In 1941, E. S. Forster wrote a short article, published in this journal, which compiled all of the instances he could identify in the ancient source material that described dogs being used in a military capacity.Footnote ¹ G. B. A. Fletcher, who had identified a few obscure references that Forster had not cited, responded to Forster's paper later that same year.Footnote ² The purpose of both papers was simply the compiling of a list, a purpose that had been inspired by Forster's interest in the French army's recruitment of dogs on the outbreak of the Second World War.Footnote ³ The result was a thorough catalogue of known examples, showing the ancient dog being used for a variety of purposes such as patrol work or observation duties, or being used as combatants or despatch couriers. The primary aim, according to Forster was to ‘make a comparison with modern practice’ – that is, the French practice he had read about; the only exception for which he could find no ancient evidence was what he called ‘Red Cross’ work.Footnote ⁴

Since the publication of these two papers, there has been no standalone monograph nor article that has revisited the topic.Footnote ⁵ As a result, our understanding of ancient dogs, and their role in war, has become skewed by the belief that what the sources describe is in fact the truth. Nowhere is this clearer than in the academic and popular treatment of classical Greek ‘dogs of war’.Footnote ⁶ In this article, I offer the first critically informed, in-depth study of this topic, and seek to fill what are large lacunae in the historiography of both ancient history and the historical study of animals. In so doing, I propose a new model of interpretation that distinguishes between a ‘dog of war’ – that is, a dog trained for the military environment – and a ‘dog in war’ – that is, a dog utilized in the military environment without military-specific training.

In the study of dogs and their participation in war, there is often an attempt to assert a sense of lineage, throughout European history in particular. During the nineteenth century, there were a variety of published articles and letters that not only discussed war dogs, but also specifically mentioned their presence in the ancient world.Footnote ⁷ According to one author, it is ‘to the ancients [that] belongs the honour of having first used dogs [in war]’.Footnote ⁸ Indeed, this author was the very man responsible for introducing dogs into the British army, E. H. Richardson, who begins his treatise on the ‘war dog’ with a chapter that outlines the historical precedent of using dogs in a military capacity. Not only does he state that ancient cultures, mostly the Romans, used dogs in war, but he references ancient sources and offers a number of ancient Greek examples as well.Footnote ⁹ By showing a long-standing lineage, Richardson felt justified in his own personal pursuit of training police and military dogs before the First World War, and in facing his critics.Footnote ¹⁰

The pursuit of lineage by non-specialists of ancient history has led to some errors of understanding, errors that continue to pervade in the modern day. In a recent popular survey of the use of animals in warfare from antiquity to the present, J. M. Kistler relates a story that allegedly dates from the Peloponnesian War. He describes the city of Corinth having fifty guard dogs kept near the shoreline to warn of enemy encroachment. One night, while the humans were drunk, the enemy landed and were duly attacked by forty-nine of the dogs. Although the dogs were quickly killed, the lone survivor had run back to the city and raised the alarm. As a reward to the dog the city of Corinth engraved his collar ‘Sorter [sic], Defender and Savior of Corinth’, and a monument was raised to all fifty dogs.Footnote ¹¹ Kistler offers no primary evidence to support this, but it is a story that predates him by over a century.

The earliest appearance of this story in the English language seems to come in 1845, from W. C. L. Martin, who recounts the same story but the dog's name is given with the correct transliteration from the Greek, ‘Soter’.Footnote ¹² However, Martin fails to explain where he found this story, offering neither an ancient nor a contemporary reference in support. The episode does appear earlier still in French, which may be the original source of the story. In 1796, Anne François Joachim Fréville wrote a work on famous dogs in history that tells the tale of Soter but, similarly, does not offer any ancient evidence in support. The only such evidence that could be used to support the story comes from the biographer Plutarch, in his Life of Aratus.Footnote ¹³ It describes fifty dogs that were kept in the citadel of the Acrocorinth as part of an Achaean garrison, but there is no mention of an enemy landing party or an assault of any kind. At a much earlier point in the book, Plutarch describes Aratus leading a group of exiles to scale the walls of Sicyon. Their position was effectively revealed by a group of dogs barking, but the human guards ignored these, allowing Aratus and his conspirators to enter the city and banish the tyrant Nicocles.Footnote ¹⁴ Neither of these two passages reflects the elaborate eighteenth-century tale, so perhaps the Soter story is both a combination and an over-elaboration of a few episodes. If an elaboration of Plutarch is the ultimate source for the modern story of the dog Soter, it must be noted that the episode discussed by him occurred in the Hellenistic era and cannot be taken as representative of classical warfare.

Nevertheless, the possible fallacy of this story does not discount the numerous historic accounts collated by Forster in his article, which suggest that the ancient Greeks did in fact use dogs in warfare. It is necessary, therefore, to readdress the evidence with a different motivation from Forster's. Avoiding a limited positivist methodology, the source material must be challenged, not only for its validity, but also for its modern interpretation. In so doing, an important historiographical distinction can be made to aid our understanding of the role of dogs in the military sphere: a dog can be found in war, without making it a ‘dog of war’.

‘Dog of war’ is a generic description frequently used by writers and scholars alike, owing in no small part to the popularity of Mark Antony's famous line in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. But what is actually meant by this term, and what assumptions arise from using it? In modern warfare, a ‘dog of war’ indicates the animal's presence within a professional military system. The term does not necessarily define it as a combatant but suggests a dutiful role on and/or off the battlefield, a role it has been trained to perform.Footnote ¹⁵ In theory, a ‘dog of war’ can denote a frontline combat role, but more commonly relates to the use of dogs in a logistical capacity. This role has encompassed such tasks as the delivery of messages, the detection of mines, and patrol duty. From a purely semantic perspective, a ‘dog of war’ suggests that the dog's primary purpose is military. It implies that the dog has been trained to become a resource and even a weapon of war.

If we accept that a ‘dog of war’ is one defined by its role in war, and its training therein, then there is an immediate problem when examining the classical Greek world. There is very little evidence regarding the training of dogs during the classical period, and the one surviving manual does not discuss dogs in a military capacity. This manual, Xenophon's Cynegeticus, offers a guide to hunting with dogs and includes a passage concerning their training.Footnote ¹⁶ While the purpose of the text has been questioned and convincingly aligned with moral education and a defence against sophism, the passage in question is purely technical in its execution.Footnote ¹⁷ Xenophon describes many elements of dog training that are familiar today, including the use of voice commands, the initial use of food to train a conditioned response, and the choosing of a name that is appropriate for calling them with ease.Footnote ¹⁸ He also describes the importance of controlling undesirable behaviour in dogs, for example in the ability to immediately call in a dog that is unable to maintain its focus.Footnote ¹⁹ His advice on training is very specific to the task assigned to the dog, and the quarry they have been chosen for. What it does not offer is any evidence for dogs being used in a military capacity. While the book itself is non-military in its nature, the relationship between hunting and warfare is clearly made in regard to young men: ‘I recommend for the young not to look down on hunting or any other schooling. For these are the means by which men become good in war’.Footnote ²⁰ This is a strong connection that Xenophon makes on two further occasions, thus highlighting its importance.Footnote ²¹ He makes no such connection between hunting with dogs and using dogs in war. If we consider that the purpose of the book was to morally educate young men, this may not come as a surprise, but it is important to note that the only relevant source on dogs and dog training from the classical period does not present them in a military environment.

An alternative model for the ‘dog of war’ would be the ‘dog in war’. A dog in war is not a dog that has been trained or prepared for war, but rather a domestic animal experiencing war, often for the first time, having been drafted in and used by humans. To understand the role of the dog in classical Greek warfare, this is an important distinction to make. Were these dogs of war trained for military experience to a high and reliable level, so that they could be trusted on the front line or with important logistical matters? Conversely, were they domestic dogs and hunting hounds, lacking any diligent training for the military experience? The ancient sources do describe dogs on the battlefield, and they do describe dogs being used for logistical purposes, so these pieces of evidence need addressing. Thus, by clarifying the role of the dog it is possible to understand their purpose and position in classical Greek warfare.

Contemporary evidence for dogs in classical Greek warfare is very scarce. Considering the availability of works by three Greek historians who each wrote books focused on war, it is surprising that not one of them suggest that dogs had any role in Greek warfare. The earliest, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, mentions dogs in the presence of two armies. One instance describes the great Persian army of Xerxes I, in a passage where Herodotus attempts to give an account of the size of the Great King's forces, and includes a statement about the unquantifiable number of Indian dogs in the army.Footnote ²² The Indian dog was famous in the Hellenistic Greek world for its ferocity, strength, and discipline, but there is no suggestion that they held this reputation in the classical period.Footnote ²³ For Herodotus, the Indian dog was a status symbol, used as an indicator of luxury, power, and wealth.Footnote ²⁴ In this context, they should not be seen as dogs of war, but rather as high-status dogs travelling in the Great King's entourage.Footnote ²⁵ They allowed Xerxes the ability to hunt recreationally, and were not used in a military capacity. Herodotus makes mention of another instance of dogs in the retinue of two opposing armies, which places the dogs on the actual battlefield. The battle is between the Balkan people of Paeonia and the Greeks living in Perinthus. Herodotus does not describe the dogs in any detail; they only appear in the description of the fighting. Allegedly, the battle was to be settled by a threefold duel: ‘they challenged each other to a three way duel (μουνομαχίη): pitting together man against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog’.Footnote ²⁶ The Greek text is very clear: the armies called for a monomachia, single combat. So the dog, in this instance, was not being used in battle but rather in a dogfight.

Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bc), does not mention dogs in a military capacity at all.Footnote ²⁷ Even though his work covers field battles, sieges, raids, ambushes, and naval warfare, there is not a single mention of dogs being used. This silence is replicated by Xenophon in his Hellenica, which covers the period from the end of the Peloponnesian War to the Second Battle of Mantinea in 362 bc. Out of the two historians, Xenophon's silence is the more revealing. Xenophon was an Athenian polymath: he wrote books pertaining to history, philosophy based on his lessons from Socrates, biography based on his time as a mercenary in Asia Minor, household management, and more. Most importantly, he wrote the manual on how to hunt with dogs discussed above. In this text, he goes to great lengths to discuss canine breeding programmes, the necessary tools and kit for hunting dogs, how to choose the right ‘breeds’ for the task at hand, and how to train one's dogs. He was an experienced military commander who was clearly interested in dogs, and in the best ways to utilize their strengths for an advantage. While this silence does not preclude the presence of dogs in classical Greek warfare, it is important to note that very little information can be gleaned from these historians. So where does the direct evidence come from, which places the classical Greek dog on a conventional battlefield?

The only classical Greek evidence is provided by Aeneas Tacticus, writing in the fourth century bc, who describes the use of dogs during siege warfare. In a brief section of his work, Aeneas Tacticus mentions the fear and paranoia within the city of Naxos following a major naval battle.Footnote ²⁸ The military commander in charge of the city's forces was a man called Nicocles, and he set about preparing the city for a possible assault. He closed the ramps to prevent enemy ships from beaching, he posted extra sentinels on the walls, and he set up patrols with dogs outside the city walls. However, what is not clear is whether these dogs were actually trained or designated this role on a permanent or even semi-permanent basis.Footnote ²⁹ More conventionally, Aeneas Tacticus advises that dogs be used as guards.Footnote ³⁰ In the case of a siege, he recommends that they be tied up outside the walls of the city, and in so doing he articulates the two key characteristics which he considered a dog to possess: they would be able to detect a spy or deserter from a much greater distance in the dark than a human guard, and their barking would awaken any sleeping guards on duty.Footnote ³¹ Importantly, what the source does not describe are complex tasks for which the dogs needed systematic training; the primary function of the dogs was to employ their natural tendencies and characteristics for the good of the army or city.

Within the modern period, dogs have been utilized by various armies through the employment of their natural attributes, most notably their sense of smell, their acute sense of hearing, their loyalty and intelligence, and their propensity to bark. Before the advent of more sensitive technologies, the dog was the most effective tool of detection and alarm available to a pre-modern army.

Aeneas Tacticus’ account does have corroboration from the Roman stratagem collector Polyaenus (second century ad), who describes a fifth-century bc Spartan army under the command of their king Agesipolis, who was besieging the town of Mantinea.Footnote ³² His army consisted of numerous allied forces, many of whom did not want to be there but felt compelled by the power and influence of the Spartans. These allies felt a level of sympathy to the Mantineans and began to send in supplies to the defenders. When Agesipolis heard that this was happening, he released an unspecified number of dogs in and around the Spartan camp. As a result, the allies stopped sending supplies into the city, through fear of the dogs barking while they were crossing between the camp and the city. Setting aside the late dating of the source, it is revealing in a few of its details. The first is that there must have been dogs present with the army for Agesipolis to use. Presumably these would have been hunting dogs like those that went as part of Xerxes’ retinue, or else scavengers following the military camp. Second, this is an obvious use of the dog as an alarm system, a system that was so effective it solved Agesipolis’ problem almost instantaneously. Third, the dogs were not already performing this role before Agesipolis assigned it to them. This suggests that the commander had chosen to use dogs that were to hand, rather than guard dogs specifically there for that purpose.Footnote ³³ This does not prove that the dogs were not trained; it just suggests that they did not need training.

A more compelling case comes, once more, from Aeneas Tacticus, who describes the use of dogs for logistical purposes. Within Greek sieges, the greatest fear for the defenders was not that the enemy would breach the walls, but that they would gain entry through the actions of internal traitors.Footnote ³⁴ As such, it was important to be able to communicate private messages inside the city, safe in the knowledge that they could not be intercepted, or that the senders and recipients were unidentifiable should the message be discovered. Aeneas Tacticus goes to great lengths to describe the importance of secret messages and codes, during which he digresses to describe the habits of the people of both Epirus and Thessaly.Footnote ³⁵ If it was necessary to send a secret message inside the city, they would allocate a trusted confidante, and take his dog away from him on a lead. They would then place a strap around the dog's neck, as if a collar, but which contained a letter stitched into the underside.Footnote ³⁶ When the time had come, the dog was released to go to the person they knew it was most likely to return to, its caretaker.

Primarily, this is an invaluable source for the first clear case of a military messenger dog, a role which relies on a trustworthy and highly trained dog. However, Aeneas Tacticus’ description offers a few important caveats. The dog was not a trained messenger but instead a favoured dog taken from its owner. More interestingly, the scenario, as it is described, suggests that there was an element of gambling on behalf of the message writer. The successful arrival of the letter relied on the dog returning to its caretaker, assuming that he was the person to whom the dog was most likely to go. What this does not suggest is that the dog was in any way trained to return to a given spot, or that it had a set route it had been taught to run on a given command. This use of the dog is but an extension of the guarding and patrolling roles discussed above. The Greeks did not train dogs for these military purposes; they simply tried to utilize the nature of dogs based on an understanding of the human–canine bond.

As a result of this method of understanding and using a dog's natural skills rather than specifically training it, it was necessary for Aeneas Tacticus to warn his readers of the negative attributes of these same dogs.Footnote ³⁷ On two separate occasions, he highlights the dangers inherent in the mere presence of dogs in the city. The first concerns the planning of a sally, before which Aeneas Tacitus advises the commander to suppress the barking of the dogs, as these would betray the movements of the men inside the city.Footnote ³⁸ As a solution, he suggests that a commander could make the dogs mute by cauterizing a part of their body. The notion that inflicting pain on an animal would keep them quiet during a military operation is not unique to Aeneas Tacticus; allegedly, the Parthians would bind their horses’ tails so tight that the pain would stop them from neighing.Footnote ³⁹ The second instance concerns the moving of reserve troops throughout the city. Aeneas Tacticus suggests that the defending forces of a siege should be split into three groups: one that is engaged in combat, one that is at rest, and one that is preparing for battle.Footnote ⁴⁰ The constant noise of battle and movement of armed men is identified as a potential issue for the dogs in the town, so Aeneas Tacticus advises that all of the dogs be tied up. Interestingly, this advice does not come from a point of concern for the animals but rather from military pragmatism: the dogs would be startled by the unusual activity and begin to cause trouble, and would thus become a liability.Footnote ⁴¹

Importantly for the topic at hand, Aeneas Tacticus does not distinguish in his language between the dogs who could be used for the military cause and those that could be problematic. These are all the same group of hypothetical dogs that one would expect to find in a besieged city. The negative attributes of the dog are discussed in the same way as the positive attributes. There is a matter-of-fact way in which these behaviours are described: not that one set are trained and specialized, while the other set are expected behaviours from non-military dogs, but that these are the pros and cons of having dogs present in a siege.

What Aeneas Tacticus is describing are not dogs of war, but very literally dogs in war. His work offers examples for how to use the dog in a military situation, but equally he provides an important insight into the experience of those untrained, unprepared dogs who found themselves in a combat zone. They were surrounded by new and startling sounds of armour and weaponry, of battle and of human death. We know that this experience caused them to act unpredictably out of fear. We also know that the dogs could be taken from their caretakers for an extended period and tied to a wall, or so that they could deliver a message. They were moved to unfamiliar areas of the city and kept in a hyper-vigilant state: the perfect state for the commanders to have their untrained dogs, but not a good state for the dog itself.

The classical evidence does show that the Greeks used dogs in the military environment for direct military duties. Of the roles identified by Forster, it can be seen clearly that dogs were used for patrol work and observation duties, and even courier delivery is attested to once. What is missing from the classical record is perhaps the most popular conception of the dog of war: the dog as a combatant. The earliest literary example of this use of dogs comes from Polyaenus, who describes the use of dogs as combatants between the Lydians and Cimmerians in a conflict that may have taken place nearly 800 years earlier.Footnote ⁴² The King of Lydia, Alyattes, marched into battle with a large number of fierce dogs who were unleashed and set upon the enemy as they would a herd of wild animals.Footnote ⁴³ The Lydians were not strictly Greek but Anatolian; however, they did share many of the same military characteristics, such as the presence of hoplite infantrymen. There is no mention of this story in any of the earlier source material: it is notably absent from Herodotus, who describes the war between the Lydians and Cimmerians in admittedly short detail.Footnote ⁴⁴

In Forster's brief analysis of this passage, he cross-references it with the painted terracotta sarcophagus from Clazomenae which has panels that seem to portray a battle scene. In these panels, the image of a dog appears frequently, always alongside a horseman or a chariot. As has been convincingly argued by R. M. Cook, the presence of the dog is more closely related to that of the horse rather than the theme of the scene, and this is an artistic relationship that has established precedents in contemporary art in Asia Minor and northern Syria.Footnote ⁴⁵ Equally, within the Greek artistic tradition, the iconographic correlation relates more closely to the dog's role as a hunter, rather than as a combatant.Footnote ⁴⁶ The role of light cavalry was predominantly to chase down the enemy once the battle lines had broken. The presence of the dog, as an icon of the hunt, is a possible reflection of the practice, though it sits more comfortably as an artistic representation of the role of the cavalry. Potentially, they are merely what Cook describes as a ‘meaningless artistic convention’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Either way, we cannot simply put these two pieces of unrelated evidence together and declare a corroboration.

Polyaenus is not alone, however. Pliny the Elder (second century bc) describes in fanciful detail the Colophonian dogs of war who fought in the front ranks, never retreated, and proved themselves superior to auxiliaries because they would work for free.Footnote ⁴⁸ The reliability of this account is immediately brought into question by Pliny's subsequent account of a king who was brought out of exile by 200 dogs who, it transpires, had maintained a conflict against the king's enemies on his behalf. The Imperial Roman author Aelian describes the Magnesians, whose horsemen were each accompanied by an armed attendant and a dog.Footnote ⁴⁹ His description of the dogs’ role is quite detailed: they would lead the cavalry line, charge the enemy, and rout them, before the servants and cavalry charged in to finish the job. This is a clear example of dogs in a Greek army being used as combatants, but it first appears in the second or third century ad, not in the Greek classical period. Therefore, the absence of contemporary evidence, allied with the fanciful appearance of later evidence, means that it can be quite safely concluded that the dog as a combatant is not a reliable motif in the classical Greek record.Footnote ⁵⁰

To understand the role of dogs in warfare, and the possibility of a Greek ‘dog of war’, there is a final element in need of consideration, that of breed. It has been shown that most of the evidence of dogs in Greek warfare is erroneous. Of that evidence which is most credible, namely from the work of Aeneas Tacticus, it has been argued that the dogs lacked any training or specialization to characterize them as anything but normal dogs caught up in human conflict. There is another possibility: that the Greeks chose specific dogs for their military tasks based on their innate characteristics. This could, theoretically, negate such a demand for thorough training. Such a view is popularly held today, with numerous breeds being linked to the supposed Greek ‘dogs of war’, most commonly the Molossian and the Indian dogs.Footnote ⁵¹ The belief in these military breeds negates the need for specific training: you would not need to train a guard dog who was already large, aggressive, and very territorial, for instance.

Both championed breeds hold identical problems of reasoning, specifically surrounding the question of breeds themselves. The concept of a dog breed does not appear until the nineteenth century, when there was a movement within the dog breeding circles of Victorian Britain to divide species by their form rather than their function.Footnote ⁵² Breeds were, and still are, defined by a physical standard based upon a subdivision of their body into points. Only when the notion of a dog breed was introduced did breeders attempt to diminish, if not eradicate, variations such as colour and size; this in turn encouraged breeds to take on more distinct and embellished characteristics that clearly differentiated them from each other.Footnote ⁵³ These breed characteristics needed to be inheritable, which in turn highlighted the importance of bloodlines, and so studbooks were important in confirming a verifiable lineage.

In his Cynegeticus, Xenophon describes an extensively controlled method of breeding hunting hounds, and describes various types of dog that were suited to hunt different animals.Footnote ⁵⁴ Yet it is not clear whether these breeds refer to a pure line and their physical characteristics or not.Footnote ⁵⁵ The majority of the breeds named by Xenophon refer to a geographic origin: Indian, Cretan, Locrian, and Laconian. When he does mention important physical characteristics, he goes into great detail about desirable head shapes and neck length, describing the limbs, and so on. He does not relate this to a specific breed but simply advises the use of ‘dogs like these’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Similarly, the natural philosopher Aristotle offers a confusing paradox when considering the concept of classical Greek breeds. He discusses the dogs of Molossus, a breed not mentioned by Xenophon but one that has often been associated as a military dog: ‘Of the Molossian breed of dogs, those that are used to hunt do not differ from those elsewhere; but those that are used to guard sheep are much bigger, and courageous when facing wild animals.’Footnote ⁵⁷ This passage suggests two important points. The first is that the Molossian was named primarily based on its location, for it was essentially the same as other dogs used in the chase. Second, and building on the first point, the Molossian had more than one set of characteristics. Unlike modern breeds, the Molossian could refer to both a fast hunting hound and a big sheepdog that was renowned for its courage.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is not possible that these two descriptions are for the same breed of dog, as we would understand the term, and yet both would qualify as Molossians.

The same is true of the Indian dog. While the Indian dog is never presented in a military capacity in the source material, this has not stopped its erroneous identification as a war dog.Footnote ⁵⁹ Yet, much as with the Molossian, it is hard to determine whether there was only one type of Indian dog. According to Xenophon, it was a hunting hound similar in size to the Castorian variety of Laconian hounds, the Cretan hounds, and the Locrian hounds.Footnote ⁶⁰ As a result of its size and power, it was particularly suited to boar hunting.Footnote ⁶¹ While its size was an important characteristic, the Indian dog was also swift in the chase, and full of energy, making it equally suitable for hunting deer.Footnote ⁶² Nevertheless, there is nothing here that separates the Indian dog from any other deer- or boarhound, and nothing that distinguishes it as somehow more capable as a military dog.

It is in the writings of Ctesias, a contemporary of Xenophon, that the Indian dog takes on its more aggressive and fantastical traits.Footnote ⁶³ For, according to Photius’ epitome, Ctesias describes the Indian dogs as so large that they even attacked lions. Aristotle goes further and describes the Indian dog as a hybrid between a dog and a tiger, or else it was some wild doglike creature.Footnote ⁶⁴ Such a description suggests that the dog of Ctesias and Aristotle is not the same as the one described by Xenophon.Footnote ⁶⁵ This shows the fruitlessness of trying to project modern notions of breed, or even later ancient notions of breed, onto the classical Greek world. Nevertheless, even if it was accepted that there were some forms of breed, and that some of these breeds were better suited to guard duty and frontline combat, there is still a distinct lack of corroborating evidence. As previously stated, Aeneas Tacticus, as our only relevant contemporary source, does not mention any breed of dog in his manual. The dogs he describes are generic; they are meant to be interpreted as the dogs that live in a city. There was no breed in mind, and there most certainly was not a breed of war dog.

When discussing the dog of classical Greece, and the experience of those dogs in war, it is important to differentiate between a dog that has been exposed to, trained for, and ultimately prepared to act within military scenarios, and one that has not. There is no question that dogs were present in military situations and in army camps, but, as has been argued throughout this article, the dogs of classical Greece were not ‘dogs of war’. This terms denotes a level of capability that was beyond them. As the text of Aeneas Tacticus clearly shows, a Greek dog could be relied upon to perform in accordance with its own limitations. The natural propensity for the dog to be alert, its superhuman hearing and smell, and its loud bark made it a natural tool in dire situations. These assets did not need specialized training nor any form of preparation. Indeed, taking the reported episode of Agesipolis discussed earlier, the dogs could simply be let loose around the camp to form an organic alarm system, much like pouring shattered glass on the ground to alert someone to the footsteps of an intruder. The ad hoc nature of these arrangements is evident from the issues that are described. The dog could not be relied upon to discern the appropriate people to bark at, nor could it be relied upon to remain calm during the chaotic movements of troops within the city.

Furthermore, it has been necessary to dispel some commonly held misconceptions. The Greek sources offer no suggestion that dogs could be used in frontline action as combatants in the classical period. Each historical example has been shown to necessitate sceptical analysis. Similarly, the notion of a war dog breed has been shown to be a fallacy. It rests on the preconceived notion of breed, when such a clear distinction cannot be trusted, even when sources give the same name of dog. More importantly, to identify a breed of war dog it is necessary for that breed to be named specifically in a military capacity; during the classical Greek period, they simply are not.

The fact that dogs were caught up in the midst of classical Greek warfare is not up for debate. Nevertheless, the historical understanding of their experience is determined by our assessment of their purpose. These dogs were not in any way prepared for their experiences. The most common, and reliable, attribution of their presence in the field occurred during sieges. Not only would these have been loud, hectic, and confusing places for the dogs, but there was the possibility of them being taken from their usual surroundings and tied up outside the walls indefinitely. They could be taken from their masters and given to another for the sake of a patrolling duty, or have a strange collar attached to them and released into the city to deliver a message – hopefully. These were not military dogs as we may imagine; they were domestic dogs, or else strays in the city. They were not ‘dogs of war’ but very simply ‘dogs in war’, with all of the panic, fear, and chaos that such an image conjures.