MAN’S UNLIKELY BEST FRIEND
Writers in the first centuries AD were fascinated by animal anecdotes. Their texts reveal that a vast body of tales about remarkable animal behaviour was in circulation. Some of these are found in zoological treatises or texts that are now branded ‘paradoxography’, literature dedicated to incredible natural phenomena and bizarre animal behaviour. The same kinds of stories are, however, also (re)told in many other literary genres. For example, no philosopher or orator worth their salt would forget to cite precedents from the natural world in support of their particular position.
The third-century philosopher Porphyry offers remarkable evidence for the intimate familiarity with animal stories among the Greco-Roman elite. During an elaborate argument that animals possess reason, he (in all seriousness) lists examples of their ability to acquire human skills: “they have learned dancing, chariot driving, gladiatorial combat, tight-rope walking, writing, reading, playing the flute and cithara, archery, and horse riding” (On abstinence of eating animals 3.15.1). Porphyry simply assumes that these bewildering feats are common knowledge among his readers. This presumption is in fact corroborated by the zoological texts from the period. Philo of Alexandria, for example, describes a monkey driving a chariot drawn by four goats (On animals 23).
Virtues and vices
In this nexus of anecdotes, certain species serve as representations of a specific virtue or vice. For instance, the lion features as a shorthand for courage, deer represent cowardice, and the king-fisher surpasses all in its care for its offspring. Dolphins occupied a special position. They embodied) for humans (). This idea is elaborated in a treatise by Plutarch, an intellectual with broad interests, in the words of the youth Phaedimus:
