Note 100 — ANALYSIS

Though I have endeavoured to shew, that the term of which I have been treating was greatly misapplied, in being so uniformly referred to dogs, yet I do not mean to insinuate that it did not sometimes relate to them. They were distinguished by this sacred title, and were held in some degree of [100]veneration; but how far they were reverenced is not easy to determine. Herodotus,[101] speaking of the sanctity of some animals in Egypt, says, that the people in every family, where a dog died, shaved themselves all over: and he mentions it as a custom still subsisting in his own time. Plutarch[102] differs from him. He allows that these animals were, at one time, esteemed holy; but it was before the time of Cambyses: from the æra of his reign they were held in another light: for when this king killed the sacred Apis, the dogs fed so liberally upon his entrails, without making a proper distinction, that they lost all their sanctity. It is of little consequence whichever account be the truest. They were certainly of old looked upon as sacred; and esteemed emblems of the Deity. And it was, perhaps, with a view to this, and to prevent the Israelites retaining any notion of this nature, that a dog was not suffered to come within the precincts of the temple at [103]Jerusalem. In the Mosaic law, the price of a dog, and the hire of a harlot, are put upon the same level. [104]Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow: for both these are an abomination to the Lord thy God.