INTRODUCTION

Pet-keeping was a widespread and well-accepted phenomenon in classical antiquity, raising disapproval only when pets supplanted or were thought to supplant children in human affections, regardless of the owners’ self-respect and consideration for their own species. Besides this, ancient Greeks and Romans of all ages enjoyed animal companions of many different species, from insects to mammals. However, for all the pets found so far in ancient literature and art, owners’ explicit statements of their reasons for preferring one species to another and, more fundamentally, for wanting or needing a pet are still lacking, even supposing that they had once been recorded and preserved from destruction. An insight into the reasons for ancient people's interest in pets is provided by pet epitaphs. Some animal companions were offered burials intended not for ritual or apotropaic purposes, for example, but for their own sake. The tombstone or sarcophagus erected at the grave site was carved with a funerary text which not only mentioned the pet's name, but also listed its merits and expressed the mourner's grief.

This chapter seeks to retrieve the classical pet owner's motivations from the content of animal epitaphs. First, animal burial in classical antiquity will be described briefly. After an overview of the animals’ qualities and merits and the owners’ sorrow, some points relevant to the conceptual background of ancient pet-keeping will be delineated. These points will serve as an introduction to the discussion of the intentional wording of the epitaphs as they disclose grounds for keeping companion animals in ancient Greece and Rome.

ANIMAL BURIAL IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

The principle of funerals for dead animals (pets, domestic or even wild animals) was neither officially forbidden nor morally condemned in ancient Greece and Rome, although not everyone showed sympathy and respect towards the burial place of lower beings. One dog epitaph (Roman Empire) makes this plea: ‘Do not laugh, I beg you, you passing by, because it is a mere dog's grave’. Apart from this, explicit criticisms were levelled only at people ‘plunged into shameful and intolerable grief’ and deemed too ostentatious and extravagant by the standards of pet funerals in Greece or Rome (Georgoudi, 1984: 41). It is worth noting that human funerals, too, were governed by regulations which were intended to impose restrictions on both emotional displays and funerary expenses.