Myth of the dog world: Rome’s fighting dogs and the Cane Corso

Today, the claim that the increasingly popular Cane Corsos are descendants of the Roman fighting dogs, the Canis Pugnaxes, has become almost uncontrollable dogma. This is echoed in most media products about the breed, with breeders firmly believing it and many people choosing the Italian breed as a pet because of this misconception.

What is the truth, is there a link between the dogs of ancient times and the modern Cane Corso?

What was the Canis Pugnax?

It is a common belief (misconception) today that Canis Pugnax was a type of dog that in ancient Rome were successfully used as war dogs in various campaigns. In many illustrations of Roman legionnaires of the day, cane-like dogs, usually black, are depicted alongside Roman legionnaires, charging savagely at enemy ranks, wreaking terrible havoc.

Apart from this idealised image, which is more a product of the Italian breeders’ excellent marketing sense than of reality, if we look at the surviving sources on Canis Pugnax, we have to realise that we know virtually nothing about these dogs. What we do know is that these dogs were never used against enemy armies. The reason for this was extremely simple: there is not and never has been a dog in human history that has stood any chance against a group of soldiers, even a small one, in formation, with steel stabbing and cutting tools.

Just how true this is was demonstrated against the Romans in 120 BC, when British tribesmen used large numbers of molosene against a small Roman force, to no effect.

Almost nothing is known about its use in combat

A researchers on the topic have found only one written source that mentions the use of Canis Pugnaxes in a live situation. This source dates back to 234 BC, when the consul Marco Pomponio led a campaign to conquer the native population of Sardinia. Well, he deployed ‘fighting’ dogs against the weakly armed, fleeing members of the battered enemy tribes as part of a kind of counter-guerrilla warfare. It follows, of course, that these dogs were more likely to be used against smaller, irregular forces. They also performed auxiliary military tasks, such as guarding camps and being used as signal dogs. Legends aside, this is about all we know – practically nothing – about the use of Canis Pugnaxes in combat.

But there are many more records of the breeding centre for these dogs in Capua, where in the arenas the ‘gladiator dogs’ for use in the arenas were selected and bred. Here, the best and most valued dogs from almost every part of the Roman Empire came from all over the continent. They were tested, bred together and trained for combat. As opposed to the cane-like depiction so prevalent today, the truth is that we know nothing about the appearance of these dogs. There are not even fragmentary representations of them. The main reason for this, by the way, may be that appearance was of no importance to the Romans in terms of the end result and the dog’s efficiency. The only reference to the appearance of these dogs survives in the sources, which show that yellow or silver-eyed dogs were particularly popular among the Roman nobility.

Cane Corso

If we try to summarise what we know about the alleged ancestors of this species, it quickly becomes clear that we know very little. Neither what exactly these dogs were used for, nor what they looked like, nor what types of dogs were used to make up this stock. And especially not how they survived and survived for thousands of years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, during the age of migrations and in the Middle Ages.

So the likelihood that there was any connection between the modern cane corso and the ancient Canis Pugnaxes is very low. And we don’t even know what they were like.

Excellent marketing and the human imagination can create wonderfully fabulous stories.

According to the facts about the cane corso’s past, this dog breed originated in southern Italy as a farm dog. They guarded homes, were used for hunting and could also be used to drive cattle when needed. As with almost all large and powerful breeds, the history of the Cane Corso has been severely disrupted by the transformation of the natural environment and the rural way of life. Just as, of course, the world wars were not good for this dog. By the 1970s, only a few dozen examples of this excellent working dog survived in remote, isolated parts of the Italian south. It was at this point that they were discovered and reconstructed by a small group of cane corso enthusiasts (Vito Indiveri, Giovanni Bonnetti and others.) From the late 1980s onwards, the breed became increasingly popular and set off on its world tour. In reality, however, this outstanding popularity has very little to do with ancient Rome and the Canis Pugnax. It is more to the outstanding qualities of the Cane Corso and its undoubtedly beautiful appearance.