The
Dogs of War
From Alexander the Great to the Present
From Alexander the Great's Molossus Peritas in 331 B.C. to William A. Wynne's little Yorkshire terrier Smoky in WWII and even on today's high-tech battlefield, man's best friend has been--and probably always will be--at the soldier's side, helping to win battles and wars.
If you have a St. Bernard, Great Pyrenees, Rottweiler, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, or Bernese Mountain Dog, you have something in common with Alexander the Great, whose Molossus saved the day at the crucial battle of Gaugamela against the Persians led by Darius III in 331 B.C. The Molossus dog is considered the forebear of the St. Bernard, etc. In the days of Alexander, generals didn't lead from behind, so Alexander drove his chariot into the thick of the fighting. Soldiers riding one of the Persians' war elephants aimed the elephant at Alexander, with the intention of trampling him and thereby ending the battle. Alexander's Molossus dog, named Peritas, came to the rescue. He leapt at the elephant and, like a pit bull, latched onto the elephant's lower lip and held on. Needless to say, the elephant was surprised. It halted its charge and in trying to shake loose the dog also shook loose the soldiers on its back. Alexander was able to escape the peril and continue the battle to victory. After the fighting, Alexander found his dog dead on the battlefield, trampled by the war elephant. Alexander was grief stricken. The dog had been given to him as a puppy when Alexander was 11, and they were inseparable. Before its death, Alexander had held public birthday parties for the dog, May 2011
The "Jennings dog" on display at the British Museum is thought to be a representation of a Molossus, the breed of Alexander the Great's dog Peritas. Used by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.
and continued doing so after the dog's death. Also, according to Plutarch in his Life of Alexander, after Peritas's death Alexander established and named a city after him: "He also, we are told, built another city, and called it after the name of a favourite dog, Peritas, which he had brought up himself." (Dryden translation.) Various writers of more modern times mention the use of dogs in battle by the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and other nations and empires of ancient and Classical times. In the conquest of Britain, the Legend & Lore Magazine
Romans are said to have used Molossus dogs in battle only to have them bested by the native Pugnaces Britanniae, the forebear of today's English Mastiff. So impressed were the Romans with these dogs that they shipped them to Rome for Coliseum games and exhibitions, and replaced the Molossus with them as war dogs. According to Roman historian Gratius Falsius, writing in A.D. 8: "Although the British dogs are distinguished neither by colour nor good anatomy, I could not find any particular faults with them. When grim work must be done, when special pluck is needed, when Mars summons us to battle most extreme, then the powerful Molossus will please you less and the Athamanen dog cannot measure up to the skill of the British dog either." The Romans also supposedly put spiked collars on their war dogs so the dogs could do some real harm
Legend & Lore
The Take-Me-Home Waiting Room Magazine
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