13
The same thing is said to have been done by the poet Hesiod’s Cf. 984 d infra. A different account, omitting the dog, will be found in Mor. 162 c-f (where see Wyttenbach’s note); Cf. also Pollux, Onomasticon, v. 42 and Gabathüler on Anth. Pal. vii. 55 (Hellenistische Epigramme auf Dichter, p. 31). dog, which convicted the sons of Ganyctor the Naupactian, by whom Hesiod had been murdered. But a matter which carne to the attention of our fathers when they were studying at Athens is even plainer than anything so far mentioned. A certain fellow slipped into the temple of Asclepius,The same story in Aelian, De Natura Animal. vii. 13, indicates a literary source. See now E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 114 and n. 65. took such gold and silver offerings as were not bulky, and made his escape, thinking that he had not been detected. But the watchdog, whose name was Capparus, when none of the sacristans responded to its barking, pursued the escaping temple-thief. First the man threw stones at it, but could not drive it away. When day dawned, the dog did not approach close, but followed the man, always keeping him in sight, and refused the food he offered. When he stopped to rest, the dog passed the night on guard; when he struck out again, the dog got up and kept following, fawning on the other people it met on the road and barking at the man and sticking to his heels. When those who were investigating the robbery learned this from men who had encountered the pair and were told the colour and size of the dog, they pursued all the more vigorously and overtook the man and brought him back from Crommyon. On the return the dog led the procession, capering and exultant, as though it claimed for itself the credit for pursuing and capturing the temple-thief. The people actually voted it a public ration of food and entrusted the charge of this to the priests in perpetuity, thereby imitating the ancient Athenian kindness to the mule. For when Pericles was building the HecatompedonBetter known as the Parthenon; cf. Mor. 349 d, Life of Pericles, xiii. 7 (159 e). on the Acropolis, stones were naturally brought by numerous teams of draught-animals every day. Now one of the mules who had assisted gallantly in the work, but had now been discharged because of old age, used to go down every day to the Ceramicus and meet the beasts which brought the stones, turning back with them and trotting along by their side, as though to encourage and cheer them on. So the people of Athens, admiring its enterprise, gave orders for it to be maintained at the public expense, voting it free meals, as though to an athlete who had succumbed to old age. Cf. Life of Cato Maior, v. 3 (339 a-b). Aelian, De Natura Animal. vi. 49, agrees in the main with Plutarch’s account; Aristotle, Historia Animal. vi. 24 (577 b 34), says merely that a public decree was passed forbidding bakers to drive the creature away from their trays. He adds that the mule was 80 years old and is followed by Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 175.
