Animal Encounters in Classical Philosophy and Literature

The capacities of nonhuman animals were much debated in the philosophical schools of Late Antiquity (Sorabji 62, 82-5, 192-4). This paper explores Porphyry’s claim in De abstinentia, Book Three, that all animals, insofar as they have soul, perception, and memory, participate to some extent in logos (Abst. 3.1 and 3.26.1; cf. Haussleiter, 332-3; Preus, 153-7). This claim about animal logos culminates in a story Porphyry tells about how, when he lived in Carthage, a partridge flew to his window, whom he raised to speak with him.

Did the Romans have zoos? Or keep animals for anything other than slaughter in the arena? This paper responds to those questions by investigating private animal collections in ancient Rome. It focuses, in particular, on the words Romans used for enclosures meant for animals in captivity: vivaria, leporaria, roboraria, therotrophia, paradisi, aviaria, ornithones, piscinae.

This paper examines the complexities of the human-animal interface in hunting by focusing on key differences in the treatment of the dog and the hare in Xenophon’s Cynegeticus.