EARLY HISTORY OF THE DOG. 7 



with dogs, and then not with dogs that ran by sight, or succeeded by their 

 .swiftness of foot, but by beagles very little superior to those of modern 

 days.* Of the stronger and more ferocious dogs there is, however, occa- 

 sional mention. The bull-dog of modern date does not excel the one 

 (possibly of nearly the same race) that was presented to Alexander the 

 Great, and that boldly seized a ferocious lion, or another that would not 

 quit his hold, although one leg and then another was cut off. 



It would be difficult and foreign to the object of this work fully to trace 

 the early history of the dog. Both in Greece and in Rome he was highly 

 estimated. Alexander built a city in honour of a dog ; and the Emperor 

 Hadrian decreed the most solemn rites of sepulture to another on account 

 of his sagacity and fidelity. 



The translator of Arrian imagines that the use of the pugnaces (fight- 

 ing) and the sagaces (intelligent) the more ferocious dogs, and those 

 who artfully circumvented and caught their prey was known in the 

 earlier periods of Greek and Roman history, but that the celeres, the dogs 

 of speed, the greyhounds of every kind, were peculiar to the British 

 islands, or to the western and northern continents of Europe, the interior 

 and the produce of which were in those days unknown to the Greeks and 

 Romans. By most authors who have inquired into the origin of these 

 varieties of the dog the sagaces have been generally assigned to Greece 

 the pugnaces to Asia and the celeres to the Celtic nations. 



Of the aboriginal country of the latter there can be little doubt ; but the 

 accounts that are given of the English mastiff at the invasion of Britain 

 by the Romans, and the early history of the English hound, which was once 

 peculiar to this countiy, and at the present day degenerates in every other, 

 would go far to prove that these breeds also are indigenous to our island. 



Oppian thus describes the hunting dog as he finds him in Britain : 

 " There is, besides, an excellent kind of scenting dogs, though small, yet 

 worthy of estimation. They are fed by the fierce nation of painted Bri- 

 tons, who call them agascri. In size they resemble worthless greedy 

 house-dogs that gape under tables. They are crooked, lean, coarse-haired, 

 and heavy-eyed, but armed with powerful claws and deadly teeth. The 

 agasceus is of good nose and most excellent in following scent." b 



Among the savage dogs of ancient times were the Hyrcanian, said, on 

 account of their extreme ferocity, to have been crossed with the tiger, 

 the Locrian, chiefly employed in hunting the boar, the Pannonian, used 

 in war as well as in the chace, and by whom the first charge on the enumy 

 was always made, and the Molossian, of Epirus, likewise trained to war 

 as well as to the honours of the amphitheatre and the dangers of the chace. 

 This last breed had one redeeming quality an inviolable attachment to 

 their owners. This attachment was reciprocal ; for it is said that the Mo- 

 lossi used to weep over their faithful quadruped companions slain in war. 



JElian relates that one of them, and his owner, so much distinguished 

 themselves at the battle of Marathon, that the effigy of the dog was placed 

 on the same tablet with that of his master. 



Soon after Britain was discovered the pugnaces of Epirus were pitted 

 against those of our island, and, according to the testimony of Gratius, 

 completely beaten. A variety of this class, but as large and as ferocious, 

 was employed to guard the sheep and cattle, or to watch at the door of 



* New Sporting Magazine, vol. xiv. p. 97. 

 ' Oppian's Cyuegeticus, lib. i. v. 408480. 



