While we don't have documents specifically calling small animals "cute", we have a wealth of evidence that the ancient Romans loved their many pets. In fact, Juvanel's 6th Satire rants about the overabundance spoiled lapdogs in his time! Similarly, Seneca complains that Roman women " spare no pains in raising pups and birds and other silly pets".

The complainers were clearly of a minority opinion: toy dogs were everywhere, and favorite breeds included the ancestors of the modern Maltese and the Italian Greyhound. Delicate marble sculptures of Italian Greyhounds, dating to about 2CE, can be found in the Vatican Archives; Roman vase art and murals from as early as 600BCE shows dogs, particularly toy breeds, being kept indoors, accompanying their humans on outings, and enjoying the run of the house. Just like today, people in ancient Rome formed deep emotional attachments to their dogs: this blog shows a small sample of Roman tombstones, complete with epitaphs, erected to honor dogs.

Dogs may have been popular, but they were certainly not the only species the ancient Romans kept as household pets. Many species of pet birds are recorded in Roman texts and art. Rose-ringed parrots, imported from southern India, were a popular pet, particularly as they could be taught to imitate human speech. Apuleius noted that if exposed to bad language, a parrot would learn to "curse continually" and that the only solution was to "cut out its tongue or send it back as soon as possible to its native woods"!. Other birds that could imitate human speech-- such as ravens, magpies, nightingales, and starlings-- were also popular. Like dogs, these pets were beloved by their owners and often honored with memorial poems, funerals, and graves when they died.

Snakes were also kept as pets, which Sutonius mentions in his Lives of the Ceasars; Seneca describes pet snakes gliding "among the cups" at banquets. However, snakes did not quite have the following that mammals did -- Cicero, for one, expressed a dislike for encountering pet snakes slithering around their owners' homes.

While the word "cute" wasn't precisely applied to these animals, it was normal in Roman society to form close bonds with domestic or tamed animals and treat them as family pets.