PHOENICIAN DOG?

Burglar makes the mistake of choosing 22-stone mastiff's home

By Chris Brooke (Daily Mail)
Last updated at 8:54 AM on 09th June 2008

Of all the gardens in all the world, the thief had the bad luck to break into the one where Cromwell was peacefully gnawing on his bone.

The three-year-old English mastiff is a gentle pet. But his breed are also born guard dogs - and big ones at that.

Only the thief and Cromwell know exactly what happened next.
Enlarge Cromwell, his owner George Watson and the burglar's torn shirt

But it can't have been friendly, as the dog's owner heard a 'scream, a roar and a commotion' from the back garden.

George Watson, 43, had been having a bath and ran outside in his towel, to see the thief zooming off down the driveway in his van.

Apart from a very agitated dog, the only evidence the man left behind was the torn Tshirt.

[...]

Okay, not the usual PaleoJudaica fare, but this next bit caught my eye:

The breed now known as the English mastiff was brought to this country by Phoenician traders as early as the 6th century BC.

After the Roman invasion, they were used to fight in arenas against other large animals such as lions.

I didn't know the mastiff had a Phoenician connection, but the claim is certainly widely made on the Internet. The sentence above is a bit too telegraphic - the Phoenicians certainly didn't bring the dog directly to Britain - but here's a more detailed account:

These ancient mastiffs, whatever their origins and prey, are believed to have been the ancestors of the later war-dogs and sheepdogs for which ancient Epirus and Sparta were to become so famous. Molossia, a country in Epirus (located on what is now the Western coast of the Greek mainland), gave rise to the term "Molosser," which was the name given to the famous mastiffs of that region and which is still used to refer to members of the mastiff family.

Phoenicians traveling to Italy and on to Spain and France are thought to have carried these guarding dogs with them, perhaps selling them along with sheep and goats to herdsmen in those areas. By this time there were already reported differences in the ancient mastiffs. A number of sources available today refer to the early difference that developed between the white, longer muzzled, graceful "shepherd's" dog and the darker, heavier, dog used for protection and for war (Raulston). Both Strang and von Stephanitz report that Columella, a Roman writer, in about the year 60 AD in De Re Rustica describes two types of guard dogs: the white, swift sheep guarding dog or shepherd's dog and the dark colored, heavy farm guard dog. These early imports from Asia Minor to the Pyrenees were certainly of the first type and were the basis for the breed we now know as the Great Pyrenees.

Once the mastiff reached the Roman Empire, they had already been bred to suit special purposes, the first step in the development of "breeds" within a species. The Romans had developed one breed that very closely resembles the Sennenhund or Swiss Mountain Dog of today (Hubbard). In fact, there were no prehistoric Swiss mastiffs, or doggen, prior to the last century BC (Raulston). The Romans took their mastiffs into Gaul, now known as France. Their mastiffs guarded the mountain passes where a few hundred years later the St. Bernard would be found. These early mastiffs also contributed to French breeds like the Dogue de Bordeaux and quite possibly to the many breeds of hounds found in France. To the south, in Italy the Neapolitan Mastiff was born. In Spain, very near the homeland of the Great Pyrenees, the Spanish Mastiff developed. To the north, in Belgium, the feared tracker, St. Hubert's Hound, the ancestor of today's Bloodhound, was developed from the descendants of those fierce hunting dogs of prehistoric times. The retrievers, like the Labrador and the Chesapeake, are thought also to trace to the ancient mastiffs.

From the Alps, the mastiff is thought to have been adopted by the Germanic peoples and then to have traveled to Great Britain with Angles and Saxons. The Great Dane is known as the Deutsche Dogge (or German Mastiff) in most countries today. In Chaucer's day the Middle English words alaunt or alan and alano were also used to indicate early mastiffs. These words may have derived from the word Alani, the name of an Eastern race that lived before the time of Christ in what is now Albania (AKC) or they may have , in fact, been corruptions of the word Allemannni, the Germanic people who invaded France prior to the reign of Charlemagne.

I have no idea how accurate any of this is, but it's interesting.