At the end of Robert Graves’s historical novel Claudius the God, emperor Claudius visits Vitellius, a dying courtier. Claudius ask the man why someone so virtuous as he had not supported the Republican cause during Claudius’s reign. Vitellius’s last words are “Phaemon’s dog was right.”
Claudius explains:
“It appears that Phaemon the philosopher had a little dog whom he had trained to go to the butcher every day and bring back a lump of meat in a basket. This virtuous creature, who would never dare to touch a scrap until Phaemon gave it permission, was one day set upon by a pack of mongrels who snatched the basket from its mouth and began to tear the meat to pieces and bolt it greedily down. Phaemon, watching from an upper window, saw the dog deliberate for a moment just what to do. It was clearly no use trying to rescue the meat from the other dogs: they would kill it for its pains. So it rushed in among them and itself ate as much of the meat as it could get hold of. In fact it ate more than any of the other dogs, because it was both braver and cleverer.”
Phaemon’s dog certainly seems right; and if this is the case we have ourselves a brilliant apologia for collaboration in unjust regimes. Or is the dog’s option of scoring a moral victory by not participating in the eating of the spoils downplayed? Or is it his duty to be killed defending a just cause (his master’s meat) even if there is no chance of succeeding?
But who is Phaemon? I cannot find a reference to him anywhere, which is unusual for Graves, whose novels are usually colored by real historical figures.
Phaemon is someone Graves made up.
Think of the ancient writers (ancient to the Romans) whose writngs did not survive into our time.
Phaemon is one of those.
How do you know this to be true? Are you an historian?
I just know.
you are wrong janey! because I know you are wrong.
Two comments:
1.
A treatise on the proper management of dogs was printed in Latin and Greek by Andrew Goldschimdt in 1545 at Wittenberg under the name of Phaemon Philosophus. This treatise was later published in Paris by Nicolaus Rigaltius in 1619 under the title De Re Accipitraria et Venatica. This was discovered in a reference book of Greek and Roman mythology. Chances are, Peter and Matt Kopy, that JaneyRuth is correct in her assertion that the ancient work did not survive until modern times and could have either been destroyed in ancient times and passed on in Arabic, which would explain why it was being written in Latin and Greek in the 16th century, or it was destroyed in one of the numerous modern wars of Europe.
2.
Stefan, this quote is about more than corrupt regimes. Robert Graves is dealing with political and philosophical issues of the 1930s as well. Replace the Romans with the British and keep the Germans as they are and throw in the hoi-polloi of the Alexandrian Greeks and their treatment of Jews and you have 1930s Europe. Basically what I’m saying is that Phaemon’s Dog also applies in a grander philosophical sense, especially to the nihilism that was setting in Europe at the time, and it applies today even more so with the nihilism of capitalism (which don’t necessarily need to go hand in hand).
The Faux Intellectual
Thank you, Faux, I stand vindicated.