Beasts and their Names in the Roman Empire

Extract

Personal names of animals, mostly of dogs and horses, are, as everyone is aware, recorded in the literature and archaeological monuments of archaic, classical, and hellenistic Greece. A few examples must suffice here, by way of preface to our present study. The most familiar of Homeric named beasts is, of course, Odysseus' faithful hound Argos (‘Swiftfoot’: Od. 17, 292). Hector's steeds (Il. 8, 185) were Xanthos, Podargos, Aithon, and Lampos—Tawny, Swiftfoot, Flash, and Fire: Achilles drove Xanthos and Balios—‘Tawny’ and ‘Dapple,’ offspring of the mare Podarge (Il. 19, 400); and Menelaus yoked Agamemnon's mare Aithe (Bay) and his own horse Podargos (Il. 23. 295). Names of classical hunting-dogs are quoted in Xenophon's Cynegeticus (7, 5). In hellenistic times the best-known animal-name is that of Alexander's favourite charger Boukephalas (‘Oxhead’) (Strabo 15, I, 29; etc.). Theocritus records the names of two heifers, Lepargos (‘Whitecoat’) and Kymaitha (Plumpling ?) (4, 45–46), and of a bull, Phaethon (‘Brightcoat’) (25, 139): the author of Idyll 8 tells us of Lampourgos (Firetail), a sheep-dog (65); while among metrical epitaphs on dogs dating from this age we have that of Philokynegos (‘Chasseur’) of Pergamon, accompanied by a portrait of the deceased and dating, probably, from the third century b.c.