(intelligent) — the more ferocious dogs, and those who artfully circumvented and caught their prey — was known in the earlier periods of Greek and Roman history, but that the
celeres
, the dogs of speed, the greyhounds of every kind, were peculiar to the British islands, or to the western and northern continents of Europe, the interior and the produce of which were in those days unknown to the Greeks and Romans. By most authors who have inquired into the origin of these varieties of the dog, the
sagaces
have been generally assigned to Greece — the
pugnaces
to Asia — and the
celeres
to the Celtic nations.
The vertragi, canes celeres, or dogs that hunted by sight alone, were not known to the ancients previous to the time of the younger Zenophon, who then describes them as novelties just introduced into Greece:—