Hunting dogs

but if anyone despise them and approach boldly, it is not hard for cowardly and feeble men to master the strong—men most like dogs, which pursue and bite those who flee, and have torn to pieces some they overtook, but fear and retreat from those who come on and fight, and in the end fawn, when they have grown familiar.

And tasting the blood of boars and deer, and often eating the flesh, they at last unlearned their liking for barley-cake in favour of meat, filling themselves with it whenever something was caught, but going hungry when not, they gave more heed now to such fare, and pursued alike everything that appeared, and perceived a scent and a track somehow or other, and turned out, instead of herd-dogs, a k …

And having leisure from the cattle, they turned to hunting, partly by themselves, partly with dogs.

Of scent in dogs doth lead the hunter on

So dogs oft wander astray, and hunt the scent.

Whithersoever the splay-foot of wild beast

it is just as if wolves were to give small bits of their prey to watch-dogs, and they being mollified by the gifts were to allow them to go ravening among the flocks.

Shall we say that those who watch over the fairest things, and who are themselves eminently good at keeping watch, are inferior to dogs and ordinary men, who would never betray justice for the sake of gifts impiously offered by unjust men?

Necessarily they must be rulers, if they are to be in continual control of the whole heaven.

Do we expect the females of watch-dogs to join in guarding what the males guard and to hunt with them and share all their pursuits or do we expect the females to stay indoors as being incapacitated by the bearing and the breeding of the whelps while the males toil and have all the care of the flock?

I see that you have in your house hunting-dogs and a number of pedigree cocks.