Pets as Humans and Humans as Pets in Imperial Rome

Abstract: Petkeeping 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.