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

Although not provoked by the act of stealing food, beating features elsewhere as a
violent treatment of the dog. In Aristophanes’ Knights, for example, the sausage seller
launches the following threat to Paphlagon: “I’ll beat your back like a dog’s!” (Eq. 289)
[36]. The simile is instructive in showing that beating was treatment regularly meted out
to the animal. Also by equating his intended beating of Paphlagon to that of a dog, the
sausage seller presents a strong case for wanting his threat to come across as severe. In
this way, the simile demonstrates the function of a dog’s beating as a sign of severity.
This evidence is further instructive, for it confirms the prominence not simply of the
animal, but also of its physical suffering in the mind and language of contemporary
society.
c. Food for Dogs
The physical assault of the dog as exemplified by beating contrasts sharply with
textual evidence that suggests that a considerable degree of care was invested in
providing food for the animal. First, however, reference should be made to the prevailing
Classical Greek belief that the dog did not have specific preferences, but ate any food that
came to its attention. 275 This belief is clearly stated in Aristophanes’ Peace (421 B.C.).
The play opens in the courtyard of the house of Trygaeus, a country man. Two slaves
prepare stinking food for a greedy dung-beetle located inside a room of the house. One
slave is kneading into dung-cakes the contents of a mixing bowl, while another keeps
dashing in and out of the room in the course of feeding these cakes to the dung-beetle.
275 The fact that comic texts provide evidence for food for dogs accords well with the scholarly status of
comedy as the most useful literary genre regarding food in Classical Greece. For a discussion of the value
of comedic context as evidence for the consumption of food in Classical Greece, see J. Wilkins, “Comic
Cuisine: Food and Eating in the Comic Polis,” in G. W. Dobrov, ed., The City as Comedy. Society and
Representation in Athenian Drama (Chapel Hill and London, 1997) 250-268.
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