162 Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. © 
of anatomy, lasted to the middle age: even at that period 
mention is made. of giants, and the descriptions of their 
bones are sometimes so exaggerated that they make them 
ten times larger than those of the largest elephants. 
As more correct ideas have now dissipated these chimeras, 
one would think that the elephants whose bones were dis- 
covered had been buried by human beings. Thus, so far as 
these discoveries are confined to Italy, and those countries 
frequented by the Macedonians, the Carthaginians, and the 
Romans, they may be reasonably accounted for by reflect- 
ing on the prodigious number of elephants possessed by these 
people. . 
We know that the first Europeans who had elephants 
were Alexander and his Macedonians after the defeat of 
Porus *; and on that occasion some excellent notions were 
furnished by Aristotle on the subject of these animals: after 
the death of Alexander, Antigonus possessed the greatest 
number of elephants +. The Seleucides maintained them 
always, particularly after Seleucus Nicator received fifty of 
them from Sandro-Cottus in exchange for a whole canton 
on the banks of the Indust. Pyrrhus was the first who 
brought them ifto Italy in the year of Rome 472 §;. and as 
he disembarked at Tarentum the Romans gave these ani- 
mals, which were then unknown to them, the name of Lu- 
eanian bulls. They were in very small numbers, and Pyrrhus 
hhad taken them from Demetrius. Curius Dentatus captured 
four of those from Pyrrhus, and brought them to Rome to 
grace his triumph. © These were the first that were seen. by 
the Romans; but they soon became quite common. 'Me- 
tellus, having conquered the Carthaginians in Sicily, in the 
year of Rome 502, conducted their elephants to Rome upon 
rafts, to the number of 120 according te Seneca, and 142 
according to Pliny ||: these were all massacred in the Circus. 
Hannibal also brought elephants with him into Italy. Clau- 
dius Pulcher and Lucullus introduced them to combat with 
* Pausanias, Attic, lib. i. + Id, ib. } Strabo, lib. xv. 
§:Plin, viii, «6 | Id. ib. 
bulls. 
