by Aldus Marius on Thu Apr 28, 2005 6:13 am
Ave iterum, Iohannes...!
This is off the cuff, so I may be back with more specific info, references and the like. But my impression is that, if we restrict ourselves to the available literature, there ain't much. Many of the agricultural poems and manuals mention dogs; and someone wrote a treatise on hunting called the Cynegetica. I think Pliny the Elder might have a chapter on dog breeds. But as far as 'Lassie stories', odes to beloved pets, and that sort of thing...they may be out there, but the Romans seem to have been more interested in keeping dogs than in writing about them.
Expand the search to art, however...! Representations of dogs abound in painting, sculpture, and mosaic. Some, naturally enough, are hunting-scenes; but others, lots of them, are tender scenes lovingly rendered, of small dogs up to mischief...street dogs taking part in city life...pairs of dogs playing, or sleeping together, or grooming each other. And the sculptures, especially, tend to be so sensitively-executed that I cannot doubt that the Romans had house-dogs, and loved them very much.
The Maltese is said to be from Roman antiquity, as is the Italian Greyhound. The latter had the duty of snuggling up under his master's covers to warm him if he had a chill! (They still do this today; the IG is not the pet to have if you can't stand dogs on the furniture.)
Does that give you some places to start looking...?
In amicitia,
Aldus Marius Peregrinus.