Dogs and Canine Character Between Homer and Plato: Poetic and Philosophical Imagination
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphil.2026.2.01Keywords:
Dogs, guardians, women, Homer, Plato, poetry, philosophy, the RepublicAbstract
This paper examines the figure of the dog in ancient Greek imagination, tracing its representations from Homeric poetry to Platonic philosophy. It explores the ethical, social and political dimensions of human-canine relationships, focusing on the dog’s fundamentally ambivalent status. The first part analyses literary representations of dogs alongside the structural analogy between dogs and women, highlighting their shared social functions and parallel negative associations. The second part argues that Plato’s Republic reconfigures these inherited concepts through institutional and psychological strategies designed to channel canine and feminine agency towards civic cohesion, preventing psychic and political disruption as exemplified by the tyrant’s degeneration into a wolf-like nature.
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