Talk:Molossus of Epirus

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Unclear if this dog breed is real

Please see Is Molossus of Epirus a real dog breed? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:59, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that, Jonesey95; good catch on the copyvio, btw! My Greek is pretty shaky these days, but it definitely has a breed standard published by the national kennel club, the Κυνολογικός Ομιλος Ελλάδος (Kynologikós Omilos Elládos), an FCI affiliate. I'm not entirely convinced that the the other source I added to the article is WP:RS. By the way, I think the question is not whether it's real, but more whether it now exists – there seems to be adequate evidence that there was such a breed or type in the past. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:40, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Is it appropriate to consider these dogs Albanian?

@Adventurous36: recently added Albania as a country of origin for this dog along with the name "Molosat Shqiptare" as the given Albanian name. I've never heard of this dog as being considered Albanian before and a quick google search showed that the only references to Albania in articles about this dog were either part of a sentence explaining that the territory where this dog originated (ancient Epirus) is found in "modern-day Greece and Albania", or an uncited blog which seemed to have a rather Albanian-nationalist slant to it. Given this seeming lack of evidence that the dog has any relation to Albania and given that the apparent agreed-upon and cited origin of this breed is that it was originally bred by the Greek tribe known as the Molossians it seems that we should not include Albania as an origin place of this breed without a citation.
Additionally, when I googled the proposed Albanian name ""Molosat Shqiptare"" (which, if my rusty Albanian is correct, means literally "Albanian Molossus") the search yielded only 402 results. For comparison, the searches for "Molossus of Epirus" and "Μολοσσός της Ηπείρου" yield 47,000 and 685,000 respectively. Unlike English and Greek searches, the search results for "Molosat Shqiptare" were primarily made up of dead links, websites that had nothing to do with dogs but used the word Shqiptare, or (and this seems to be most of them) websites linking to an old youtube video that appears to be very Albanian-nationalist slanted.
So, given all this, I've undone the edits by @Adventurous36: pending a reasonable citation for the claims. --Skoulikomirmigotripa (talk) 23:13, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Molossus (dog) with Molossus of Epirus

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was merge. William Harris (talk) 10:06, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

---

We don't need two pages on the same ancient dog breed/type, they should be combined. No particular opinion on which title the page should end up at, but in general a title without disambiguation is preferable. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:26, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support, no particular preference for title either. Cavalryman (talk) 11:09, 18 June 2020 (UTC).
• Support, perhaps with removal of dubious/unreferenced text during the merge process. William Harristalk 12:33, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article now merged. William Harris (talk) 10:06, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Bold split and merger

Hello Justlettersandnumbers and William Harris, having just completed a rewrite of Greek Shepherd I made a bold determination that this page was better merged into that one. So ... I have boldly done so and restored Molossus (dog). If you disagree with what I have done, three simple reverts will undo everything.

Also, there is no evidence the photo that was on this page was an example of the breed, the commons caption stated it was a photo of a dog from Albania. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 10:31, 27 January 2021 (UTC).

Based on the new information from the Greek Kennel Club that appears in the Greek Shepherd article, I concur. William Harris (talk) 10:50, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Well, Cavalryman, William Harris, I'm sorry but I don't – I'm quite uncomfortable about this, though I do see where you're coming from. As I see it, if there are a good number of solid sources that say that these are both the same dog then we should cite them; but if there aren't, I think we should respect the decision of the national kennel club of Greece to treat them as separate. I'm concerned that the new paragraph on this dog at Greek Shepherd is based only on what that kennel club says, yet disagrees with its fundamental premise – that it's a separate breed. I suggest reverting to the status quo ante unless some strong sources show up to confirm that they're really the same. As for the image ... if it's wrong, we should just remove it. Oh, and compliments on the Greek Shepherd page! Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:35, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

We appear to have 3 topics under discussion: (a) the "Molossus of Epirus" is a herding breed found in modern Greece, and (b) the "Molossus (dog)" was an ancient form of mastiff found - from the same region - in ancient Greece, (c) the Greek Shepherd. Having looked at the text of what was the "Molossus of Epirus" article, it appears to have confused itself with the "Molossus (dog)" in parts. Where do we go from here is the question. (Note that both Aristotle and Hancock state that the Mollosians kept two types of large hounds - one for sheep and one for being fierce.) William Harris (talk) 20:59, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Justlettersandnumbers, absolutely no apology necessary, I knew I was skirting the acceptable and am very unoffended by your objections, I suppose I wasn’t 100% convinced by my actions either.

A look at the last version of the Molossus of Epirus page [1], the only reliable (albeit primary) source is the Greek Kennel Club website, I was thinking this looked a bit reliable(ish) but they say this on their website:

“ΓΡΑΦΕΙΣ ΑΡΘΡΑ; Γίνε συντάκτης του site και γράψε άρθρα για τα θέματα που σε ενδιαφέρουν και θέλεις να μοιραστείς με την κοινότητα των κυνόφιλων. Μπορείς να ξεκινήσεις απλά στέλνοντας το άρθρο σου με email στο dogmagazine.gr@gmail.com. Οι αναγνώστες του DOGMAGAZINE.GR περιμένουν να σε διαβάσουν!”

Which Google unreasuringly translates to:

“ARE YOU WRITING ARTICLES? Become an author of the site and write articles on topics that interest you and you want to share with the canine community. You can start by simply sending your article by email to dogmagazine.gr@gmail.com. The readers of DOGMAGAZINE.GR are waiting to read you!”

Two contemporary secondary sources (Hancock and Morris) state in all likelihood the Molossians kept two kinds of dogs, which is no doubt influenced by the writings of Aristotle et al (and possibly Ash and each other), and to be brutally honest the notion that these are the purebred descendants of the Molossus of old is a little hard to believe. Morris has a pretty detailed entry and I have more to add in time. Further, I cannot find any mention of the Molossus of Epirus is any secondary source, anywhere, they no doubt exist because they are recognised by a kennel club but that’s not enough.

How about we flip the previous merger and move the paragraph & infobox I included on the Molossus of Epirus which I included in the Greek Shepherd page onto the Molossus (dog)? I think given the sources available it’s the primary topic. Another ping to William Harris to hear his thoughts also. Cavalryman (talk) 01:38, 30 January 2021 (UTC).

According to Morris: Alexander the Great's mother was from Molossus, that was her people (fact). He invaded Persia and pushed out into Central Asia (also fact). From the steppes he brought back a large and fearless battle dog, and named it in honour of his mother's people (maybe yes, maybe no - its not unreasonable.). The dog then made its way to Rome to become their early mastiff. It is beyond doubt that we should have an article on the Greek Shepherd. I would suggest, given its history, we also have an article on the molossus. There is a modern breed that is recognised by the Greek Kennel Club called the "Molossus of Epirus" - and I doubt its ancientness - the question is do we have enough information for it to be WP:NOTABLE here on WP? William Harris (talk) 08:15, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you both. On balance, I'm still in favour of restoring the status quo ante. Sources for "Molossus of Epirus" or "Μολοσσός της Ηπείρου" include:

• this report, pages 21, 130, 427
• this journal article from 1965, page 42
• this paper, possibly unpublished, page 41

As far as the ancientness goes, we know for a fact that the first dog breed standard was published in (have I remembered right?) 1865, so no formal breed is older than that. This seems to be a situation similar to the Maltese, where a modern breed is claimed to descend from an ancient type; as long as we make clear that there are a couple of millennia of intervening history completely missing, there shouldn't be too much of a problem there in my view. As for article title, our policy generally prefers an alternative name also used in English to a title with disambiguation. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:21, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

That Diogenes knew a thing or two about dogs (refer last ref above). I concur with JLAN; there is argument for all three articles. Many European dog breeders are claiming an ancient pedigree for their breeds (there must have been many sailors and much dog diversity in old Phoenicia!) but it is not supported by DNA. Most came into being in the last 200 years and the "breeds" that they came from - plus many others - are now gone. (This is why there is more dog genetic diversity found in East Asia than in Europe, which has led in the past to the false claim that the dog was domesticated in East Asia.) William Harris (talk) 21:07, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

JLAN, your capacity to dig out sources always astounds me, unfortunately I cannot view the first one. I agree the ideal is three separate articles, but the second two sources above still don’t give us SIGCOV so I’m not sure there’s enough there for a stand-alone article. Given the sourcing I think Molossus is the primary target and worthy of its own page (Morris wasn’t included in the article when we had the above merger discussion). Further, the vast majority of the page links are to Molosser which we merged into Molossus about 18 months ago, I think that is far better targeted at the legendary dog of the ancients than to an obscure breed for which we cannot even find sufficient reliable coverage for its own article.

I now vote to merge (retarget) Molossus of Epirus into Molossus (dog), using the breed standard as the reference. Kind regards, Cavalryman (talk) 01:53, 31 January 2021 (UTC).

Caution: are we about to turn a shepherd dog into a mastiff? If we take the Molossus of Epirus article (currently a redirect), cut out all of the unreliable sourcing and no-sourcing, then what we have left is some form of shepherd dog. Are we comfortable that what is left can fall under Molossus? William Harris (talk) 08:48, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

That was my rationale for moving the content to Greek Shepherd, I have no idea about the history of the Molossus of Epirus but I find it hard to imagine it is anything but a local variety of the Greek Shepherd. That being said, if we can find sufficient sources it deserves its own page. Cavalryman (talk) 21:55, 1 February 2021 (UTC).

Epirus is given a romantic history, with the breed standard of the Greek Kennel Club as its source. Unfortunately, that source mentions no history apart from the breed originating in the Epirus region. William Harris (talk) 08:27, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Yep, from the citation I had assumed there was something about that in the standard, but nothing about the history at all. The primary differences in the standards appears to be the colours, perhaps the locals of Epirus prefer a certain colour. Cavalryman (talk) 12:32, 2 February 2021 (UTC).

Pets in action magazine

This article listed as a reference appears to be from Pets in action magazine (unless my translations are eskewed), that publication lists an ISSN (ISSN 2585-3007), a search of three ISSN databases finds no such ISSN. Due to this discrepancy I am removing that article as a source but am happy to discuss, my interpretation could very easily be incorrect. Cavalryman (talk) 01:38, 17 September 2020 (UTC).