A dog’s life in Greece

Press, 13 May 1987, Page 20

A dog’s life in Greece

Greeks have been dog-owners since the cave-dwellers of Mesolithic times first decided that wolf puppies were more useful as pets than as supper. Since the young cubs would eat practically anything, experts think they were given the contract to clean up scraps and bones from messy floors in exchange for food and shelter. “The relationship was strictly business,” says Mrs Linda Collins Reilly, an American scholar who is doing research into the dog’s life in ancient Greece. Excavations show that early hunters caught young wolves for food, since the bones are marked with tell-tale gastronomic incisions. Later skeletons of dogs show marked changes in the jaws, teeth and skulls as a result of domestication. All that was happening roughly 10,000 years ago. The utilitarian relationship between man and dog still survives in Greece. Petloving foreigners are often outraged to see animals in Greece abandoned. to die once they have outlived their usefulness. Brigitte Bardot, in a scathing “open letter to the Greeks,” recently deplored the way modern Greeks treat their animals. Greek dogs, she said, are “skeletal, famished, rejected, beaten,

crushed, ousted victims of a cruel and uncaring population.” Greek dogs have not always been scraggy. Thanks to the historian Xenophon, much is known about hunting dogs in classical Greece (though not enough about the relationship between man and dog). In his treatise on hunting, written about 400 BC, Xenophon lays down strict standards of appearance and performance for hounds. Masters are urged to give their dogs short, snappy names — by Greek measures — such as Lailaps (Whirlwind), Phylax (Guard), even Hybris (Arrogance). Research into ancient sculp-

ture, frescoes, vase illustrations and literary texts has allowed Mrs Reilly to identify three main breeds of dogs in classical Greece; the Laconian hound, a short-haired elegant hunting dog, the size of a saluki, with small upright ears and a thin winding tail; the Molossian dog, built like a mastiff, and suitable for guarding sheep; and a largely unnoticed white lap-dog with pointed nose, short legs and a fluffy sickle-shaped tail. According to Mrs Reilly the lap-dog is shown playing or jumping with children on a series of painted vases from Athens in the fourth century BC. The relationship between man and dog was not strictly utilitarian throughout Greek history. Mrs Reilly has idenitifed grave decorations of dog-lovers with bas-reliefs showing the portrait .of the dead man and his dog. Then, of course, there is that touching scene in Homer when Odysseus returns to Ithaca after wandering for 20 years. He is first recognised by Argos, his elderly hound, who, having wagged his tail, expires. Modern Greeks might well reflect on this example of devotion and love between Greek dogs and their masters.

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