# Talk:Laconian (dog)

Hi AmazingAce. I saw this on the list of Good Article nominations, so I came by to take a look. A great deal of work has clearly gone into the preparation of this article, and it gathers together a lot of interesting information. I do agree with the earlier comments (above on this talk page) by Michael Aurel, that the quotations, in their present number and length, are a rather overwhelming. Wikipedia articles should summarize what secondary sources say about a topic, and most of the time it's not necessary to quote the primary sources at length, unless there's something very specific about the vocabulary or other aspects of the passage that can't be easily summarized. To be clear, I'm very much in favor of citing the ancient sources, and if possible adding links to texts and translations for those readers who want to follow them up. Most will probably not be interested, but those who are (myself included) will be grateful that you have provided them. But piling on quotation after quotation when the content can be easily summarized or paraphrased threatens to overload the article with annotation. In this case, the word count of the footnotes far exceeds that of the article itself. That's a sign that something is out of balance. It might occasionally be appropriate in an academic publication that includes detailed discussion of the original texts, but Wikipedia is aimed at a different kind of audience. 
I have a few other suggestions and comments about the content of the article:

Lead image. The statue of the dog from the Athenian Acropolis (Acropolis Museum 143) was not found in the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia on the Acropolis, as stated in the caption (and also in the description of the file on the Commons). Guy Dickins, Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum, vol. 1 (Cambridge 1912), p. 98, no. 143 says that it was found north of the Parthenon, and the online catalogue of the Acropolis Museum says the same thing. Maria Brouskari's Musee de l'Acropole: Catalogue descriptif (Athens 1974), p. 60, no. 143, says that it was found south of the Parthenon. I don't know if this was just a slip on her part or if there is genuine uncertainty about the findspot, but either way, if it was found north or south of the Parthenon that rules out the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia, which was located west of the Parthenon, at the far southwest corner of the hilltop. Some scholars have certainly suggested that this dog (and its very fragmentary companion) may originally have been placed at the entrance to the sanctuary of Artemis, which would be an appropriate place for them, but this is speculation; there is no archaeological evidence to support it, and the statues could just as easily have stood elsewhere. Since the article is concerned with the dog as a breed, not with the topography of the Acropolis, it doesn't really matter where this statue was found, and the easiest thing to do here is just to omit any mention of the sanctuary of Artemis and say "found on the Acropolis of Athens", which is true, and all the reader needs to know. If you really want to mention Artemis for some reason, I suppose you could also write that the statue "perhaps stood in the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia" (but not that it was found there).
The current footnote on the caption of the lead image cites James Grout's Encyclopedia Romana essay on Greek and Roman dogs (without his name, although he is cited by name several times later in the article). This "encyclopedia" is actually a self-published collection of "personal and idiosyncratic" essays (his words), written not by a classical scholar but by an enthusiastic amateur, who admits that he is not a classicist and cannot read the ancient sources in the original languages. There's nothing wrong with that; most Wikipedia editors of classical articles are in the same boat. But it does mean that he is not an recognized authority on any aspect of classical antiquity, and therefore not a Reliable Source for Wikipedia purposes. Even if most of what he writes is accurate, self-published essays like this can be used only when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications (see WP:RSSELF). That is certainly not the true of Grout, so the half-dozen references to his essay on Greek and Roman dogs should be removed and, if necessary, replaced. It's not always necessary to replace them, since there are some instances in which he is one of two or three different sources cited on the same sentence; in such cases he can just be quitely deleted. Where replacement is required, it should be easy to do, because Grout drew his information from the same published sources that are already cited elsewhere in the article. Anything that he says can almost certainly be cited equally well from a peer-reviewed academic publication like Hull, Anderson, or Rajewicz.
The footnote on the caption of the statue from the Acropolis needs to be something that specifically describes the dog as having "Laconian" features. If you can't use Grout, and you don't find what you need in one of the other sources already cited in the article, may I suggest citing the discussion by Walter-Herwig Schuchhardt in H. Schrader, ed., Die Archaischen Marmorbildwerke der Akropolis (Frankfurt 1939), pp. 262–264, no. 377. This is still the most detailed description of the statue and its features, and it explicitly characterizes the dog as Laconian, citing the long, smooth-haired body, the light head, and the long thin tail (pp. 263–264: "Es handelt sich um den lakonischen Jagdhund, dessen Merkmale weitgehend vorhanden sind: langgestreckt, glatthaarig, mit leichtem Kopf, langem, dünnen, geraden Schwanz").
Re the adjective Ἀμυκλαῖος (Amyclaeus) and Simonides: the second footnote on this word (currently note 29) says Rajewicz states it as a source, yet when searching for "Simonides fragment, 86 2" the only thing that came up was a snippet that had nothing to do with the word, nor contained any word that would be similar enough to be confused. I admire your transparency, but this report of original research is not really appropriate for a WP article. In any case, it's not necessary. The passage you're looking for is quoted by Plutarch in Quaestiones convivales = Moralia 748B. (This is the work entitled "Table-Talk" in volume 9 of the Loeb edition of Plutarch's Moralia; if you type "Plutarch Table Talk" into the search box on the Loeb site, it will take you to the right volume; then in the "Go to section" menu choose Stephanus 748 and section B.) The quotation begins Πελασγὸν ἵππον ἢ κύνα Ἀμυκλαίαν ... μίμεο ("imitate the Pelasgian horse or Amyklaian hound"). Unfortunately, Plutarch doesn't name the author of this fragment of lyric verse, and scholarly opinions have varied. In the 19th century it was included among the fragments of Simonides in the early editions of Bergk's  Anthologia Lyrica (you can see it here as fragment 29, with Meineke's suggestion ἀπέλαστον in place of Πελασγὸν in the first line). I'm not sure what edition of Simonides Rajewicz is referring to when he calls this fragment 86, but as you have already discovered, you won't find it under this number or any other in a search of the Loeb edition of Simonides, because it's not there. Instead, it's included in the Loeb edition of the fragments of Pindar, as fragment 107a, following the numbering of the standard edition of Pindar by Snell and Maehler. Since the authorship doesn't matter for your purposes, perhaps the best thing to do is simply to cite the passage in Plutarch, while noting that he does not identify the author of the quotation by name. Incidentally, the same adjective also shows up in Nicander's Theriaca, line 670 (σκυλάκεσσιν Ἀμυκλαίῃσι κελεύων, "urging on his Amyclaean dogs"), although I don't see any mention of this in Rajewicz.
Drawing of the engraved gem. Although the 19th-century publication from which this image was taken identifies the scene as Odysseus and Argos, there is no good reason to accept that identification, and plenty of reason to reject it. In gems that depict Odysseus and Argos, Odysseus is regularly shown as an older bearded man, wearing a traveling cloak over his shoulder and a pilos (the distinctive conical cap that is one of his regular iconographic attributes) on his head. Here are some examples: one, two, three, four. The gem illustrated in the article, on the other hand, shows a nude youth (no beard) without a cloak and without a pilos. This particular gem was originally in the collection of the topographer William Martin Leake and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. J. H. Middleton, who was briefly the curator of the museum in the late 19th century, published a catalogue of the Fitzwilliam gem collection in 1891, and he describes the scene like this: "a youth, nude, leaning on a jagged staff, bends downwards to caress his dog, which looks up affectionately at its master" (The Engraved Gems of Classical Times, with a Catalogue of the Gems in the Fitz-William Museum (Cambridge 1891), appendix, p. vii, no. 10). Similarly, the Fitzwilliam Museum online catalogue describes it as "nude youth in profile to right, holding staff and leaning down to pat head of dog". No mention of Odysseus, an identification which has rightly been discarded. "Nude youth with dog" is in fact a common subject on Greek gems, and one can easily add other examples, like this one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or  this one in the Getty collection, or these two in the Louvre (one, two), or these three in the British Museum (one, two, three). I don't think there's anything here to suggest a connection between the Fitzwilliam gem and Odysseus and Argos, and probably no reason to keep this (rather poor) drawing in the article at all. (For what it's worth, I had the very same discussion at Talk:Argos_(dog)#Lead_image, where this same drawing was briefly the lead image when the article was nominated for GA. After looking at the evidence the editor of that article agreed and decided to remove the image altogether.)
The red-figure vases are helpful illustrations (full disclosure: the lekythos in Boston is one of my photographs). The detail of the mosaic from Pella is very low resolution; I think you might get a better crop if you start from a higher-resolution image, like this one: File:Pella Mosaics VIII - The Hunters and the Deer (50009205138).jpg. It's darker, but much clearer. One other source of possible illustrations that seems to have been overlooked here is Greek funerary reliefs of the Classical period, where depictions of idealized youths with lean-bodied, long-muzzled hunting dogs similar to those shown on contemporary vases are not uncommon. See, for example:
File:Επιτύμβια στήλη με αθλητή και σκύλο 9891.jpg
File:Grave stele Stephanos NAMA2578.jpg
File:Glyptothek München 155.JPG
File:Grave stele, nude youth and father, Skopas, 340 BC, NAMA 869, 225671.jpg
Perhaps one of these would make a good addition to the article?
Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 00:38, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Dear Choliamb,
Thank you so much for your thorough feedback!
Lead image:  I’ve updated the lead image and linked it to this talk page so that anyone who uses the picture in the future knows the look in further about the location. Thank you very much for finding the Frankfurt source - I have no idea how you were able to find it!
Grout: I hadn’t realized that Grout was not an expert on the topic. I have replaced his citations with correct link to the original text or to another scholar.
Amyclaeus: I also really appreciate you finding the Simonides fragment source. I am also going to add the Nicander's Theriaca, line 670 (σκυλάκεσσιν Ἀμυκλαίῃσι κελεύων, "urging on his Amyclaean dogs")
https://www.attalus.org/poetry/theriaca.html
http://www.poesialatina.it/_ns/greek/testi/Nicander/Theriaca.html
Odysseus: Thank you for write up on the gem - I looked through your research and have removed it. It may be worth commenting the directly under the source image so that no one else uses it.  Since the main source for the Argos speculation is Grout I have removed it altogether.
Images: I’ve updated the mosaic to the one you’ve suggested for a higher resolution and cropped it to get a better shot of the dog specifically. I would love to use some of those funerary reliefs you’ve found but I can’t find a source linking any of the ones available on Wikipedia to the Laconian breed. I’ve found a few pictures of those in book but none of them are available in the public domain.  AmazingAce123 (talk) 00:16, 23 July 2025 (UTC)
Hi AmazingAce. I'm glad you found the comments helpful. As for the dogs depicted in the reliefs, yes, it is a problem: many of the ones that reliable sources describe as "Laconian" in type do not have suitably licensed photos available in the Commons or elsewhere, and many of the ones with photos in the Commons are not specifically described in the sources as "Laconian", even though they share the same characteristics. For the purposes of Wikipedia you need both, and the combination can be hard to find. I can give you two examples that are okay to use, if you care to do so, although they are from votive reliefs rather than funerary reliefs:
The dog in this votive relief in the Torlonia collection in Rome (Torlonia MT 433) is included in a list of "probable depictions of Laconian hounds" in Katia Magariti, Dogs in Athenian Sculpture and Vase Painting of the Archaic and Classical Periods (Archaeopress 2025), pp. 10–11, note 119. The photo I've linked to is one that I just took a few months ago at an exhibition of sculpture from the Torlonia collection in Chicago; the resolution is high, but the lighting in the case that held the relief was not ideal, so the photo is a little dark. You may prefer one of the more well-lighted images in the same Commons category.
The dog in this fragmentary votive relief in Berlin (Antikensammlung Sk 941) is listed by Margariti in the same footnote cited above, and also described as a "Lakonian hound" by Angeliki Kosmopoulou, The Iconography of Sculptured Statue Bases in the Archaic and Classical Periods (Univ of Wisconsin Press 2002), p. 221, and as a "'Lakonian' dog" (with quotes around Lakonian) by Kim Hartswick, "The Ares Borghese Reconsidered", Revue archéologique 1990, p. 243, note 43 JSTOR 41737412.
I see that Margariti is not cited anywhere in the article. That's not surprising, since her book was just published this year, and you probably weren't aware of it when you were writing the article. (I wasn't aware of it until I began drafting this reply.) Only excerpts are available via Google Books, but she discusses Laconians as a breed on pp. 6–7 and 10–11, which are part of the preview. She also has a separate chapter on depictions of hunting dogs. The Google Books preview shows up inconsistently for me: sometimes I get it, but other times a get a message that no preview is available. This link will probably work for you, but if it doesn't, let me know: I took screen shots of pp. 10–11, which contain the footnote you need to justify inclusion of the two reliefs listed above, and I can sent them to you if you need them. But those pages are only the tip of the iceberg, and if you are at all interested in the ways that dogs (not just Laconian dogs but all kinds of dogs) are depicted in Greek art, the whole book is definitely worth a look. The cost of the ebook version actually seems pretty reasonable compared to most academic book prices these days. More information here. Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 00:31, 25 July 2025 (UTC)
Dear Choliamb,
Thank you again for the sources! I have added the Torlonia Relief. The Margariti is fantastic and I am going to add her points on the naming confusion. AmazingAce123 (talk) 18:28, 30 July 2025 (UTC)