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"There on the left as one entered...was a huge dog with a chain round its
neck. It was painted on the wall and over it, in big capitals, was written:
Beware of the Dog."
Petronius, Satyricon (XXIX
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By Daniel Chavarria
Chapter 1
A young slave could be bought for two hundred drachmas. A well-trained
Molossian hound cost five hundred.
Well-trained meant that he would always bite on the buttocks and deliver
his captive alive and free of fractures.
The Assembly had issued an ordinance providing that anyone who kept a
loose Molossian at a distance of less than one stadium from public places
would be fined fifteen drachmas. On the streets of Athens, the guards had
orders to confiscate all wandering Molossians, no matter who the negligent
owner might be.
Molossians were lazy and rather boring dogs. They didnıt even bark,
although they yawned a lot when they woke up. They even yawned while they
were walking around. And sudden confrontations with those impressive jaws
spread wide and gaping down to the uvula had already caused too many fits
and near-strokes in the City. Yes, fines had to be severe.
Even wolves shied away from Molossians, these beasts of a single bite. If
they chanced to miss their initial attack on the victimıs jugular, they
would latch onto the muzzle, the chest, or the stomach, and once their jaws
locked, they would howl through the nose and tear at the flesh
matter-of-factly until the piece came off.
In their rugged home country back in Molossia, they were known to lock
onto large game and let themselves be dragged over cliffs or drowned in
mountain rivers rather than let go of their victim. The shepherds knew where
to find them, days later, floating in the lower course of the Arachthus,
corpses with unflinching jaws.
They were bigger than wolves, and stronger. The hind molars, which they
used only to kill, never to chew, could lock together so tightly that the
dogs had to slide their jaws sideways, like oxen chewing cud, to get them
apart. And they could nip off a manıs wrist with a single chomp.
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over their snow-covered mountains, alone or in pairs, but they were always
loyal to the scattered pack. As soon as one of them bit onto a victim, the
pack would hear the howling and move in, yawning all the way, to get a piece
of the feast or the fight. That was why the local wolves, even when
traveling in packs, gave lone Molossians a wide berth. In Athens they were
trained to catch runaway slaves. They learned to fast until they caught
their victim and then to give up those juicy buttocks in exchange for pigıs
or goatıs liver and heart, which the kennel master hurried to throw them as
soon as their job was done. They then proceeded to devour their prize while
the prisoner was being put in irons.
But never, since they had begun to serve the City, had the Molossians had
to fast as long as during that month of Scirophorion, when the order went
out to hunt down the beggar of the Goddess.
The mastini is a descendant of the Molossian. As are OEM's,
Bullmastiffs, even pugs. They are probably descendents of the dogs you
hear of Alexander the Great roaming around with. Probably descendents
of the fighting dogs used the the old Colosseum in ancient Rome. They
are not the SAME dog however. This is a fairy tale image conjured up
by someone trying to make their mastini seem like one of the oldest breeds
around. It happens is most breeds- Like saying the Akita was
primarily used for hunting. While it is fun to believe in fairy tales,
the mastini we know of today is a modern creation.
Alexander Wolf says it best in the mastini profile at Molosser Dogs-
MD Profile
"As its name implies, this famous mastiff breed comes from Naples and
surrounding areas in Italy. Descended from the legendary wardogs of the
Assyrians and Roman arena fighters, the ancestors of the Mastino Napoletano
are believed by some to had been the legendary wardogs of Alexander the
Great, but seeing how the old Molossers that Alexander took with him on his
war campaigns were longhaired, mountain type dogs, like the breeds of
Macedonia and Greece, such as the Hellenic Mastiff, Sarplaninec, Molossos
tis Epirou, as well as his own famous strain of such dogs known as the
Skilos tou Alexandrou, it is more likely that these large shepherd dogs came
into contact with existing Roman cattledogs, guardians and fighting dogs and
from then on went through generations of crossings and inbreeding, without
much attention given to appearance or standards of purity, with
ferociousness and working ability being the only qualities of importance. It
is claimed by some that the Romans brought old English mastiffs from the
British Isles which were supposedly introduced to the bloodlines of their
arena dogs, but it should be noted that the Mastin Espanol also played a
much more important role in the development of the dogs of Naples, as did
the Spanish and Sicilian working bulldogges. For centuries this breed was
considered to be just one of the regional types of the working Cane e Presa
population of Italy, alongside the
Cane Corso,
Bucciriscu Calabrese,
U Vucciriscu and other varieties used for guarding, fighting and hunting
duties prior to the World Wars. The Neapolitan Mastiff finally received its
name in the 1940's."
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