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

e. The Savage Nature of Dogs
Historical and philosophical writings provide evidence for the division of dogs
into specific breeds as well as the genetic factors that contributed to the rise of these
breeds. The prevailing idea in these writings is that certain canine breeds were the
progeny of interbreeding between a wild animal and the dog. As noted earlier,
Xenophon, for example, in his treatise On Hunting asserts that a particular breed of
Laconian hounds called Vulpine was a hybrid between a fox and a dog (Cyn. 3.1)
[189]. 299 In agreement with him is Aristotle, who refers to additional examples of
hybrids. After concluding his discussion on mice, for example, he says:
Other animals too are produced from the mixing of different breeds, as in Cyrene
the wolves mate with the dogs and generate young, and from fox and dog come
the Laconian hounds. They say too that the Indian hounds come from tiger and
dog, not immediately, but after the third mating; for they say the first offspring is
like a savage beast. They take the bitches to deserted places and tie them up; and
many are devoured, if the wild animal does not happen to be excited for mating.
(HA 7.607a) [65]
The passage confirms the idea that crossbreeding between a specific wild animal and the
dog produced a specific canine breed. The discussion of the breed of Indian hounds,
however, is important, for it sheds light on specific beliefs about the savage nature of the
dog. Aristotle identifies the breed of Indian hounds as the offspring of a third-generation
mating between a dog and a tiger. 300 His statement demonstrates that he conceived of a
299
In addition, Pollux notes that in Hycarnia, a region to the south of the Caspian Sea, dogs were crossed
with lions (Onom. 5.38) [163].
300
For the suggestion that the Indian dog that Aristotle describes here was a real dog, see A. Platt, “On the
Indian Dog,” CQ 3 (1909) 241-243; also R. H. A. Merlen, De Canibus. Dog and Hound in Antiquity
(London, 1971) 31-32. The earliest reference to Indian dogs is that of Herodotus (7.187), who records that
when Xerxes invaded Greece in the early fifth century B.C., his army included vast numbers of “Indian”
dogs. The earliest literary evidence for the use of dogs in warfare comes from Polyaenus, a second-century
A.D. author, who refers to a sixth-century B.C. battle between Alyattes, the king of Lydia, and the
Cimmerians: “When the monstrous and the bestial Cimmerians made an expedition against him, Alyattes
brought out for battle his strongest dogs along with the rest of his force. The dogs set upon the barbarians
as if they were wild animals, killed many and forced the rest to flee shamefully” (Strategems 7.2.1-7.2.6;
193