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

combination with the view of animals as possessors of mh~tij suggests that both the
playwright and his audience considered the dog an animal endowed with mh~tij.
Vigilance aside, how this concept might have further operated in linking the
image of the watchman to that of the dog is not made explicit in the text. Rather the
mh~tij of the watchman appears hidden in practical behavior: the continuous shifting of
his bed in order to avoid falling asleep. 242 This behavior fits well with the fact that he is a
veteran of his profession (year-long watch), thus justly one of those individuals endowed
with mh~tij. Within this implicit context, Aeschylus highlights next the connection of the
watchman to the dog through the use of explicit vocabulary. He has the watchman
referring to his bed as eu)nh&n (A. 13). 243 As Heath maintains, “this word (and others with
the same root) had a long tradition of metaphorical application to the animal world.
Homer [for example] uses it six times of animal beds, including once of a nest.” 244
This reference of the watchman to his bed as that of an animal, his adoption of
canine behavior as evidenced by his position on the roof of the palace, the resemblance of
his posture to that of a dog, and also his vigilance and possible mh~tij, all underscore
242 Detienne and Vernant, Cunning Intelligence 3, emphasize that one of the difficulties in unlocking the
semantics of mh~tij stems from the fact that the concept “is never clearly revealed in a theoretical work that
aims to define it. It always appears more or less below the surface, immersed as it were in practical
operations which, even when they use it, show no concern to make its nature explicit or to justify its
procedures.”
243 The Classical Greek term for “bed” is kli/nh not eu)nh&n; for a brief discussion of the term kli/nh in
Classical literary and epigraphical sources, see D. Andrianou, “Chairs, Beds, and Tables: Evidence for
Furnished Interiors in Hellenistic Greece,” Hesperia 75 (2006) 232-233.
244 Heath, The Talking Greeks 225, no. 26, does not include this example from the watchman’s speech in
his discussion of the term. He demonstrates his point, however, by referring to specific examples from the
Homeric poems. In the Iliad, the term is used especially of a deer’s lair (2.115, 15.580, and 22.190). In the
Odyssey, the same term denotes the nests of owls, falcons, sea crows (5.65), and a pig-pen (14.14); also the
places, where Menelaus and his men, disguised as seals, wait for Proteus are called eu)na~j (4.438).
Aeschylus’s veering towards Homeric language should not be surprising since there is ancient testimony
that he viewed his works as “slices from Homer’s great banquets” (Ath. Deipn. 8.347e) and recognized
how beneficial the poets of the past like Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and Musaeus had been (Ar. Frogs 1030-
1036). For a detailed discussion of the tendency of Aeschylus to adapt words and images to his own
intentions, see M. M. Lee, “The Myth of the Classical Peplos” (diss. Bryn Mawr College, 1999) 79.
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