Synonymous of the Italian Mastiff, this large breed is the result of at least four thousand years of both natural and human selection based on the various descriptions obtained as a gift from the past. According to different sources, the progenitor of this mastiff is a Tibetan dog which directly affected the phenotype of the Persian Mastiff used in battle by King Porus against Alexander The Great. It was Alexander The Great who admired the strength of these dogs and brought them to his kingdom in Greece to a region of Epirus called "Molossia" (from which the term Molossus used by the Romans to describe this dog, freely translated in English a Molossian), and thereafter, were bred for many years. The Roman Emperor Paolo Emilio, at his triumphal return to Rome after a military campaign in Greece, brought a hundred of these dogs back as war booty. Based on reports of Quinto Aurelio Simmaco, the Romans widely employed these dogs for their fighting games at the Colosseum ("giochi circensis"). At the time of Julius Caesar, the original Greek strain was supposedly bred with the mastiffs encountered during the military campaign in Britannia (the actual Great Britain), most likely brought there by the Phoenicians.
