A puppy and a slab of marble
Picture a man in a Roman toga in the inner courtyard of his house, weeping like a child as he lays a small dog inside a tomb. He has just lost the one who, for him, was the best friend in the world. And hold this detail well: what I am describing is not a scene from today. It is happening two thousand years ago, in the Rome of the emperor Augustus. And yet it could perfectly well be you, on a Saturday morning, burying your dog in the garden.
Because that is what I am going to try to prove to you here: this thing that happens to us Westerners with our pets, this tender madness that makes us talk to them as if they were children, sleep with them and shed tears the day they leave us, is no modern invention. It is something ancient. And to see it clearly, let us take a stroll through the Mediterranean of twenty-five centuries ago.
Egypt, the paradise where cats were gods
First and obligatory stop: ancient Egypt, a civilisation that carried the love of domestic animals to an extreme that strikes us today as comical, but that was deadly serious to them. Cats were consecrated to the goddess Bastet, a deity with the head of a cat; and killing a cat, even by accident, could cost you your life. Literally.
The best scene of ancient Egypt is told to us by Herodotus in his Histories. When a fire broke out in an Egyptian house, do you know what the inhabitants did? They did not rush to put out the fire. They lined up forming a human chain around the flames, not to quench them, but to stop the household cat, terrified, from throwing itself into them. Picture it: the house ablaze, the furniture turning to ash, and twenty Egyptians forming a cordon for the sole purpose of keeping the kitty from immolating itself. The whole house could come down on them; what mattered was saving the cat.
And when an Egyptian pet died of natural causes, you cannot imagine the spectacle the family put on. If it was a cat, every member of the household, men, women and children, shaved off their eyebrows with a razor as a sign of mourning. If it was a dog, the mourning was greater still: they shaved their entire head and body. Then the poor creature was given the most honourable funeral rites, mummified with the full ritual, and in the case of cats it was carried in pilgrimage to the city of Bubastis, which had a cemetery just for them. Yes, you read that correctly: cemeteries for cats, three thousand years ago. Dogs, consecrated to the great god Anubis, had their own in each city.
Pet cemeteries, in pharaonic Egypt. Compared with this, what we do today is almost austere.
Greece: Herodotus and a dog named Lelaps
We now leap to classical Greece. And here I should like to share with you a small confession that Herodotus himself lets slip in his Histories, one of those stray phrases that are worth their weight in gold.
It turns out that the Father of History, that venerable sage we all imagine as a respectable old man with a white beard, was first and foremost a boy from Halicarnassus who had grown up on his parents' farm surrounded by shepherd and guard dogs. And among them all, there was one very special one he adored more than anything in the world: a noble animal, slender, strong and intelligent, to which he had given a beautiful name, Lelaps, which in Greek means «storm wind», just like the mythical dog owned by Zeus himself.
And here comes the confession. Herodotus, now old, now writing his Histories, openly admits the following: if as a child he had been forced to choose between saving the life of his own brother Theo or that of his dog Lelaps, he would not have hesitated for a second; he would have chosen Lelaps. A thousand times over. The Father of History, the man who laid the foundations of all that came after, preferred his dog to his own brother. Well, frankly, I do not blame him: anyone who has had a childhood dog understands perfectly what Herodotus is talking about.
Rome: the epitaph of Patricus
And we come at last to Rome, where the jewel in the crown awaits us. Because among all the testimonies Antiquity has bequeathed to us, there is none comparable to the epitaph that an anonymous Roman, in the time of the emperor Augustus, had carved on the marble tombstone of his dog, a little animal he had named Patricus. I swear to you it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read:
«Patricus, my little one, today I carried you in my arms, my eyes laden with tears and grief, to your place of eternal rest; just as, fifteen years ago now, in far happier circumstances, I carried you into our home when you were no more than a puppy. But now, sweet Patricus, you will give me no more of your thousand kisses, nor will you be able to lie affectionately around my neck. You were a good dog, the best in the world to me, and it is with enormous sorrow that today I have laid for you this tomb and this marble stone; and when I too die, you and I shall be reunited forever in heaven.»
And it goes on:
«You easily grew used to living with a human thanks to your charming ways and your intelligent gaze. Oh, what a magnificent house companion you were, and what a great friend we have lost! You, sweet Patricus, used to join us at the table and gently beg us for food in our lap, you were used to licking with your tongue the cup of water my hands held for you, and at night you would greet your weary master's return home with a great celebration, with barks of joy and the happy wagging of your tail. Rest in peace, my wonderful friend.»
Close your eyes a moment and think of this man. We do not know his name, we do not know what he did, nor where exactly he lived. We know absolutely nothing about him, except one thing, the only one he himself cared to leave engraved for eternity: that he had a dog he called Patricus, that this dog lived fifteen years at his side, that it kissed his face and greeted him wagging its tail, and that when it died, this man, raised in a hard and military society, wept without shame and had carved in marble that he hoped to be reunited with it in heaven. And all of this two thousand years ago.
Twenty-five centuries later, the same furry rascals
So there you have it. The Egyptians shaving their heads over the death of the house dog. Herodotus choosing Lelaps over his own brother. Patricus's master promising to meet him again in heaven. Three different civilisations, separated from one another by centuries and by thousands of kilometres of Mediterranean, and exactly the same love, the same grief, the same tears.
Because love for dogs and cats is not, as some would have it, a modern sentimentality of childless city folk. No, my friends, no. It is something far older and deeper: one of the oldest relationships we humans have with the rest of the living world.
I tell you so myself, for in my house in Ibiza, as I write these lines, I have my own private Patricus snoring at my feet. His name is Igor. He came home a few years ago now, when my son Jordan was still a small child, and from the very first day he became one more member of the family. When Igor is one day no longer here, I too shall weep without shame, just as that anonymous Roman wept two thousand years ago for his Patricus. Because for those of us who truly love dogs, there is no difference whatsoever between one century and another. Patricus, Lelaps and Igor are, deep down, the same dog: the one who comes home as a puppy, loves you in a way no human knows how to love, and to whom one day you must say goodbye with your heart broken in two.
And that, dear readers, is the most beautiful thing History has to teach us.