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family photo

Today I'm going to send you to a fantastic article I've found, dating from 1949: "Greek and Roman Household Pets," by Francis D. Lazenby.  There you'll find a treasure trove including: - Supposedly Ajax had a pet snake that followed him like a dog - Quails were a favorite pet of patrician boys - The ancestor of our domestic cats may well be the cream-colored Nubian cat - Cats and weasels are most often interchangeable in ancient sources (that is, you can't really tell what animal exactly they're talking about) Don't be put off by the footnotes and quotations - there's so much here!  Read it now .

Unknown artist Pin with a Finial Shaped as a Dove Sitting on Pomegranates , 525–400 B.C., Gold 7.7 × 0.8 × 0.5 cm (3 1/16 × 5/16 × 3/16 in.), 96.AM.256 Gift of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman www.getty.edu If this beautiful bird pin were mine, I could pin up my hair with it, or pin a loose dress together at my shoulder.  That's what its original owner, an Etruscan of 525-400 B.C. would have done.  Was she hoping to attract romance, or assured of it already?  Doves were favorites of Aphrodite/Venus, and pomegranates have symbolized beauty, love and fertility since the ancient Greeks.  Though the Etruscans lived in the area that eventually became Tuscany, they had transactions with expatriate Greek colonies in southern Italy.  I suspect that's where the idea for this imagery came from.  Just for the color and life  of it, I'll send you to this friendly article on pomegranate symbolism.