Papy, Jan. Lipsius and His Dogs: Humanist Tradition, Iconography and Rubens's Four Philosophers

This is one of my favorite bits of humanist research I have found so far. Read the article by Papy (quoted below) if you want to learn more. But what a beautiful thing indeed, that humans have always loved their dog companions so much.

The height of the discussion surrounding poetry adressed to pets was reached when poets (not limited to Lipsius but also including Giselinus) started to imitate the poets of antquity such as Catullus in these poems,which again made them heretics to the public eye. Again, they did not care.

The poetry written for his dogs actually placed him in the eye of contemporary criticism which went as far as calling him a heretic - still he prevailed. Talk about dogged loyalty or something.

In 1601 Saphyrus died tragically by falling into a cauldron of boiling water (yes, this actually happened) and in his grief, Lipsius wrote a heart-wrenching epigram for his dog. He didn't stop there tho. No, he also built a tomb for him in his garden and finished it with an epitaph.

Jan Papy has written an excellent paper on the topic, which i refer back to a bit, but this man LOVED his dogs