. As a result, the animal speaks to the viewer as if it were alive, while the
latter is aware of the fact that he or she is speaking to a work of art. In this way, the
124 A lion is also depicted on a grave stele found in the Athenian Kerameikos and dated to the third or
second centuries B.C. The lion attacks the corpse of the diseased, whom a bilingual (Greek, Phoenician)
epitaph identifies as Antipater of Ashkelon. A six-line Greek epigram below the image of the attacking
lion, cast in the voice of the dead man, mentions that “the hateful lion came, wishing to destroy my things.”
For a discussion of these stele, its epitaph, imagery, and epigram, see J. M. S. Stager, “‘Let No One
Wonder at This Image,’ A Phoenician Funerary Stele in Athens,” Hesperia 74 (2005) 427-449.
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