Hare's to you

This fast-running herbivore, a stand-in for both witches and the Holy Trinity, has inspired centuries of artists, from medieval monks who made it into a dog-chasing predator to Barry Flanagan's monumental sculptures, as Michael Prodger reveals

- Michael Prodger

The year 55BC was a bad one for the hares of Britain. With the arrival of Julius Caesar and his legions, things took a turn for the worse. In his Commentaries on the Gallic War, a self-promoting history of his career as Rome’s greatest general, Caesar paused in his descriptions of the warlike tribes he faced and the battles he fought to note that the Britons he encountered ‘do not regard it lawful to eat the hare… they do, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure’. This fastidiousness was bewildering to the invaders from the south, who enjoyed both hunting hares and cooking them. As with so much else, Roman tastes quickly took hold and the hares’ days of being coddled were over.

That is not to say that the Romans, and the Greeks before them, didn’t have a soft spot for the animal. Hares appear in the writings of Pliny, Aristotle, Herodotus and, most famously, in Aesop’s fable of the hare and the tortoise. Because of their fecundity, they were associated with the seasons and the cycle of life and were animals sacred to the goddess of love, Aphrodite (Venus for the Romans). As such, they often appeared engraved on wedding rings and lovers would give one another a hare as a symbol of their affection.

More often, however, the Greeks and Romans depicted hares being hunted. Existing mosaic floors from across the ancient world, from Sicily and Alexandria to Tunisia and mainland Italy, show dogs hot on the heels of the fleeing animals (the hunters needed to be quick, as a hare can reach 40mph at full pelt). Sometimes, too, they are shown in repose, munching on a bunch of grapes or, in a 4th-century AD mosaic found in Cirencester, grazing quietly among foliage.