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

the door by which this dog stood belonged to the main entrance of the house or to any of
the rooms inside. 254 As a result, it is not possible to detect where exactly in the house this
dog was expected to be found. 255
a jeweled collar is depicted on the wall of the front room of the shop of Sotericus on the Via dell’
Abbondanza in Pompeii: A. King, “Mammals. Evidence from Wall Paintings, Sculpture, Mosaics, Faunal
Remains, and Ancient Literary Sources,” in W. F. Jashemski and F. G. Meyer, eds., The Natural History of
Pompeii (Cambridge, 2002) 412, fig. 340. For the depiction of a dog’s collar on a red-figured aryballos
dated to 490-480 B.C., and found in a tomb (no. 1099) during rescue excavations at the Kerameikos Station
in Athens, see E. Baziotopoulou-Valavani, “Red-Figure Aryballos,” in L. Parlama and N. C. Stampolidis,
eds., Athens: The City beneath the City. Antiquities from the Metropolitan Railway Excavations (Athens,
2001) 309, no. 311. Also for the bronze studs of a collar found in a dog’s grave (no. 82) that was uncovered
in rescue excavations at the Parliament Square in Athens, and dates to the transitional period from the first
to the second centuries A.D., see N. C. Stampolidis, “Bronze Studs from the Collar of a Dog,” in Parlama
and Stampolidis, eds., Athens: The City beneath the City 177, no. 164 and 157, fig. 10.
254 Archaeological evidence suggests that the spatial arrangement of the Classical Greek house
corresponded to a structure with a single street entrance leading, sometimes though a lobby (pro&quron)
with a second door, to a court through which access was gained to the remainder of the house. As L. C.
Nevett, “Between Urban and Rural: House-Form and Social Relations in Attic Villages and Deme
Centers,” in B. A. Aunt and L. C. Nevett, eds., Ancient Greek Houses and Households. Chronological,
Regional, and Social Diversity (Philadelphia, 2005) 84, suggests: “Excavation both at Athens and at other
large settlements has revealed high numbers of houses following a relatively standardized pattern of
organization, the single entrance, courtyard house. The only street door in such houses generally opens
onto an open central court, which in turn provides access to various rooms, their entrances normally shaded
by a portico (a prostas, pastas, or peristyle). ” Similarly, and in reference to the spatial organization of the
Classical houses excavated on the north slope of the Areopagus in Athens, B. Tsakirgis, “Living and
Working Around the Athenian Agora: A Preliminary Case Study of Three Houses,” in Aunt and Nevett,
eds., Ancient Greek Houses and Households 69, maintains that a standard feature of these houses is a
roughly centrally placed courtyard usually entered directly from the street, rather than from a vestibule.
The same site has also provided an example of a fourth-century house with a single entrance leading to a
lobby with an interior door leading into the court: L. C. Nevett, “Gender Relations in the Classical Greek
Household: The Archaeological Evidence,” BSA 90 (1995) 376, n. 62.
255 It is reasonable to assume that, when the leader of the chorus advises her visitors not to approach the dog
by her door, she does not mean the main entrance to her house; otherwise her invitation does not make any
sense since it presupposes that these persons are welcome to her house, but advised not to approach its
main entrance. Additional evidence that she is not referring to the main entrance derives from the sequence
of the instructions she relates: first, visitors are welcome to her house, second, her slave will assist them in
pouring flour in bags, and third, they should be cautious about the dog by her door. These successive
phases of their visit, especially their assistance by the slave, presuppose the physical presence of visitors
within the house. This line of thinking fits well with the suggestion that the courtyard of the Classical
Greek house was the place to which visitors were admitted first. As L. C. Nevett, House and Society in the
Ancient Greek World (Cambridge, 1999) 70, states the spatial arrangement of the court in the middle of the
Classical Greek house marks it as part of the “public” part of the house, the center of domestic life and the
place that visitors would see first, since it was the only area through which access to the other “public” part
of the house—andron—and the remainder of the house could be attained. At the Classical site of Olynthus,
the “public” function of the courts of the excavated houses is corroborated by the use of colored walls,
terracotta figurines, and metal ornaments for decoration.
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