Maybe the Greeks and Romans were onto some things related to nature, wildlife and hunting with their statues and stories. We were agog as we wandered through Italy’s Uffizi Gallery where deer, snakes, boars, and marble penises figured heavily in the statues and oil paintings.
In the artists’ reach for symbolism they went a step beyond the natural by featuring the likes of salacious half-goat/ half-man Satyrs. Anyone who has tended buck goats will understand.
Then there were the powerful half-horse/half-man Centaurs. In case you are wondering, the man is not the rear end of the horse in this case. Here Hercules struggles to subdue a Centaur and my money is on ole’ Herc. Part of Hercules power came from a puncture-proof lion-skin cape he wore in battle. Of course, one wonders how he ever skinned the lion in the first place.
What great wildlife truisms might come from the ancients? Surprisingly, not many. Like the messages of Aesop or Gary Larson, most of the insights were about predicaments and decisions emerging from human circumstance. For example, consider poor Cyparissus here agonizing over having killed a smallish fallow deer.
Hunters often have a DARN moment of regret upon killing game but here, Cyparissus is in trouble for killing the favorite pet deer of the god Apollo who promptly turned the hunter into a Cypress tree. Oh well. Look before you shoot. I am unsure why Cyparissus was hunting naked but he qualifies as “buck naked”.
Diana the Huntress of mythology (also known as Artemis), was a crack shot with a bow, a master dog handler and leader of other women hunters.
Diana was so virtuous that when a man named Siproites accidentally viewed her bathing nude he was given the choice of being killed on the spot or being turned into a woman huntress. He wisely opted for the latter transsexual treatment. We need more women hunters!
The ancients offered fishing examples too like this painting by Antonio Pollaiuolo where the Archangel Raphael commanded Tobias to go fishing — I am liking this so far and wondered if my angelic wife might similarly command me.
However, once a fish was landed, Tobias gives us a masterclass in poor fish handling for catch and release. No matter, he was going to gut the fish and rub viscera on his blind father’s eyes to restore sight. Probably walleyed him.
And snakes-my observation is that Canadians generally don’t like them. Even though very few of my university students lived in poisonous snake country, 30% reported having scary dreams about snakes.
Our World Health Organization’s medicine symbol of a staff and snake harkens back to the Ancient Greek Asclepias who did like snakes because of their medicinal venom (Whaaa?) and their regenerative ability to shed their skin and grow a new one.
Wild boars are a hot topic in Alberta. This famous original boar carving appears in marble.
Yet the same boar appears in lots of places, including a garden in Saanich, BC where I live because they made a mold of it and cast a bunch of copies in bronze. Kind of heavy for full body decoy however.
Major religions didn’t stick well to me in childhood yet I read every Aesop’s fable (written approximately 2600 years before present) and Grimm’s Fairy Tale (around 170 years before present) I could find.
Those books were rife with the advice and morality tales that formed the basis of my ability to tell right from wrong. Here are a few takeaways from their stories:
-No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted
-Those who cry the loudest are not always the ones who are hurt the most.
-It is easy to be brave at a safe distance.
-Please all, and you will please none.
-Once a wolf, always a wolf.
-The haft of the eagle-killing arrow is feathered with the eagle’s own quills.
-Vices are their own punishment.
- A man is known by the company he keeps.
-It is easy to despise what you cannot get
The animals in these stories were simply the role players demonstrating ethical choices presented to us. How often do we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma? Even the term dilemma; “di-” meaning two and “lemma” meaning horns, indicates there will be some discomfort with whichever side we take. Who would have thought blocks of marble, old paintings, and ancient writers would land advice so relevant to our current days? Some things just never change though.
