[77] Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 293.
[78] Montaigne, Essais, ii. 11.
[79] Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, pp. 180, 217.
So also the ancient Greeks were on familiar terms with the animal world. This appears from the frequency with which their poets illustrate human qualities by metaphors drawn from it. And as men were compared with animals, so animals were believed to possess human peculiarities. When a beast was going to be sacrificed it had to give its consent to the act by a nod of the head before it was killed.[80] Animals were held in some measure responsible for their deeds; they were tried for manslaughter, sentenced, and executed.[81] On the other hand, honours were bestowed upon beasts which had rendered signal services to their masters. The graves of Cimon’s mares with which he three times conquered at the Olympic games were still in the days of Plutarch to be seen near his own tomb;[82] and a certain Xanthippus honoured his dog by burying it on a promontory, since then called “the dog’s grave,” because when the Athenians were compelled to abandon their city it swam by the side of his galley to Salamis.[83] According to Xenocrates, there were in existence at Eleusis three laws which had been made by an ancient legislator, namely:—“Honour your parents; Sacrifice to the gods from the fruits of the earth; Injure not animals.”[84] At Athens a man was punished for flaying a living ram.[85] The Areopagites once condemned a boy to death because he had picked out the eyes of some quails.[86] As we have noticed before, the life of the ploughing ox was sacred;[87] and young animals in particular were believed to be under the protection of the gods.[88] An ancient proverb says that “there are Erinyes even for dogs.”[89] This seems to indicate that the Greeks, also, were influenced by the common notion that the soul of an animal may take revenge upon him who killed it, the Erinys of the slain animal being originally its persecuting ghost. Among the Pythagoreans, again, the rule that animals which are not obnoxious to the human race should be neither injured nor killed[90] was connected with their theory of metempsychosis;[91] and in some cases the prohibition of slaying useful animals may be traced to utilitarian motives.[92] But both in Greece and Rome kindness to brutes was also inculcated for their own sake, on purely humanitarian grounds. Porphyry says that, as justice pertains to rational beings and animals have been proved to be possessed of reason, it is necessary that we should act justly towards them.[93] He adds that “he who does not restrict harmless conduct to man alone, but extends it to other animals, most closely approaches to divinity; and if it were possible to extend it to plants, he would preserve this image in a still greater degree.”[94] According to Plutarch kindness and beneficence to creatures of every species flow from the breast of a well-natured man as streams that issue from the living fountain. We ought to take care of our dogs and horses not only when they are young, but when they are old and past service.[95] We ought not to violate or kill anything whatsoever that has life, unless it hurt us first.[96] And if we cannot live unblamably we should at least sin with discretion: when we kill an animal in order to satisfy our hunger we should do so with sorrow and pity, without abusing and tormenting it.[97] Cicero says it is a crime to injure an animal.[98] And Marcus Aurelius enjoins man to make use of brutes with a generous and liberal spirit, since he has reason and they have not.[99]
[80] Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 96 sq.
[82] Plutarch, Cato Major, v. 6.
[83] Ibid. v. 7.
[84] Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium, iv. 22.
[85] Plutarch, De carnium esu oratio I. vii. 2.