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

eed as the result of a successive process of hybridization. 301 Further, his explanation
that the progeny of the first crossbreeding between a dog and a tiger was “like a savage
beast” is instructive, for it suggests two ideas: 1) that this savage nature manifested itself
in an obvious way, perhaps in terms of appearance and/or behavior, and 2) that it was
thought to diminish as each successive phase of inbreeding occurred. In other words,
until it reached the desirable, subsided stage that marked the breed of Indian hounds, the
characteristic of canine wildness underwent an evolutionary process that was each time
spurred by a genetic factor. 302
translation: P. Krentz and E. L. Wheeler, eds., trs., Polyaenus. Strategems of War II (Chicago, 1994) 625.
Polyaenus mentions a second incident of warlike character in which dogs are featured. Referring to the
Persian invasion of Egypt (525 B.C.) by Cambyses, he says: “Cambyses was besieging Pelusium. The
Egyptians stoutly resisted by blocking the entries to Egypt, and bringing up many batteries of artillery they
shot quick-firing catapult bolts, stones, and fire. Cambyses drew up in front of his army as many animals
as the Egyptians worshipped—dogs, sheep, cats, ibexes. The Egyptians stopped shooting for fear of
striking one of the holy animals. Thus Cambyses captured Pelusium and entered Egypt” (Strategems 7.9.1-
7.9.9); translation: Krentz and Wheeler, Polyaenus. Strategems 639. Evidence that dogs were used in
warfare in the Classical period, derives from Aelian, who mentions that a dog had served in the battle of
Marathon (490 B.C.):
An Athenian took with him a Dog as fellow-soldier to the battle of Marathon, and both are figured
in a painting in the Stoa Poecile, nor was the Dog denied honor but received the reward of the
danger it had undergone in being seen among the companions of Cynericus, Epizelus, and
Callimachus. They and the dog were painted by Micon, though some say it was not his work but
that of Polygnotus of Thasos (NA 7.38) [3].
Pausanias’s account of this picture (1.15.3), however, does not mention this detail.
301 A passage from Aelian, that cites knowledge of the Aristotelian reference to Indian hounds, is crucial in
understanding how the particular steps of this process of inbreeding were thought to have occurred:
Indian histories teach us the following facts also. Huntsmen take thoroughbred bitches
which are good at tracking wild animals and are very swift of foot to places infested by
these animals; they tie them to trees and then go away, simply, as the saying is, trying a
throw of the dice. And if tigers find them when they have caught nothing and are famished,
they tear them to pieces. If however they arrive on heat and full-fed they couple with the
bitches, for tigers too when gorged turn their thoughts to sexual intercourse. From this union,
so it said, a tiger is born, not a hound. And from this tiger and a bitch again a tiger would be
born, although the offspring of this last and of a bitch takes after its dam, and the seed
degenerates and a hound is born. Nor will Aristotle contradict this. Now these hounds which
can boast a tiger for sire scorn to pursue a stag or to face a boar, but are glad to rush at lions and
thereby give proof of their pedigree (NA 8.1) [4].
302 The parallel between this process and the modern understanding of how, for example, the domestication
of the dog—thought to be initially a wolf—occurred is striking. J. Clutton-Brock, “Origins of the Dog:
Domestication and Early History,” in Serpell, ed., The Domestic Dog 15, hypothesizes that, after the wolf
was incorporated into the social structure of the human community and was tamed, it would have become
less and less like its wild forbears “because inherently variable characters, such as coat color, carriage of
the ears and tail, overall size and the proportions of the limbs would have been altered by the combined
194