Chap. 6.] ELEPHANTS. 251 



ought we to be surprised, that an animal which possesses me- 

 mory should be sensible of affection : for the same author re- 

 lates, that an elephant recognized, after the lapse of many 

 years, an old man who had been its keeper in his youth. 

 They would seem also to have an instinctive feeling of justice. 

 King Bocchus once fastened thirty elephants to the stake, 

 with the determination of wreaking his vengeance on them, 

 by means of thirty others ; but though men kept sallying 

 forth among them to goad them on, he could not, with all his 

 endeavours, force them to become the ministers of the cruelty 

 of others. 



CHAP. 6. (6.) WHEN ELEPHANTS WERE FIRST SEEN IN ITALY. 



Elephants were seen in Italy, for the first time, in the war 

 with King Pyrrhus, 32 in the year of the City 472 ; they were 

 called " Lucanian oxen," because they were first seen in Lu- 

 cania. 33 Seven years after this period, they appeared at Rome 

 in a triumph. 34 In the year 502 a great number of them were 

 brought to Eome, which had been taken by the pontiff Me- 

 tellus, in his victory gained in Sicily over the Carthaginians ; 35 

 they were one hundred and forty-two 36 in number, or, as some 

 say, one hundred and forty, and were conveyed to our shores 

 upon rafts, which were constructed on rows of hogsheads joined 

 together. Verrius informs us, that they fought in the Circus, 



Macrobius, where the custom of offering pieces of money to elephants, which 

 they took up with the proboscis, is referred to. B. 



32 In the Epitome of Livy, B. xiii., it is said, that Valerius Corvinus 

 was unsuccessful in his engagements with Pyrrhus, in consequence of the 

 terror produced by the elephants. B. 



33 Varro, De Ling. Lat. B. vi. calls the elephant " Lucas bos," "the 

 Lucanian ox," from the fact of this laifge quadruped being first seen by the 

 Romans in the Lucanian army. B. 



34 According to Seneca, Manius Curius Dcntatus was the first who 

 exhibited elephants in his triumph over Pyrrhus. See also Florus, B. i. 

 c. 18. B. 



35 There are coins extant struck to commemorate this victory, in which 

 there is the figure of an elephant. B. 



86 The number of elephants brought to Eome by Metellus is differently 

 stated; Florus, B. ii., says that they were "about a hundred;" in the 

 Epitome of Livy, B.xix., they are one hundred and twenty, and the same 

 number is mentioned by Seneca, B. 



