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

But he [Hector] fell on them [Achaeans] like a lion of destructive mind
coming against cattle that are grazing in the bottom of a great marsh, and there is
no counting them, and among them is a herdsman who is yet unskilled to fight
with a wild beast over the carcass of a sleek heifer that has been slain: he paces
ever by their side, now abreast of the foremost of the cattle, and now of the
hindmost, but the lion leaps on the midmost, and devours a heifer, and at that they
all flee in terror; so wondrously were the Achaeans one and all then driven in rout
by Hector and father Zeus. (Il. 15.630-15.637) [125]
The unwillingness of a lion to release its kill is also encountered in another simile
in the Iliad, where the scene of Patroclus and Hector fighting over the corpse of
Cebriones, the driver of Hector’s chariot, is compared to two lions competing over a slain
hind:
So the two joined in strife for Cebriones like two lions that on the peaks of a
mountain fight for a slain hind, both of them hungering, both high of heart; so
for Cebriones the two masters of the war cry, Patroclus, son of Menoetius, and
glorious Hector, were eager each to cleave the other’s flesh with the pitiless
bronze. Hector, when once he has seized the corpse by the head, would not
loose his hold, and Patroclus on the other side held fast hold of the foot.
(Il. 16.756-763) [126]
The representation of Hector and Patroclus fighting over Cebriones’ corpse like lions
over prey suggests direct borrowing from leonine behavior, and therefore, first-hand
knowledge of it. 202 Indeed, such evidence accords well with modern observations of
lions, which note that competition among these animals over the kill or guarding of it is a
pronounced trait of their behavior. 203 Given the overall reliance of the simile on leonine
202 For a discussion of the animal similes in the Iliad containing accurate descriptions of animal behavior,
and the suggestion that Homeric audiences preferred “naturalistic descriptions of animals,” see Lonsdale,
Creatures of Speech 12-13; also 53, n. 3, where he cites H. W. Auden’s (“Natural History in Homer,” CR
10 (1896) 107) observation that Homer’s description of lions seizing their victims by the muzzle (Il. 5.161;
11.174) is indeed an accurate one since it parallels contemporary accounts of similar lion behavior.
203 In Joubert and Joubert, The Lions of Savuti 71, the caption, for example, of a photograph of two
lionesses fighting over a carcass reads: “the transition from friendly cooperation during hunt to ferocious
competition once the kill has been made is an unforgettable, Jekyll and Hyde characteristic of lion
behavior.” Also, G. B. Schaller, The Serengeti Lion. A Study of Predator-Prey Relations (Chicago and
London, 1972) 267, states that lions often transport small prey after killing it because they want “to escape
from another lion intent on a share….as if afraid of being deprived of a meal.” Schaller (267) also provides
the following account of a lion’s safeguarding of the kill: “six nomads, two of them males, rest at 1635 near
Naabi Hill when a sick wildebeest stumbles by. One lioness pulls it down, and while she suffocates it a
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