Sphinx

Homer’s Iliad: perhaps the most grotesquely over-valued work of human culture after Shakespeare; entire books pass by without even the implied presence of a horse pulling a chariot, and the famous critique of the manufacture of artficial animals for destructive ends turns out not even to be in the poem. Marginally relieved by its embrace of the principle that superior healthy beings should end the lives of others.

Homer’s Odyssey: there are at least some more animals here, but their subjective experience is ignored – they exist as threats, foodstuffs or sources of blind devotion for the self-obsessed central character.

Herodotus: a pioneering survey of the animal life of different regions of the Near East, albeit with an excessive emphasis on the exotic, regularly interrupted by tedious narrative of human events.

Aristophanes: why have I never heard of this author before? Why are his plays not being performed in every major theatre so that small children of sufficient intelligence to be worth nurturing can be forced to watch them? As I read these neglected texts with growing fascination, I realised that it was Aristophanes’ inexplicable habit of constantly digressing from his brilliant exploration of the way the world appears from the perspective of birds, frogs and wasps to indulge in pointless wordplay, slapstick and political commentary.

Xenophon: does at least recognise the importance of animals for global wellbeing, but dedicates himself to providing instruction for their subordination and exploitation.

Livy: a short story about elephants.

Vergil: interesting discussion of the utilitarian social utopia of the beehive as a model for reforming human society and culling the weak, surrounded by lots of aimless waffle.

Catullus: amateurish ornithology.

Horace: brilliantly prescient dramatisation of the consequences of animal migration between different ecosystems.

Tacitus: like Livy, but no elephants.