BOOK VIII. VI. 16 vii. 20 



Thei-e were 142 of them, or by some accounts 140, 

 and they had been brought over on rafts that 

 Metelhis constructed by laying decks on rows of 

 casks lashed together. Verrius records that they 

 fought in the Circus and were killed with javeHns, 

 because it was not known what use to make of them, 

 as it had been decided not to keep them nor to 

 present them to native kings ; Lucius Piso says that 

 they were merely led into the Circus, and in order to 

 increase the contempt felt for them were driven all 

 round it by attendants carrying spears with a button 

 on the point. The authorities who do not think that 

 they were killed do not explain what was done witli 

 them afterwards. 



VII. Thei'e is a famous story of one of the Romans FightswUh 

 figliting single-handed against an elepliant, on the '^1''/^''^"^^^,' 

 occasion when Hannibal had compelled his prisoners ifie cirais. 

 froni our ai'my to fight duels with one another. For 

 he pitted one survivor against an elephant, and this 

 man, having secured a promise of his freedom if he 

 killed the animal, met it single-handed in the arena 

 and much to the chagrin of the Carthaginians dis- 

 patched it. Hannibal reahzed that reports of this 

 encounter \\ould bring the animals into contempt:, so 

 he sent hoi*semen to kill the man as lie was departing. 

 Experiences in our battles with Pyrrhus made it 

 clear that it is very easy to lop Oif an elephant's 

 trunk. Fenestella states that the first elephant 

 fought in the circus at Rome in the curule aedileship 

 of Claudius Pulcher and the consulship of Marcus 

 Antonius and Aulus Postumius, 99 b.c, and also that 

 the first fight of an elephant against bulls was twenty 

 years later in the curule aedilesliip of the Luculli. 

 Also in Pompey's second consulship," at the dedica- 



15 



