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These three states are delusion, also known as ignorance; greed or sensual attachment; and hatred or aversion. [1] [2] These three poisons are considered to be three afflictions or character flaws that are innate in beings and the root of craving, and so causing suffering and rebirth. [1] [3]
The art of the Middle Ages was mainly religious, reflecting the relationship between God and man, created in His image. The animal often appears confronted or dominated by man, but a second current of thought stemming from Saint Paul and Aristotle, which developed from the 12th century onwards, includes animals and humans in the same community of living creatures.
Animal examples of greed in literary observations are frequently the attribution of human motivations to other species. The dog-in-the-manger , or piggish behaviors are typical examples. Characterizations of the wolverine (whose scientific name (Gulo gulo) means "glutton") remark both on its outsized appetite, and its penchant for spoiling food ...
Animals had a variety of roles and functions in ancient Greece and Rome. Fish and birds were served as food. Species such as donkeys and horses served as work animals. The military used elephants. It was common to keep animals such as parrots, cats, or dogs as pets. Many animals held important places in the Graeco-Roman religion or culture.
The spotted hyena is a sacred totem animal for some Pedi tribes, with the skin often being used as robes by chieftains and their bones as divining instruments. [8] According to the doctrine of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church , hyenas are unclean animals which represent sexual deviancy and lawlessness.
Locusts have represented greed, and more literally plague and destruction, while the fly has been used to indicate death and decay, and the grasshopper has indicated improvidence. The horsefly has been used from classical times to portray torment, appearing in a play by Aeschylus and again in Shakespeare 's King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra ...
The anthropologist Lynne Isbell has argued that, as primates, the serpent as a symbol of death is built into our unconscious minds because of our evolutionary history.. Isbell argues that for millions of years snakes were the only significant predators of primates, and that this explains why fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias worldwide and why the symbol of the serpent is so ...
The tortoise was the symbol of the ancient Greek city of Aegina, on the island by the same name: the seal and coins of the city shows images of tortoises. The word Chelonian comes from the Greek Chelone, a tortoise god. [13] The tortoise was a fertility symbol in Greek and Roman times, and an attribute of Aphrodite/Venus. [33]