BOOK VIII. III. 6-v. 9 



wrote this and dedicated these spoils won from the 

 Celts ; ' and also that he personally had seen elephants 

 that, when having been brought by sea to Pozzuoli 

 they were made to walk ofF the ship, were frightened 

 by the length of the gangway stretching a long way 

 out from the land and turned round and went 

 backwards, so as to cheat themselves in their estima- 

 tion of the distance. 



IV. They themselves know that the only thing in EUpham 

 them that makes desirable plunder is in their weapons /^^^J^l'^.'' 

 which Juba calls ' horns,' but which the author so 

 greatly his senior, Herodotus,* and also common usage 

 better term ' tusks ; ' consequently when these fall 



ofF owing to somc accident or to age they bury them 

 in the ground. The tusk alone is of ivory : otherwise 

 even in these animals too the skeleton forming the 

 framework of the body is common bone ; albeit 

 recently owing to our poverty even the bones have 

 begun to be cut into layers, inasmuch as an ample 

 supply of tusks is now rarely obtained except from 

 India, all the rest in our workl having succumbed to 

 luxury. A young elephant is known by the white- 

 ness of its tusks. The beasts take the greatest care of 

 them ; they spare the point of one so that it may 

 not be bhint for fighting and use the other as an 

 implement for digging roots and thrusting massive 

 objects forward; and when surrounded by a party 

 of hunters they post those with the smallest tusks 

 in front, so that it may be thought not worth while 

 to fight them, and afterwards when exhausted they 

 break their tusks by dashing them against a tree 

 and ransom themselves at the price of the desired 

 booty. 



V. It is remarkable in the case of most animals 



