“Large dog, tied to the threshold of the door of a house in which he stood guard.” – Giuseppe Fiorelli in his Guida di Pompei, 1877.
This is a cast of the guard dog of Marcus Vesonius Primus. The animal was tethered by the entrance to the Casa di Vesonius Primus or the House of Orpheus in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.
Unable to flee, the dog died and his contorted pose suggests he was desperately attempting to free himself until his last breath. He probably suffocated to death or died from extreme heat and was subsequently covered in volcanic ash that solidified before his body decomposed, which then left a void in the ground.
When the void was found by archaeologists in 1874, it was filled with plaster to form a cast of the dog as he appeared in his final moments. It is on display in the Antiquarium di Boscorea to the northwest of Pompeii, Italy. Info provided by museum:
“The cast obtained by pouring plaster into the imprint left by the dog in the eruptive material of 79, shows a specimen of Canis Catenarius ᴀssigned, that is to the custody of the house. The examination of the morphological characteristics, made possible by the perfection of the cast, while not allowing the identification of a precise breed, places it, however among those suitable also for hunting.”
