Date of Award
1-1-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in History
First Advisor
Lester L. Field
Second Advisor
Frances C. Kneupper
Third Advisor
John A. Lobur
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Romans had in dogs a useful element for the execution of obligations in their daily lives, and also a companion for their affections. Besides the two main occupations that dogs had, an aid to hunters and a guardian to homes and farmsteads, they served Romans for the completion of other duties and needs. These instances incur a pronounced veriety that oscilated from things as divergent as elements for propitiations and ingredients for medicinal compounds.
As Rome grew in power, new nations came under her sway and with them their people and their belongings. Hence, in the age of Augustus, the poet Grattius while singing of the accoutrements for hunting noted that dogs have their origin in a thousand fatherlands. The distinctions that differentiated the dogs of one region to those from another fascinated the Romans, especially because through the knowledge of canine traits Romans improved the performance they sought to accomplish with the help of dogs. The canine jobs, so to speak, assured that Romans kept raising dogs, and as a consequence of those services dogs became fairly numerous at any given time in Roman towns and cities.
The conditions for dogs in the Roman world varied with the lots the Fates spun and allotted to the Romans. In circumstances of great distress, as those effected by a famine or during a siege, people put dogs to a use alien to the purpose for which they had reared them, but nonetheless required by the circumstances. Historians such as Ammianus and Procopius recorded occurrences in which a people under Roman dominion, or even the very Romans had to resort to consumption of canines in order to survive.
Recommended Citation
Cazares, Anthony, "The Natural and Unnatural Uses of Dogs in Latin Literature" (2025). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3256.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/3256