The Romans did not think in breeds. They thought in job descriptions, and their writers sort dogs accordingly — canes villatici for the yard, canes pastorales for the flock, canes nare sagaces for following a scent, canes pugnaces for the fight. Varro held that every household, and certainly every farm, wanted a guard dog and a hunting dog, and that the guard dog should be white so that nobody mistook it for a wolf in the dark; Columella preferred a black one for daylight, on the grounds that it frightened thieves better. The studded collar this dog wears has a name too. It is the melium, made thick and set with studs to guard the throat against wolves — Varro reasoned that a wolf which had once bitten one would think twice about every dog it met afterwards. A collar recovered from Pompeii carries an inscription praising the dog that wore it for saving its master from exactly that.

King & Country give the handler a drawn gladius and a taut leash, in segmented armour over a red tunic, with the dog leaning into the collar ahead of him. What the army demonstrably used dogs for was sentry work, patrols and tracking — in 231 BC Marcus Pomponius put keen-scented Italian dogs onto Sardinian rebels and followed them to their hiding places — so this pair belongs at a gate or on a road, not in the battle line. Post them under the Roman Triumphal Arch, or on the edge of a camp scene with Roman Soldiers at Ease and the Roman Centurion who set the watch. A dog gives a diorama something a rank of legionaries cannot — a diagonal, and a reason for civilians to keep their distance.

Model: ROM052 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 2 piece set