Pets as humans and humans as pets in imperial Rome

Sian Lewis

doi:10.1353/are.2025.a962487

Pets as humans and humans as pets in imperial Rome

Sian Lewis^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Pet keeping in Rome was a cultural and class-based phenomenon to which modern expectations about the role of the pet are not easily applicable; in particular, any conceptualisation of pet ownership in imperial Roman society must be complicated by the existence of human pets, the so-called pueri minuti.

A consideration of the role of the pet child brings into clearer focus some of the underlying structures of the pet-owner relationship as experienced at Rome: the one-sided nature of the affection demonstrated, the owner’s indifference to the pet’s interior state, and the permeable conceptual boundary between the animal and the human.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	143-164
Journal	Arethusa
Volume	58
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1353/are.2025.a962487
Publication status	Published - 13 Jun 2025
Event	American Society of Classical Studies Annual Meeting 2023 (New Orleans) - New Orleans, United States Duration: 5 Jan 2023 → 8 Jan 2023

Keywords

Animals
Petkeeping
Rome

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10.1353/are.2025.a962487

Lewis_2025_Pets_as_humans_and_humans_as_pets_Arethusa_AAM_CCBY
Copyright © 2025 the Author. This work has been made available online in accordance with the University of St Andrews Open Access policy. This accepted manuscript is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1353/are.2025.a962487.
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Cite this

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AB - Pet keeping in Rome was a cultural and class-based phenomenon to which modern expectations about the role of the pet are not easily applicable; in particular, any conceptualisation of pet ownership in imperial Roman society must be complicated by the existence of human pets, the so-called pueri minuti. A consideration of the role of the pet child brings into clearer focus some of the underlying structures of the pet-owner relationship as experienced at Rome: the one-sided nature of the affection demonstrated, the owner’s indifference to the pet’s interior state, and the permeable conceptual boundary between the animal and the human.

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Y2 - 5 January 2023 through 8 January 2023

ER -

Pets as humans and humans as pets in imperial Rome

Abstract

Keywords

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