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

190 B.C.), and cited in Athenaeus’s discussion on ancient table manners, clarifies that
“[diners] used to smear their hands with perfumes, spurning the crumbs of bread
(a)pomagdalia&j) which the Spartans called ‘dog-bits’ (kuna&daj)” (Deipn. 9.409d) [75].
In this case, the etymology of the word kuna&daj, which shares the same root with the
ancient Greek term for dog (ku&wn) supports the connection between these items and the
animal. 280 Further information regarding the material of which a)pomagdalia&j were
made is related by Pollux, who refers to them as soft pieces of dough or bread (Onom.
6.93), 281 and also by Hesychius, whose lexicon (A.D. V) also identifies them as pieces of
dough made of flour. 282
Additional evidence regarding the food provided to dogs comes from a short
fragment of Diphilus (born c. 360-350 B.C.). The fragment preserves an episode in
which a mysterious woman attempts to feed a dog: 283
This young miss is one of a kind even father never kisses
and house-dog won’t take crusts (a1rton) from,
so dark she makes day night. (fr. 91 Kock) [84]
280
Regarding the visual record, a scene on a black-figured Boeotian lekythos (c. 550 B.C.) that depicts a
dog in the presence of women involved in the process of making bread has been interpreted as an allusion
to the dog’s waiting to receive bits of this bread, most likely, in the form of discarded napkins; B. A.
Sparkes, “The Greek Kitchen,” JHS 82 (1962) 126-127, pl. VII, fig. 2; for additional illustrations of the
same lekythos without, however, focusing on the dog, see S. Lewis, The Athenian Woman: An
Iconographic Handbook (London and New York, 2002) 69, fig. 2.10. To this visual repertoire can also be
added the Boeotian, black-figured skyphos that depicts two dogs, FILOQERA being one of them, in the
presence of women making bread, and is slightly later in date (525-500 B.C.).
281
E. Bethe, ed., Pollucis Onomasticon (Lexicographi Graeci IX) I (Leipzig, 1900, 1931; repr. Stuttgart,
1967) 26-27.
282
E. Munksgaard, ed., Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon I (Copenhagen, 1953) 219, s.v. a ) pomagdali/a
283
The image of a dog being offered food appears frequently in the arts of the Classical period, as, for
example, on a red-figured miniature chous, dated to ca. 420 B.C. and housed at the A. M. Sackler Museum,
Harvard University Art Museums. The vase depicts a boy holding offering a treat, perhaps meat or grapes,
to a dog that rises onto its hind legs to reach it. For a discussion and an illustration of this vase, see J. Neils
and J. Oakley eds., Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (New
Haven, 2003) 146 and 285, no. 95.
187