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To Alexander he presented many impressive gifts, among them one hundred and fifty dogs remarkable for their size and courage and other good qualities.1 People said that they had a strain of tiger blood. [2] He wanted Alexander to test their mettle in action, and he brought into a ring a full grown lion and two of the poorest of the dogs. He set these on the lion, and when they were having a hard time of it he released two others to assist them. [3] The four were getting the upper hand over the lion when Sopeithes sent in a man with a scimitar who hacked at the right leg of one of the dogs. At this Alexander shouted out indignantly and the guards rushed up and seized the arm of the Indian, but Sopeithes said that he would give him three other dogs for that one, and the handler, taking a firm grip on the leg, severed it slowly. The dog, in the meanwhile, uttered neither yelp nor whimper, but continued with his teeth clamped shut until, fainting with loss of blood, he died on top of the lion.

1 Curtius 9.1.31-33; Strabo 15.1.31. These Indian dogs were famous (Hdt. 1.192; Hdt. 7.187; cp. Real-Encyclopädie, 8 (1913), 2545).

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  • Cross-references in notes from this page (4):
    • Herodotus, Histories, 1.192
    • Herodotus, Histories, 7.187
    • Strabo, Geography, 15.1.31
    • Curtius, Historiarum Alexandri Magni, 9.1.31
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