Cave canem

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A cave-canem mosaic from Pompeii

Cave canem is a Latin warning (consisting of cavere "shy", "beware" and canis "dog") and means "watch out for the dog!"

Known and often quoted through the discovery of a corresponding, well-preserved floor mosaic in the ruins of Pompeii , it is now sometimes even used in German-speaking countries instead of the inscription “Warning, biting dog!” On gates or fences.

The mosaic is located at the beginning of the long hallway in the so-called " House of the tragic poet ". Right behind the front door, a black and white floor mosaic shows a large chained dog with the inscription: Cave canem.

Such images were common in house entrances in antiquity . The Roman writer Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) used the phrase as a heading for a Menippe satire , which has only survived in fragments.

In the Satyricon of the Roman writer Titus Petronius (around 14-66 AD), the first-person narrator Encolpius reports how he was frightened when entering the house of the wealthy freedman Trimalchio in front of the mural of a huge chain dog under which the "Cave canem" stood.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Wilhelm Weeber : Everyday life in ancient Rome. A lexicon. Artemis & Winkler, Zurich 1998, p. 172 f.
  2. ↑ Paul Veyne : Cave canem. In: Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome. Antiquité. 75, Issue 1 (1963), p. 59 ( online at thelatinlibrary.com, accessed August 3, 2019)
  3. ↑ Petronius: Satyricon XXIX ( online at thelatinlibrary.com, accessed August 3, 2019)

Fiction