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

SECTION 1
a. Dogs Living in the House
Evidence that dogs lived in the premises of the Classical Greek house comes from
a passage from Aristophanes’ Plutus (388 B.C.). The play opens at the house of
Chremylus, a poor Athenian citizen, where Plutus, the god of wealth, appears as an old,
blind man. Chremylus takes Plutus to a sanctuary of Asclepius, where he has his sight
restored. This newfound ability enables Plutus to distinguish between virtuous but poor
and wicked but rich citizens. In an attempt to eliminate these categories, Plutus
establishes a new world where everyone is virtuous and rich, but the main effect of this
act is the cessation of sacrificial offerings to the gods. Hermes visits the house of
Chremylus to complain about the situation. He is first met by a slave named Carion:
CARION
Here, you, tell me, was it you that was knocking
so hard on the door just now?
HERMES
No, I didn’t; I was going to, but you opened the door first.
Now run quickly and call out your master, then his wife
and children, then the servants, then the dog, then yourself, and
then the pig. (Plut. 1100-1105) [44]
The words of Hermes show that a dog was included among the residents of the house of
Chremylus. This evidence does not automatically assign to the dog status equal to that of
a member of Chremylus’s family, as it has been previously suggested, 225 but does
225 S. Lilja, Dogs in Ancient Greek Poetry (Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 56; Helsinki, 1976)
78-79, correctly notes that the passage cannot be used as evidence that dogs were considered members of
the Classical Greek family. This point, she clarifies, is presented in a discussion of this passage by J. Löbe,
“Notizen über der Hund aus griechischen und römischen Schriftstellern,” Mitteilungen aus dem Österlande
9 (1900) 33. The situation provides the ground for reference to modern notions of animals as members of
the family. A. Katcher and A. Beck, Between Pets and People: The Importance of Animal Companionship
(West Lafayette, 1983; rev. ed., 1996) 41, indicate that, in a survey regarding animals and the family, 87
percent of their subjects considered animals living with them as members of their family. In addition,
another study focusing on adolescent pony-club members found that more than 80 percent of persons asked
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