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

the dog’s stealing of food within a dining context and space, thus suggesting the lively
presence of the animal in the daily routine of the household. 263 Equally suggestive is
also the description of a specific aspect of its behavior—waiting for those moments of
laxity, when diners look at another direction, in order to steal and eat their food. This
behavior implies that vigilance was the quality that enabled the dog to profit from the
lack of vigilance of humans, switch from fawning to stealing and thus become a
deceptive creature. The scene also suggests awareness of the fact that the dog observed
human behavior, which, in turn, recognizes a degree of intelligence in the animal. 264
Considering that vigilance was thought to be an essential feature of mh~tij, the cunning
intelligence that the dog was seen previously to hold, then the intelligence with which
this passage from the Knights charges the animal can be securely identified as mh~tij.
The canine tendency to steal and gobble food is also seen in the slightly later (422
B.C.) comedy of Aristophanes, Wasps. The play tells the story of an old man,
Philocleon, who believes that serving as a juror provides him with exceptional power.
Objecting to this view is his son Bdelycleon, who tries to keep his father away from the
courts. Confined in his son’s house, Philocleon is allowed to have a private court and try
263 The presence of dogs in a context that refers to dining appears as early as the Homeric poems. In the
Iliad (22.69) [127], for example, Priam talks of the dogs that dwell in his house as dogs that he reared at his
table (trapezh~aj qurawrou&j) in order to guard his door; also in the Iliad (23.173), the two dogs
sacrificed by Achilles as part of the funeral of Patroclus, belonged to a total of nine dogs that had been fed
beneath the table (trapezh~ej ku&nej) of their master; finally, in the Odyssey (17.309-17.310) Odysseus,
upon his return to Ithaca, asks Eumaeus, whether his dog Argos is like table dogs (trapezh~ej ku&nej),
which their masters keep for show. Regarding the visual record, an example of a dog featuring underneath
a table appears as part of a symposium scene on an Attic red-figured crater that dates to c. 475-465 B.C.,
and has been attributed to the Pig Painter. For a discussion of this vase, see E. Pottier, CVA (France 5;
Louvre 4) 17, cat. no. G355, pl. 25, fig. 9.
264 For modern accounts of dogs’ observation of human behavior and mannerisms, see E. M. Thomas, The
Social Life of Dogs. The Grace of Canine Behavior (New York, 2000) 41-48.
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