the sow
animal · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
a sow · a young pig · the victim
in the texts
Orations
A domesticated pig secretly fattened by the young suitor's family to serve as the sacrificial victim for the wedding.
So the girl's younger brother said, But this man has long since provided a victim, and there is one within, being fattened behind the hut, a noble one.
When we took the sow that had the young, the rest escaped;
74. These things, then, he said, your mother was laughing at, when I wondered to hear the sow grunting, and you spent the barley so. For the Euboean acorns, he said, were not enough to fatten her, who would not even eat acorns. But if you wish to see her, I will go and bring her. And they bade him. So he and the boys went off from there at a run, rejoicing.
Barlaam and Josaphat
Proverbial sow used as a simile for a sin-habituated soul.
and thereafter, just as a sow that wallows in mire takes pleasure in it, so too that soul, buried under evil habits, no longer takes any perception of the foul stench of its sins, but rather delights in them and is sweetened by them, clinging to wickedness as to some good;