Peritas: The Dog Alexander the Great Named a City After
by Athens Bureau · Greek City TimesAlexander the Great loved his warhorse Bucephalus so much that he named a city after him. According to the ancient biographer Plutarch, he did the same for a dog called Peritas.
What the ancient sources say about Peritas
Only one ancient writer names Peritas: Plutarch, the Greek biographer who wrote his Life of Alexander around four centuries after the king’s death. In chapter 61, he writes that Alexander had raised a dog called Peritas and loved him dearly, and that when he lost the dog, he founded a city and gave it the dog’s name.
Plutarch is careful about where the story came from. He attributes it to the writer Sotion, who said he had heard it from Potamon of Lesbos.
The anecdote follows Plutarch’s account of Bucephalus, the horse that died after Alexander’s battle against King Porus in India in 326 BC, and of Bucephala, the city Alexander founded on the Hydaspes river in his memory. Plutarch gives no date or cause for the death of Peritas, and no location for the city named after him, which has never been identified. It is one of many settlements Alexander founded from Egypt to India.
Read more: Alexander the Great Biography Wins Prestigious UK Book Prize
What breed was Peritas?
No ancient source says. Modern retellings often describe Peritas as a Molossian, the large guard and hunting dog of Epirus, the homeland of Alexander’s mother Olympias. Given Alexander’s family ties to Epirus, it is a plausible guess, but it remains a guess. The Molossian is among the best known ancient Greek dog breeds, alongside much smaller companions such as the kokoni, the little house dog of ancient Greek families.
Did Peritas save Alexander from an elephant?
Many popular accounts say Peritas saved Alexander’s life by attacking an elephant, at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC or later in India, or that he died during a siege. None of these stories appears in any ancient text.
The elephant story may borrow from a different dog. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, describes a huge dog that the king of Albania, an ancient kingdom in the Caucasus rather than modern Albania, gave Alexander on his way to India. When the dog ignored the bears and boars set against it, Alexander had it killed. The king sent a second dog, which killed a lion and then brought down an elephant. Pliny never names either dog, and nothing in his account links them to Peritas.
Why the story of Peritas endures
Even without the later legends, the story is striking. Alongside Bucephala, a city reportedly named for a dog Alexander raised himself offers a rare glimpse of the conqueror as someone who mourned his animals as companions.
Sources: Plutarch, Life of Alexander 61; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.149–150.
READ MORE: From Egypt to India: The cities founded by Alexander the Great
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