How the African-American literary organization Cave Canem came to be

In Pompeii, Eady and Derricotte visited the House of the Tragic Poet and discovered in the vestibule a mosaic of a black-and-white dog straining at its leash. The dog’s claw rests on the words printed below it: cave canem, “beware the dog.” Thus the organization gained both a name and a meaningful symbol: one not of aggression, Eady clarifies, but of protection and privacy.