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

SECTION 3
Dogs as Food
The practice of eating dog flesh features in two types of Classical texts: comic
accounts and medical treatises. In terms of frequency, the references to consumption of
dog flesh contained in the treatises outnumber by far those found in comedy. Later Greek
authors, however, such as Galen, Sextus Empiricus (both A.D. II), and Porphyry (A.D.
III), advocate abstinence from consuming dog flesh, and include Greece among those
parts of the world that, in their times, shared this attitude. Sextus Empiricus, in
particular, conveys this information by pointing out its sharp contrast with the practice of
fourth-century B.C. Greek physicians of prescribing dog flesh to their patients as dietary
treatment. The following discussion begins with the post-Classical Greek attitudes to the
consumption of dogs, and proceeds to comic and medical accounts of the Classical
period, which indicate that contemporary Greek society did not abstain from eating dogs.
a. Post-Classical Greek Attitudes to the Practice of Eating Dogs
The dietary treatises of Galen of Pergamon, a philosopher and physician who
worked in Alexandria and mostly Rome in the second century A.D., provide evidence
regarding the practice of eating dogs in that time. In his treatise On the Properties of
Foodstuffs, Galen notes: “As for dogs, what can I say? In some countries they are often
eaten when they are young and plump, and particularly after they have been castrated”
(3.664) [93]. 303 As can be seen, Galen’s statement is quite general in its character. He
303 This statement accords well with the results of the examination of skeletons of puppies found in twenty-
six assemblage deposits in an area of both domestic and commercial activity at the site of Sardis. Dated
between the late seventh and early to mid-fifth century B.C., each of these deposits, thought to be part of a
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