1087

THE HOUNDS OF ANCIENT GREECE
By David Hancock

   Classical Greece was an essentially agricultural society and as such can trace its origins back to the first farming communities in Greece in the early neolithic period (7th millennium BC). Some at least of the domestic livestock and crop species were introduced from the near-east, but Greece had long been occupied by paleolithic and mesolithic gatherer-hunters. Homer, in later times, described how the 'epic heroes' hunted both to fill their stomachs and to rid the country of dangerous beasts. The boar was the most formidable quarry, with venison highly valued. Hunters mainly went on foot armed with spear or bow. In their literature, the educational value of hunting is emphasised but hunting is always for the pot. Hare and boar hunting was carried out using nets and hounds, with mounted hunters operating in the east. But Alexander the Great's conquests enabled the Macedonian nobles to hunt on a gigantic scale, establishing the hunt as a paradigm of manly virtue. This has long inspired the western world to view hunting as a noble venture and, against certain quarry, a supreme test of manhood. Exceptional hounds are needed on boar.   

    In his Hounds and Hunting in Ancient Greece of 1964, Denison Bingham Hull wrote: "It was the very danger of the boar hunt that made it fascinating to the Greeks; victory was essential, for there was no safety except through conquest. It was that urge to display courage that made the boar hunt the highest manifestation of the chase for the hunter; that urge to show that he too was made of the same stuff as the heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, his forefathers, that compelled a man to take the risks and face the danger." I would place the courage of the hounds ahead of that of the human hunters. But man and hound acted as a team; the hunter could not manage without the hound, and the hounds needed to work with each other. Flavius Arrianus, (Arrian), in the second century AD, described two particular Celtic breeds, the Segusiae (named after a tribe from a province which included what is now Lyons) with excellent noses, good cry but a tendency to dwell on the scent and the Vertragi (literally "lots of foot"), rough-haired, greyhound-like hounds.

   Claims have been made for the Segusiae being the prototype of our modern scenthounds - Bloodhounds, Foxhounds, Bassets and Harriers. But Arrian found nothing remarkable or noteworthy about them, merely explaining that they hunted in the same way as Cretan and Carian hounds. Xenophon records seeing hounds in Asia Minor. I suspect that the Greeks and Romans found the Celtic greyhound not a new breed but a variety of one of the oldest types in existence. In time the Greeks became aware of the hounds from the Rhineland called Sycambrians, the Pannonian hounds from what is now northern Yugoslavia and the Sarmatian hounds from southern Russia. From the north of the Himalayas came a ferocious breed of hounds known as Seres after the people of that name. From further south came the red-brindle "Indian" hounds, recommended by Xenophon for hunting deer and wild boar. From Persia in early BC came the Elymaean hounds (more precisely from the Gulf area), the fierce Carmanians, the savage mastiff-like Hyrcaneans (from the area where Tehran now is and probably more like today's broad-mouthed breeds than any Molossian) and the fighting hounds, the Medians. In Asia Minor were the Carians (from the area where the hound-like Anatolian shepherd dogs of today come from), esteemed by Arrian as tracking hounds, with good nose, pace and cry. The much bigger variety of the Carian, the Magnesian, was a shield-bearer in war. And from the south of this region came the Lycaonian hounds, highly regarded for their admirable temperament.

   In North Africa, Aristotle tells us that the Egyptians favoured the smaller sighthound type, comparable with the so-called Pharaoh hound and Whippet of today. The Libyans had good hounds and the Cyrenean hounds were allegedly crossed with wolves, with lurcher-like all-purpose hunting dogs known to exist in central and southern Africa. In ancient Greece, Epirus in the extreme north-west, produced the Acarnanians, which unusually for those times ran mute, the Athamanians, the Chaonians (from which came the legendary Laelaps) and the longer-eared Molossian hound. Since the cynologist Otto Keller produced his personal theory which linked the latter with the big mountain dogs of Tibet and then with the Tibetan wolf, mastiff and Great Dane researchers have had a field day. The Molossians of ancient Greece were in fact usually sheepdogs, sometimes shaggy-coated and often white. Xenophon refered to the Locrians as the powerful short-faced boar-hunting hounds.

  Time and time again, in books and magazines, especially on the continent and in North America, the mastiff group of dogs is blurred with the molossers, or dogs claiming ancestry with the huge dogs of the Molossi people. The "gripping" or "holding" breeds like the Bulldog, the Bullmastiff, the Dogue de Bordeaux, the Cane Corso and the Perro de Presa Canario have become "molossers" in spite of any evidence that I can detect. I have searched the literature, art galleries and museums of Greece and Italy without avail. But there is evidence in abundance of big Molossian dogs taking two distinct forms: a flock guardian and a hound of the chase. But who were the Molossi? They were an Epirote people, ascendant from 500 to 300 BC. Their tribal kingdom stretched from north of Mount Pindus to the headwaters of the Thyamis river, on the Greek mainland, opposite Corfu. Other tribes rallied to them in their battles with the Illyrians from the north. The Molossi were Greek-speaking, sheep-owning, mainly mountain dwellers who cultivated valleys, occupying the wettest part of Greece, with heavy snowfalls in winter and many villages above 5,000 feet in altitude. The Molossi came originally in migrations from the north. In 167 BC Molossia was captured by the Romans and a sizeable proportion of its people enslaved. In happier times, two hundred years earlier, the Molossi had issued their own silver coinage with, as its emblem, the Molossian hound, a tribute to its fame.

   But what does recorded history tell us of the dogs of the Molossi? Aristotle, 384-322 BC, wrote of..."The Molossian breed, moreover, the hunting kind, differs in no way from the rest...But famous above all for courage and hard work is the progeny of Molossian crossed with Laconian". He therefore acknowledges more than one kind and recommends an outcross! But he also recorded that "The Epirote dogs are the largest of all." Varro, born in 116 BC, wrote: "Dogs are called after the district that they come from, as Laconian, Epirot, Sallentine...", going on to differentiate between butchers' dogs and hunting dogs. Theodore Gaza, an eminent Greek scholar of the fifteenth century, refers to "...the Colophonian breed and that of the Castabalienses, who had regiments of dogs that fought in the Van of War", with Pliny as his source. Aelian, living in the early part of the third century AD, wrote that: "The Hyrcani and Magnesii used to be accompanied into battle by their dogs". Neither of these authorities wrote of the Molossian dog as a war-dog. 

  A description of a Molossian dog is contained in Travels in Sicily, Greece and Albania by the Rev. Thomas Smart Hughes, of 1820: "The colour of these dogs varies through different shades from a dark brown to a bright dun, their long fur being very soft and thick and glossy; in size they are about equal to an English mastiff; they have a long nose, delicate ears finely pointed, magnificent tail, legs of moderate length, with a body nicely rounded and compact." It is significant that although the Rev. Hughes evidently knew what an English Mastiff looked like, he did not suggest, size apart, that there were any other similarities. The statue of a Molossian dog in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence does not portray a broad-mouthed dog.  Aristotle's History of Animals c.347BC (Revised Oxford translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 1984) states:

"Of the Molossian breeds of dogs, such as are employed in the chase are much the same as those elsewhere; but the sheepdogs of this breed are superior to the others in size, and in the courage with which they face the attacks of wild animals." From the Suli mountains in Epirus, home of the Molossii, came the Suliot Dog, a huge hound, used as sentry dogs by the Austro-Hungarian armies - some being favoured as 'parade dogs' or regimental mascots by German soldiers, leading to their being crossed with their native boarhound to produce today's Great Dane.

   For me, the most important Greek hound was the Laconian, sometimes called the Spartan hound. This hound was good enough to be held in high esteem for many centuries, hence the Shakespearean reference - although the description there is not accurate. We have on record a great deal of information on the Laconian hound, a Harrier-sized scenthound with small prick ears, free from throatiness or dewlap. It was more tucked-up than our scenthounds of today but not as much as the modern sighthounds; the contemporary Italian breed, the Segugio, ears apart, being the nearest modern equivalent. Tan and white or black and tan, bold and confident, built like a steeple-chaser, their fame spread wide and their blood was extensively utilised. Xenophon's chief delight was hunting hare with them. Equally important however is the Cretan hound, a superb tracker in the mountains, with one variety the "outrunners" running free, under the control of the huntsman's voice only, the first to do so in Europe until the end of the sixteenth century. The Cretan was subsequently crossed with the Laconian to produce the Metagon, so highly praised by Gratius but strangely by no other.  It could be that the stamina-packed Laconian of the Greeks was crossed with the skilled trackers, the Segusiae of the Celts, to found the subsequent scenthound types further north, the Norman hounds, St. Huberts, the great white hounds of France and the gris or big grey hounds of Louis XV.

    It's important to keep in mind that ancient Greek provinces like Caria, Lydia and Lysia were in Anatolia not in the mainland Greece of today. The hound-like Anatolian Shepherd Dog, most probably a hound before becoming a flock-protector, would have been noticed by the mounted tribes moving through Anatolia on their way to Egypt (the Hyksos), the Alans (to form the Roman Cavalry) and the Scythians who went further north. Four centuries of Ottoman rule didn't do much for Greek hounds but the Greek nobility and the Turk military did share hunting dogs. Today, in Greece, we still have the Greek Hound, usually black and tan like many Balkan scenthounds, and the Cretan Hound, with the old Greek sighthound, as a courser, now lost to us. But the ancient Greeks gave us a number of aspects connected to hunting with hounds: the essence being based in a test of manliness not just pot-filling; an appreciation of the hounds of neighbouring countries, with perhaps today's Istrian Hound replacing the Pannonian Hound; and the Molossian hound, represented today perhaps by the Great Dane, through the Suliot Dog, a heavy hound par excellence. But the ethos of hunting is the most precious legacy the Greeks left behind, inspiring much of the grande venerie in France and the recognition of sporting chivalry out of regard for the quarry throughout the western world.