BOOK VIII. V. 13-V1. 16 



they are devoid of strong afFection, for it is re- 

 ported that one elephant in Egypt fell in love with a 

 girl who was seUing flowers, and (that nobody may 

 think that it was a vulgar choice) wlio was a remark- 

 able favourite of the very celebrated scholar Aris- 

 tophanes ; and another elephant is said to have fallen 

 in love with a young soldier in Ptolemy*s army, a 

 Syracusan named Menander, and whenever it did 

 not see him to have shown its longing for him by 

 refusing food. Also Juba records a girl selHng scent 

 who was loved by an elephant. In all these cases 

 tlie animals showed their affection by their delight 

 at the sight of the object and their clumsy gestures 

 of endearment, and by keeping the branches given 

 to them by the pubUc and showering them in the 

 loved one's lap. Nor is it surprising that animals 

 possessing memory are also capable of affection. 

 For the same writer records a case of an elephant's 

 recognizing many years later in old age a man who 

 had been its mahout in its youth, and also an instance 

 of a sort of insight into justice, when King Bocchus 

 tied to stakes thirty elephants which he intended to 

 punish and exposed them to a herd of the same 

 number, men running out among them to provoke 

 them to the attack, and it proved impossible to make 

 them perform the service of ministering to another's 

 cruelty. 



VI. Italy saw elephants for the first time in the Firstappear- 

 war M-ith King Pyrrhus, and called them Lucan "JIZ,"/,^,^ 

 oxen because they were seen in Lucania, 280 " b.c. ; fn naiy. 

 but Rome first saw them at a date five years later, 

 in a triumph, and also a very large number that were 

 captured from the Carthaginians in Sicily by the 

 victory of the pontiif Lucius Metellus, 252 b.c. 



13 



